Fifteen: Each Other's Clothes
August 15th, 1978
Sirius is working at a Muggle record store, which is a little silly since he has all the money he needs, but they give him a discount on records. He’s already got a stack collecting on the floor by the coffee table, which Remus has tripped over about six times. It’s funny, because the record player is on the other side of the room, so it’s not really convenient, but Sirius has never gone for sense and convenience over whim.
It’s late afternoon, bordering on evening, and Sirius is about to close up shop. Outside, sun has sunk into the sidewalks and the walls, and the brick of the buildings across the street glows a little. The bell over the door jangles when Remus comes in, announcing his presence, but Sirius doesn’t look up.
“You’re wearing my jumper,” Remus says, and Sirius jumps and looks up from the magazine he’s reading.
“It’s warm,” Sirius says. “And soft. And you weren’t wearing it, so it looked lonely.”
Remus’ mouth quirks. “Come on, lock up the store, we’re going somewhere.”
“Where?”
“Doesn’t matter. You’re a bad influence on me, Padfoot. I’m being impulsive.”
This propels Sirius into action, and he can’t help feeling a bit triumphant. He locks the cash register and turns off the lights as Remus watches him, an amused look on his face. He is thinking how Sirius looks responsible, and how he wears the look with a rebellious air. Only Sirius.
They leave the shop (Ye Olde Music Shoppe-Sirius’ boss is a bit strange, really), and get on a bus. They sit in the back, which is empty apart from some newspapers and a sad-looking umbrella. Sirius throws an arm around Remus’ shoulders, lounging across three seats.
“Where’s this bus go, then?” he asks. “Are we going to wind up standing on the edge of a cliff, and you looking melancholy and quoting poetry at me? Or at the seaside somewhere, and I’ll get sand in places no sand should ever go? Maybe we’ll end up in a suburb being fed tea and crumpets by some old lady with lots of cats.”
“I don’t care where this bus goes, Sirius,” Remus says, and shoves him gently against the window, kissing him on the cheeks, forehead, nose, eyebrows, chin, mouth. Sirius grins and pulls Remus closer by the back of his head. He likes Remus this way because it is a rarity-impulsive, careless, lovely Remus, wearing a jacket Sirius recognises as his own. For a moment they might almost have switched places, and they are pressed so close together that it hardly matters anyway.
“Quote me some poetry, Remus,” Sirius whispers, leaning his head back against the window and running his thumb across Remus’ cheekbone.
They are two boys kissing with fierce hope in the back of a bus, wearing each other’s clothes with their hearts still pasted to the sleeves. “We’re not on the edge of a cliff.”
“Oh, yes we are.”
Si on me presse de dire pourquoi je l’aimais, je sens que cela ne se peut s’exprimer, qu’en respondant: "Parce que c’etait lui, parce que c'etait moi.”
- Montaigne
Day Sixteen