Fic: A Proper Relationship
A Proper Relationship
By minnow_53
Disclaimer: These characters belong to JK Rowling and various corporations.
Pairing: Remus/Sirius
Rating: PG-13
Era: Just after Hogwarts.
Summary: Sirius and Remus’s first day living together after Hogwarts.
Thank you: To astra_argentea, for a swift, online beta, and for defying the HP Lexicon. You get to keep the CD!
Dedication: At last! A very late birthday fic for kabeyk.
No spoilers. None at all.
Fluffy, slashy R/S...hope you’ll enjoy! On my journal, and now crossposted to remusxsirius and two_boys.
A Proper Relationship
‘Now school’s over,’ Sirius said, ‘it’s time we had a proper relationship.’
He and Remus were unpacking Remus’s belongings, and Remus was glad of the distraction: he didn’t want Sirius to notice he’d brought his collection of Chocolate Frog cards when he’d promised to throw them away. So he fumbled at the bottom of his trunk and said in an innocent voice, ‘What d’you mean, Padfoot?’
‘Well, we’re going to be living together, and we need to build up a, a relationship. Like I said.’
‘What were we doing at school, then?’ said Remus, a bit puzzled. He pulled out his cards and hid them under his jumper. ‘Wasn’t that a relationship?’
‘Not really. It was shagging.’
‘Oh.’ Remus considered. ‘I liked shagging.’
Sirius sniggered. ‘So did I! Still do. But we need to do more now than shag. For instance, I’m helping you unpack. And we’re talking.’
Remus wasn’t really talking, because he was more concerned about sneaking his cards past Sirius without them falling out from under his top. He didn’t want to use his wand, but if he could just hold them up by himself Sirius would never notice.
‘Remus. Have you heard a word I was saying?’
‘Yes,’ lied Remus. ‘About relationships.’
‘I was on to shared interests there. Things we like doing together,’ he elaborated. ‘Apart from shagging,’ he added hastily.
Remus thought. They liked playing pranks, but he supposed that was something they had to leave behind at school. He didn’t imagine that the landlord would take kindly to green slime on his shiny new car, or a love-potion in his morning coffee.
‘Fishing?’ he ventured.
Sirius snorted. ‘You’ve never even been fishing! That was James.’
‘Well, I could learn. If you want to share interests. Or you can just go fishing with James, then. Why should I care?’
Fish were vile flapping things anyway, and they were probably in terrible pain, and their gills bled. He glowered at Sirius. ‘It was only a suggestion. I hate fishing.’
‘You don’t know that for sure,’ Sirius pointed out. ‘It seems like your sort of sport. You lie under a tree with a book, and just wait for something to bite.’
He bit Remus playfully to illustrate his point, which made Remus squirm, and they postponed their discussion of the relationship for half an hour while they explored the physical side.
Eventually, Sirius roused himself and started to take Remus’s robes out of his trunk, performing complex magic to hang them in the wardrobe. Remus knew he was proud of the wardrobe: it seemed a very grown-up item of furniture, and it expanded magically every time Sirius added to his collection of leather jackets, which he’d promised that Remus could borrow any time he liked.
Having done his bit, Sirius lay on the bed with his hands behind his head, watching Remus as he sorted and folded the rest of his clothes.
‘You can use the top two drawers for your underwear and stuff. Should be enough for now.’
Remus thought he might need some extra space, what with the Chocolate Frog cards and all, but he didn’t like to mention it.
‘First, we've got to find out what kind of relationship we actually have,’ Sirius said, as Remus did intricate things with the collars and cuffs of his shirts.
‘Do we?’ Remus hardly thought it even mattered. He’d always thought they had a wonderful time shagging and doing Muggle Studies projects and discussing Divination.
Sirius, on the other hand, had a wider view of things. ‘I mean, we could discover we have all sorts of perversions, like BDSM - ’
‘I thought that was a driving school,’ Remus said blankly.
‘Well, there’s bondage in there somewhere. That blue shirt you’ve just put away. It would make a wonderful tie.’
‘You’re not tying me up,’ said Remus in disgust.
‘How d’you know I don’t want to be tied up? See? We don’t really know anything about each other. We could just be friends underneath it all, or maybe we’ll be loving but level-headed, like James and Lily.’
Remus didn’t agree that James and Lily were level-headed. Just that afternoon, they’d been over at the flat helping Remus with his trunk and several black plastic bags - for an impoverished werewolf, he certainly had a lot of possessions - and every time Remus looked round they were snogging in a corner. He went into the kitchen, and they were kissing passionately beside the cooker. While Sirius opened bags at random, exclaiming over Remus’s books and clothes, James and Lily gazed into each other’s eyes, oblivious to everything but each other. On reflection, he wouldn’t mind if his and Sirius’s relationship was like that, without the hassle of being engaged, of course.
*
It was Sirius’s flat and Sirius’s bed, and on his first night there Remus reflected that he didn’t even know what side Sirius liked to sleep on.
He asked, rather pleased with the question, because it seemed exactly the sort of thing you’d want to find out in a proper relationship.
Sirius looked blank. ‘I usually sleep in the middle… well, I’ll go on the right tonight.’
Remus always found it hard to sleep on his first night in a new place. He spent a couple of hours tossing and turning, until even Sirius, who slept like the dead and had been snoring happily, was woken up.
‘For goodness’ sake, Moony! What’s wrong?’
‘Can’t sleep. Perhaps,’ he said hopefully, ‘a shag might help.’
This woke Sirius up completely. ‘Okay, that’s a perfect example. I know I said it myself earlier, but I’ve been thinking. We’re living together now. We don’t shag. We make love.’
‘Oh. Do we?’
‘Yes. Come here and I’ll show you.’
It wasn’t any different from shagging, Remus decided, as they snuggled up afterwards, but he supposed that in a relationship semantics were all-important. It felt just as good; he didn’t think calling it something else would make it any better.
He finally fell asleep pondering the complexities of language and emotions, and was woken by Sirius shaking him.
‘Moony. I’ve brought you a cup of water.’
‘What happened to tea?’ Remus grumbled.
‘There isn’t any tea.’
Remus drank his water and got up for breakfast. He and Sirius went into the kitchen, sat down opposite each other at the table, and looked round a bit helplessly.
Sirius seemed pleased, in a grudging way, to have another example of what a relationship entailed, though like Remus he was unhappy about the lack of food. Remus knew that when Sirius was on his own he took the Floo to the Potters’ for breakfast, or went out to a café, or ate left-over takeaway. But now there were two of them, apparently they needed to be more domesticated, especially as the takeaway hadn’t survived both their appetites.
‘Shopping,’ Sirius said. ‘We haven’t got any house-elves, and we need to go shopping. The food won’t appear magically on the table. Well, not all cooked and ready, anyway.’
‘My mum does the shopping,’ Remus said.
‘Your mum isn’t here now, Moony. It’s just us, and one of us must buy food and tea, and coffee. If I don’t have coffee in the morning I will fade away.’
Remus was inspired. He raised his wand and intoned, ‘Accio eggs!’
A carton of half a dozen free-range eggs wafted off a shelf of the little shop across the road, gathering momentum on its way to the flat. It whizzed in through the open window and crashed to the floor.
Remus and Sirius contemplated the mess. ‘We could make an omelet,’ Remus said.
‘You have to pay the shopkeeper too.’ Sirius cleaned up the floor with a wave of his wand: his household charms were shaky, but he managed to get most of the sticky yolk up. ‘He’s all on his own. His family are in India.’
He got up and fetched a quill and some parchment. ‘That’s something we can do together! Write a shopping list. Then you can go and buy everything on it.’
‘Why me?’ Remus already knew why, but he thought that Sirius would want him to keep the discussion flowing.
‘Because I’m working,’ Sirius said, and made the mistake of adding, ‘After all, you’re the wife.’
Remus took out his wand and hexed him.
Sirius, his jaw locked, scribbled on the parchment for the list, ‘Don’t be such an idiot. I was only joking.’
Remus reluctantly undid the spell. He was never quite sure with Sirius whether he’d hex him straight back or forget all about it and go on to the next thing. Or return to the previous discussion, which was what he did now.
‘If you’ll stop being so childish, Remus. We’re supposed to have a democratic and equal relationship.’
‘I thought we didn’t know what sort of relationship it was yet,’ said Remus sullenly. ‘And I work too. Well, I have a job for this afternoon.’
Sirius looked triumphant. ‘Ah, but I have training every day this week. Even Saturday.’
‘But we’re going to a Quidditch match on Saturday!’ Remus protested.
‘We were. Not any more. You can go with Prongs and Wormtail, can’t you? You don’t need to have me round all the time.’
Remus scowled and said, ‘I don’t see why your work should be more important than mine.’
Sirius laughed. ‘Oh, sure. Being a Healer is trivial compared to the occasional gig at a Muggle birthday party.’
‘Training to be a Healer. You’re not there yet. You didn’t even cure my headache the other day. You made it worse.’
‘We’re having an argument!’ Sirius exclaimed, smiling widely. ‘A real argument. Hey, Moony, it’s our first row. Well,’ he amended, ‘our first proper living-together row.’
Actually, it wasn’t that long since the week Remus had lost his temper over a missing piece of Charms homework, and Transfigured Padfoot's nice new collar into a thirty-foot essay. Sirius retaliated with lemon curd in Remus’s shampoo, and their hostilities escalated, culminating in Sirius being bald for a day - really the worst twenty-four hours of his life - and Remus getting a mysterious rash that mimicked the sort of disease he couldn’t take to Madam Pomfrey.
But of course, a real argument about work and careers was very different. In fact, Remus was rather awed, because arguments certainly formed a vital part of serious relationships, in his experience. His parents bickered constantly, about everything from money to unwashed dishes.
‘We can have make-up sex later,’ Sirius said enthusiastically. ‘No time now, though. We need to do this list. We don’t want to be one of those couples who’re only in it for the sex, do we?’
Remus couldn’t answer that, because it seemed a pretty good basis for a relationship. He didn’t have any examples to go by, though, because he was fairly certain his parents’ rows never featured make-up sex, or lists either, but he helped Sirius decide between tea and coffee, chicken and steak. ‘Someone has to cook it,’ Sirius said, and Remus replied, ‘Don’t look at me, Padfoot.’
Sirius left soon afterwards, and kissed Remus goodbye. ‘Do you think we should call each other ‘dear’ or ‘darling’, like other couples do?’ he asked.
‘Not till we’re married,’ Remus said, which he thought was quite witty, but Sirius was annoyed and said, ‘I’m off then,’ and slammed the door on his way out.
*
Remus kept himself occupied with thoughts of the make-up sex when he took the list out later. He felt a bit mean not going to the little shop, but he wanted to explore the supermarket further along the road: they didn’t have a Waitrose in Cheltenham, where his parents lived.
He soon forgot the list in the delights of the vast array of food and drink, even household utensils, laid out in front of him: if this was part and parcel of a proper relationship, he was all for it. He filled a trolley with every possible variety of meat, yoghurt, wine, whisky, a useful gadget for opening bottles - not that you needed it when you had a wand, but what if Muggles suddenly walked in? - and several yellow dusters, because if you bought one you got another free.
The bags were many and heavy, so Remus walked them home with a Levitating Charm, casting a Confundus on top so nobody would notice eleven Waitrose carriers floating along in mid-air behind him.
Back in the flat, he dumped the bags on the kitchen table, looking forward to a well-earned cup of tea or coffee, until he suddenly remembered that he hadn’t bought either.
He decided that he deserved something a bit stronger anyway, as a reward for his expedition. After all, he was eighteen, freshly out of school and in an adult relationship. He had a boyfriend. He was a boyfriend. He was mature and sophisticated, he had wine, and a gadget to open it with.
Half an hour later, he used his wand to mend the horribly mangled corks and open a bottle of Beaujolais that had been on special offer. He couldn’t find a glass, and this morning’s water cup was still in the sink, so he took a swig straight out of the bottle, then belatedly remembered that he should put the food away.
His mother always handled the groceries with a casual swish and flick, and it looked so easy: cold things into the fridge - this flat boasted a huge, ancient fridge that leaked, and so far contained nothing but a very old cabbage - staples into the cupboards and larder, butter into a dish, bread into the breadbin.
A while later, he concluded that it was an enormous compliment for Sirius to call him the wife: if this was what women did all day, he had to congratulate them on getting it right. It took him some time to coax the frozen peas down from the top of the wardrobe where they had, inexplicably, lodged themselves, and even more time to separate the major food groups and sort them into the right places.
He ran out of space, even in the mammoth fridge, quite early on. He also found that chilled food had something called sell-by dates on it, and twenty of the yoghurts had to be eaten by tomorrow.
He then realised that it was already time for him to leave for his job, and he hadn’t even thought about lunch yet. He took a couple more swigs from the bottle to keep him going, surprised to find that he had somehow got through a good three-quarters of it while wrestling with what Sirius would probably call ‘housework’. He didn’t feel too drunk - he remembered to change into old school robes and a wizard's hat and pick up his bag of tricks - so he decided to risk Apparating to the house where he would be performing. No sooner had he done so, than an owl swooped down with a very unpleasant letter.
Dear Mr Lupin,
You are well over the legal limit for Apparating, and have therefore been fined five Galleons. You may send this direct from your Gringott’s vault to our office. A debit form is enclosed.
‘Damn,’ Remus said aloud. That was roughly the equivalent of the Muggle money he would be earning this afternoon. He decided not to tell Sirius, who’d just give him a lecture about doing proper work at home, like translating runes or something.
The party was for Danny, who was now nine, and therefore old enough to know that magic tricks weren’t really magic. He and his friends eyed Remus coldly, and Remus eyed them back a bit unsteadily, while Danny’s mother gushed over the birthday boy and settled the children down to watch the nice magician.
Because he really wasn’t quite as sober as he’d thought, Remus messed up the first trick. Instead of a white rabbit, an exceptionally vicious bunny with black splotches emerged from the hat. It struggled and snarled, and scratched at him with its razor-sharp claws, glaring at the assembled party-goers with baleful pink eyes. He expected the children to scoff and catcall, but instead they seemed frightened, and one of the little girls burst into tears.
He Banished the rabbit impatiently, and possibly inaccurately, hoping it wouldn’t turn up in Sirius’s flat - their flat - and eat the food piled high in the kitchen. With any luck, it was back wherever it had come from.
He had no problem producing a rainbow of coloured scarves from his sleeve, and he successfully sawed one of the little girls in half: not the one who had been crying. The card tricks were a bit dodgy, though; and the fiery hoops appeared and disappeared as planned, but scorched a corner of the Muggles’ immaculate lawn quite badly. Remus hoped Danny’s mother wouldn’t notice. There were no more tears from the girls, but once the boys realised the feral rabbit wouldn’t return, they grew bored and restless. It was just as well that Remus had to cut the act short before the finale, when he usually Disapparated, in order to avoid another fine. It didn’t matter, because the boys were now fighting over who’d have first go on the bouncy castle.
Danny’s mother gave him cash and a party bag containing cake, a whistle and three toffees. She thanked him profusely, but Remus was pretty sure she wouldn’t recommend him to her friends.
He took a bus back to the flat, remembering that he’d eaten nothing all day, unless wine counted as food. He had his cake, which left him hungrier than ever, so he started on the ranks of yoghurt standing forlornly on the counter. He even managed to find a cleanish spoon for them.
*
When Sirius came home, he called out, ‘Remus, I’m back!’ as he opened the door. Remus woke with a start from his nap on the sofa, feeling grumpy and hungover and in no mood to foster a relationship.
Sirius sat down next to him, and said, ‘Now you should ask if I had a good day at work.’ He was so excited that he didn’t even wait to be prompted, but launched at once into a long and enthusiastic monologue about dissection and magical ailments of the mind.
Remus tuned out during ‘You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to saw off an arm!’ Sirius, though, poked him for emphasis when he got on to the mad witch. ‘She said she was being followed by a wizard disguised as a puffin who was trying to kill her. Well, with Voldemort on the loose she may not be too wrong. Oh, I brought the Daily Prophet home.’ He levitated it over to Remus. ‘We can talk about the main news when we’ve read it.’
‘Is that part of our relationship?’ Remus asked.
‘Of course. Even my parents discuss the latest headlines over dinner. What is dinner by the way?’
Remus explained about the shopping and the yoghurts. He was still feeling a bit sick.
‘You didn’t have to eat all of them, Moony!’
‘I only ate the ones that expire tomorrow. They were mainly blueberry. And I didn’t have any breakfast or lunch. Anyway, there are hundreds left for you.’
‘I want a proper meal!’ Sirius pouted. ‘Tell you what, let’s go to the pub. That’s another thing couples do. I can eat a pie, and you can get morose and cry into your Butterbeer.’
‘I’m going to look at the employment section in the Prophet,’ Remus said. ‘If I get a decent job, perhaps we can afford a house-elf. I’ve got as many NEWTs as you do, anyway.’ He glowered at Sirius, daring him to mention werewolves, but Sirius sensibly refrained.
‘Listen to this, Padfoot. ‘Smart wizard wanted for exciting permanent job.’
‘Those are Death Eater recruitment ads, Remus. That’s how they suckered Regulus in.’
‘Oh. But it says here ‘Must be skilled at flying.’ Perhaps it’s for a Quidditch coach.’
Sirius sniggered. ‘I still think proof-reading’s your best bet. Anyway, I’m going to have a quick shower. Want to join me?’
Remus waited for Sirius to mention that all couples in proper relationships had showers together, which he did. Remus was happy to have it confirmed, because it sounded a lot more fun than discussing the latest news about the war.
It was a lot more fun. The shower was old and leaky, and the water pressure uneven, so they didn’t get very clean, but they held each other and kissed a bit, and eventually had a clumsy but pleasurable shag against the tiled wall; or rather, they made love, as Sirius was at pains to remind Remus afterwards. At any rate, it put them both in a better mood, and they were laughing and joking as they set off for the nearest wizarding pub.
*
The pub was having a quiz night, they discovered when they were settled with their pie and chips. A young witch and wizard at the next table, who looked as if they were a couple with a reasonable relationship, asked Remus and Sirius to make up a team with them.
The first part of the quiz was more like a NEWT practical. Remus felt very proud when Sirius successfully Transfigured a tankard into a bowl full of goldfish and guessed every ingredient in the mystery potion. The witch smiled at Sirius, which made Remus feel a bit odd, as if he wanted to hit her. He also felt like saying quite loudly that he and Sirius were in a relationship, or would be soon when they’d had a bit of practice, but he thought that would embarrass Sirius so he didn’t. Anyway, the girl’s boyfriend also got cross, and told her off quite sharply when she got her Cheering Charm muddled up with a Jelly-Legs Jinx.
Remus was good on the theory part of the quiz. He knew random facts about feeding dragons, wand-polish, exchange rates and Muggle adventure novels. His and Sirius’s team won free shots of firewhisky all round and were each presented with a three Galleon book token for Flourish and Blotts, which Remus thought Sirius should use for one of his expensive Healer training textbooks.
The evening’s entertainment resumed. A pub singer with greasy hair and a very big nose, almost a clone of Snivellus, appeared on the stage with his piano, and launched into a song about a girl waiting for her lover beneath a waning moon.
‘Perhaps our relationship will be a romantic one,’ Sirius speculated, under cover of the singer’s very loud tenor. ‘I’ve waited for you under the waning moon. And we’ve run together under the full moon,’ he added sentimentally.
Remus wasn’t convinced; a few bars later, he had decided that he definitely didn’t want a romantic relationship, if it meant broken hearts and off-key warbling. ‘Let’s go home,’ he said, downing the last of his Firewhisky.
‘Yes, you have a busy day tomorrow,’ Sirius said. ‘You could use that voucher for a book of household charms, and tidy the flat.’
Remus was drunk and mellow enough not to jinx him again, though he kept the remark tucked away for future ammunition.
When they went to bed, he was a bit surprised that Sirius took the left-hand side. ‘I thought you decided to sleep on the right.’
‘I didn’t decide anything. I thought I’d alternate.’
Remus, who infinitely preferred the left, said nothing, but after he’d successfully enticed Sirius into a bout of sex, he craftily rolled over to his chosen side of the bed, and pretended to be asleep so Sirius couldn't make him move.
A proper relationship was mainly a matter of compromise. Give and take, Remus thought as he curled up comfortably against Sirius, though he was kept awake for a while when he thought he heard the feral rabbit scratching at the door. Fortunately, it didn’t manage to get in.
End
By minnow_53
Disclaimer: These characters belong to JK Rowling and various corporations.
Pairing: Remus/Sirius
Rating: PG-13
Era: Just after Hogwarts.
Summary: Sirius and Remus’s first day living together after Hogwarts.
Thank you: To astra_argentea, for a swift, online beta, and for defying the HP Lexicon. You get to keep the CD!
Dedication: At last! A very late birthday fic for kabeyk.
No spoilers. None at all.
Fluffy, slashy R/S...hope you’ll enjoy! On my journal, and now crossposted to remusxsirius and two_boys.
A Proper Relationship
‘Now school’s over,’ Sirius said, ‘it’s time we had a proper relationship.’
He and Remus were unpacking Remus’s belongings, and Remus was glad of the distraction: he didn’t want Sirius to notice he’d brought his collection of Chocolate Frog cards when he’d promised to throw them away. So he fumbled at the bottom of his trunk and said in an innocent voice, ‘What d’you mean, Padfoot?’
‘Well, we’re going to be living together, and we need to build up a, a relationship. Like I said.’
‘What were we doing at school, then?’ said Remus, a bit puzzled. He pulled out his cards and hid them under his jumper. ‘Wasn’t that a relationship?’
‘Not really. It was shagging.’
‘Oh.’ Remus considered. ‘I liked shagging.’
Sirius sniggered. ‘So did I! Still do. But we need to do more now than shag. For instance, I’m helping you unpack. And we’re talking.’
Remus wasn’t really talking, because he was more concerned about sneaking his cards past Sirius without them falling out from under his top. He didn’t want to use his wand, but if he could just hold them up by himself Sirius would never notice.
‘Remus. Have you heard a word I was saying?’
‘Yes,’ lied Remus. ‘About relationships.’
‘I was on to shared interests there. Things we like doing together,’ he elaborated. ‘Apart from shagging,’ he added hastily.
Remus thought. They liked playing pranks, but he supposed that was something they had to leave behind at school. He didn’t imagine that the landlord would take kindly to green slime on his shiny new car, or a love-potion in his morning coffee.
‘Fishing?’ he ventured.
Sirius snorted. ‘You’ve never even been fishing! That was James.’
‘Well, I could learn. If you want to share interests. Or you can just go fishing with James, then. Why should I care?’
Fish were vile flapping things anyway, and they were probably in terrible pain, and their gills bled. He glowered at Sirius. ‘It was only a suggestion. I hate fishing.’
‘You don’t know that for sure,’ Sirius pointed out. ‘It seems like your sort of sport. You lie under a tree with a book, and just wait for something to bite.’
He bit Remus playfully to illustrate his point, which made Remus squirm, and they postponed their discussion of the relationship for half an hour while they explored the physical side.
Eventually, Sirius roused himself and started to take Remus’s robes out of his trunk, performing complex magic to hang them in the wardrobe. Remus knew he was proud of the wardrobe: it seemed a very grown-up item of furniture, and it expanded magically every time Sirius added to his collection of leather jackets, which he’d promised that Remus could borrow any time he liked.
Having done his bit, Sirius lay on the bed with his hands behind his head, watching Remus as he sorted and folded the rest of his clothes.
‘You can use the top two drawers for your underwear and stuff. Should be enough for now.’
Remus thought he might need some extra space, what with the Chocolate Frog cards and all, but he didn’t like to mention it.
‘First, we've got to find out what kind of relationship we actually have,’ Sirius said, as Remus did intricate things with the collars and cuffs of his shirts.
‘Do we?’ Remus hardly thought it even mattered. He’d always thought they had a wonderful time shagging and doing Muggle Studies projects and discussing Divination.
Sirius, on the other hand, had a wider view of things. ‘I mean, we could discover we have all sorts of perversions, like BDSM - ’
‘I thought that was a driving school,’ Remus said blankly.
‘Well, there’s bondage in there somewhere. That blue shirt you’ve just put away. It would make a wonderful tie.’
‘You’re not tying me up,’ said Remus in disgust.
‘How d’you know I don’t want to be tied up? See? We don’t really know anything about each other. We could just be friends underneath it all, or maybe we’ll be loving but level-headed, like James and Lily.’
Remus didn’t agree that James and Lily were level-headed. Just that afternoon, they’d been over at the flat helping Remus with his trunk and several black plastic bags - for an impoverished werewolf, he certainly had a lot of possessions - and every time Remus looked round they were snogging in a corner. He went into the kitchen, and they were kissing passionately beside the cooker. While Sirius opened bags at random, exclaiming over Remus’s books and clothes, James and Lily gazed into each other’s eyes, oblivious to everything but each other. On reflection, he wouldn’t mind if his and Sirius’s relationship was like that, without the hassle of being engaged, of course.
*
It was Sirius’s flat and Sirius’s bed, and on his first night there Remus reflected that he didn’t even know what side Sirius liked to sleep on.
He asked, rather pleased with the question, because it seemed exactly the sort of thing you’d want to find out in a proper relationship.
Sirius looked blank. ‘I usually sleep in the middle… well, I’ll go on the right tonight.’
Remus always found it hard to sleep on his first night in a new place. He spent a couple of hours tossing and turning, until even Sirius, who slept like the dead and had been snoring happily, was woken up.
‘For goodness’ sake, Moony! What’s wrong?’
‘Can’t sleep. Perhaps,’ he said hopefully, ‘a shag might help.’
This woke Sirius up completely. ‘Okay, that’s a perfect example. I know I said it myself earlier, but I’ve been thinking. We’re living together now. We don’t shag. We make love.’
‘Oh. Do we?’
‘Yes. Come here and I’ll show you.’
It wasn’t any different from shagging, Remus decided, as they snuggled up afterwards, but he supposed that in a relationship semantics were all-important. It felt just as good; he didn’t think calling it something else would make it any better.
He finally fell asleep pondering the complexities of language and emotions, and was woken by Sirius shaking him.
‘Moony. I’ve brought you a cup of water.’
‘What happened to tea?’ Remus grumbled.
‘There isn’t any tea.’
Remus drank his water and got up for breakfast. He and Sirius went into the kitchen, sat down opposite each other at the table, and looked round a bit helplessly.
Sirius seemed pleased, in a grudging way, to have another example of what a relationship entailed, though like Remus he was unhappy about the lack of food. Remus knew that when Sirius was on his own he took the Floo to the Potters’ for breakfast, or went out to a café, or ate left-over takeaway. But now there were two of them, apparently they needed to be more domesticated, especially as the takeaway hadn’t survived both their appetites.
‘Shopping,’ Sirius said. ‘We haven’t got any house-elves, and we need to go shopping. The food won’t appear magically on the table. Well, not all cooked and ready, anyway.’
‘My mum does the shopping,’ Remus said.
‘Your mum isn’t here now, Moony. It’s just us, and one of us must buy food and tea, and coffee. If I don’t have coffee in the morning I will fade away.’
Remus was inspired. He raised his wand and intoned, ‘Accio eggs!’
A carton of half a dozen free-range eggs wafted off a shelf of the little shop across the road, gathering momentum on its way to the flat. It whizzed in through the open window and crashed to the floor.
Remus and Sirius contemplated the mess. ‘We could make an omelet,’ Remus said.
‘You have to pay the shopkeeper too.’ Sirius cleaned up the floor with a wave of his wand: his household charms were shaky, but he managed to get most of the sticky yolk up. ‘He’s all on his own. His family are in India.’
He got up and fetched a quill and some parchment. ‘That’s something we can do together! Write a shopping list. Then you can go and buy everything on it.’
‘Why me?’ Remus already knew why, but he thought that Sirius would want him to keep the discussion flowing.
‘Because I’m working,’ Sirius said, and made the mistake of adding, ‘After all, you’re the wife.’
Remus took out his wand and hexed him.
Sirius, his jaw locked, scribbled on the parchment for the list, ‘Don’t be such an idiot. I was only joking.’
Remus reluctantly undid the spell. He was never quite sure with Sirius whether he’d hex him straight back or forget all about it and go on to the next thing. Or return to the previous discussion, which was what he did now.
‘If you’ll stop being so childish, Remus. We’re supposed to have a democratic and equal relationship.’
‘I thought we didn’t know what sort of relationship it was yet,’ said Remus sullenly. ‘And I work too. Well, I have a job for this afternoon.’
Sirius looked triumphant. ‘Ah, but I have training every day this week. Even Saturday.’
‘But we’re going to a Quidditch match on Saturday!’ Remus protested.
‘We were. Not any more. You can go with Prongs and Wormtail, can’t you? You don’t need to have me round all the time.’
Remus scowled and said, ‘I don’t see why your work should be more important than mine.’
Sirius laughed. ‘Oh, sure. Being a Healer is trivial compared to the occasional gig at a Muggle birthday party.’
‘Training to be a Healer. You’re not there yet. You didn’t even cure my headache the other day. You made it worse.’
‘We’re having an argument!’ Sirius exclaimed, smiling widely. ‘A real argument. Hey, Moony, it’s our first row. Well,’ he amended, ‘our first proper living-together row.’
Actually, it wasn’t that long since the week Remus had lost his temper over a missing piece of Charms homework, and Transfigured Padfoot's nice new collar into a thirty-foot essay. Sirius retaliated with lemon curd in Remus’s shampoo, and their hostilities escalated, culminating in Sirius being bald for a day - really the worst twenty-four hours of his life - and Remus getting a mysterious rash that mimicked the sort of disease he couldn’t take to Madam Pomfrey.
But of course, a real argument about work and careers was very different. In fact, Remus was rather awed, because arguments certainly formed a vital part of serious relationships, in his experience. His parents bickered constantly, about everything from money to unwashed dishes.
‘We can have make-up sex later,’ Sirius said enthusiastically. ‘No time now, though. We need to do this list. We don’t want to be one of those couples who’re only in it for the sex, do we?’
Remus couldn’t answer that, because it seemed a pretty good basis for a relationship. He didn’t have any examples to go by, though, because he was fairly certain his parents’ rows never featured make-up sex, or lists either, but he helped Sirius decide between tea and coffee, chicken and steak. ‘Someone has to cook it,’ Sirius said, and Remus replied, ‘Don’t look at me, Padfoot.’
Sirius left soon afterwards, and kissed Remus goodbye. ‘Do you think we should call each other ‘dear’ or ‘darling’, like other couples do?’ he asked.
‘Not till we’re married,’ Remus said, which he thought was quite witty, but Sirius was annoyed and said, ‘I’m off then,’ and slammed the door on his way out.
*
Remus kept himself occupied with thoughts of the make-up sex when he took the list out later. He felt a bit mean not going to the little shop, but he wanted to explore the supermarket further along the road: they didn’t have a Waitrose in Cheltenham, where his parents lived.
He soon forgot the list in the delights of the vast array of food and drink, even household utensils, laid out in front of him: if this was part and parcel of a proper relationship, he was all for it. He filled a trolley with every possible variety of meat, yoghurt, wine, whisky, a useful gadget for opening bottles - not that you needed it when you had a wand, but what if Muggles suddenly walked in? - and several yellow dusters, because if you bought one you got another free.
The bags were many and heavy, so Remus walked them home with a Levitating Charm, casting a Confundus on top so nobody would notice eleven Waitrose carriers floating along in mid-air behind him.
Back in the flat, he dumped the bags on the kitchen table, looking forward to a well-earned cup of tea or coffee, until he suddenly remembered that he hadn’t bought either.
He decided that he deserved something a bit stronger anyway, as a reward for his expedition. After all, he was eighteen, freshly out of school and in an adult relationship. He had a boyfriend. He was a boyfriend. He was mature and sophisticated, he had wine, and a gadget to open it with.
Half an hour later, he used his wand to mend the horribly mangled corks and open a bottle of Beaujolais that had been on special offer. He couldn’t find a glass, and this morning’s water cup was still in the sink, so he took a swig straight out of the bottle, then belatedly remembered that he should put the food away.
His mother always handled the groceries with a casual swish and flick, and it looked so easy: cold things into the fridge - this flat boasted a huge, ancient fridge that leaked, and so far contained nothing but a very old cabbage - staples into the cupboards and larder, butter into a dish, bread into the breadbin.
A while later, he concluded that it was an enormous compliment for Sirius to call him the wife: if this was what women did all day, he had to congratulate them on getting it right. It took him some time to coax the frozen peas down from the top of the wardrobe where they had, inexplicably, lodged themselves, and even more time to separate the major food groups and sort them into the right places.
He ran out of space, even in the mammoth fridge, quite early on. He also found that chilled food had something called sell-by dates on it, and twenty of the yoghurts had to be eaten by tomorrow.
He then realised that it was already time for him to leave for his job, and he hadn’t even thought about lunch yet. He took a couple more swigs from the bottle to keep him going, surprised to find that he had somehow got through a good three-quarters of it while wrestling with what Sirius would probably call ‘housework’. He didn’t feel too drunk - he remembered to change into old school robes and a wizard's hat and pick up his bag of tricks - so he decided to risk Apparating to the house where he would be performing. No sooner had he done so, than an owl swooped down with a very unpleasant letter.
Dear Mr Lupin,
You are well over the legal limit for Apparating, and have therefore been fined five Galleons. You may send this direct from your Gringott’s vault to our office. A debit form is enclosed.
‘Damn,’ Remus said aloud. That was roughly the equivalent of the Muggle money he would be earning this afternoon. He decided not to tell Sirius, who’d just give him a lecture about doing proper work at home, like translating runes or something.
The party was for Danny, who was now nine, and therefore old enough to know that magic tricks weren’t really magic. He and his friends eyed Remus coldly, and Remus eyed them back a bit unsteadily, while Danny’s mother gushed over the birthday boy and settled the children down to watch the nice magician.
Because he really wasn’t quite as sober as he’d thought, Remus messed up the first trick. Instead of a white rabbit, an exceptionally vicious bunny with black splotches emerged from the hat. It struggled and snarled, and scratched at him with its razor-sharp claws, glaring at the assembled party-goers with baleful pink eyes. He expected the children to scoff and catcall, but instead they seemed frightened, and one of the little girls burst into tears.
He Banished the rabbit impatiently, and possibly inaccurately, hoping it wouldn’t turn up in Sirius’s flat - their flat - and eat the food piled high in the kitchen. With any luck, it was back wherever it had come from.
He had no problem producing a rainbow of coloured scarves from his sleeve, and he successfully sawed one of the little girls in half: not the one who had been crying. The card tricks were a bit dodgy, though; and the fiery hoops appeared and disappeared as planned, but scorched a corner of the Muggles’ immaculate lawn quite badly. Remus hoped Danny’s mother wouldn’t notice. There were no more tears from the girls, but once the boys realised the feral rabbit wouldn’t return, they grew bored and restless. It was just as well that Remus had to cut the act short before the finale, when he usually Disapparated, in order to avoid another fine. It didn’t matter, because the boys were now fighting over who’d have first go on the bouncy castle.
Danny’s mother gave him cash and a party bag containing cake, a whistle and three toffees. She thanked him profusely, but Remus was pretty sure she wouldn’t recommend him to her friends.
He took a bus back to the flat, remembering that he’d eaten nothing all day, unless wine counted as food. He had his cake, which left him hungrier than ever, so he started on the ranks of yoghurt standing forlornly on the counter. He even managed to find a cleanish spoon for them.
*
When Sirius came home, he called out, ‘Remus, I’m back!’ as he opened the door. Remus woke with a start from his nap on the sofa, feeling grumpy and hungover and in no mood to foster a relationship.
Sirius sat down next to him, and said, ‘Now you should ask if I had a good day at work.’ He was so excited that he didn’t even wait to be prompted, but launched at once into a long and enthusiastic monologue about dissection and magical ailments of the mind.
Remus tuned out during ‘You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to saw off an arm!’ Sirius, though, poked him for emphasis when he got on to the mad witch. ‘She said she was being followed by a wizard disguised as a puffin who was trying to kill her. Well, with Voldemort on the loose she may not be too wrong. Oh, I brought the Daily Prophet home.’ He levitated it over to Remus. ‘We can talk about the main news when we’ve read it.’
‘Is that part of our relationship?’ Remus asked.
‘Of course. Even my parents discuss the latest headlines over dinner. What is dinner by the way?’
Remus explained about the shopping and the yoghurts. He was still feeling a bit sick.
‘You didn’t have to eat all of them, Moony!’
‘I only ate the ones that expire tomorrow. They were mainly blueberry. And I didn’t have any breakfast or lunch. Anyway, there are hundreds left for you.’
‘I want a proper meal!’ Sirius pouted. ‘Tell you what, let’s go to the pub. That’s another thing couples do. I can eat a pie, and you can get morose and cry into your Butterbeer.’
‘I’m going to look at the employment section in the Prophet,’ Remus said. ‘If I get a decent job, perhaps we can afford a house-elf. I’ve got as many NEWTs as you do, anyway.’ He glowered at Sirius, daring him to mention werewolves, but Sirius sensibly refrained.
‘Listen to this, Padfoot. ‘Smart wizard wanted for exciting permanent job.’
‘Those are Death Eater recruitment ads, Remus. That’s how they suckered Regulus in.’
‘Oh. But it says here ‘Must be skilled at flying.’ Perhaps it’s for a Quidditch coach.’
Sirius sniggered. ‘I still think proof-reading’s your best bet. Anyway, I’m going to have a quick shower. Want to join me?’
Remus waited for Sirius to mention that all couples in proper relationships had showers together, which he did. Remus was happy to have it confirmed, because it sounded a lot more fun than discussing the latest news about the war.
It was a lot more fun. The shower was old and leaky, and the water pressure uneven, so they didn’t get very clean, but they held each other and kissed a bit, and eventually had a clumsy but pleasurable shag against the tiled wall; or rather, they made love, as Sirius was at pains to remind Remus afterwards. At any rate, it put them both in a better mood, and they were laughing and joking as they set off for the nearest wizarding pub.
*
The pub was having a quiz night, they discovered when they were settled with their pie and chips. A young witch and wizard at the next table, who looked as if they were a couple with a reasonable relationship, asked Remus and Sirius to make up a team with them.
The first part of the quiz was more like a NEWT practical. Remus felt very proud when Sirius successfully Transfigured a tankard into a bowl full of goldfish and guessed every ingredient in the mystery potion. The witch smiled at Sirius, which made Remus feel a bit odd, as if he wanted to hit her. He also felt like saying quite loudly that he and Sirius were in a relationship, or would be soon when they’d had a bit of practice, but he thought that would embarrass Sirius so he didn’t. Anyway, the girl’s boyfriend also got cross, and told her off quite sharply when she got her Cheering Charm muddled up with a Jelly-Legs Jinx.
Remus was good on the theory part of the quiz. He knew random facts about feeding dragons, wand-polish, exchange rates and Muggle adventure novels. His and Sirius’s team won free shots of firewhisky all round and were each presented with a three Galleon book token for Flourish and Blotts, which Remus thought Sirius should use for one of his expensive Healer training textbooks.
The evening’s entertainment resumed. A pub singer with greasy hair and a very big nose, almost a clone of Snivellus, appeared on the stage with his piano, and launched into a song about a girl waiting for her lover beneath a waning moon.
‘Perhaps our relationship will be a romantic one,’ Sirius speculated, under cover of the singer’s very loud tenor. ‘I’ve waited for you under the waning moon. And we’ve run together under the full moon,’ he added sentimentally.
Remus wasn’t convinced; a few bars later, he had decided that he definitely didn’t want a romantic relationship, if it meant broken hearts and off-key warbling. ‘Let’s go home,’ he said, downing the last of his Firewhisky.
‘Yes, you have a busy day tomorrow,’ Sirius said. ‘You could use that voucher for a book of household charms, and tidy the flat.’
Remus was drunk and mellow enough not to jinx him again, though he kept the remark tucked away for future ammunition.
When they went to bed, he was a bit surprised that Sirius took the left-hand side. ‘I thought you decided to sleep on the right.’
‘I didn’t decide anything. I thought I’d alternate.’
Remus, who infinitely preferred the left, said nothing, but after he’d successfully enticed Sirius into a bout of sex, he craftily rolled over to his chosen side of the bed, and pretended to be asleep so Sirius couldn't make him move.
A proper relationship was mainly a matter of compromise. Give and take, Remus thought as he curled up comfortably against Sirius, though he was kept awake for a while when he thought he heard the feral rabbit scratching at the door. Fortunately, it didn’t manage to get in.
End