Part I
Some things never leave you; it’s like learning to ride a bike. Once you learn it, you can’t unlearn it. Twelve years and a prison sentence later, he still haven’t forgotten what it’s like to kiss Sirius.
‘Surrounded by family and friends’, that’s what they say, almost always preceded by ‘passed away peacefully in his/her sleep’. It’s one of those things that they say, doctors and priests and newsreaders and grieving family members. It’s bollocks, of course; maybe not the ‘in sleep’ part, but the rest – there is no such thing as a peaceful death, in sleep or not. Peaceful is calm, unchanging. Death is just an end. ‘Surrounded by family and friends’ is just as false – it’s not like ‘family and friends’ would be gathered around some poor sod’s deathbed in the middle of the night, just to be there when their light snuffs out, when they shuffle off their mortal coil.
Marlene McKinnon is sprawled out across Remus’ bed, long, bare brown legs swinging. She’s holding an ancient music box, carefully winding up the dial and listening to the tune that spills out, her shoulders swaying.
“So how’s coffee boy?” she asks, blinking up at Remus from under her almost overlong fringe. Remus rolls his eyes, flops down next to her, twisting so he lands on his side. ‘Coffee boy’ is what Marlene calls their favourite hot barista, who she has selflessly given up perusing so Remus could stare at him from across the café, too awkward to make conversation or get through his order without stammering. The barista, of course, has to find this adorable and endearing, and has taken to flirting outrageously with Remus whenever they’re in the café, and because Remus is Remus and incapable of flirting they spend most of the time talking about Remus’ schoolwork, and occasionally the radical brain surgery that left him with a huge curved scar across his skull.
Brain tumours, Remus has discovered, are real bitches.
In return, they know almost nothing about the barista. He rides a motorbike and he’s vain about his hair and he’s a uni student. They don’t even know his name. Marlene finds it infuriating.
“Same as the last time we were there, I guess,” Remus shrugs, not an easy task lying down. Marlene kicks him. “You said you’d go back yesterday to see him.”
“I got caught up,” Remus shrugs, and glances at his bedside clock. “We’ll be late,” he says, rolling off the bed, onto his feet, scooping up his school bag and snatching the music box out of Marlene’s long, dark fingers.
Seventeen is the age for falling in love, and twenty is when you figure out there is no such thing. Only, Remus doesn’t know that yet.
The café is almost empty, which is something of a relieve. Remus doesn’t like crowds, doesn’t like the way people look at him, wondering what’s wrong with him, if it’ll kill him.
He really can’t wait for his hair to grow back.
The barista is behind the counter when they come in, chatting to a redhead waitress and a tall boy with glasses, but he flashes them a smile and a little wave anyway, both of which are aimed at Remus rather than Marlene, and the girl nudges Remus in the shoulder and raises an eyebrow at him – you still think he’s not into you?
Remus ignores her, and sends a wobbly smile at the barista, who throws in a wink, and Remus promptly trips over a table leg, righting himself seconds from hitting the ground. Marlene laughs, reaching out a hand to steady him, and the barista calls out, “You alright, Remus?” and Remus can’t even answer because he knows my name he knows my name he knows my name.
Seventeen; the age of love, indeed.
When Remus was fourteen, he got diagnosed. He had his first surgery four months later, and his nurse was a possibly the kindest woman he’d ever met, and she’d brought her daughter in to see him the day after his surgery because he was surly and depressed and lonely.
The funny part was, he’d already known Marlene. She went to his school, they shared a few classes. But after that day they’d found something, a bond, formed over a mutual hatred of hospitals and a respect for nurses and a shared obsession with the Sherlock Holmes series. It’d been weeks until Remus could go back to school, and when he finally did Marlene was by his side, with her quick smile and her sharp wit and even sharper tongue. She’d taken notes for him through all the classes he missed, and stood up for him against anyone who dared give him trouble. Marlene was the first best friend he’d ever had, and possibly the greatest thing to ever have happened to him.
In short, she was well worth her slightly unhealthy obsession with MasterChef.
Two weeks later it becomes apparent that coffee boy has a name, as does the redheaded waitress, who introduces herself as Lily and tells them he’s Sirius and if Remus is going to do something about their ‘spark’ he should just go ahead and do it, because Sirius might be good and flirting and one-night stands, but he’s awful at actual relationships, and somewhere during their conversations about algebra and brain surgery, Sirius has decided he wants that with Remus.
It’s a strange conversation, to say the least. Somewhere along the way Remus thinks he falls a little in love with Lily, in the same plutonic way that he’s in love with Marlene and his cousin and that one contestant in MasterChef.
“So,” says the barista – Sirius – when Remus and Marlene are halfway out the door. “What exactly my lovely Lily say to you, and how hard must I kill her?”
“Oh, just about how I have seduced you with my awkwardness,” Remus calls over his shoulder, heart in his throat. “While we’re on the subject, do you want to take me out to dinner some time?” he almost baulks at his own boldness, and can feel Marlene’s surprise.
“Dinner and a movie, at least,” Sirius shoots back. “I’m a classy broad; you’ll have to feed me and pay for my ticket before I’ll let you under my skirt.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Remus replies, grinning all over his face.
This is how Remus Lupin falls in love, at age seventeen.
“No, no, no, plate up, you bastard, it’s an elimination challenge, you’ve got SECONDS!” Marlene hollers, bouncing on the longue and throwing a cushion at the television, as her person favourite MasterChef contestant fails to plate up a dish. “Remus, are you seeing this? Cry for me, Remus.”
“No,” Remus replies stubbornly, grinning at his phone. Marlene tosses another cushion at the screen, and reaches for the nearest thing to throw, which happens to be her silky black ferret, affectionately named Castiel after a character on a television show Remus does not understand. Marlene stops herself from throwing Castiel, but it’s a near thing. Sometimes, Remus worries about her mental health. Then again, he’s currently smiling at his phone like it holds the secrets of the universe, so he’s hardly one to talk.
“Stop texting lover boy and join me in my misery,” Marlene demands, stroking Castiel’s head, as her favourite contestant says a teary goodbye.
“I thought he was ‘coffee boy’,” Remus muses, his grin widening at the image on his phone – Sirius, pouting at the camera, looking adorable and so perfect Remus can’t believe he’s his, the caption reading, I wish you were here, preferably in my bed. Wink, wink. I'm not cheesy at all.
“He’s lover boy now you’re shagging him,” Marlene replies, kissing the top of Castiel’s furry head. “Comfort me, Remus. I’m an emotional black woman.”
“You’re not a woman. You’re a girl. And you’re dark brown, not black.”
“You and your dry wit, Watson, will be my undoing,” Marlene replies with a sigh, and Remus flashes her a smile at the familiar nickname; Marlene is Holmes, the captain of their two-man ship, and Remus is Watson, her sidekick, her first mate.
“I would not have it any other way, Holmes, my dear,” he says, and Marlene springs from the lounge, apparently recovered, to snatch two DVDs from next to the TV. “Which reminds me: Cumberbatch season one, or Downy Jr?”
“Cumberbatch,” Remus decides, and sends a message to Sirius: I’d love to be in your bed, but I have fanboying to do.
He gets a reply within a minute, and it reads: Well, then, don’t let me distract you, my darling little geek.
And something about being declared as Sirius’ makes Remus’ toes curl in his mismatched socks; Marlene is sighing audibly over Rupert Graves, her ferret is snacking on the forgotten popcorn at the end of the lounge, and Remus belongs to Sirius. It’s a good feeling.
Remus genuinely likes Sirius’ friends; it comes as something of a surprise. He hadn’t been expecting to like them. He’s not too fond of people in general, as a rule. But James and Peter are funny and easy-going and don’t treat him like a kids despite the three-year age gap and don’t treat him like he’s something that might break despite his fairly obvious numerous brain surgeries. It’s a refreshing change.
They get him drunk on James’ twentieth, and James surprises them all by going down on one knee and proposing to Lily, and the birthday party turns into an engagement party, and it’s mad and wonderful and someone phones Marlene and she shows up at midnight with Castiel in her pocket and a bottle of champagne in her hand, and is welcomed with open arms.
Remus ends up so drunk he can’t see straight, and when Sirius tries to wrestle him out of his shirt to put him to bed he keeps batting the older boy’s hands away. “Stop it,” he keeps saying. “Stop it, I’ve got a boyfriend.”
“I’m your boyfriend, you tosser,” says Sirius, laughing, pressing light kisses to Remus’ cheeks and jawline.
“Nngh,” says Remus. “My boyfriend, Sirius. S’really good-looking.”
“Why, thank you,” smirks Sirius, and proceeds to tuck Remus in like a child. In reality, Remus should have known it was too good to last.
Marlene’s personalized ring tone wakes Remus up at 3am on Halloween night. “What?” he groans into the phone, still half-asleep, but wakes completely when he hears panicked breaths over the phone.
“James and Lily and Peter are dead,” Marlene doesn’t sob into the phone, because Marlene isn’t the kind of girl who sobs. “They’re saying – they’re saying Sirius did it. My dad, he arrested him himself, covered in blood and laughing and –“
“What?” it’s all Remus can say. “What? What?”|
“I’m at the station,” Marlene says shakily. “I’m sorry I woke you, I had to tell you, Remus, I’m so sorry.”
“Marls. Marley, I don’t understand – he couldn’t. He wouldn’t.”
“He was holding the gun, Remus,” Marlene makes a noise that could be a sob, maybe. “Shit, Watson, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
Remus thought of James and his dopey smile when he looked at Lily, and Lily with her red hair and attitude, and Peter will his laid back jokes and kindness. And he couldn’t think of a single thing to think after that.
The trail and sentencing goes past in a blur; many months hazing together into one big period of no, no this can’t be happening. Remus makes front page news, just under Sirius’ mug-shot, an article about a teenage cancer survivor who fell for a killer. Remus wants to hunt down the journalist and shake her by the shoulders until she understands: Sirius is not a killer.
But he’s serving a life sentence in a maximum security prison, and no one’s going to listen to some kid who made a dumb choice in the romance department, no matter how loud Remus yells.
Life does what life does best; it goes on. Remus grows up, finishes school. He goes to uni, and wishes he’d gone backpacking across Britain and Europe with Marlene when she offered; she’s currently somewhere in France, flirting with French boys and getting into trouble.
His visits to the prison, to Sirius have become few and far between; he can barely stand to look at Sirius anymore, his ragged face, his tired eyes. “I didn’t do it,” he says over and over again, and Remus believes him. But Remus is the only one, and it’s not enough.
By the time Remus is twenty, he’s stopped visiting altogether. He meets a girl called Tonks who has more hair dye then sense and knows how to have fun, and he falls a bit in love with her in that special platonic way reserved for Marlene and certain reality TV personnel, and as hard as he tries to fall head over heels for her it just doesn’t happen.
Life goes on. The world keeps spinning. And then, Sirius Black escapes from prison.