Fic: Long Ago And Far Away
Long Ago And Far Away
by minnow_53
Disclaimer: The Harry Potter characters belong to JK Rowling and various corporations.
Pairing: Remus/Sirius
Era: August 1978, just after Hogwarts.
Summary: Remus goes to stay with Sirius in the country house inherited from his uncle.
Rating: PG-13
Now crossposted to the_kennel and remusxsirius.
Long Ago And Far Away
It was, Sirius promised, going to be the best summer of their lives, the first summer of freedom after school.
Remus arrived late on Thursday afternoon, with just a backpack containing his wand, a toothbrush and a change of underwear. When Sirius saw him standing on the terrace at the back of the house, looking faintly bemused by the expanse of lawn spread out in front of him, he yelled, ‘Hey, Moony!’ and rushed out to embrace him. They clung together fiercely for a few minutes.
‘I’ve missed you,’ Sirius whispered, and Remus answered, ‘Me too,’ and neither of them seemed to want to let go first.
‘You must see the house,’ Sirius said when they finally went into the cool, marble hall with its massive mirrors and frescos of hunting scenes. ‘Cruel lot, those country Blacks,’ he remarked. ‘Of course, my uncle didn’t hunt.’
He took Remus’s hand and led him down the shining corridors, through the ballroom and the grand reception rooms, the vast basement kitchen, the formal dining room, the miles of portrait galleries, the acres of attic. Remus stared, and exclaimed, and was altogether a satisfactory audience.
After the grand tour, he slung his backpack on to the floor of Sirius’s room, then picked it up again as if he’d been too hasty and asked, a bit shyly, ‘Where I am going to sleep, then?’
‘In here, of course. If you want to,’ Sirius answered, suddenly shy in his turn. ‘It’s not really the best room. I like it because I can see the lake from here. It, well, it reminds me of school.’
‘But this place is enormous. You could choose a different room every night,’ Remus said.
‘We could, you mean.’ Sirius felt hotter than the afternoon warranted, remembering the five or six times at school - never often enough, not even nearly - they’d slept in Remus’s bed, curled together like children, though the things they did were not childish in the slightest. Of course, it was hard to steal time alone with the others always around. He added, pointedly, ‘It’s going to be different without Prongs and Wormtail.’
‘Yes.’
‘Now you’ve seen the house, we can start on the garden,’ Sirius said, and laughed at Remus’s expression. ‘It’s okay. We’ll do that tomorrow.’ He fetched a bottle from the kitchen and they sat outside on the terrace, drinking wine out of mismatched glasses.
‘To Uncle Alphard,’ Sirius said, raising his tumbler and draining it.
Remus echoed the toast, sipping from his delicate stemmed wineglass. ‘Are you going to live here, then?’ he asked, still wide-eyed as he looked across at the lake. His combined awe and eagerness made Sirius smile, made Sirius long to run his fingers through that messy blond hair, which was turning darker every year, but bleached to a honey gold by the sun this summer.
He moved closer to Remus, sat right beside him so their legs were touching, and the contact went straight to his head and his groin; he suddenly felt even drunker.
‘I’m going to sell it. I mean, it’s beautiful, and fine for the summer, but it’s a bit out of the way, isn’t it? I thought I’d stay till after the NEWT results, and then I’ll have some idea what I want to do. I could use the money to train as a Healer.’
‘Or,’ Remus said, ‘you could buy a bigger flat.’
‘Not much bigger, at London prices.’
When dusk started to fall, at about nine o’clock, they decided they were hungry, and Sirius owled for some takeaway pizza. It was delivered five minutes later by a young girl about their age, who Apparated almost soundlessly. In the fading light she looked like a tiny ghost, white and big-eyed, with her PizzaWand uniform starched and glowing faintly under the crescent moon.
‘That’ll be a Galleon, please.’
She spoke with the local accent, a soft, amiable burr. While Sirius fumbled in his pocket for the money, Remus asked, ‘What’s your name?’
‘Francesca.’
‘That’s a beautiful name,’ Remus said, and Sirius, annoyed, shoved a Galleon and two Sickles at the girl, almost rudely.
*
That first night, their caresses were tentative and unsatisfactory, both holding back from the strange yet familiar touches. ‘We need to get to know each other again, I suppose,’ Sirius thought, though it was pleasant enough to fall asleep curled round each other, Remus’s head on his shoulder.
He was woken at three in the morning by Remus shaking him. ‘Padfoot. There’s a moth in the room.’
Instantly wide awake, Sirius asked, ‘Why don’t you just Banish it?’
‘I don’t like to. You never know where they’ll end up, do you, and I don’t want to hurt it.’
Sirius opened the window and guided it out by the light on his wand, thinking that really, Remus could be such a girl. But he didn’t actually mind, not when he got back into bed and reached for Remus and they clung together, kissing as if it was the end of the world, desperately and deeply.
‘It’s the first time we’ve ever slept together properly,’ Sirius said afterwards, as they lay tangled in the damp, sweaty sheets. ‘I’ve been wanting to do that for years.’
As Remus slept, Sirius traced ‘I love you I love you I love you’ down the length of his back, and Remus stirred and reached for him again, and this time they both spoke the words out loud. It seemed natural to say them, somehow, in this vast house, empty except for the two boys and its slumbering portraits, and Sirius wondered if the place had cast a spell on them.
They slept and woke again, and went downstairs, naked in the heat, to find something to eat. There was soft white bread, butter sweating ice-cold under its Cooling Charm, honey, and coffee in the pot, just waiting for the spell to bring it to life and percolate it. ‘The house-elves come in from the village every Friday and Saturday morning,’ Sirius said. ‘Just to clear up. We’ll be able to eat a proper meal tonight, and your mother’ll be relieved when you tell her.’
An owl arrived while they were having their late breakfast, with a postcard from Remus’s parents in Sardinia. ‘They’re feeling guilty,’ Remus said, not bothering to read it at once.
‘Why? I thought you wanted to come here.’
‘I did. But they didn’t know. They always feel bad about not wanting me on holidays, with the full moon and all. I don’t care.’
Sirius reached for the untouched card and read it. ‘‘R, We’re missing you. Hope you and your friends are having a good time.’ Friends?’ He raised an eyebrow quizzically.
‘I told them Pete and James were going to be here. Actually, I made it sound a bit like a school reunion. I think they’re expecting half the staff of Hogwarts to be here too.’
Sirius handed the card back. ‘I’m glad they’re not. Why couldn’t you just tell them?’
Remus blushed, and looked away. ‘I think they suspect something,’ he blurted out. ‘Every time I mention your name. I don’t know why, really. It’s not as if we even did much. Before.’
When the last crumb of breakfast had been eaten, they put on their swimming trunks and took sun loungers down to the lawn. ‘It’s not often we get a chance to tan, Moony. You’ll look wonderful, all brown.’
Remus was restless, though, and turned over so frequently that Sirius teased him. ‘You won’t even be medium-rare! Give the sun a chance.’
Remus picked up his wand and Accio’d the sketchpad, quills and coloured inks that had taken up most of the room in his backpack. He flicked to a clean sheet and started to draw. ‘Hold still, okay, Padfoot? It won’t take long.’
Sirius tried to look at the drawing, but Remus put his hand over it.
‘Let me see, please.’
‘No. Don’t lose the pose. You can wait till I’ve finished.’
‘But I’m lying on my stomach! You can’t see anything but my back and my hair.’
Remus’s friends had never liked to tell him, but he didn’t actually draw very well: his lines were rigid where they should be fluid, and his proportions were usually a bit out. Still, Sirius thought his pictures had a certain charm. But then, he thought everything about Remus had a certain charm.
He got up and knocked the sketchpad from Remus’s hands, kissing him hungrily, and Remus responded, not concerned that his picture of Sirius was getting crushed beneath them as they tussled on the grass.
‘Remind me why we wasted a whole two weeks of the holidays,’ Sirius said, coming up for air.
‘You wanted to get the house ready,’ Remus said. ‘And my parents felt it was their duty to have me at home until they went away, and - ’
‘Stop talking, Moony.’ Sirius silenced him with another deep kiss.
*
On the fifth day, Monday, they both woke up cranky and out of sorts, to a dark sky and a squall of rain battering against the windows, blowing in on to the bed. The lake in the distance was grey and choppy, and Sirius grumbled at being deprived of his favourite view.
There was no breakfast waiting downstairs, as it wasn’t a house-elf day. Remus was scowling; there were deep shadows under his eyes, and he looked as if he’d just gone through about four consecutive full moons. Sirius glanced at himself in the shiny surface of the kettle, and noted that his hair looked lank and his mouth downturned.
When the owls arrived, Sirius received an official-looking letter reminding him that the estate agent would be coming that morning to value the house. He groaned, crumpled it up and Incendio’d it so forcibly that he burned a corner of the table.
‘Just my luck! It doesn’t look half as good in the rain, and I’ll have to show him the grounds through a bloody Impervius. Always wrecks a garden.’
‘It’s a pity you have to sell it,’ Remus said rather wistfully. He was smiling again, just faintly, revived by a cup of strong tea, in default of the house-elves’ coffee. ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could just stay here?’
‘Yes, it would,’ Sirius agreed, his own bad mood temporarily forgotten. ‘We’d be well away from that bloody war... Mind you, we mustn’t forget that Alphard was a Black. Voldemort would probably commission the place as a safe house.’
Remus produced very lumpy scrambled eggs with his wand, and was so pleased with his achievement that Sirius hadn’t the heart to leave them. He choked them down as fast as possible, then put Remus in charge of tidying the kitchen while he did a lightening tour to make sure the house looked saleable, using his entire repertoire of household charms to polish the banisters of the grand staircase.
The rain stopped at around ten, but there was still a faint mist obscuring the grounds, and the grass was very wet.
The estate agent appeared at the front door at ten fifteen on the dot. Remus waved his wand to produce the smell of baking bread and hot chocolate just coming to the boil. Sirius performed a last-minute glamour charm, in case a forgotten cobweb was lurking anywhere.
After Sirius had taken the estate agent round the house and grounds, they both Disapparated to the branch of Lease and Rooke in the nearby village to discuss terms and conditions.
‘I’m not planning to sell quite yet,’ Sirius explained. ‘I just wanted to have it valued.’
‘Very sensible,’ the estate agent agreed. ‘But you know, I could get you a cash buyer immediately.’
Sirius thought of Remus’s face, pale and dreamy beside his, of his mouth, of his hipbones and long legs wrapped round his waist, of his face drawn and white after the moon. ‘No. I really don’t want to put it on the market until the autumn.’
They finally agreed a price that pleased both of them, and Sirius arranged for photos to be taken. ‘But please owl me if it’s raining again. It looks much better in the sunshine.’
Allies now, they shook hands and Sirius Disapparated.
*
Back in the house, he found Remus standing in the hall, talking to the pizza delivery girl.
Their heads were close together and they were laughing. Without even thinking, Sirius strode over to hug Remus, watching her defiantly. ‘Hi, Moony. I see you weren’t too lonely while I was gone.’
Remus flushed slightly, though he returned the hug. ‘Hey, Padfoot. I thought I’d get some pizza in as a surprise. To cheer you up. My treat,’ he added, as Sirius started fumbling for a Galleon in his robe pockets, and Sirius resolved to pay him back somehow, because there was no way Remus could afford pizza.
‘I don’t need cheering up,’ Sirius said shortly.
He kept hold of Remus, and out of the corner of his eye he saw whatever her name was - Frances? Fiona? - shift uncomfortably from foot to foot. In daylight, he could see that she wasn’t very pretty, but she was striking: her eyes were different colours, one hazel, one green, and her straight black hair was cut in a fringe, which emphasised their size and her long lashes. Her mouth was wide, her nose nondescript, her face a bit too elfin for beauty; she was tiny and small-boned as a bird.
‘Francesca was telling me that she once did a tour of the house,’ Remus was saying, almost proprietorially, it seemed to Sirius, as if the place were his. ‘When she was a child.’
Sirius struggled to keep his voice level. ‘Uncle Alphard opened it to the public for a few years. Before he got so ill. ’ For some reason, he hated to think that this girl had walked along the same corridors he’d shown Remus, exclaimed at the same paintings, scrutinised the bedroom they were sleeping in.
He noticed that she wasn’t holding the familiar flat white box. ‘Hey, where’s the pizza, Moony?’
‘In the oven.’ Remus looked proud and happy. ‘I put a permanent warming charm on it. I thought...’ he hesitated, then ploughed on, ‘I thought you wouldn’t mind if Francesca shared it with us. Only, she’s having a rough time. Her stepfather’s violent, and she thinks he may be a, a Death Eater. He’s always locking her brother in his room, and she’s not allowed to go out except to work.’
They ate lunch in the kitchen, in what would have been an uneasy atmosphere except for Remus’s obvious pleasure in being with two people he liked. For his sake, Sirius did his best to be polite and attentive to the girl, though he was disliking her more by the second. Fortunately, she had to work that afternoon, and Sirius watched her disappear from the rain-swept front steps with grim relief.
*
That night, for the first time, their lovemaking, as Sirius thought of it to himself, was less than gentle. He pounded hard into Remus, working off his frustration at not having him to himself, his annoyance with the girl, his anger with Remus for asking her to eat with them... When, afterwards, Remus turned to him with soft, glowing eyes and nestled into the crook of his shoulder, he felt ashamed.
He held him close and started again, gentle this time, trying to convey his feelings with every touch and caress, and they didn’t get much sleep that night.
It was sunny again the next morning. In his sleep-deprived state, Sirius decided that they should do some shopping, buy enough food to keep them going between house-elf visits. ‘Not in the village. I’ll show you the town. Well, it’s really a seaside resort, and you’ll probably hate it. We used to spend our summer holidays there, and it was always overrun with Blacks and Malfoys and Rosiers. They were the only ones who could afford it. I’m not surprised at Pizza Girl’s father being a Death Eater. Goes with the territory.’
The resort was unexpectedly attractive, smaller than Sirius remembered. The narrow, cobbled streets were crammed with tiny shops selling postcards, Lady Betelgeuse’s Soothing Sun cream and souvenirs made of shells, some of which performed clattering dances on the counter. On the front, the lanes gave way to a broad boulevard lined with trees, and they sat outside a smart café and ate ice-cream. The two sundaes cost more than a week’s worth of takeaway pizza, but Sirius didn’t tell Remus that.
Remus, overwhelmed, said, ‘I didn’t know places like this existed in England.’
‘They don’t officially. You won’t find it on any Muggle map. Wait’ll you see the beach.’
The sea here was well-behaved, the tide staying in most of the day so the wizarding families could bathe, and the white sand was lined with row upon row of blue and white striped mattresses and matching parasols. Prosperous witches, artificially thin and with dark tans, roasted themselves even darker, and house-elves wandered up and down the beach with cooling drinks and slices of coconut and orange.
Remus and Sirius paddled briefly, but Remus soon rolled down his jeans and put his shoes on again. He seemed worried that one of the witches would demand what he and Sirius were doing here, in their shabby Muggle clothes.
But Sirius shrugged. ‘It’s not a problem. I’m still a Black, and nobody’s going to dare question me.’
All the same, they left the beach and went back to the town centre to buy their provisions. The food shops seemed to be frequented solely by house-elves, many of them from the grand hotels. They stepped aside when they saw Remus and Sirius, to let the ‘young masters’ through, which worried Remus too, Sirius could tell, though he obediently went ahead without arguing.
Still, Remus cheered up visibly when they got to the French pâtisserie, with its displays of cakes and chocolate in all sorts of shapes, and homely baguettes in their rack by the counter.
‘We won’t need any pizza delivered for a while,’ Sirius said with satisfaction as they walked out, their arms laden.
‘No.’ Remus’s voice was neutral. ‘We should drop in and see Francesca, if she isn’t coming to the house again. ’
Sirius couldn’t think of a reason to refuse, so they wandered away from the centre to look for the pizza place. They found it in a rather unsalubrious back street, tucked between an Apothecary and a block of flats with iron bars on the windows. There was a pile of owl droppings and feathers outside the door, as with any takeaway service. Remus braved them to go into the rather greasy-looking premises, but came out minutes later: Sirius was happy to find that Francesca was out on a delivery.
‘The man wouldn’t tell me where she lives,’ Remus grumbled.
‘Well, not in the town, unless she’s very rich, and she wouldn’t be working as a delivery girl if she was.’
‘It’s a summer job.’
‘Never mind her, Moony. Let’s go home now.’
Sirius felt the bright day had been tarnished, but Remus seemed to forget all about the girl once they were unpacking their purchases, and during their evening of wine and kisses. When they finally lay exhausted in the big bed, too tired to keep their eyes open, Sirius’s last conscious thought was that she had surely been exorcised.
*
Remus was in a worse mood than usual on the day of the full moon. ‘If some wizards are so powerful they can control the tides, why can’t they cure me?’
Sirius sighed inwardly and put his arm round him. ‘Never mind, Moony. Let’s go round the grounds again, and then you’ll be a bit more confident for the transformation.’
‘But Sirius, I can never remember anything human when I’m a wolf,’ Remus wailed, distraught.’
‘Well, it’ll take your mind off it,’ Sirius said, slightly reproachful, and Remus said, ‘I know. Sorry.’
They wandered down through the rose garden to the lake, where three rowboats were moored to ancient-looking wooden stakes. ‘We’ll go sailing,’ Sirius said, ‘afterwards. We’ll go across to the other side. There isn’t too much of a current, or there usen’t to be. Can you row?’
‘Of course!’ said Remus indignantly.
‘Regulus and I used to play hide and seek over there, when we were kids,’ Sirius said. ‘There’s a ruin that’s great to hide in. Some sort of temple.’
‘Greek or Roman?’ Remus asked with interest, and Sirius laughed. ‘Merlin, Moony, how would I know? Pagan, probably. You’ll be able to date it when you see it.’
After lunch, Sirius Accio’d a couple of sheets down to the terrace to make a nest and coaxed Remus outside to lie down. ‘It’ll relax you,’ he explained, and Remus leered and said, ‘Is that what you call it?’ Sirius was relieved to see him in a better mood, and they kissed till their lips were sore. Eventually, reluctantly, they broke apart, their limbs stiff from lying on the ground, their faces red where they’d been exposed to the sun.
‘You look like a half-baked apple,’ Remus said, and Sirius retorted, ‘You should see yourself, Moony. Tomato face isn’t in it.’
Remus grinned and punched him, but just as Sirius was thinking how good it was to see him so calm, the doorbell rang, its sonorous chimes rather ominous to Sirius’s ears.
He grabbed his jeans and wriggled into them, his misgivings justified when he opened the door. That girl from the pizza place was standing there, apparently off-duty as her overall had been replaced by a lurid Muggle dress with a short skirt, made of some shiny purple material. ‘Remus is going to hate that dress,’ Sirius thought with a wonderful surge of malice, and said, ‘We’re going out soon, so if you’ve got anything to tell Remus you’d better be quick.’
Remus, a few steps behind him, chimed in, ‘Hi, Francesca. That’s a pretty dress.’
Sirius glanced at him to see if he was lying and was amazed to find that his eyes were sincere, his pupils large as he looked at the interloper.
‘We’re going out in a few minutes,’ he repeated, hoping that the message would get through to Remus, who was grinning at her like an idiot; a bit the way James used to grin at Lily, his treacherous mind whispered, and he was tempted to grab Remus and lock him away somewhere, like the girl’s brother, keep him safe where nobody and nothing else would have a claim on him.
‘Oh.’ She looked rather taken aback, Sirius was pleased to see. ‘I thought you might like to come out to a club later tonight. One of my cousins plays in a band there, and he’s quite good.’
‘I thought your stepfather only let you out to work,’ Sirius said.
She went red. ‘Well, he’s away on business at the moment, and my mother’s okay. So, will you be able to come?’
‘Not tonight,’ Remus said, with every appearance of genuine regret. ‘Maybe tomorrow, okay?’
‘But don’t bank on it,’ Sirius muttered under his breath, shutting the door firmly in her face.
*
The wolf was overexcited by the multitude of new spaces to explore, and Padfoot had a hard time keeping him in check. He wished fervently that James and Peter had been able to come here after all, at least for that one night.
In the morning, it was overcast again, not quite raining but dull and grey. Sirius settled Remus on one of the big sofas in the drawing-room, covering him with a blanket when he shivered, holding his hand and murmuring soothing platitudes.
The portrait of Uncle Alphard above the fireplace looked down benignly, and later, as the temperature plunged and the rain started to fall, Sirius lit a fire and watched his dead uncle’s features glow in the light from the flames.
‘I don’t think there’s anything to worry about,’ he said aloud, as Remus dozed. ‘I’m not really jealous. Why should I be? He doesn’t like girls anyway. She’s just a fluke, that’s all.’
He waited for Alphard to answer, but the old man just continued to smile, and remained silent. Sirius sighed. ‘Oh, well, how would you know? I bet none of your lot ever fell in love with other boys. You’re probably scandalised, and I don’t blame you.’ He conjured up another log for the fire and dropped it in with a satisfying crash, which woke Remus and gave him an excuse to hold him close and reassure him that it was only a noise.
He loved it when Remus was vulnerable like this, depending on him, looking at him with such trusting eyes. He gave him a dose of painkilling potion, and listened patiently as he grumbled, ‘I’m not that achy, Padfoot. I really don’t want any more.’
‘Have it anyway. You need a nap. We both do.’
And they fell asleep in front of the fire which was really too hot in August, even on a cool, wet day, and Sirius dreamed that he and Remus were living together in his flat in London, and he said loudly, ‘What a good idea!’ and woke himself up.
He was disoriented at first: it was still light, but his bladder was bursting, and he got up and went to the loo. The clock in the kitchen told him sternly that it was after eleven, and he inferred that he must have slept for nearly twenty-four hours. The minute hand also informed him that Alphard Black was deceased and Sirius Black was in the house, but said nothing about Remus Lupin’s whereabouts.
He found him on the terrace, with that girl. The nest of sheets was still there from two days ago, but Remus had brought up one of the sunloungers for her. She was perched rather precariously at the edge, and Remus was sitting on the ground next to her, as if he were worshipping at her feet, Sirius thought, irritated .
The sun was blazing down again this morning, but Remus was in the shade, and from where Sirius was standing he looked depleted, two-dimensional.
He wanted to go and clap Remus on the shoulder, put his arms round him, brand Remus as his in front of the girl; but he also wanted to hear what they were saying, get some idea what Remus was really up to.
‘...could come and see me in the autumn, Francesca,’ Remus said. ‘My mother’s been dying for me to bring a girl home.’
The girl, Sirius noticed, was wearing her uniform again. Good. She’d have to go back to work any minute.
‘But I thought...you and him, you know. The other boy. I thought you shared a flat.’
‘No,’ Remus said, and Sirius liked to imagine regret in his voice; he could remedy that, anyway. Now he and Remus were so close, there was no point living apart. He didn’t care any more what James or Peter might think, if he ever had. This was his chance at happiness, and he didn’t want to let it slip away.
‘But we might,’ Remus went on, and Sirius’s heart leapt. ‘We’ve always been really good friends.’
Sirius waited for him to fill the pause, explain a bit more, but really, how could he? Even he, Sirius, wouldn’t have known what to say. What was Remus to him? Friend, brother, lover, boyfriend, everything in the world but nothing that could be defined in a word.
He decided that it was time to let Remus know he was there, so he made a big show of Apparating right next to him on the terrace. He also made a point of hugging him again, and was pleased that Remus responded warmly, and seemed happy to see him.
‘Great. Now you’re here, Padfoot, perhaps we can go out on the lake,’ he said. ‘We can have a picnic.’
‘With her?’ Sirius asked, dismayed. He meant, he really did, to keep his voice down, but he thought she might have heard.
‘Of course,’ Remus whispered, frowning at him.
Sirius said, ‘Fine’, his mind busy with visions of the girl overboard, calling out for help that never came, or perhaps stranded on the wrong side of the lake all alone, as night fell and the spirits of the temple came out to play. But of course, she had plenty of practice Apparating, and you couldn’t strand her anywhere. He wished, he really wished, she were a Muggle.
‘I don’t need to be at work till two today,’ the girl said, rather tentative now that Sirius was there. She probably disliked him as much as he disliked her, he realised.
*
They got together a hamper of sorts, filled mainly with bottles, courtesy of Sirius, and the remains of their haul from the French pâtisserie, courtesy of Remus. ‘We should have ordered a pizza,’ Remus said, half-joking, and the girl, Francesca, said, ‘I get sick of pizza. We eat it all the time.’
‘How many of you do deliveries?’ Sirius asked, thinking it was just rotten luck they’d fallen on her.
‘Three.’
No doubt the other two delivery people were boys, though come to think of it he’d rather Remus fancied Francesca than another boy, if indeed he did fancy her. Really, the stupid cow was no competition.
He and Remus each took an oar, and they smiled at each other just before they set out, exchanged soft, intimate glances that must surely have said, even to that idiot girl, ‘Watch us, watch the way we look at each other. We’re in love, and you mean nothing.’
But, Sirius noted, Remus was also looking fondly at Francesca, if slightly less fondly than at him. She sat opposite them, so light that she made virtually no impression on the boat at all; she couldn’t even have weighed six stone.
There were willows along the bank of the lake, and the far shore was green with vegetation, trees and long grass; in contrast, the white stone shell of the ruined temple was dazzling in the noonday sun. It was so hot that Remus and Sirius both removed their tee-shirts and rowed bare-chested.
Sirius thought how wonderful it would be if it were just him and Remus, how they could picnic and make love in the shadow of the trees, with the sun dappling their bodies, and their kisses sweet but slightly sour with the wine, tasting of summer and love and the promise of forever.
He let his hand brush Remus’s as they moored the boat securely on a branch; just a game for wizards, of course, because they didn’t need the boat, any more than Francesca did, could go anywhere they liked at any time.
He was surprised to sense Remus’s tension. ‘Hey, Padfoot... What you said earlier. You sure you don’t mind her being here?’
‘No,’ Sirius lied, squeezing Remus’s hand. ‘Of course I don’t.’
He put two bottles of white wine to cool in the lake - another Muggle fancy, because when they wanted to drink them he could put a perfectly good Chilling Charm on them - and he and Remus lay down in the sun, exhausted by their exertions. Francesca perched next to them, exclaiming over the profusion of flowers, mainly rather tatty roses, poppies and cornflowers, the August residue of summer.
‘You should be wearing something on your head,’ Remus remarked to her, and waved his wand to conjure up a straw boater trimmed with tiny daisies; not very flattering, Sirius noted with pleasure, but Francesca seemed quite happy with it, especially when Remus attached a trailing length of green ribbon and fastened the hat securely with a bow under her chin. She seemed to be tilting her head to be kissed for a moment, and Sirius felt dizzy, not just with the strong sunshine.
They ate éclairs and profiteroles and drank wine. Remus let Francesca have the long-stemmed wineglass he’d drunk from on the first night, and chose a squat tumbler like Sirius’s. Francesca was useful at least for packing away the remains of the food when they’d finished, though she annoyed Sirius all over again by Scourgifying the glasses long before he or Remus had had enough to drink.
Once the hamper was stowed on the boat for the return journey, Sirius suggested a game of hide and seek among the ruins, for old time’s sake, and offered to be It. He assumed that Remus, who knew him better than anyone on earth except James, might be suspicious, but he met Sirius’s gaze perfectly openly.
Sirius reassured him and Francesca that the site was perfectly safe, with no hidden trapdoors or jinxed foundations, and they went off good as gold, in opposite directions, Sirius was glad to note. He watched, unabashed, as Remus made for the bushes beside the old altar, and barely gave himself time to count to fifty before going right after him.
‘Gotcha!’
Remus jumped as Sirius pulled him down on the earth, which was damp and cool here under the thick foliage and dark jutting shadow of the flat stone. ‘What are you doing, Sirius?’
‘You.’
He pushed Remus to the ground and lay on top of him, licking his way up his bare chest, from his navel to the curve between his neck and shoulder, which always made Remus squirm and his eyes go veiled and inward.
‘Hey, Sirius, what about Francesca?’
‘What about her? She’s miles away. She won’t get bored for a few minutes anyway, which gives us plenty of time, and then I’ll go and find her like a good seeker.’
‘But - ‘
‘Shush, Moony.’
Sirius pulled down Remus’s jeans and then his own, and then Remus was arching against him, and he held him closely, trying not to make a noise, which was difficult.
They subsided, panting, and Sirius checked his watch. ‘Three minutes. See? Now, I’ve found you, so we can both go and find her, okay?’
Sirius hoped she might have seen or heard them, finally got the message, but she was crouched obediently in her hiding place between a willow and an upright wall with no roof to support, eyes closed, waiting for him. Remus bounded over and pulled her to her feet, straightening the ridiculous hat. You’d think from his expression, Sirius though resentfully, that Remus had just been making love to her, not to him.
He made a show of checking his watch. ‘You’ll have to be off to work soon.’
‘I suppose so.’ She didn’t sound very eager. ‘Better get on then.’
‘Wait, we’ll row you back,’ Remus said,
Francesca frowned, a bit anxious. ‘Are you two okay to be in charge of a boat?’
‘Just be glad it’s not a broomstick,’ Sirius sniggered, and they set off again, steering a rather uneven course. Francesa held tightly to the sides on the way back, looking so pale that Sirius though she was going to be sick. She disembarked as soon as they reached the shore, not waiting for Remus’s helping hand, and looked a lot happier now she was back on firm ground.
‘I’ll be seeing you then,’ she called, just before she disappeared, and Remus called after her, ‘I’ll look forward to it.’
*
Sirius really didn’t want to find out, and he knew the answer anyway. But in the evening, when they were both drunk, and it wasn’t quite dark but the first stars were coming up, they sprawled on the terrace and he cracked open another bottle and asked, ‘Moony, d’you like that girl?’
It was impossible to tell in the fading light whether Remus was going red, or smiling at the thought of her. He even turned his head away, so Sirius couldn’t begin to decipher his expression. ‘Francesca? Well...yes, I do.’
‘Like you like me?’
Remus hesitated, taking a very large swig from the bottle they were now passing to and fro between them: they’d given up on the glasses quite a while ago. ‘Well, it’s different. I love you, Padfoot. We’ve been friends for so long, and I like you in so many different ways. But I like her too.’
‘D’you fancy her?’
Remus handed back the bottle. ‘Yeah. I s’pose so.’
‘More than you fancy me?’ It hurt to get the words out, and Sirius really wished he hadn’t broached the subject. He took an even bigger swig and passed over the bottle.
Remus’s hand shook, and he spilt some of the wine. ‘No! I mean, you and I, we’re sleeping together, aren’t we? How could I fancy you more than that? Anyway, I wouldn’t have a chance with her. She’s a pureblood, surely you’ve twigged that, or are you just too busy hating her?’
Sirius’s felt his face grow hot. ‘I didn’t think you’d noticed.’
‘Of course I have! You can’t even remember her name from one second to the next.’
‘I’m a pureblood too,’ Sirius pointed out, and Remus laughed. ‘Oh, Padfoot, but you’re unique, really you are. There can’t be a single other pureblood like you. But with her it matters, doesn’t it? You’ve heard her go on about her stepfather, and there’s no way I’d be allowed over that threshold. So forget it. You’re probably stuck with me.’
Sirius felt ominously on the brink of tears. ‘So I’m second best, am I? Because you don’t have a chance with the pureblood girl?’
Remus laid his head in Sirius’s lap and gazed up at the sky, which was now almost completely dark. Sirius took his hand and clutched it as if he could never bear to let it go.
It was a few moments before Remus answered. ‘You know that’s not what I mean! I love you, Padfoot. With her...well, I could have a chance, couldn’t I? I can’t just walk away from it. But you’re like a part of me. I can always come to you and you’ll take me in. You’re home, you know that.’
Sirius struggled to speak for a minute. ‘Really? But she could be home too, couldn’t she?’
Remus pulled his hand away and sat up abruptly, almost knocking the bottle over. ‘Sirius. Stop it! When we were at school, you had a different girl every week, and I just had to put up with it. You must have known how I felt then.’
‘Yes,’ Sirius said in a small voice. ‘But I didn’t like any of them like I did you.’
‘Well.’ Remus sounded hoarse, as he often did for a couple of days after the transformation. ‘I don’t like her as much as you either. But I’m not going to pretend I’m not attracted to her.’ And he suddenly picked up the bottle and flung it high over the terrace so it fell somewhere on the dark lawn. ‘Bugger! I really wish I hadn’t met her, if that’s any consolation.’
‘So do I,’ Sirius said, and grabbed Remus by the wrist, pulling him toward him. ‘She can’t love you like I do, can she? She’s not going to fuck you till you scream out her name, is she?’
He pinned Remus down on the terrace, covering him with kisses that he thought must have burned every inch of Remus’s skin if they felt as hot as they did to him. He wanted to cry and he wanted to conquer, but he wanted, above all, for Remus to know the important thing, that other people didn’t matter, certainly not stupid girls, not even James; it was just the two of them, for ever and ever.
He rebuilt a temple in honour of Remus’s body, worshipping it with every fibre of his own, pouring every ounce of emotion he had into the act under the stars, the terrace an altar, himself the sacrifice. Finally, he sighed and rolled over and looked up at the sky in his turn, pulling Remus down on top of him.
‘No,’ Remus said softly, and Sirius stroked his hair, and this time they both lay with their eyes wide open until the sun rose.
*
On Saturday night, with no immediate excuse, Remus and Sirius went along to the club where Francesca’s cousin played. It was in the modern part of the resort, certainly not a tourist trap but a cramped basement lit only with candles and a few wands. All the local kids seemed to frequent it, and you could hardly move for bodies.
At least Francesca wasn’t wearing her purple dress, but the white one was worse in a way, because even Sirius had to admit it was quite pretty and looked good on her. Her weird, unmatched eyes were rimmed with eyeliner and she swept Remus on to the dancefloor without waiting for him to ask her; unless they'd planned this behind his back, of course, which wouldn't have surprised Sirius a bit.
He went over to the bar and ordered a Firewhisky, then another, growing steadily more morose as the evening went on. He suspected that Francesca, or that girl as he was calling her to himself again, must have had a word with the band, asked them to play all slow songs, because she and Remus had been pressed close to each other for at least five numbers now.
He could have been dancing too, no doubt: several girls were still hanging round him expectantly, and a couple of bolder ones actually asked, but he shrugged them off. He was in no mood to be polite to strangers.
The barman looked at him a bit warily as he measured out the seventh drink. ‘Take it easy, lad, won’t you?’
Sirius gave him a brief smile, and included a small tip with the money he was handing over. He wanted to keep the supplier of alcohol sweet, at least, if nobody else.
After two further shots, he decided that the whisky was finally having the desired effect and, emboldened, he plunged into the mass of bodies on the dance floor. He knew exactly where Remus was because he’d been following his every move, watching him and that girl, always together beneath the spinning globe with its squares of coloured glass.
‘Can I cut in?’ He remembered the phrase from the Muggle Studies module on Social Traditions, which was, he knew to his cost, not always a hundred percent accurate. He wasn’t certain if either wizards of Muggles really said it, if it sounded corny or what, but thought he was nearly drunk enough not to care.
Francesca looked surprised, said, ‘Sure,’ and seemed to be holding her hands out to him. Sirius ignored the gesture and grabbed Remus’s teeshirt, bunching it in his fists, hissing, ‘What the fuck are you doing?’
‘Sirius, for Merlin’s sake! Francesca thinks you want to dance with her!’
‘I don’t.’
‘Well, I know that! But you can’t dance with me. Not here.’
‘Why not?’ Sirius tightened his grip, pulling Remus toward him. ‘It’s time Francesca found out that it’s you and me, not you and her. We’re supposed to be a couple, Remus! You should have told her.’
‘Shut up, Padfoot. Let’s talk somewhere a bit more private.’
‘She can’t hear us, not with that bloody band going on and on.’
All the same, Sirius let go of Remus’s tee-shirt, which was now crumpled and grubby, and they pushed their way through to the bar.
Remus sounded tired and defeated. ‘Padfoot, we agreed the other night. That if I had a chance I should take it.’
‘We agreed what?’
‘Well, not in so many words, perhaps.’
‘But... I thought we were together.’
‘We are. Of course we are. I just want to be normal, Sirius, don’t you understand that? Sure, I love you, but I could fucking well learn to love a girl too, okay? I told you anyway, it won’t work out, so just let me have this evening. Then I’ll come back to the house and we can talk.’
‘Okay, mate. Good luck to you. Tell her all the best from me.’
He walked out of the club, not even pausing to see if Remus was following him. The air outside was cool and clean after the smoky, dark basement, and under the wide sky, life suddenly seemed a lot less complicated.
He knew exactly what he was going to do, but he’d be fair and let the decision depend on Remus. If he heard running footsteps behind him, or the crack of Apparition, and Remus suddenly appeared at his side, apologetic, saying he didn’t know what had got into him, treating him right, treating him like his fucking boyfriend, for Merlin’s sake, they’d go back to the house. He may not be able to seal it or Remus off from the rest of the world, but at least they’d spend the last few weeks of the summer together.
But if Remus wasn’t back within the hour, if he took their commitment so lightly, well, Sirius could too. He’d owl the estate agent and accept the cash offer, get the damn house off his hands. Then, he’d go back to London, see James and Peter, have a few laughs, meet a few girls; or even a few boys, he told himself defiantly.
He walked all the way home. The hour had long since passed, but even so, he sat outside on the terrace for the rest of the night, waiting for Remus. Dawn came, and Sirius still waited. Finally, when there was still no sign of him by noon, Sirius sealed the parchment and sent the owl to Lease and Rooke. Before he left for London, he forwarded Remus’s backpack to his parents’ address, complete with toothbrush, change of clothes and sketchpad, but no covering note. He looked in the sketchpad just to check, and came across several attempts at Francesca, in Remus’s usual wooden style, but recognisable enough. When he saw them, bile rose to his throat, and he had to swallow rapidly a few times so he wouldn’t throw up.
He felt bad, of course, once everything was finalised, but it was too late by then. He wrote to Remus several times - or several hundred times - but always scrunched up the parchment without sending the letter. What was the point, after all?
*
They didn’t see each other again until the first meeting of the Order of the Phoenix. Remus came in late and sat at the back, a few rows behind Sirius, who was with James, Lily and Peter.
It wasn’t long after the October full moon, and Remus looked exhausted, with dark shadows under his eyes. His hair wasn’t honey blond in the dim room but a mousy brown, and he was so thin that his cheekbones stood out under his pale skin.
Sirius didn’t hear a word of the meeting; he swivelled his head round and stared and stared at Remus, drinking him in, thinking that he’d never seen such a beautiful or welcome sight. It hurt almost unendurably to look at him and remember what he’d lost, but he simply couldn’t help himself, any more than he could stop himself lingering after the meeting, grabbing Remus’s arm and steering him to a seat so they could talk.
‘I’m sorry.’ Remus looked down and wouldn’t meet Sirius’s eyes.
‘I’m sorry too. I left you in the lurch, didn’t I?’
‘S’okay. I went home, and it wasn’t too bad, because my parents were away.’
‘Good. I was worried you’d be stranded. Well, I thought you’d be with her, you know?’
Remus played with the button on his robes. ‘Well, I’m not, and I wasn’t. I haven’t the faintest clue what she’s doing now. I haven’t seen or heard from her since we went to that club.’
Sirius got up, feeling irrationally guilty and unable to sit still a second longer. ‘Let’s go somewhere else. McGonagall’s giving us filthy looks.’
When they were settled in the Leaky Cauldron with their Firewhisky, he said, ‘We really blew it, didn’t we?’
‘I thought I could have both of you,’ Remus said, so loudly that a giant at the next table turned to stare at him. ‘Stupid of me. It wouldn’t have been fair on either of you. And now I’ve ended up without anyone, and it serves me right.’
‘It does,’ Sirius said, and meant it, but Remus looked so downcast that he wished he hadn’t.
They sat there for a long time, silent, until Sirius glanced round and realised that the bar was emptying. Tom, the barman, was starting to clear up, clattering bottles and glasses so the remaining clientèle would take the hint and leave.
Outside in Diagon Alley, they lingered under a streetlight to say their goodbyes. Remus shivered in his thin robes, and Sirius felt concerned again. ‘Haven’t you got a cloak, Moony?’
‘No. But it doesn't matter, because I must be getting back anyway. My mother makes a fuss if I’m late out. It's a real pain living with my parents, actually.’
‘Why don’t you leave, then?’
‘Where would I go?’ It was a rhetorical question, Sirius knew that, but all the same the old impulsiveness kicked in, and before he fully realised what he was doing, he was holding out his hand and saying, ‘You can come and stay with me.’
He felt strangely detached, as if he were looking at himself from the outside, and it was so cold that his breath formed white puffs of vapour against the night sky. He watched them with interest, and continued, before he could change his mind, ‘You said it yourself, remember? That I’d always take you in. We can start again. We were both wrong, so let’s forget it ever happened. That she ever happened.’
He opened his arms and a second later he and Remus were hugging, and Sirius didn’t even care that the last stragglers coming out of the pub were staring at them. He held Remus tightly, tightly, his head buried in his shoulder so he could drink in the familiar, slightly sweaty, slightly soapy smell that always meant Remus to him and Padfoot.
Perhaps, he reasoned, he should have seen it the other way round as well. If he was home for Remus, Remus should be home for him, and he couldn’t keep running away forever. Not even if Remus sometimes made mistakes, not even if he did, because they weren’t superhuman, after all.
‘Let’s go,’ he said, and they Apparated hand in hand, landing just outside his flat.
‘Well,’ Remus said, breaking away, trying to smile and not quite succeeding, ‘are you going to give me the grand tour?’
‘Yes. I wouldn’t want you to get lost again.’
Sirius opened the front door with a flourish, bowed Remus inside, feeling a combination of excitement and dismay. If things hadn’t worked in Uncle Alphard’s sunny house, with its gardens and lake, with all the time and space in the world, they probably wouldn’t be any better in a cramped flat, with Order missions and the war and all the miseries on earth crowding in. But he and Remus could try, at least. Nobody could do more than that.
End
by minnow_53
Disclaimer: The Harry Potter characters belong to JK Rowling and various corporations.
Pairing: Remus/Sirius
Era: August 1978, just after Hogwarts.
Summary: Remus goes to stay with Sirius in the country house inherited from his uncle.
Rating: PG-13
Now crossposted to the_kennel and remusxsirius.
Long Ago And Far Away
It was, Sirius promised, going to be the best summer of their lives, the first summer of freedom after school.
Remus arrived late on Thursday afternoon, with just a backpack containing his wand, a toothbrush and a change of underwear. When Sirius saw him standing on the terrace at the back of the house, looking faintly bemused by the expanse of lawn spread out in front of him, he yelled, ‘Hey, Moony!’ and rushed out to embrace him. They clung together fiercely for a few minutes.
‘I’ve missed you,’ Sirius whispered, and Remus answered, ‘Me too,’ and neither of them seemed to want to let go first.
‘You must see the house,’ Sirius said when they finally went into the cool, marble hall with its massive mirrors and frescos of hunting scenes. ‘Cruel lot, those country Blacks,’ he remarked. ‘Of course, my uncle didn’t hunt.’
He took Remus’s hand and led him down the shining corridors, through the ballroom and the grand reception rooms, the vast basement kitchen, the formal dining room, the miles of portrait galleries, the acres of attic. Remus stared, and exclaimed, and was altogether a satisfactory audience.
After the grand tour, he slung his backpack on to the floor of Sirius’s room, then picked it up again as if he’d been too hasty and asked, a bit shyly, ‘Where I am going to sleep, then?’
‘In here, of course. If you want to,’ Sirius answered, suddenly shy in his turn. ‘It’s not really the best room. I like it because I can see the lake from here. It, well, it reminds me of school.’
‘But this place is enormous. You could choose a different room every night,’ Remus said.
‘We could, you mean.’ Sirius felt hotter than the afternoon warranted, remembering the five or six times at school - never often enough, not even nearly - they’d slept in Remus’s bed, curled together like children, though the things they did were not childish in the slightest. Of course, it was hard to steal time alone with the others always around. He added, pointedly, ‘It’s going to be different without Prongs and Wormtail.’
‘Yes.’
‘Now you’ve seen the house, we can start on the garden,’ Sirius said, and laughed at Remus’s expression. ‘It’s okay. We’ll do that tomorrow.’ He fetched a bottle from the kitchen and they sat outside on the terrace, drinking wine out of mismatched glasses.
‘To Uncle Alphard,’ Sirius said, raising his tumbler and draining it.
Remus echoed the toast, sipping from his delicate stemmed wineglass. ‘Are you going to live here, then?’ he asked, still wide-eyed as he looked across at the lake. His combined awe and eagerness made Sirius smile, made Sirius long to run his fingers through that messy blond hair, which was turning darker every year, but bleached to a honey gold by the sun this summer.
He moved closer to Remus, sat right beside him so their legs were touching, and the contact went straight to his head and his groin; he suddenly felt even drunker.
‘I’m going to sell it. I mean, it’s beautiful, and fine for the summer, but it’s a bit out of the way, isn’t it? I thought I’d stay till after the NEWT results, and then I’ll have some idea what I want to do. I could use the money to train as a Healer.’
‘Or,’ Remus said, ‘you could buy a bigger flat.’
‘Not much bigger, at London prices.’
When dusk started to fall, at about nine o’clock, they decided they were hungry, and Sirius owled for some takeaway pizza. It was delivered five minutes later by a young girl about their age, who Apparated almost soundlessly. In the fading light she looked like a tiny ghost, white and big-eyed, with her PizzaWand uniform starched and glowing faintly under the crescent moon.
‘That’ll be a Galleon, please.’
She spoke with the local accent, a soft, amiable burr. While Sirius fumbled in his pocket for the money, Remus asked, ‘What’s your name?’
‘Francesca.’
‘That’s a beautiful name,’ Remus said, and Sirius, annoyed, shoved a Galleon and two Sickles at the girl, almost rudely.
*
That first night, their caresses were tentative and unsatisfactory, both holding back from the strange yet familiar touches. ‘We need to get to know each other again, I suppose,’ Sirius thought, though it was pleasant enough to fall asleep curled round each other, Remus’s head on his shoulder.
He was woken at three in the morning by Remus shaking him. ‘Padfoot. There’s a moth in the room.’
Instantly wide awake, Sirius asked, ‘Why don’t you just Banish it?’
‘I don’t like to. You never know where they’ll end up, do you, and I don’t want to hurt it.’
Sirius opened the window and guided it out by the light on his wand, thinking that really, Remus could be such a girl. But he didn’t actually mind, not when he got back into bed and reached for Remus and they clung together, kissing as if it was the end of the world, desperately and deeply.
‘It’s the first time we’ve ever slept together properly,’ Sirius said afterwards, as they lay tangled in the damp, sweaty sheets. ‘I’ve been wanting to do that for years.’
As Remus slept, Sirius traced ‘I love you I love you I love you’ down the length of his back, and Remus stirred and reached for him again, and this time they both spoke the words out loud. It seemed natural to say them, somehow, in this vast house, empty except for the two boys and its slumbering portraits, and Sirius wondered if the place had cast a spell on them.
They slept and woke again, and went downstairs, naked in the heat, to find something to eat. There was soft white bread, butter sweating ice-cold under its Cooling Charm, honey, and coffee in the pot, just waiting for the spell to bring it to life and percolate it. ‘The house-elves come in from the village every Friday and Saturday morning,’ Sirius said. ‘Just to clear up. We’ll be able to eat a proper meal tonight, and your mother’ll be relieved when you tell her.’
An owl arrived while they were having their late breakfast, with a postcard from Remus’s parents in Sardinia. ‘They’re feeling guilty,’ Remus said, not bothering to read it at once.
‘Why? I thought you wanted to come here.’
‘I did. But they didn’t know. They always feel bad about not wanting me on holidays, with the full moon and all. I don’t care.’
Sirius reached for the untouched card and read it. ‘‘R, We’re missing you. Hope you and your friends are having a good time.’ Friends?’ He raised an eyebrow quizzically.
‘I told them Pete and James were going to be here. Actually, I made it sound a bit like a school reunion. I think they’re expecting half the staff of Hogwarts to be here too.’
Sirius handed the card back. ‘I’m glad they’re not. Why couldn’t you just tell them?’
Remus blushed, and looked away. ‘I think they suspect something,’ he blurted out. ‘Every time I mention your name. I don’t know why, really. It’s not as if we even did much. Before.’
When the last crumb of breakfast had been eaten, they put on their swimming trunks and took sun loungers down to the lawn. ‘It’s not often we get a chance to tan, Moony. You’ll look wonderful, all brown.’
Remus was restless, though, and turned over so frequently that Sirius teased him. ‘You won’t even be medium-rare! Give the sun a chance.’
Remus picked up his wand and Accio’d the sketchpad, quills and coloured inks that had taken up most of the room in his backpack. He flicked to a clean sheet and started to draw. ‘Hold still, okay, Padfoot? It won’t take long.’
Sirius tried to look at the drawing, but Remus put his hand over it.
‘Let me see, please.’
‘No. Don’t lose the pose. You can wait till I’ve finished.’
‘But I’m lying on my stomach! You can’t see anything but my back and my hair.’
Remus’s friends had never liked to tell him, but he didn’t actually draw very well: his lines were rigid where they should be fluid, and his proportions were usually a bit out. Still, Sirius thought his pictures had a certain charm. But then, he thought everything about Remus had a certain charm.
He got up and knocked the sketchpad from Remus’s hands, kissing him hungrily, and Remus responded, not concerned that his picture of Sirius was getting crushed beneath them as they tussled on the grass.
‘Remind me why we wasted a whole two weeks of the holidays,’ Sirius said, coming up for air.
‘You wanted to get the house ready,’ Remus said. ‘And my parents felt it was their duty to have me at home until they went away, and - ’
‘Stop talking, Moony.’ Sirius silenced him with another deep kiss.
*
On the fifth day, Monday, they both woke up cranky and out of sorts, to a dark sky and a squall of rain battering against the windows, blowing in on to the bed. The lake in the distance was grey and choppy, and Sirius grumbled at being deprived of his favourite view.
There was no breakfast waiting downstairs, as it wasn’t a house-elf day. Remus was scowling; there were deep shadows under his eyes, and he looked as if he’d just gone through about four consecutive full moons. Sirius glanced at himself in the shiny surface of the kettle, and noted that his hair looked lank and his mouth downturned.
When the owls arrived, Sirius received an official-looking letter reminding him that the estate agent would be coming that morning to value the house. He groaned, crumpled it up and Incendio’d it so forcibly that he burned a corner of the table.
‘Just my luck! It doesn’t look half as good in the rain, and I’ll have to show him the grounds through a bloody Impervius. Always wrecks a garden.’
‘It’s a pity you have to sell it,’ Remus said rather wistfully. He was smiling again, just faintly, revived by a cup of strong tea, in default of the house-elves’ coffee. ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could just stay here?’
‘Yes, it would,’ Sirius agreed, his own bad mood temporarily forgotten. ‘We’d be well away from that bloody war... Mind you, we mustn’t forget that Alphard was a Black. Voldemort would probably commission the place as a safe house.’
Remus produced very lumpy scrambled eggs with his wand, and was so pleased with his achievement that Sirius hadn’t the heart to leave them. He choked them down as fast as possible, then put Remus in charge of tidying the kitchen while he did a lightening tour to make sure the house looked saleable, using his entire repertoire of household charms to polish the banisters of the grand staircase.
The rain stopped at around ten, but there was still a faint mist obscuring the grounds, and the grass was very wet.
The estate agent appeared at the front door at ten fifteen on the dot. Remus waved his wand to produce the smell of baking bread and hot chocolate just coming to the boil. Sirius performed a last-minute glamour charm, in case a forgotten cobweb was lurking anywhere.
After Sirius had taken the estate agent round the house and grounds, they both Disapparated to the branch of Lease and Rooke in the nearby village to discuss terms and conditions.
‘I’m not planning to sell quite yet,’ Sirius explained. ‘I just wanted to have it valued.’
‘Very sensible,’ the estate agent agreed. ‘But you know, I could get you a cash buyer immediately.’
Sirius thought of Remus’s face, pale and dreamy beside his, of his mouth, of his hipbones and long legs wrapped round his waist, of his face drawn and white after the moon. ‘No. I really don’t want to put it on the market until the autumn.’
They finally agreed a price that pleased both of them, and Sirius arranged for photos to be taken. ‘But please owl me if it’s raining again. It looks much better in the sunshine.’
Allies now, they shook hands and Sirius Disapparated.
*
Back in the house, he found Remus standing in the hall, talking to the pizza delivery girl.
Their heads were close together and they were laughing. Without even thinking, Sirius strode over to hug Remus, watching her defiantly. ‘Hi, Moony. I see you weren’t too lonely while I was gone.’
Remus flushed slightly, though he returned the hug. ‘Hey, Padfoot. I thought I’d get some pizza in as a surprise. To cheer you up. My treat,’ he added, as Sirius started fumbling for a Galleon in his robe pockets, and Sirius resolved to pay him back somehow, because there was no way Remus could afford pizza.
‘I don’t need cheering up,’ Sirius said shortly.
He kept hold of Remus, and out of the corner of his eye he saw whatever her name was - Frances? Fiona? - shift uncomfortably from foot to foot. In daylight, he could see that she wasn’t very pretty, but she was striking: her eyes were different colours, one hazel, one green, and her straight black hair was cut in a fringe, which emphasised their size and her long lashes. Her mouth was wide, her nose nondescript, her face a bit too elfin for beauty; she was tiny and small-boned as a bird.
‘Francesca was telling me that she once did a tour of the house,’ Remus was saying, almost proprietorially, it seemed to Sirius, as if the place were his. ‘When she was a child.’
Sirius struggled to keep his voice level. ‘Uncle Alphard opened it to the public for a few years. Before he got so ill. ’ For some reason, he hated to think that this girl had walked along the same corridors he’d shown Remus, exclaimed at the same paintings, scrutinised the bedroom they were sleeping in.
He noticed that she wasn’t holding the familiar flat white box. ‘Hey, where’s the pizza, Moony?’
‘In the oven.’ Remus looked proud and happy. ‘I put a permanent warming charm on it. I thought...’ he hesitated, then ploughed on, ‘I thought you wouldn’t mind if Francesca shared it with us. Only, she’s having a rough time. Her stepfather’s violent, and she thinks he may be a, a Death Eater. He’s always locking her brother in his room, and she’s not allowed to go out except to work.’
They ate lunch in the kitchen, in what would have been an uneasy atmosphere except for Remus’s obvious pleasure in being with two people he liked. For his sake, Sirius did his best to be polite and attentive to the girl, though he was disliking her more by the second. Fortunately, she had to work that afternoon, and Sirius watched her disappear from the rain-swept front steps with grim relief.
*
That night, for the first time, their lovemaking, as Sirius thought of it to himself, was less than gentle. He pounded hard into Remus, working off his frustration at not having him to himself, his annoyance with the girl, his anger with Remus for asking her to eat with them... When, afterwards, Remus turned to him with soft, glowing eyes and nestled into the crook of his shoulder, he felt ashamed.
He held him close and started again, gentle this time, trying to convey his feelings with every touch and caress, and they didn’t get much sleep that night.
It was sunny again the next morning. In his sleep-deprived state, Sirius decided that they should do some shopping, buy enough food to keep them going between house-elf visits. ‘Not in the village. I’ll show you the town. Well, it’s really a seaside resort, and you’ll probably hate it. We used to spend our summer holidays there, and it was always overrun with Blacks and Malfoys and Rosiers. They were the only ones who could afford it. I’m not surprised at Pizza Girl’s father being a Death Eater. Goes with the territory.’
The resort was unexpectedly attractive, smaller than Sirius remembered. The narrow, cobbled streets were crammed with tiny shops selling postcards, Lady Betelgeuse’s Soothing Sun cream and souvenirs made of shells, some of which performed clattering dances on the counter. On the front, the lanes gave way to a broad boulevard lined with trees, and they sat outside a smart café and ate ice-cream. The two sundaes cost more than a week’s worth of takeaway pizza, but Sirius didn’t tell Remus that.
Remus, overwhelmed, said, ‘I didn’t know places like this existed in England.’
‘They don’t officially. You won’t find it on any Muggle map. Wait’ll you see the beach.’
The sea here was well-behaved, the tide staying in most of the day so the wizarding families could bathe, and the white sand was lined with row upon row of blue and white striped mattresses and matching parasols. Prosperous witches, artificially thin and with dark tans, roasted themselves even darker, and house-elves wandered up and down the beach with cooling drinks and slices of coconut and orange.
Remus and Sirius paddled briefly, but Remus soon rolled down his jeans and put his shoes on again. He seemed worried that one of the witches would demand what he and Sirius were doing here, in their shabby Muggle clothes.
But Sirius shrugged. ‘It’s not a problem. I’m still a Black, and nobody’s going to dare question me.’
All the same, they left the beach and went back to the town centre to buy their provisions. The food shops seemed to be frequented solely by house-elves, many of them from the grand hotels. They stepped aside when they saw Remus and Sirius, to let the ‘young masters’ through, which worried Remus too, Sirius could tell, though he obediently went ahead without arguing.
Still, Remus cheered up visibly when they got to the French pâtisserie, with its displays of cakes and chocolate in all sorts of shapes, and homely baguettes in their rack by the counter.
‘We won’t need any pizza delivered for a while,’ Sirius said with satisfaction as they walked out, their arms laden.
‘No.’ Remus’s voice was neutral. ‘We should drop in and see Francesca, if she isn’t coming to the house again. ’
Sirius couldn’t think of a reason to refuse, so they wandered away from the centre to look for the pizza place. They found it in a rather unsalubrious back street, tucked between an Apothecary and a block of flats with iron bars on the windows. There was a pile of owl droppings and feathers outside the door, as with any takeaway service. Remus braved them to go into the rather greasy-looking premises, but came out minutes later: Sirius was happy to find that Francesca was out on a delivery.
‘The man wouldn’t tell me where she lives,’ Remus grumbled.
‘Well, not in the town, unless she’s very rich, and she wouldn’t be working as a delivery girl if she was.’
‘It’s a summer job.’
‘Never mind her, Moony. Let’s go home now.’
Sirius felt the bright day had been tarnished, but Remus seemed to forget all about the girl once they were unpacking their purchases, and during their evening of wine and kisses. When they finally lay exhausted in the big bed, too tired to keep their eyes open, Sirius’s last conscious thought was that she had surely been exorcised.
*
Remus was in a worse mood than usual on the day of the full moon. ‘If some wizards are so powerful they can control the tides, why can’t they cure me?’
Sirius sighed inwardly and put his arm round him. ‘Never mind, Moony. Let’s go round the grounds again, and then you’ll be a bit more confident for the transformation.’
‘But Sirius, I can never remember anything human when I’m a wolf,’ Remus wailed, distraught.’
‘Well, it’ll take your mind off it,’ Sirius said, slightly reproachful, and Remus said, ‘I know. Sorry.’
They wandered down through the rose garden to the lake, where three rowboats were moored to ancient-looking wooden stakes. ‘We’ll go sailing,’ Sirius said, ‘afterwards. We’ll go across to the other side. There isn’t too much of a current, or there usen’t to be. Can you row?’
‘Of course!’ said Remus indignantly.
‘Regulus and I used to play hide and seek over there, when we were kids,’ Sirius said. ‘There’s a ruin that’s great to hide in. Some sort of temple.’
‘Greek or Roman?’ Remus asked with interest, and Sirius laughed. ‘Merlin, Moony, how would I know? Pagan, probably. You’ll be able to date it when you see it.’
After lunch, Sirius Accio’d a couple of sheets down to the terrace to make a nest and coaxed Remus outside to lie down. ‘It’ll relax you,’ he explained, and Remus leered and said, ‘Is that what you call it?’ Sirius was relieved to see him in a better mood, and they kissed till their lips were sore. Eventually, reluctantly, they broke apart, their limbs stiff from lying on the ground, their faces red where they’d been exposed to the sun.
‘You look like a half-baked apple,’ Remus said, and Sirius retorted, ‘You should see yourself, Moony. Tomato face isn’t in it.’
Remus grinned and punched him, but just as Sirius was thinking how good it was to see him so calm, the doorbell rang, its sonorous chimes rather ominous to Sirius’s ears.
He grabbed his jeans and wriggled into them, his misgivings justified when he opened the door. That girl from the pizza place was standing there, apparently off-duty as her overall had been replaced by a lurid Muggle dress with a short skirt, made of some shiny purple material. ‘Remus is going to hate that dress,’ Sirius thought with a wonderful surge of malice, and said, ‘We’re going out soon, so if you’ve got anything to tell Remus you’d better be quick.’
Remus, a few steps behind him, chimed in, ‘Hi, Francesca. That’s a pretty dress.’
Sirius glanced at him to see if he was lying and was amazed to find that his eyes were sincere, his pupils large as he looked at the interloper.
‘We’re going out in a few minutes,’ he repeated, hoping that the message would get through to Remus, who was grinning at her like an idiot; a bit the way James used to grin at Lily, his treacherous mind whispered, and he was tempted to grab Remus and lock him away somewhere, like the girl’s brother, keep him safe where nobody and nothing else would have a claim on him.
‘Oh.’ She looked rather taken aback, Sirius was pleased to see. ‘I thought you might like to come out to a club later tonight. One of my cousins plays in a band there, and he’s quite good.’
‘I thought your stepfather only let you out to work,’ Sirius said.
She went red. ‘Well, he’s away on business at the moment, and my mother’s okay. So, will you be able to come?’
‘Not tonight,’ Remus said, with every appearance of genuine regret. ‘Maybe tomorrow, okay?’
‘But don’t bank on it,’ Sirius muttered under his breath, shutting the door firmly in her face.
*
The wolf was overexcited by the multitude of new spaces to explore, and Padfoot had a hard time keeping him in check. He wished fervently that James and Peter had been able to come here after all, at least for that one night.
In the morning, it was overcast again, not quite raining but dull and grey. Sirius settled Remus on one of the big sofas in the drawing-room, covering him with a blanket when he shivered, holding his hand and murmuring soothing platitudes.
The portrait of Uncle Alphard above the fireplace looked down benignly, and later, as the temperature plunged and the rain started to fall, Sirius lit a fire and watched his dead uncle’s features glow in the light from the flames.
‘I don’t think there’s anything to worry about,’ he said aloud, as Remus dozed. ‘I’m not really jealous. Why should I be? He doesn’t like girls anyway. She’s just a fluke, that’s all.’
He waited for Alphard to answer, but the old man just continued to smile, and remained silent. Sirius sighed. ‘Oh, well, how would you know? I bet none of your lot ever fell in love with other boys. You’re probably scandalised, and I don’t blame you.’ He conjured up another log for the fire and dropped it in with a satisfying crash, which woke Remus and gave him an excuse to hold him close and reassure him that it was only a noise.
He loved it when Remus was vulnerable like this, depending on him, looking at him with such trusting eyes. He gave him a dose of painkilling potion, and listened patiently as he grumbled, ‘I’m not that achy, Padfoot. I really don’t want any more.’
‘Have it anyway. You need a nap. We both do.’
And they fell asleep in front of the fire which was really too hot in August, even on a cool, wet day, and Sirius dreamed that he and Remus were living together in his flat in London, and he said loudly, ‘What a good idea!’ and woke himself up.
He was disoriented at first: it was still light, but his bladder was bursting, and he got up and went to the loo. The clock in the kitchen told him sternly that it was after eleven, and he inferred that he must have slept for nearly twenty-four hours. The minute hand also informed him that Alphard Black was deceased and Sirius Black was in the house, but said nothing about Remus Lupin’s whereabouts.
He found him on the terrace, with that girl. The nest of sheets was still there from two days ago, but Remus had brought up one of the sunloungers for her. She was perched rather precariously at the edge, and Remus was sitting on the ground next to her, as if he were worshipping at her feet, Sirius thought, irritated .
The sun was blazing down again this morning, but Remus was in the shade, and from where Sirius was standing he looked depleted, two-dimensional.
He wanted to go and clap Remus on the shoulder, put his arms round him, brand Remus as his in front of the girl; but he also wanted to hear what they were saying, get some idea what Remus was really up to.
‘...could come and see me in the autumn, Francesca,’ Remus said. ‘My mother’s been dying for me to bring a girl home.’
The girl, Sirius noticed, was wearing her uniform again. Good. She’d have to go back to work any minute.
‘But I thought...you and him, you know. The other boy. I thought you shared a flat.’
‘No,’ Remus said, and Sirius liked to imagine regret in his voice; he could remedy that, anyway. Now he and Remus were so close, there was no point living apart. He didn’t care any more what James or Peter might think, if he ever had. This was his chance at happiness, and he didn’t want to let it slip away.
‘But we might,’ Remus went on, and Sirius’s heart leapt. ‘We’ve always been really good friends.’
Sirius waited for him to fill the pause, explain a bit more, but really, how could he? Even he, Sirius, wouldn’t have known what to say. What was Remus to him? Friend, brother, lover, boyfriend, everything in the world but nothing that could be defined in a word.
He decided that it was time to let Remus know he was there, so he made a big show of Apparating right next to him on the terrace. He also made a point of hugging him again, and was pleased that Remus responded warmly, and seemed happy to see him.
‘Great. Now you’re here, Padfoot, perhaps we can go out on the lake,’ he said. ‘We can have a picnic.’
‘With her?’ Sirius asked, dismayed. He meant, he really did, to keep his voice down, but he thought she might have heard.
‘Of course,’ Remus whispered, frowning at him.
Sirius said, ‘Fine’, his mind busy with visions of the girl overboard, calling out for help that never came, or perhaps stranded on the wrong side of the lake all alone, as night fell and the spirits of the temple came out to play. But of course, she had plenty of practice Apparating, and you couldn’t strand her anywhere. He wished, he really wished, she were a Muggle.
‘I don’t need to be at work till two today,’ the girl said, rather tentative now that Sirius was there. She probably disliked him as much as he disliked her, he realised.
*
They got together a hamper of sorts, filled mainly with bottles, courtesy of Sirius, and the remains of their haul from the French pâtisserie, courtesy of Remus. ‘We should have ordered a pizza,’ Remus said, half-joking, and the girl, Francesca, said, ‘I get sick of pizza. We eat it all the time.’
‘How many of you do deliveries?’ Sirius asked, thinking it was just rotten luck they’d fallen on her.
‘Three.’
No doubt the other two delivery people were boys, though come to think of it he’d rather Remus fancied Francesca than another boy, if indeed he did fancy her. Really, the stupid cow was no competition.
He and Remus each took an oar, and they smiled at each other just before they set out, exchanged soft, intimate glances that must surely have said, even to that idiot girl, ‘Watch us, watch the way we look at each other. We’re in love, and you mean nothing.’
But, Sirius noted, Remus was also looking fondly at Francesca, if slightly less fondly than at him. She sat opposite them, so light that she made virtually no impression on the boat at all; she couldn’t even have weighed six stone.
There were willows along the bank of the lake, and the far shore was green with vegetation, trees and long grass; in contrast, the white stone shell of the ruined temple was dazzling in the noonday sun. It was so hot that Remus and Sirius both removed their tee-shirts and rowed bare-chested.
Sirius thought how wonderful it would be if it were just him and Remus, how they could picnic and make love in the shadow of the trees, with the sun dappling their bodies, and their kisses sweet but slightly sour with the wine, tasting of summer and love and the promise of forever.
He let his hand brush Remus’s as they moored the boat securely on a branch; just a game for wizards, of course, because they didn’t need the boat, any more than Francesca did, could go anywhere they liked at any time.
He was surprised to sense Remus’s tension. ‘Hey, Padfoot... What you said earlier. You sure you don’t mind her being here?’
‘No,’ Sirius lied, squeezing Remus’s hand. ‘Of course I don’t.’
He put two bottles of white wine to cool in the lake - another Muggle fancy, because when they wanted to drink them he could put a perfectly good Chilling Charm on them - and he and Remus lay down in the sun, exhausted by their exertions. Francesca perched next to them, exclaiming over the profusion of flowers, mainly rather tatty roses, poppies and cornflowers, the August residue of summer.
‘You should be wearing something on your head,’ Remus remarked to her, and waved his wand to conjure up a straw boater trimmed with tiny daisies; not very flattering, Sirius noted with pleasure, but Francesca seemed quite happy with it, especially when Remus attached a trailing length of green ribbon and fastened the hat securely with a bow under her chin. She seemed to be tilting her head to be kissed for a moment, and Sirius felt dizzy, not just with the strong sunshine.
They ate éclairs and profiteroles and drank wine. Remus let Francesca have the long-stemmed wineglass he’d drunk from on the first night, and chose a squat tumbler like Sirius’s. Francesca was useful at least for packing away the remains of the food when they’d finished, though she annoyed Sirius all over again by Scourgifying the glasses long before he or Remus had had enough to drink.
Once the hamper was stowed on the boat for the return journey, Sirius suggested a game of hide and seek among the ruins, for old time’s sake, and offered to be It. He assumed that Remus, who knew him better than anyone on earth except James, might be suspicious, but he met Sirius’s gaze perfectly openly.
Sirius reassured him and Francesca that the site was perfectly safe, with no hidden trapdoors or jinxed foundations, and they went off good as gold, in opposite directions, Sirius was glad to note. He watched, unabashed, as Remus made for the bushes beside the old altar, and barely gave himself time to count to fifty before going right after him.
‘Gotcha!’
Remus jumped as Sirius pulled him down on the earth, which was damp and cool here under the thick foliage and dark jutting shadow of the flat stone. ‘What are you doing, Sirius?’
‘You.’
He pushed Remus to the ground and lay on top of him, licking his way up his bare chest, from his navel to the curve between his neck and shoulder, which always made Remus squirm and his eyes go veiled and inward.
‘Hey, Sirius, what about Francesca?’
‘What about her? She’s miles away. She won’t get bored for a few minutes anyway, which gives us plenty of time, and then I’ll go and find her like a good seeker.’
‘But - ‘
‘Shush, Moony.’
Sirius pulled down Remus’s jeans and then his own, and then Remus was arching against him, and he held him closely, trying not to make a noise, which was difficult.
They subsided, panting, and Sirius checked his watch. ‘Three minutes. See? Now, I’ve found you, so we can both go and find her, okay?’
Sirius hoped she might have seen or heard them, finally got the message, but she was crouched obediently in her hiding place between a willow and an upright wall with no roof to support, eyes closed, waiting for him. Remus bounded over and pulled her to her feet, straightening the ridiculous hat. You’d think from his expression, Sirius though resentfully, that Remus had just been making love to her, not to him.
He made a show of checking his watch. ‘You’ll have to be off to work soon.’
‘I suppose so.’ She didn’t sound very eager. ‘Better get on then.’
‘Wait, we’ll row you back,’ Remus said,
Francesca frowned, a bit anxious. ‘Are you two okay to be in charge of a boat?’
‘Just be glad it’s not a broomstick,’ Sirius sniggered, and they set off again, steering a rather uneven course. Francesa held tightly to the sides on the way back, looking so pale that Sirius though she was going to be sick. She disembarked as soon as they reached the shore, not waiting for Remus’s helping hand, and looked a lot happier now she was back on firm ground.
‘I’ll be seeing you then,’ she called, just before she disappeared, and Remus called after her, ‘I’ll look forward to it.’
*
Sirius really didn’t want to find out, and he knew the answer anyway. But in the evening, when they were both drunk, and it wasn’t quite dark but the first stars were coming up, they sprawled on the terrace and he cracked open another bottle and asked, ‘Moony, d’you like that girl?’
It was impossible to tell in the fading light whether Remus was going red, or smiling at the thought of her. He even turned his head away, so Sirius couldn’t begin to decipher his expression. ‘Francesca? Well...yes, I do.’
‘Like you like me?’
Remus hesitated, taking a very large swig from the bottle they were now passing to and fro between them: they’d given up on the glasses quite a while ago. ‘Well, it’s different. I love you, Padfoot. We’ve been friends for so long, and I like you in so many different ways. But I like her too.’
‘D’you fancy her?’
Remus handed back the bottle. ‘Yeah. I s’pose so.’
‘More than you fancy me?’ It hurt to get the words out, and Sirius really wished he hadn’t broached the subject. He took an even bigger swig and passed over the bottle.
Remus’s hand shook, and he spilt some of the wine. ‘No! I mean, you and I, we’re sleeping together, aren’t we? How could I fancy you more than that? Anyway, I wouldn’t have a chance with her. She’s a pureblood, surely you’ve twigged that, or are you just too busy hating her?’
Sirius’s felt his face grow hot. ‘I didn’t think you’d noticed.’
‘Of course I have! You can’t even remember her name from one second to the next.’
‘I’m a pureblood too,’ Sirius pointed out, and Remus laughed. ‘Oh, Padfoot, but you’re unique, really you are. There can’t be a single other pureblood like you. But with her it matters, doesn’t it? You’ve heard her go on about her stepfather, and there’s no way I’d be allowed over that threshold. So forget it. You’re probably stuck with me.’
Sirius felt ominously on the brink of tears. ‘So I’m second best, am I? Because you don’t have a chance with the pureblood girl?’
Remus laid his head in Sirius’s lap and gazed up at the sky, which was now almost completely dark. Sirius took his hand and clutched it as if he could never bear to let it go.
It was a few moments before Remus answered. ‘You know that’s not what I mean! I love you, Padfoot. With her...well, I could have a chance, couldn’t I? I can’t just walk away from it. But you’re like a part of me. I can always come to you and you’ll take me in. You’re home, you know that.’
Sirius struggled to speak for a minute. ‘Really? But she could be home too, couldn’t she?’
Remus pulled his hand away and sat up abruptly, almost knocking the bottle over. ‘Sirius. Stop it! When we were at school, you had a different girl every week, and I just had to put up with it. You must have known how I felt then.’
‘Yes,’ Sirius said in a small voice. ‘But I didn’t like any of them like I did you.’
‘Well.’ Remus sounded hoarse, as he often did for a couple of days after the transformation. ‘I don’t like her as much as you either. But I’m not going to pretend I’m not attracted to her.’ And he suddenly picked up the bottle and flung it high over the terrace so it fell somewhere on the dark lawn. ‘Bugger! I really wish I hadn’t met her, if that’s any consolation.’
‘So do I,’ Sirius said, and grabbed Remus by the wrist, pulling him toward him. ‘She can’t love you like I do, can she? She’s not going to fuck you till you scream out her name, is she?’
He pinned Remus down on the terrace, covering him with kisses that he thought must have burned every inch of Remus’s skin if they felt as hot as they did to him. He wanted to cry and he wanted to conquer, but he wanted, above all, for Remus to know the important thing, that other people didn’t matter, certainly not stupid girls, not even James; it was just the two of them, for ever and ever.
He rebuilt a temple in honour of Remus’s body, worshipping it with every fibre of his own, pouring every ounce of emotion he had into the act under the stars, the terrace an altar, himself the sacrifice. Finally, he sighed and rolled over and looked up at the sky in his turn, pulling Remus down on top of him.
‘No,’ Remus said softly, and Sirius stroked his hair, and this time they both lay with their eyes wide open until the sun rose.
*
On Saturday night, with no immediate excuse, Remus and Sirius went along to the club where Francesca’s cousin played. It was in the modern part of the resort, certainly not a tourist trap but a cramped basement lit only with candles and a few wands. All the local kids seemed to frequent it, and you could hardly move for bodies.
At least Francesca wasn’t wearing her purple dress, but the white one was worse in a way, because even Sirius had to admit it was quite pretty and looked good on her. Her weird, unmatched eyes were rimmed with eyeliner and she swept Remus on to the dancefloor without waiting for him to ask her; unless they'd planned this behind his back, of course, which wouldn't have surprised Sirius a bit.
He went over to the bar and ordered a Firewhisky, then another, growing steadily more morose as the evening went on. He suspected that Francesca, or that girl as he was calling her to himself again, must have had a word with the band, asked them to play all slow songs, because she and Remus had been pressed close to each other for at least five numbers now.
He could have been dancing too, no doubt: several girls were still hanging round him expectantly, and a couple of bolder ones actually asked, but he shrugged them off. He was in no mood to be polite to strangers.
The barman looked at him a bit warily as he measured out the seventh drink. ‘Take it easy, lad, won’t you?’
Sirius gave him a brief smile, and included a small tip with the money he was handing over. He wanted to keep the supplier of alcohol sweet, at least, if nobody else.
After two further shots, he decided that the whisky was finally having the desired effect and, emboldened, he plunged into the mass of bodies on the dance floor. He knew exactly where Remus was because he’d been following his every move, watching him and that girl, always together beneath the spinning globe with its squares of coloured glass.
‘Can I cut in?’ He remembered the phrase from the Muggle Studies module on Social Traditions, which was, he knew to his cost, not always a hundred percent accurate. He wasn’t certain if either wizards of Muggles really said it, if it sounded corny or what, but thought he was nearly drunk enough not to care.
Francesca looked surprised, said, ‘Sure,’ and seemed to be holding her hands out to him. Sirius ignored the gesture and grabbed Remus’s teeshirt, bunching it in his fists, hissing, ‘What the fuck are you doing?’
‘Sirius, for Merlin’s sake! Francesca thinks you want to dance with her!’
‘I don’t.’
‘Well, I know that! But you can’t dance with me. Not here.’
‘Why not?’ Sirius tightened his grip, pulling Remus toward him. ‘It’s time Francesca found out that it’s you and me, not you and her. We’re supposed to be a couple, Remus! You should have told her.’
‘Shut up, Padfoot. Let’s talk somewhere a bit more private.’
‘She can’t hear us, not with that bloody band going on and on.’
All the same, Sirius let go of Remus’s tee-shirt, which was now crumpled and grubby, and they pushed their way through to the bar.
Remus sounded tired and defeated. ‘Padfoot, we agreed the other night. That if I had a chance I should take it.’
‘We agreed what?’
‘Well, not in so many words, perhaps.’
‘But... I thought we were together.’
‘We are. Of course we are. I just want to be normal, Sirius, don’t you understand that? Sure, I love you, but I could fucking well learn to love a girl too, okay? I told you anyway, it won’t work out, so just let me have this evening. Then I’ll come back to the house and we can talk.’
‘Okay, mate. Good luck to you. Tell her all the best from me.’
He walked out of the club, not even pausing to see if Remus was following him. The air outside was cool and clean after the smoky, dark basement, and under the wide sky, life suddenly seemed a lot less complicated.
He knew exactly what he was going to do, but he’d be fair and let the decision depend on Remus. If he heard running footsteps behind him, or the crack of Apparition, and Remus suddenly appeared at his side, apologetic, saying he didn’t know what had got into him, treating him right, treating him like his fucking boyfriend, for Merlin’s sake, they’d go back to the house. He may not be able to seal it or Remus off from the rest of the world, but at least they’d spend the last few weeks of the summer together.
But if Remus wasn’t back within the hour, if he took their commitment so lightly, well, Sirius could too. He’d owl the estate agent and accept the cash offer, get the damn house off his hands. Then, he’d go back to London, see James and Peter, have a few laughs, meet a few girls; or even a few boys, he told himself defiantly.
He walked all the way home. The hour had long since passed, but even so, he sat outside on the terrace for the rest of the night, waiting for Remus. Dawn came, and Sirius still waited. Finally, when there was still no sign of him by noon, Sirius sealed the parchment and sent the owl to Lease and Rooke. Before he left for London, he forwarded Remus’s backpack to his parents’ address, complete with toothbrush, change of clothes and sketchpad, but no covering note. He looked in the sketchpad just to check, and came across several attempts at Francesca, in Remus’s usual wooden style, but recognisable enough. When he saw them, bile rose to his throat, and he had to swallow rapidly a few times so he wouldn’t throw up.
He felt bad, of course, once everything was finalised, but it was too late by then. He wrote to Remus several times - or several hundred times - but always scrunched up the parchment without sending the letter. What was the point, after all?
*
They didn’t see each other again until the first meeting of the Order of the Phoenix. Remus came in late and sat at the back, a few rows behind Sirius, who was with James, Lily and Peter.
It wasn’t long after the October full moon, and Remus looked exhausted, with dark shadows under his eyes. His hair wasn’t honey blond in the dim room but a mousy brown, and he was so thin that his cheekbones stood out under his pale skin.
Sirius didn’t hear a word of the meeting; he swivelled his head round and stared and stared at Remus, drinking him in, thinking that he’d never seen such a beautiful or welcome sight. It hurt almost unendurably to look at him and remember what he’d lost, but he simply couldn’t help himself, any more than he could stop himself lingering after the meeting, grabbing Remus’s arm and steering him to a seat so they could talk.
‘I’m sorry.’ Remus looked down and wouldn’t meet Sirius’s eyes.
‘I’m sorry too. I left you in the lurch, didn’t I?’
‘S’okay. I went home, and it wasn’t too bad, because my parents were away.’
‘Good. I was worried you’d be stranded. Well, I thought you’d be with her, you know?’
Remus played with the button on his robes. ‘Well, I’m not, and I wasn’t. I haven’t the faintest clue what she’s doing now. I haven’t seen or heard from her since we went to that club.’
Sirius got up, feeling irrationally guilty and unable to sit still a second longer. ‘Let’s go somewhere else. McGonagall’s giving us filthy looks.’
When they were settled in the Leaky Cauldron with their Firewhisky, he said, ‘We really blew it, didn’t we?’
‘I thought I could have both of you,’ Remus said, so loudly that a giant at the next table turned to stare at him. ‘Stupid of me. It wouldn’t have been fair on either of you. And now I’ve ended up without anyone, and it serves me right.’
‘It does,’ Sirius said, and meant it, but Remus looked so downcast that he wished he hadn’t.
They sat there for a long time, silent, until Sirius glanced round and realised that the bar was emptying. Tom, the barman, was starting to clear up, clattering bottles and glasses so the remaining clientèle would take the hint and leave.
Outside in Diagon Alley, they lingered under a streetlight to say their goodbyes. Remus shivered in his thin robes, and Sirius felt concerned again. ‘Haven’t you got a cloak, Moony?’
‘No. But it doesn't matter, because I must be getting back anyway. My mother makes a fuss if I’m late out. It's a real pain living with my parents, actually.’
‘Why don’t you leave, then?’
‘Where would I go?’ It was a rhetorical question, Sirius knew that, but all the same the old impulsiveness kicked in, and before he fully realised what he was doing, he was holding out his hand and saying, ‘You can come and stay with me.’
He felt strangely detached, as if he were looking at himself from the outside, and it was so cold that his breath formed white puffs of vapour against the night sky. He watched them with interest, and continued, before he could change his mind, ‘You said it yourself, remember? That I’d always take you in. We can start again. We were both wrong, so let’s forget it ever happened. That she ever happened.’
He opened his arms and a second later he and Remus were hugging, and Sirius didn’t even care that the last stragglers coming out of the pub were staring at them. He held Remus tightly, tightly, his head buried in his shoulder so he could drink in the familiar, slightly sweaty, slightly soapy smell that always meant Remus to him and Padfoot.
Perhaps, he reasoned, he should have seen it the other way round as well. If he was home for Remus, Remus should be home for him, and he couldn’t keep running away forever. Not even if Remus sometimes made mistakes, not even if he did, because they weren’t superhuman, after all.
‘Let’s go,’ he said, and they Apparated hand in hand, landing just outside his flat.
‘Well,’ Remus said, breaking away, trying to smile and not quite succeeding, ‘are you going to give me the grand tour?’
‘Yes. I wouldn’t want you to get lost again.’
Sirius opened the front door with a flourish, bowed Remus inside, feeling a combination of excitement and dismay. If things hadn’t worked in Uncle Alphard’s sunny house, with its gardens and lake, with all the time and space in the world, they probably wouldn’t be any better in a cramped flat, with Order missions and the war and all the miseries on earth crowding in. But he and Remus could try, at least. Nobody could do more than that.
End