Chapter Text
June 8, 1973
The first time Sirius Black saw him, Remus was walking down the dusty shoulder of a two-lane highway at sunset, when the sky was a spilled-paint riot of bright oranges and pinks and “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree” played from the car speakers. Sirius drove straight past him at first, going 60 in a 40 in his blue Pontiac Firebird Trans Am, his mind still racing from the insane thing he’d just done.
Remus—that was his name, although Sirius didn’t know it yet—looked like he hadn’t seen a bar of soap, a solid meal, or a pair of barber’s clippers in a while. He carried a patched, army green, military-issue rucksack and bedroll over his shoulder and a wooden walking stick in his hand. He walked with a limp—a slight one, but still—and was trying to hitch a ride, turning around and walking backwards with his thumb in the air whenever a diesel truck rolled by.
He wore a too-loose, long sleeved gray henley; a baggy, tan canvas fisherman’s vest; and bell-bottom blue jeans that hung like wide drain pipes on his long, skinny legs. The cuffs of his jeans were filthy and frayed, as though they’d been repeatedly dragged through the dirt and stepped on, which Sirius supposed they had.
He looked like what people in those days called a hobo or a hippie, depending on your persuasion or who your parents voted for, which made it even stranger that Sirius couldn’t stop watching him in the rearview mirror. The Blacks all loved that fucking fascist Nixon.
Sirius wasn’t sure what made him look back. But he did look, and once he did he couldn’t stop, his eyes finding Remus like a compass pointing north as he tramped down the highway.
He had an odd look about him—tall but brittle, malnourished but vibrant—and Sirius kept glancing back in the rearview mirror until he got smaller and smaller and finally disappeared behind a rolling hill. The highway twisted and so did Sirius’s stomach, slapping him out of his “just drive” stupor for the first time in hours, and the next thing he knew, he was veering off the road, practically skidding onto the exit ramp, and making a hairpin turn to get back on the highway heading in the other direction.
A mile down the road and there was Remus again, still limping along the highway shoulder, still turning around every now and then, trying to catch a ride.
Sirius drove past him again, but this time he pulled over a few feet ahead of him, put the car into park, turned down the radio, and leaned across the leather seat to crank down the passenger window.
“Hey,” Sirius called out as Remus approached, his narrow, bony hips coming into view in the square of the open window before the rest of him. His bluejeans, Sirius could see now, were held up with a frayed piece of rope knotted twice around the waist. “You need a lift?”
Remus leaned down sideways to look into the car and cocked a wicked eyebrow, his burnished curls tumbling around his face like he was in a goddamn Prell commercial or something.
“No,” he deadpanned, his whisky-brown eyes alight with piss and vinegar. “I have a wet thumb. I’m trying to dry it in the breeze.”
Sirius didn’t know whether to laugh or drive away. Maybe he should just let this sarcastic fucker limp down the highway alone if he had that kind of mouth on him. And talking like that to a perfect stranger? Who only wanted to help?
But Remus’s voice was scratchy. A nice scratchy; gentle fingernails across your scalp as you fall asleep scratchy. He had a broad Downeast accent, the kind that would sound vaguely “Boston” to someone outside New England, with the wide, dropped Rs and sharp, nasal vowels, but Sirius he could tell he was more clamdigger than Kennedy. His lips twisted with a wry smile as he peered into Sirius’s car, and Sirius didn’t drive away.
“Where are you going?” Sirius asked.
“California.”
“You’re pretty far from California.”
“Yeah, no shit. You think I’m hitchhiking for my health?”
Sirius sighed. Why was he bothering with this, and today, of all days? His mother was never right about anything, but maybe she was right about hippies. He could hear her voice in his mind… filthy, vagrant, good-for-nothings, begging on the side of the road, complaining and demanding handouts instead of—
“You want a ride?” Sirius asked, silencing his mother’s voice. He hated himself for even hearing it in the first place.
Remus shrugged.
“Depends on where you’re going.”
“I don’t know where I’m going,” Sirius said. “I guess I’ll go where you’re going.”
“Are you fuckin with me?” Remus asked.
“No,” Sirius told him.
“You’re heading north right now,” Remus pointed out.
“So?”
“I need to go west.”
“You know that us being on the same road means that you’re heading north at the moment too, right?”
“I was just heading north until I could connect west.”
“Well, I can change direction just as easily as you. I was heading south before.”
“Before what?”
“Before I saw you. I turned around to pick you up.”
Remus’s eyes narrowed.
“Are you in a cult or something?” he asked. It sounded like, “Ahh you in a cult or somethin?”
“Just escaped one, actually,” Sirius replied.
“That explains the penguin suit.”
Sirius looked down at himself. He forgot he was still wearing his tuxedo.
“I have a knife, by the way,” Remus said abruptly.
“Oh. OK. I don’t. Have a knife, I mean.”
“Do you have a gun?”
Sirius cleared his throat.
“No.”
“Do you have anything? Any weapons?”
“Are you making sure that I do have weapons or making sure that I don’t?”
“I dunno.”
“Aren’t hippies supposed to be pacifists?”
“Why, are you a secret hippie?” Remus asked with a scoff that pissed Sirius off a little.
“No. Are you secretly not one?”
“Labels are stupid. I’m just some guy.”
“Me too.”
At this Remus snorted and looked Sirius up and down again, taking in the tuxedo, the Pontiac’s buttery leather seats, and Sirius’s emerald-studded cuff links.
“Oh yeah, you’re really screaming normal and average right now.”
They looked at each other for a moment longer as cars whizzed past, kicking up dust and gravel while Sirius’s Pontiac idled in the breakdown lane and the sun dipped behind the pine trees.
“You want a ride or not?” Sirius asked.
“Will you really go west?”
“Yeah.”
“For how long?”
“I don’t know. For as long as you want, I guess. Till we hit the Pacific, I don’t care.”
Remus hesitated, looking Sirius up and down once more, and Sirius felt an odd warmth creep across the back of his neck, right under the stiff, starched white collar of his tuxedo shirt.
“OK, then,” Remus said finally.
Sirius leaned over, yanked up the lock on the passenger side door, then pulled the handle to open it a little.
“Alright,” he nodded. “Get in.”
Remus opened the door and dropped his cane into the car. It landed with a bouncing clack against the center console. The cane’s blonde wood was covered all over with black lines that Sirius realized was writing. He caught phrases like, “Bar Harbor, June ‘72, lobstering. hard week” and “ Penobscot River, Oct. ‘71, rained all damned night.”
Remus held onto the car’s roof with one hand to steady himself and folded his long legs into the passenger seat. He splayed his knobby knees wide and dropped his rucksack between his chukka-clad feet. Sirius braced himself for the smell of someone unwashed, but it never came. Instead, Remus carried with him the smell of the outside, of fresh air and bright leaves underneath something spicy and almost sweet. It smelled nice. So much for “dirty hippies,” like his parents always said.
“Remus Lupin,” he introduced himself, swiveling his lanky body toward Sirius and sticking out a hand. “Thanks for the lift.”
“Sirius Black,” Sirius replied, closing his fingers around Remus’s. His hand was big and rough with calluses, including a thick one in the middle of his palm, which Sirius realized must have been from gripping his cane. His skin was a nutty, freckled tan, and his cheeks were pink with exertion and the lingering heat of the day.
“So, do I owe you congratulations?” Remus said, draping his arm out the open window as Sirius pulled back onto the highway.
“Huh?”
“You’re in a tuxedo, and there’s a sign on the back of your car that says, ‘Just Married.’”
Fuck, Sirius had forgotten about the damn sign. He’d just hopped in the car and hit the gas the second James pulled up to the front door.
“Oh, right. I need to take that thing off,” Sirius said through a forced laugh.
“Please tell me you didn’t steal the car,” Remus said.
“No. No, it’s my car. It’s just… I was supposed to get married today.”
“No shit!” Remus said, turning to Sirius with wide eyes. “Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Damn.”
Remus stared out the window for a few seconds before turning back to Sirius in alarm.
“Wait, she’s not chasing you, is she? Is that why you wanted to drive to California? So she won’t find you?”
“God, no,” Sirius said. “She’s definitely not chasing me. I bet a part of her is relieved, actually.”
“Which part?” Remus deadpanned. Sirius laughed again, but this time it was genuine.
“She’ll thank me someday,” Sirius insisted, saying out loud the thing he’d been telling himself for the past 150 miles.
“Why? Didn’t you love her?”
And there it was. What he’d known—and pretended not to—for two years.
“No,” Sirius said quietly, not taking his eyes off the road.
“Never?”
Sirius didn’t answer right away. Instead, he watched the broken yellow line flash past as he drove. It almost looked like his car was eating the painted rectangles, sucking them up and devouring them one by one.
“I don’t think so,” he said finally.
“Damn,” Remus breathed.
They were silent again for a few moments, with nothing but the faint sound of Led Zeppelin on the radio and the low rumble of rubber on road.
There were two things in Orion Black’s safe when Sirius opened it earlier that day: A little black velvet box and a Smith & Wesson Model 10 revolver. Sirius had only one thing to do: Get the velvet box and hand it to James, who’d tuck it into his inner breast pocket next to the folded piece of stationary where he’d written his best man's toast. Maybe James would pat the box affectionately against his heart through his tuxedo jacket, then slap Sirius on the back, saying, “Congratulations, man,” before pulling him into a one-armed hug. Maybe they’d each take a swig of whiskey from the flask in James’s pocket and joke about Sirius’s last drink as a free man. Maybe James would say that Linney was a great girl and that Sirius was a lucky, lucky guy.
But that’s not what happened. Because even though Sirius tried to reach for the little velvet box, he couldn’t seem to take his eyes off that goddamn revolver.
One looked like prison.
The other looked like freedom.
“What’s the matter?” James asked, standing behind Sirius in Orion’s oak-paneled study. “Aren’t the rings in there?”
“Jamie,” Sirius choked out, his fingers shaking as they gripped the safe door, his eyes locked on the cold steel barrel, the six-chambered cylinder, the polished wooden handle, “I can’t fucking do this.”
“Sorry,” Remus said finally, “that things didn’t turn out the way you thought they would.”
Sirius cranked his window down and turned the radio’s volume up. Then he untied his bowtie, fumbling with the knot with one hand. He pulled it off with a single sharp yank of his fist, then tossed it out the open window. It whipped and swirled through the car’s slipstream for a few seconds before getting sucked straight up and blowing out of sight while Robert Plant’s voice shredded the speakers.
“You don’t have to be sorry,” Sirius called over the wind and the music, finally working open the buttons of his stiff collar and feeling the warm breeze on his bare neck. God it felt good. Why’d he wait all this time to take it off? “I’m not sorry.”
“You’re not?” Remus replied, his hair blowing around so much that Sirius couldn’t see his face.
“It’s for the best,” Sirius shrugged. “She really will thank me someday.”
“If you say so, man,” Remus replied. He drummed his fingers on his knee for a moment, looking out the window again, until Sirius spoke over the music once more.
“So what’s in California?”
“Swimming pools and movie stars,” Remus smirked with a cock of his head, affecting a thick, “Beverly Hillbillies” southern drawl.
“And smog and the Manson Family,” Sirius added, and Remus laughed. “Why are you really going?”
“For the avocados,” Remus said.
“Christ, don’t you ever give a straight answer to anything?” Sirius asked.
“That was a straight answer! I’m going to Ojai to be an avocado farmer with my dad. He’s got a land claim. The government won’t let him cash in on it unless he can work the acreage and improve it, but he can’t do it alone. He’s been writing to me for years, saying as soon as I can get out there, we’ll go in on it together. So now I’m going.”
“What the hell is a land claim?” Sirius asked. He looked sideways at Remus, who was now tying a red bandana around his forehead to keep his hair from blowing in his face, revealing a sharply cut jaw and a lean, sinewy neck. Sirius’s stomach squirmed and he looked back at the road quickly. The other cars were turning their headlights on as dusk fell fast and stars popped out overhead.
“I dunno, some legal thing,” Remus shrugged. “I just know that it’s 160 acres in the Ojai Valley and that Californians really fuckin love guacamole.”
Remus laughed and continued.
“He thinks we can get some horses, too, maybe run a dude ranch or retreat eventually. Ojai’s all woo-woo. I bet we’d get a ton of people who want to commune with a higher power or some shit.”
“Yeah, maybe…” Sirius said, frowning slightly, racking his brain for what on earth a “land claim” could possibly mean in this context. He’d never heard of a “land claim” unless it had something to do with the sovereign rights of a tribal nation.
“Is your father an Indian, by chance?” Sirius ventured.
“No,” Remus said, then added, “Fucked up what the government did to those people at Wounded Knee, huh?”
“Yeah,” Sirius said, only half listening. He paused, chewing his lip, weighing what to say next.
“Listen, I don’t want to burst your bubble or anything,” Sirius said, “but I don’t know about this land claim idea.”
“Why?” Remus asked, frowning at Sirius in the dark.
“I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“Well, now you have. You’re welcome.”
“Have you verified the validity of the claim?”
“Verified the validity—”
“That means—”
“I know what it means,” Remus interrupted with an annoyed laugh. “I want to know what you mean by it.”
“I mean… the land claim. What if it's not real?”
“You can say that about anything,” Remus shrugged. “What if the moon landing wasn’t real? What if God’s not real? What if none of this is real? What if you actually did get married today and this is all a dream? What if I’m a figment of your imagination?”
“I hope a figment of my imagination would be less of a wise ass.”
“Now where’s the fun in that?”
“I just haven’t come across the phrase ‘land claim’ in any modern legal context.”
“OK, Perry Mason.”
“I mean it.”
“What are you, a lawyer?”
“Yeah, I am, actually.”
“What kind?” Remus asked, the challenge in his voice unmistakable.
“Well, none yet, exactly,” Sirius admitted. “I passed the bar a few weeks ago. I was supposed to be joining my father’s firm.”
“OK then, same question, what kind of lawyer?” Remus asked. “Environmental? Agriculture? Real estate?”
“I’d be starting in intellectual property. Then probably moving on to multinational dealmaking.”
“So, in other words, nothing that has to do with land or farming.”
“Maybe not technically—”
“No, maybe not at all!” Remus said.
“I just—”
“Listen, all I know is that I have a stack of letters from my father. He’s been talking about this for years. He’s a really smart guy. He studied history. And he’s a veteran, alright? He stormed the beach at Normandy.”
“Sorry,” Sirius replied, feeling his face heat.
“It’s fine.”
“I really am sorry. And you’re right, guacamole is delicious.”
“It’s no big deal, you can drop it.”
“I’m sure it’ll be great.”
“Thanks,” Remus said, and they fell silent.
They drove on, rolling down the endless stretch of highway for nearly an hour until Sirius started heading west and the radio station eventually turned to static. Sirius searched for another station, but the only thing that came in clearly was a radio preacher proselytizing about salvation and prosperity.
“Ugh,” Sirius huffed and turned the radio off with an annoyed flick of his wrist, plunging them into a heavy silence. He was just wondering whether he should apologize again for questioning whether or not Remus’s dad was full of shit when Remus finally spoke again.
“So, where are we heading?” he asked.
Sirius gave him a confused look.
“I thought you said California,” he said.
“I mean tonight. Where did you plan on sleeping? In the car?”
“No,” Sirius snorted. What was he, some kind of vagrant? Although, now that Remus mentioned it…
“I guess I hadn’t really given it much thought,” Sirius admitted. “I kinda just got in the car and started driving.”
“Oh. Huh.”
“What?”
“Guess the bar exam didn’t cover common sense.”
“Where were you going to sleep?” Sirius asked.
“My tent, if no one picked me up.”
“You have a tent?”
“Yeah,” Remus replied, kicking his rucksack with the side of his boot. “What do you think I have in here, fine ladieswear?”
“Where the hell would you even pitch a tent?” Sirius asked, choosing to ignore that last part. The mouth on this guy, Jesus Christ.
“Plenty of woods,” Remus replied, nodding out the window to the trees that lined the side of the highway.
“Is that even legal?”
“You tell me, Mr. Lawyer Man.”
“I haven’t memorized every single law.”
“Doesn’t matter anyway,” Remus shrugged. “A man’s gotta sleep. Can’t always obsess about what’s legal.”
“I guess,” Sirius said. He looked out the window and squinted into the thick woods, but saw nothing but blackness. Maybe Remus was happy sleeping in a tent or a car, but Sirius certainly wasn’t. And now that he thought about it, he was tired. More tired than he realized. It hit him like a ton of bricks. He was hungry, too. When was the last time he ate something? Last night, probably, at the rehearsal dinner, that disgusting chicken piccata that he’d barely kept down while Linney picked wordlessly at her salad.
Linney…
“There is somewhere,” Sirius said.
“Somewhere what?”
“Somewhere we could sleep.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. And it’s pretty nice. And, uh, already paid for.”
“OK. Where?”
“It’s called Penn Hills Resort,” Sirius said slowly. “In Pennsylvania… the Poconos.”
“The Poconos…” Remus repeated, his voice trailing away before the realization dawned on him. “Oh my god… your honeymoon?”
“Is that weird?”
“I mean… yeah, a little. But I guess I’ve slept in worse places.”
“Like where?”
“Park benches, diesel cabs, abandoned train cars. A cave.”
“A cave?”
“Well, the mouth of a cave. I was hiking, it was raining. It was a wicked trip.”
“Sounds terrible,” Sirius said, and Remus laughed.
“I wouldn’t recommend it. Not to someone like you anyhow.”
“What do you mean, ‘someone like me?’”
“Nothing bad,” Remus shrugged. “Just that you don’t strike me as the rugged type.”
“How can I strike you as anything? You’ve known me for approximately 90 minutes.”
“Sorry, man, I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“I could be rugged,” Sirius insisted.
“OK,” Remus shrugged, a slight smirk on his face.
“I could!”
“Fine.”
They fell silent again, until…
“But, like, what’s the most rugged thing you’ve ever done?” Remus asked.
“What, have you wrestled a bear or something?”
“I’m just asking.”
“Sailing! OK? Sailing is pretty rugged.”
At this, Remus doubled over laughing, folding his lanky body in half and letting his head drop between his knees.
“What?” Sirius cried. “What’s so funny?”
“The wind does all the work! You just drink champagne on the deck.”
“It’s a hell of a lot more than that! And when the water gets choppy or there’s a storm—”
“What, your Sperrys get wet?”
“You have to fight against nature!” Sirius insisted, raising his voice over Remus’s howling laughter. “The sea is a deadly opponent!”
“OK, Poseiden,” Remus said, still howling with laughter.
“I’ll take you sailing when we get to California,” Sirius scowled. “Then we’ll see who’s rugged.”
“Can’t wait.”
They fell silent again, and Sirius kept driving, heading west on route 84 as the sky darkened and traffic thinned. When they passed into Connecticut, Sirius realized that Remus had fallen asleep, and he found himself thinking about how tired Remus must be, with all that walking and always sleeping in shitty places. Tents? Abandoned railroad cars? When was the last time he slept in a bed? Or had a decent meal? Or had even seen that father of his?
Sirius glanced sideways at Remus, his face illuminated intermittently by the glow of passing headlights. He breathed deeply and slowly, his head rolled to one side, his mouth slightly open. He looked 22 or 23 but asleep, he looked even younger, his face carrying a round-cheeked innocence that Sirius hadn’t noticed when he was awake and running that wiseass mouth of his. He looked almost like a cherub. A wiry, dirty cherub, Sirius thought, and laughed to himself at the image of a foul-mouthed baby Cupid wearing a diaper, slinging insults instead of arrows. Man, he was tired too. It had been a hell of a day.
Sirius could hardly believe that only that morning, he had gone for a run with James around his parents’ neighborhood, feeling as though every stride was speeding him one step closer to the end of his life. He wanted to keep running, to run as fast and as far as he could, away from this life that looked nothing like who he really was.
Instead, he played golf with his father and the firm’s other partners, smoking cigars and drinking brandy like he was supposed to. Laughing at the stupidest, most unfunny shit, swallowing down bile. He put on his tuxedo and tied his bowtie like he was supposed to, slapping himself in the face in the mirror while he was alone in the bathroom. Wake up. Wake the fuck up! He pinned on his boutonniere and heirloom cufflinks like he was supposed to. Drove the sharp pin into his fingertip first, just to see the bright red bead of blood, just to make sure he could still feel something real.
His finger was bleeding, his stomach was churning, but he looked like a Black, the perfect Black, the last son and heir, just like he was supposed to. Smiling and lying to everyone, even James.
But in the end, he ran anyway. Here was another thing he couldn’t make himself be. Another blank space he wasn’t big enough to fill. Another lost son for his mother.
The miles rolled on, through New York and finally into Pennsylvania, where Sirius pulled off the highway to stop for gas and check the paper map that he’d picked up at the travel agency when he booked their hotel. He was just unfolding it and holding it under the cabin light when Remus spoke for the first time in hours.
“What if she’s there, too?” Remus asked, his voice quiet and raspy with sleep.
“Who?” Sirius asked, frowning over at him.
“Your wife… or your ex,” Remus yawned. “Whatever she is.”
“She’s… she’s my ex, I guess,” Sirius said, shaking his head as though trying to shoo away a bothersome fly. He didn’t want to think about Linney. “What if she’s where?”
“What if she decided to nurse her broken heart with a nice little solo trip to the Poconos? Hopped in her car and hit the road?”
“No,” Sirius said. “Definitely not.”
“Why not?”
“First of all, she doesn’t have a car,” Sirius scoffed, laughing at the thought of Linney Endicott-Whitney driving herself anywhere. “Second, I know exactly where she is. As soon as I left, she hopped on her cousin’s plane and took off to her family’s house on the Vineyard. She’s probably halfway through her second bottle of Dom Pérignon and flipping through her grandmother’s Rolodex of eligible bachelors by now.”
Sirius lifted the map closer to the light, squinting at the tiny print and trying to figure out where they were.
“How do you know that’s what she did?” Remus asked.
Sirius sighed and crumpled the map onto his lap in exasperation.
“Look, I might be an asshole, but I’m not a heartless prick,” Sirius said. “I called her parents’ house about an hour after I left to make sure she was OK. One of her bridesmaids told me where she went. She then proceeded to inform me that Linney was lucky I ran out because everyone knows all the Blacks are crazy. Then she instructed me to go fuck myself and choke on a sack of jagged rocks.’”
“Colorful.”
“Yeah, well, those Barnard girls get a hell of an education,” Sirius muttered, scanning the map one more time before tossing it in the back seat. “Alright, I’m gonna go pay for gas. Want anything inside?”
“Nah, I don’t have any cash.”
“I’ll buy,” Sirius shrugged. “I got a few bucks.”
He had $22.73, which was the combined amount of money that he, James, and Lily had on them when he took off.
“You sure?”
“Yeah, no problem.”
“Well…” Remus said, looking at him with an almost worried expression. He opened his mouth, then closed it again. “You sure you don’t mind?”
Sirius rolled his eyes.
“You’re already in my car, what’s one more thing?”
“Alright… if you’re really sure… I could go for a Dr. Pepper.”
“That’s it? A Dr. Pepper?” Sirius asked. “Jesus, the way you were talking I thought you wanted 20 cases of Marlboros and a lotto ticket or something.”
“I haven’t had a Dr. Pepper since I was a kid,” Remus said, a little wistfully. “Me and my dad used to drink them before he headed west. Seems fitting, I guess.”
Something in Sirius’s chest twinged, and he nodded.
“You got it,” Sirius replied, more softly than before, and walked into the nearly empty service station, straightening his tuxedo shirt collar as he went.
A tank of gas, two bottles of Dr. Pepper, a bag of roasted peanuts, and 40 minutes later, Sirius was pulling into the parking lot of the Penn Hills Resort, with its bright red, crown-shaped sign, slanted towers, tennis courts, and sprawling swimming pool that shone like dark glass under the moonlit sky. It looked so fucking cheesy. He couldn’t believe Linney wanted to come to a place like this. But honeymooning in the Poconos was the “thing to do,” and since the “thing to do” was always Linney’s favorite thing to do, Sirius booked it.
But if he thought the outside of the resort was cheesy, it had nothing on the inside.
“Holy Liberachi nightmare,” Sirius said as they walked inside the garish honeymoon suite and looked around. Everything, from the wall-to-wall shag carpeting to the enormous, heart-shaped bed, was a deep, bloody red. Everything, that is, except for the curved, mirrored walls and the sunken, heart-shaped Jacuzzi, which was in the very middle of the room and surrounded by even more shag carpet. An ornate, gold and crystal chandelier hung from the middle of the ceiling, and white, Greco-Roman columns flanked each corner of the room.
“Looks like a fuckin’ aneurysm in here,” Remus said, limping in behind Sirius and standing shoulder-to-shoulder with him in the doorway. Their arms brushed together and Sirius took an infinitesimal step away so they were no longer touching. He looked sideways at Remus, realizing that they hadn’t stood next to each other yet. Remus had waited for him in the car when Sirius checked in (“Mrs. Black is asleep in the car,” he’d told the receptionist. “Not for long,” the receptionist replied with a leering wink). They were roughly the same height, but Remus was far skinnier, and Sirius had the odd urge to buy him cheeseburgers, fries, and milkshakes.
Remus walked past Sirius into the room and dropped his rucksack onto the floor next to the love seat with a sigh. It was nearly 2:00 am.
“I can take the couch,” Remus said. He shucked off his vest and kicked off his boots. Then he bent over, his curls falling over his face, and pulled a thin, Army green blanket out of his rucksack.
“And, um, before I forget,” Remus said, speaking toward the floor, “you gonna want me to pay you?”
“I thought you didn’t have any cash,” Sirius said, averting his eyes as Remus stood up and peeled off his henley next, revealing wiry shoulders and leanly muscled arms in a white t-shirt with cutoff sleeves that Sirius could see in the mirrored walls, despite looking away. He looked at his feet instead.
“I don’t.”
“Then how would you pay me?” Sirius asked, midway through unbuttoning his own starched tuxedo shirt. He wanted to burn it. Instead, he tossed it onto the heart-shaped bed and started untying his shoes.
“Well, truckers sometimes expect a different kind of payment, so I thought maybe…”
Sirius’s head snapped up and he stared at Remus, his eyes wide with shock.
“What? You mean like…”
“Yeah,” Remus nodded, full of nonchalance.
“I’m not gay,” Sirius choked out quickly. He felt like his throat was closing up. What the fuck?
Remus huffed a laugh through his nose and arched an eyebrow again, his lips parting into a wry half smile.
“The truckers never are, either,” Remus said.
Then he flopped onto the couch, pulled the blanket up under his chin, and closed his eyes, flinging one skinny arm over his face against the light of the twinkling chandelier.
“Goodnight, Mr. Lawyer Man,” he said. “Enjoy sleeping in a vital organ.”