Chapter Text
He has the darkest hair Remus has ever seen.
The young gentleman moves through the aisles with a circumspect sort of rhythm Remus isn’t used to witnessing in people like him. Because he looks just like any other young man from his college, from this town: wealthy; elegant; toffish. Yet his gaze is darting around the shelves with unsureness.
A new father out of his depth, perhaps? It’s the obvious answer.
Remus balks when he feels the sharp jab of the end of a pencil against his arm. “Well? Don’t just stand about, boy, I don’t pay you to gawp.” Remus’s manager, Mr Dursley, is a small-eyed man with a mean, round face and a thick moustache the colour of dishwater. When he gets angry – it’s often, Remus is learning – the thickened flesh of his nose will turn red like a strawberry, and his lips will shine with spittle.
Dursley draws up a breath, lifting his bushy brows, and he nods at the lost looking man across the shop floor.
Right, then.
Remus straightens his nametag and squares his shoulders, and he crosses the floor with an unavoidable sort of imperfection surely giving away his newness.
The man is only a little taller than Remus is. He cuts a graceful figure beneath the smart wool coat on his back, and he’s clasping a pair of black leather gloves in one hand and a silver rattle in the other. His eyes are a peculiar, arresting shade of blueish-grey, and pinned by them as he is, Remus feels the blood rise beneath his cheeks and spread out to the tips of his ears.
The man is asking him a question, but Remus finds his tongue stuck in his mouth, gummy and too large.
A dip of his dark head; the man speaks again, clearly repeating himself, and Remus forces himself to listen this time.
“It’s for my godson,” he explains, turning the rattle this way and that, as if it will do something more than what it’s merely designed for. “He was born last July, so he’s very young, you see. I’m not sure what else would be appropriate…” His voice is rich and smooth and he has all of the traits of a life brought up gently through high society. If Remus has to guess, he’d put the man at a couple of years older than himself. He imagines him spending the first few years of his life running around in a great country home outside of town, cushioned and unawares while war ravaged their country.
“Do you do engravings?”
Remus feels a small twinge of relief; a direct question is so much easier to manage than rifling around in his head for a considered opinion. Especially an opinion on baby accessories. “Yes, we do,” he says, half-turning back to the other side of the shop floor. And then: “It’s a handsome rattle,” because he can feel Dursley’s beady little eyes following him even as the man is engaged in a conversation with another customer. “Let me fetch you a new one from storage. I’m sure your godson’s mother will love it.”
He gestures for the man to follow him after he sets the display rattle back down, and the man says, “Well, it’s not for his mother.”
When Remus glances back at him, wide-eyed, the man just smiles an easy sort of smile. Almost a grin.
There’s a curved dimple on his right cheek, like a comma.
Remus’s ankle catches on the edge of a box of model cars, nearly tipping them over, and he gasps, catching himself with both hands against the cash desk.
“Steady on,” the man says with a soft laugh, stretching out his hand without touching him. Remus’s face burns scarlet.
He rounds the desk and disappears momentarily into the storage cupboard behind it, and when he returns minutes later, he’s carrying a velvet box the shade of midnight blue, which he opens on the glass desk for the dark-haired man to inspect. As he does, he sets his leather gloves down beside it. Remus can hear the soft shuffle of his coat as it moves against the suit he’s wearing underneath it, and he sees the wink of a gold pen clipped against his pocket by his tie. He’s obviously come here straight from the office.
The man’s fingers run along the edges of the box without touching the rattle, and then drop again as he gives a nondescript, almost nervous sort of nod of his chin as if to say, it’ll do.
“And with the engraving, will it be ready before Christmas?”
“Oh, certainly. We can have it delivered by Thursday if you’re local.”
The man stretches over the counter on one forearm. “Mr S.O. Black,” he says, and it’s then Remus thinks he can smell him: a rich, musky sort of smell, like woodsmoke and vetiver.
As Mr Black recites his address – a sprawling estate out in the sticks, of course – Remus jots out the details on his invoice with a hand that is surprisingly steady. All the while, he feels those cool grey eyes on him, probably, disappointingly, seeing Remus as nothing more than what he is: a temporary, unsophisticated stock boy student in need of a few extra bob over the seasonal break.
He takes his time. He reads the address out slowly in his mind as he scribbles it down twice; one copy of the delivery invoice for Boswells, and one for the gentleman. He imprints it on his memory, wildly, and hopes his slowness doesn’t give him away.
He slides the invoice across the desk toward Mr Black and stores the other away underneath it with the boxed rattle, ready to send to the engravers with the man’s choice of inscription, which is, simply, Harry.
“Do make sure you hold onto that, for the delivery driver,” Remus tells him as Mr Black carelessly folds it in half, then again, stuffing it into the pocket of his smart wool coat. “For, er… proof of purchase.” He clears his throat, hoping his face doesn’t look as hot as it feels.
Mr Black smiles at him again. Behind his sharply handsome features, there’s an inherent playfulness there.
It makes it difficult to look at him directly.
“I’ll try,” he says, eyes twinkling. “I have a bit of a rotten habit of misplacing random bits of paper.”
“Well, you’ll need it,” Remus insists, and then suddenly kicks himself for doing so. It’s hardly his place to tell this man what to do, and certainly not in such a barking manner.
But Mr Black is laughing, and it’s a warm thing, surprised and as smooth as butter. “Gosh.” He pats his pocket. “I’ll make every effort, then.”
And then, he’s gone.
Remus stands behind the glass desk and watches him saunter toward the lift on the other side of the department, something inside of him sinking as he turns to serve the next customer: a small, round woman with white cat-eye spectacles and frizzy red hair.
He could blame the next few frazzled hours, still, on his newness, something that’s easy to fall back on; he’d only been hired at Boswells five days ago after all, one of many of an army of Christmas temps made up of mostly students and other young people from the city and surrounding towns.
Or he could blame it on the blackest hair he’s ever seen.
It isn’t until well after Mr Black’s departure that Remus notices the leather glove on the shop floor by the cash desk, and right enough, it’s labelled on the inside seam: S.O.B.
Funny initials, he thinks, covertly squirreling the glove away into his locker.
After his shift and eight hours on his feet, Remus collects his coat from the staffroom and winds his scarf around his neck before he takes a seat at one of the vacant dining tables. During his lunch hour, he’d purchased a Christmas card from the stationery department, a plain white card with a simple illustration of a robin; unpretentious, unassuming. Cheap.
He could have splashed out and chosen the card with the glittered star. He could have, would have, might have, chosen one with a message like, with love at Christmastime.
But he did not, because that was insane.
With a pencil procured from his worn leather satchel, Remus writes a simple message: Returning your lost glove – we are sure you are missing it. With many thanks for your custom, Boswells.
And then, perhaps a little recklessly, he jots down the number for his department’s extension and his surname.
What could come of it, really, Remus thinks as he stares at his own spindly handwriting. Mr Black will read it, pair his glove back with its lost partner, and he will throw the card in the bin where it belongs.
Remus stuffs the glove and card into a simple brown envelope scribbled with Mr Black’s memorised address, and before he can think too much more of it, he slips it into the shop’s mailbox on his way out of the back door, his heart beating wildly in his chest.
--
“Lupin, there’s a chap on the telephone for you!”
It’s Saturday, the last Saturday before Christmas and precisely one week since Remus had encountered Mr S.O. Black, one week since he had sent the man his glove in the post.
Boswells is crowded with shoppers, frantic in their haste to procure last-minute gifts, and Remus groans as he squeezes his way through the throng from his spot on the floor where he’s restocking boxes of toy soldiers onto the shelves. At the desk, Dursley is staring at him with barely concealed displeasure, and he thrusts the yellow handset toward him before turning to another customer with a ridiculously phony smile.
“Hello?”
Remus turns his back to the crowds, and he moves as far as the cord will allow him, almost through the door into the storage cupboard. Still, the buzz of the shopfloor persists, making it difficult to hear much else.
“Hello? Is this…” The fuzzy voice on the other end of the line hesitates for a moment before reciting the number of the extension and Remus's surname.
Remus holds a hand against his ear. “It is.”
“Well,” the voice says, a man’s. Remus’s heart skips a beat, and he presses his forehead against the edge of the doorframe. “I wanted to thank you—or indeed, at least someone in your department for returning my glove.”
Mr S.O. Black.
“And of course, for the lovely little card.”
Remus cringes. The lovely little card had cost him a pittance; he should have chosen something better.
“I—yes, you’re very welcome. I’m glad it reached you safely.”
A warm chuckle. Smooth, like butter. “It did. You’re the one who sent it, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” Remus’s cheeks flame. He feels caught out. Pointed at, for his silly little message, and his silly little card that belongs in the bin. “I’m extremely sorry.”
Another chuckle, lighter this time. “Why? I found it very charming. You’re the lad who sold me the rattle, aren’t you? I recognise your voice.”
He recognises me.
He remembers me.
“I am. Yes.”
“What’s your first name?”
“Remus, sir.”
There’s a sound on the other end of the line, like a huff of breath or a scoff. “Enough of that ‘sir’ tosh. Reckon we’re about the same age, surely.”
“Perhaps, yes. Sorry.”
“No sorry,” Mr Black says, amusement still thick in his tone. Perhaps a little admonishment. “It was very nice of you to send me a card, Remus.”
“It was very nice serving you, Mr Black.”
Remus closes his eyes and resists the urge to bash his forehead against the doorframe.
“Was it?” A pause, an inhaled catch of breath. Mr Black is smoking. He chuckles again. “I’d like to take you out for dinner. Or a drink, if you’d like. Or both! To say thank you for returning my glove.”
It's extravagant, but who is Remus to argue?
Dursley barks at him from across the desk then, and when Remus turns, the telephone cord wraps itself around his body comically, like rope around a bank robber in a cartoon strip. On the other side of the desk, a queue is forming and quickly snaking around the aisles. Anxious shoppers are holding armfuls of toys – teddy bears, boxes of toy cars, hula hoops, glamourous Barbie dolls that cost more than half of Remus’s entire pay packet – and Dursley is glaring at him as he and another sales assistant work frantically together to wrap and ring up purchases.
So, quickly, Remus says, “Yes. Yes, I’d like that very much.”
“Excellent.” Another inhale. “How about tomorrow? I know Sundays are rather sober affairs, but I know a few places we could go if you’re free?”
“I’m free,” Remus says hastily and without much thought. “I finish my shift here at five.”
“Lovely.” And then Mr Black rings off after agreeing to meet Remus at ten after five on the East corner of Broad Street.
--
Later, at dinner in Halls, Remus finds his mind preoccupied.
“You’re wearing a silly smile on your face.”
“Am I?” Remus pushes his potatoes around on his plate, studiously avoiding the narrowed gaze of his roommate and fellow student Benjy.
As soon as he arrived back in Halls after his shift, Remus had ducked into their room to change out of his Boswells uniform, carefully folding it over a hanger and feeling much more relaxed in a pair of loose slacks and an old brown cable knit. His feet are still throbbing from spending hours on them, running around like a headless chicken, but his chest is light, and now he knows it’s showing on his face.
He shrugs one thin shoulder and grins. “I’ve had a hell of a day.”
Fuck Benjy. Let him guess.
Benjy hums shrewdly under his breath, his gaze burning a hole through the top of Remus’s head as Remus quickly shovels some mash into his mouth. It’s difficult to taste when his mind is as far away as it is, and he thanks his lucky stars the college’s formal dinners are on hiatus until the new term. He has no interest in strapping himself down into the one moderately expensive suit he owns just for dinner, and a stuffy, ritualised dinner at that.
Eventually, Benjy sighs loudly and says, “I don’t know why you put yourself through that. The Christmas rush at Boswells is truly wretched.”
It’s an easy enough thing for someone like Benjy to say; an Eton alumni, now at Oxford, the proverbial tower of the privileged. It’s Remus who’s the anomaly here: a grammar schoolboy with a single mother and a scholarship he’d had to fight tooth and nail for and would have been very much out of reach if not for his late father’s reputation in his chosen field of study. Luckily, Archaeology and Anthropology would have always been Remus’s natural first choice, as academically gifted and as fascinated as he is by the subjects, but perhaps, in some far off fantasy, he could fancy himself in Art History. Or English. Whiling away the days with Chaucer and Wilde.
But it was never meant to be.
Benjy, on the other hand, a Classics undergraduate, can idle through term breaks as much as he wishes; he has no need to make money, not with his family’s cushy support. And so, he does. Idle, that is, with his gaggle of toffy friends, each of them as insufferable as the last with their signet rings and love of lawn games and parties and exclusive clubs Remus hasn’t a wish nor a hope in hell of joining.
But Benjy is, he supposes, the best of a rotten bunch, and he has to be, really, if Remus is to live with him for three long years.
“Off to your mother’s on Friday, then?” Benjy asks him politely, setting his cutlery down and folding his napkin with neatly practiced movements of his hands.
“Saturday, actually,” Remus says. “She’s working the night shift on Christmas Eve again, so I’ll meet her off the train in the morning.” His mum, Hope, is a midwife at the local village hospital back home, and as per tradition will go to her bed when they get home from the station, leaving Remus to cook the Christmas lunch they will eat together on their laps in front of the Queen’s Speech, and then later Billy Cotton’s Christmas Party with a glass of sherry each.
“Send her my love,” Benjy says. He’s back off home to Exeter on Monday. After that, Remus will practically have Halls to himself, save for the few other stragglers who will too be travelling back home later.
He’s looking forward to a few silent evenings of peace and his books.
--
Remus is breathless by the time he rounds the corner, but he has no real reason to be. It’s a mere twenty or so paces from the shop’s front door, yet it appears as if he’s ran half a mile, and he knows the cold bite of air around them isn’t making matters much better as his breath plumes out of his mouth in fat bursts of snowy white. His cheeks, too, are heated, and he feels Mr Black’s gaze on them where he stands waiting on the corner for Remus, wrapped up in his smart black coat.
“Hello,” Mr Black says. Remus instinctively looks down at his hands; he’s wearing both gloves.
A stupid thought, really, because of course he’s wearing both of his gloves.
Remus, conversely, has no gloves tonight, but he’s swapped his itchy work shirt for a soft cream-coloured jumper, which, thankfully, doesn’t look too awful with his slacks and old Oxfords, but bundled into his black winter duffle coat and burgundy woolly hat, he feels casual compared to the smartness of the man before him.
“Hello,” he says shyly.
“Ready for a drink?” Mr Black is grinning. “There’s a rather lovely hole-in-the-wall type of place just around the corner here. They say it might be the oldest restaurant in Oxford, but they do a smashing mint julep if you can believe it. And we can grab a bite to eat if you’d like.”
Remus nods, willing his cheeks to stop burning so hot, and when they fall into step together, he’s relieved it is, indeed, only a five minutes’ walk around the corner to Mr Black’s chosen establishment; he doesn’t think he’d be able to stand the silence for much longer than that.
As Mr Black had described, it’s a very small restaurant with plush, deep-seated booths and a lone pianist by the bar playing something jazzy and soft Remus doesn’t recognise but likes very much. The lighting is low in general, but there’s a hooded lamp on their chosen table that illuminates the graceful planes of Mr Black’s face as he slides into the booth across from him after they hand their coats to the host.
“I won’t be losing these again,” Mr Black teases, keeping his gloves on the table by his elbow, using them as a cushion to rest his silver cigarette case after he props it open, first to offer Remus one, who obliges with a mercifully steady hand, then slipping one out for himself and tapping the end of it against the pure white tablecloth. He hands Remus his lighter, also silver. When their fingers touch, Mr Black’s skin is shockingly warm.
“So,” Mr Black says. “What made you do it?”
“It?” Remus blows out some smoke and wafts his hand in front of his face, embarrassed by his inelegance.
“Send the card with my glove.”
Remus’s embarrassment curdles, and although there’s nowhere else to really look but Mr Black’s face, he finds it difficult, because Remus thinks he’s almost impossibly lovely to look at, like looking at the sun, a brilliant thing, so bright and warm, yet stare at it directly and you’re sure to do yourself a dreadful injury. So, his eyes flit around, and he chooses to look at different parts of him instead of all: the cut of his jaw, the soft purse of his lips when he raises his cigarette for a pull, the arch of one impossibly dark eyebrow. As striking as Mr Black is, Remus can’t allow himself to see him beyond a nebulous patchwork of individual features.
And his eyes.
Well, his eyes are really something else entirely. Molten silver. Cold and hot.
“I wanted to send my—thoughts and thanks.”
How dreadful.
“Your thoughts and thanks?” Highly amused, but not cruel. At least, Remus can’t sense any cruelness. “You’re a Christmas temp, aren’t you?” Again, said without malice.
“It’s a bit obvious, isn’t it?” Remus sighs. “Yes.”
Mr Black taps his cigarette against the edge of the ornate glass tray between them, and he opens his mouth to ask another question, but they’re interrupted by the waiter who arrives to take their drinks orders.
Remus, whose tastes rarely venture outside of ale and house wine, is at once shocked and relieved when Mr Black takes the liberty of ordering for both of them: two aforementioned mint juleps.
“You’ll love it, trust me,” he says with a wink that makes Remus’s stomach feel like it’s tying itself up in knots like a rope.
“Are you an Oxford man then, Remus?” Mr Black asks once they’re alone again, his full lips pursing around the filter of his cigarette.
“I am,” Remus says. He’s looking forward to some alcohol; perhaps his replies will be more sophisticated and natural then.
“What are you studying?”
“Archaeology and Anthropology.”
“Ah, very good! When do you graduate?”
“I’m in my final year.”
“So, the summer? Not long to go, then. Off to become a man of the world?”
Remus ducks his head and laughs. At twenty, he supposes he is, indeed, a man. But he rarely feels it.
Their drinks arrive, and Mr Black toasts to him, which is equally embarrassing and silly and rather lovely.
Remus tells him about his field trip to Orkney, which happened during the second half of his second year, as per the course requirements; it was the furthest afield Remus had ever been, and while not exactly exotic like, say, Petra or Egypt, he still found it to be fascinating, not to mention full of breathtaking natural scenery. He’d sat as an apprentice on a team conducting an excavation of standing stones that had been exposed by coastal erosion, their structure calculated to be near four millennials old. During his time there – five long weeks spent living in a rundown caravan with a fellow student from his course, eating meals with the team around roaring campfires and time off spent on the grassy beaches of Sanday – Remus had assisted unearthing pieces of Bronze Age pots and one small, unbroken bowl which the team deemed suitable enough to send to the National Museum of Scotland.
When Mr Black asks him what he wants to do after he graduates, Remus takes a moment to think about it.
It had been a conversation he’d had with his mum not that long ago, one afternoon during the summer break as he helped her patch up the garden shed after a particularly bad spell of wind and rain that knocked half of the roof off. Of course, they’d always talked about his future, from the very moment he decided to set his eyes on his dad’s old university, but it had never been with graduation so suddenly on the horizon.
His hands had been painful with effort and soiled with rust as he awkwardly yanked off the damaged pieces of cladding, and he could feel the sun beating down on the back of his neck, where it was undoubtedly darkening the freckles there as it would across the bridge of his nose and the tops of his cheeks every summer.
Hope had said, you’re more like your dad than you realise.
Lyall Lupin, the aloof field researcher who had travelled the world, from Paris to Afghanistan to Peru. The man Remus only knew from textbooks and photographs; never smiling, sun-rough, sturdy. He often wonders how Lyall would feel if he knew Remus prefers the quiet and hallowed hallways of museums and archives to the hazardous, dirty excavation sites he so favoured in his own work.
You’ve grown up soft, lad.
“I’d actually love to be a curator,” he tells Mr Black eventually, quiet like a confession; but Mr Black regards him with those cool and warm grey eyes of his, still smoking his cigarette slowly. Remus is still finding it hard to look directly at him, but it’s getting easier with every sip of his drink, and with that, he’s beginning to pick up on the keenness within Mr Black’s expression.
Remus feels listened to.
Emboldened, he asks, “And what is it you do, Mr Black?”
A rush of laughter escapes Mr Black’s nose. It’s perhaps the first time Remus has seen him edge toward pure gracelessness, and he finds himself surprisingly pleased by it. Proof he is, indeed, human beneath his otherworldly good looks. “Please, none of that Mr Black. Lord forbid, it makes me sound like my bloody father!” He shudders. “We’re friends now, aren’t we? It’s Sirius.”
Floored, Remus blinks at him, but soon enough his lips quiver into a small smile. “Sirius, then.”
What a peculiar, lovely name.
Sirius nods and tips his drink toward Remus. “I’m a trainee solicitor,” he says. “And yes, it’s about as dull as fucking dishwater, I assure you.”
Remus isn’t sure if he’s supposed to laugh at that. He does, but he’s quick to smother it with another sip of his drink. It’s sweet, but the ice has melted enough now so it tastes less sharp against his tongue.
He learns Sirius is two years older than him, a Cambridge graduate, and a junior employee at his aforementioned father’s firm. He spends his time between Oxfordshire and London, the former at a family estate just south of Watlington, and the latter in his own townhouse in Chelsea. He has no family of his own, but appears to be very fond of a younger brother named Regulus, who he speaks of affectionately. His godson Harry, Remus also learns, is the son of Sirius’s closest friend James, also a Cambridge graduate and a family doctor in training.
When Remus mentions he, too, had a father whose line of work preceded his own career path before his death in the war, Sirius’s grey eyes soften and Remus holds his breath when he reaches out across the table to ghost his fingertips over the back of Remus’s hand.
He’s smart to pull away again as the waiter approaches their table with another round of drinks, but it isn’t in haste, and Sirius’s gaze never leaves Remus’s all the while.
“And what do you like to do in your spare time? What are your hobbies and interests?”
Remus struggles with this question. Not because he doesn’t have hobbies, but because he doesn’t want to risk boring Sirius with his answer.
Should he tell him he likes to ride his bicycle around town, especially in the morning when the sun is still milky and the air smells like wet pavement from overnight rain?
That he carries a worn, furred-edged sketchpad in his satchel that he sometimes draws in when the mood strikes?
That he listens to American and Continental film music and has no real interest in the saccharine tediousness of Cliff Richard or other pop idols, but has already almost burned a hole through his new Henry Mancini album?
Should he tell him he likes browsing Oxford’s old bookshops with their titles piled high on shelves upon shelves, sometimes so plentiful they’re simply stacked in towering piles on the shop floor? These are the shops Remus loves most.
Would Sirius find any of this interesting?
Would anyone?
“I like to read,” he offers feebly, unable to translate his flowery thoughts into interesting words. “I like to draw. I enjoy music and nature… I have a bicycle…”
But Sirius is looking at him like he’s the most charming person in the room, and Remus feels his cheeks fill with colour once more as Sirius says, “I like that you sent me a card. I thought that was very kind. I can… tell. That you’re kind, that is.”
And Remus notices a couple of spots of colour high on Sirius’s cheekbones too, and this time, he’s able to take in all of Sirius’s features at once, as a whole, and he replies, boldly, “I think you’re wonderful.”
And then he immediately prays for the ground to yawn open and swallow him whole.
To say that a man is wonderful when he barely knows him from Adam. How crass. How mortifying.
Sirius laughs, not with cruelty, but with that warm light in his eyes. A grinning sort of laugh with a flash of teeth. “Wonderful?” He presses a hand to his chest. “Me?” He shakes his head and taps some more ash from the end of his cigarette into the tray. “Oh, I’m pleased it was you that sent me the card, Remus, I really bloody am.”
Another moment of silence passes between them. Sirius is just watching Remus, and when their food finally arrives – steak, on Sirius’s insistence – Sirius tells him more about himself, how uncomfortable he feels in his stuffy office attire, how he often summers in France but he actually quite likes the biting cold of London or Oxford’s winters, because it means ice skating and snug taverns and an excuse to be a child again in the snow, pelting his brother with snowballs on their lawn. All the while, he’s smiling that impish, handsome smile of his, and Remus finds himself mirroring it, finally at true ease.
“You have a soft accent,” Sirius remarks into their third drink, prompting Remus to tell him he grew up just outside of Bristol, where his mother still lives, a few hours’ away on the train. That he will be spending Christmas there. He doesn’t mention the television or the sherry; he imagines Sirius’s own holiday celebrations are far more elaborate and exciting than his own.
“And are you planning on returning to Boswells after the 25th?” Sirius asks him after their plates are cleared and he’s footing the bill with a stack of notes from his leather wallet.
Remus shakes his head. “No, my contract ends on Christmas Eve, so I’ll be heading back to Oxford on Boxing Day before I begin studies again a few days after the New Year.”
At that, Sirius hums. His dark hair is slightly looser and longer than what’s currently popular with professional young men, and as thick as it is it doesn’t look like it could be held back with pomade. So it curtains rakishly where it parts slightly off-centre, and Remus resists the ridiculous urge to leap across the table so he can card his fingers through it to mess it up some more.
He swallows, highly embarrassed by his thoughts.
“Would you like to come visit me on Boxing Day? In Oxfordshire, I mean? I’ll have the place to myself, you see, and I think you’d very much like the surrounding grounds.”
“Yes, I’d like that,” Remus says quickly, rashly, wildly. Fuck logistics; he’ll work that out closer to the time.
Sirius smiles at him. Softer, perhaps, than any of his other smiles up until now. His eyes don’t waver.
“What?” Remus asks him after a long beat, a tiny, weak little laugh escaping his lips he catches and bites down against.
Sirius shakes his head, still gazing at him in a way that makes Remus’s stomach do somersaults.
“How glad I am that I met you,” Sirius murmurs.