Chapter Text
“Hey, Lily.” Remus leans against the bar and tries to look casual and unbothered, but he can’t suppress a small groan at the tiny sliver of relief on his aching body. If Lily notices how bad the pain is today, she’ll definitely badger him into going home. “I need a whiskey sour, a French 75, and ‘the gayest-fruitiest’ drink you can think of.”
Lily rolls her eyes. “Ugh, I bet I know who these are for,” she says in an undertone as she reaches under the bar for the appropriate glasses. "I guess you drew the shortest straw this time?"
"I volunteered. No one else wanted to serve them," Remus mumbles. He props a foot against the metal footrest of an empty barstool and stretches with a wince.
“Be careful,” Lily whispers over the cocktail glasses. “Dorcas waited on them last time and she ended up having a massive panic attack. They’re the worst sort of people and they never tip.”
“I’ll be fine,” Remus says. He switches to the other foot and stretches. "Nothing I haven't done a thousand times before."
"Yeah, well, you've never waited on them before," Lily points out with a frown. "I swear the entire atmosphere shifts when they enter the building. There's a reason we pull straws when they walk in the door."
This isn't even an exaggeration. There's a bundle of straws under the drink station in the back, fastened together with a hair tie, that they use to determine who will have the honor of serving their most hated customers. Today, though, Remus took one for the team and volunteered because most of the current staff is relatively new and Dorcas would have probably quit on the spot if she got stuck waiting on these particular customers again.
It's fine. Remus has been doing this job for a long time. He knows how to deal with difficult guests.
“I’ll be fine,” Remus repeats flippantly.
Lily finishes mixing the drinks and places them on a tray, but hesitates before passing it to him. She regards him with narrowed green eyes. “You don’t look well, Remus. Are you going into another flare up?”
Remus straightens up. “No, I’m fine. My feet are just sore, I’ve been here since 2 and I worked all night at the Hog’s Head."
The Hog's Head is a large chain of supermarkets with dozens of locations all across the country. Remus works at one of the Hogwarts locations as his second job stocking shelves overnight a few nights a week.
And it just so happens that the CEO and co-CEO are waiting for their whiskey sour and French 75 right now.
Lily eyes him suspiciously when Remus holds out his hands to accept the tray. She knows him too well to believe him when he tries to mask the pain, and right now, the mask is wearing pretty thin. His "sore feet" are just the tip of the iceberg of the pain he currently feels all over his body and he has the telltale warning signs of a migraine coming on to top it all off.
He has already dry-swallowed his migraine prescription and is trying to ignore the symptoms because it never helps to dwell on it, but he expects he’ll be too nauseous and in too much pain to do much of anything come this time tomorrow. He only has 2 hours left of his shift before he can go home, take more medication, stock up his nightstand with drinks and snacks to prepare for the flare up, and curl up in his bed with his cat, Hippo, while the agony takes over his life for a while.
Lily finally hands him the tray with a worried look on her face and Remus forces a reassuring smile that maybe looks more like a grimace before walking off on screaming, burning legs.
He isn’t sure if what happens next is his fault or not since his vision chooses that exact moment to go all flashy and spotty, but as he rounds the corner only steps away from his table, he collides with another body and the drinks go flying and there’s nothing to grab onto to stop himself from falling. He falls in what feels like slow motion because he knows it’s going to hurt, really hurt, when he hits the ground.
And it does. He lands on his hip and elbow and it feels like his bones are made of glass, now reduced to a million tiny, pointy shards.
The other person, a man, swears loudly. “Are you fucking blind? I’m soaked! You got my fucking shoes wet!”
Remus can’t even try to respond. He goes completely silent, teeth clenched and eyes squeezed shut as the pain pulses through him. He wants to scream and curse and maybe cry, but not here. This job pays the mortgage.
“My left sock is worth more than your monthly salary, asshole,” the man rages, stamping a foot. “And now it’s all wet! Are you even listening to me?”
Remus hisses air through his teeth and tries to sit up, but he can’t move. His body feels like it’s broken and shattered. He looks up, intending to apologize to the angry customer, but he can’t even unclench his teeth.
With a sinking feeling, he recognizes the customer as the one who ordered the “gayest, fruitiest” drink, the eldest son of the richest family in the city of Slytherin, Sirius Black. His dark hair is dripping, the front of his tailored black shirt is drenched, and his silver-gray eyes are burning with fury.
He is quickly joined by his parents, Walburga and Orion Black, who must have seen everything happen from their table only steps away.
“Where is the manager?” Walburga crows. “My son has been attacked by the waiter!”
Attacked?! Remus can’t even find his voice to express the indignation at this accusation.
Orion stands over Remus, looming and imposing, and grumbles, “What is wrong with you, boy? Don’t you have eyes? Don’t tell me this fine dining establishment hires invalids .”
“What is going on?”
Remus recognizes the voice of his manager, Minerva McGonagall. She crouches next to him and places a gentle hand on his inturned shoulder. “Are you all right, Remus? What happened?”
“I’ll tell you what happened!” Walburga shrieks. “This employee of yours attacked my son! And he has yet to even apologize for it!”
“ Maman , he didn’t attack me,” Sirius mumbles. He sounds embarrassed now.
“He might as well have!” Walburga says. She grabs her son roughly by the back of his neck to drag him forward, closer to where Minerva and Remus are huddled on the ground. “Look! He’s completely soaked. We’ll need to get this dry-cleaned and go home to change when we have a full day planned, we don’t have time for this nonsense.”
“It’s unacceptable,” Orion agrees gruffly. “We expect a full apology, and the dry-cleaning paid for.”
“And this so-called employee should be fired immediately!” Walburga adds furiously, pointing a clawed finger directly in Remus’ face.
“Oh, come now, it was clearly an accident!” Minerva says, expression hardening. “Mr. Lupin is one of our best waiters. I will not fire him for spilling a drink.”
Walburga releases her grip on Sirius, and Remus watches as he backs away several paces, out of her reach, rubbing the back of his neck with a wince. His silver eyes flicker back down to Remus, and the anger he’d seen only moments ago is gone. Now, he looks...apologetic? Concerned?
He doesn’t say anything more, though, and he doesn't even offer to help Remus to his feet. For a long, uncomfortable moment, he just stands there, eyes watching Remus while his parents verbally assault Minerva.
Thankfully, Lily and Dorcas appear a moment later to help Remus off the floor. Lily shoots a scathing glare at Sirius Black before placing her body very deliberately between them and Remus nearly sighs his relief aloud when those unsettling grey eyes are no longer fixed on him.
Dorcas and Lily help him to the break room and into a chair. His vision is still terribly spotty and his head feels like it's being drilled into and his hip is on fire, so he still can’t even respond when Lily asks him if he’s okay.
“Ugh, those Blacks are complete assholes!” Dorcas fumes. “Remus was clearly hurt and all that guy cared about were his damn socks.”
“I knew you looked unwell,” Lily says accusingly. “Don’t even think about trying to drive home, Remus, I’ll take you. My shift is almost over.”
Remus wants to insist that he’s fine, but it is pretty obvious that he’s not. He can’t even move without pain shooting through his body and his goddamn hip is killing him.
Minerva handles the Blacks by banning them from the restaurant for discriminatory language and sends Lily and Remus home right away. Lily drives him home to his shitty condo in the small town of Azkaban, roughly 45 minutes from the big, shiny city of Hogwarts where the restaurant is located.
She tries to walk him inside, but he refuses her help and says, “I’m alright, Lily. I’m just going to lie down for a bit.”
He spends a full week bedridden with muscle spasms and nerve pain and a migraine that has him vomiting and half-blind for the first 2 days.
To add to his misery, he is promptly fired from his overnight stocking job at the Hog’s Head Superstore at the personal request of CEO Orion Black himself. His manager is apologetic about it but says her “hands are tied” on the matter and if it was up to her, he wouldn’t be let go.
…
Lily has a not-so-secret admirer at Diagon Alley, the son of one of the richest families in the city of Gryffindor, James Potter. He eats at the restaurant once every couple of months, and always requests Lily as his server so he can try to sweet talk her into agreeing to a date with him.
Lily has never agreed, and he never pushes it. He just sits, flirts badly, eats his food, asks her out, and then leaves without a fuss when she rejects him.
He always leaves an outrageous tip of $1,000 cash, which used to infuriate Lily who felt like he was trying to buy her. But after a few years of this exact same dance, she has dedicated her “James Potter tip money” to taking all of her friends out to the expensive nightclub in the progressive city of Gryffindor called Godric’s Hollow.
It has become a running joke at the restaurant. Whenever James Potter shows up at Diagon Alley, they know that they can look forward to a night out in the very near future. None of them can afford Godric’s Hollow otherwise, so it’s a bit of a highlight to their otherwise monotonous lives.
So James Potter pays a visit to Diagon Alley that week, and Lily’s friends from work--Remus, Marlene, Dorcas, and Peter--pay a visit to Godric’s Hollow that Friday evening.
“If you get $1000 for looking pretty while you bring his food, imagine how much you’d get if you actually put out!” Marlene giggles over her fourth cocktail of the night.
Lily makes a face of disgust. “He’s a rich asshole that thinks he can throw money at me to get what he wants,” she says. “He asked me if I wanted to see the back seat of his Range Rover yesterday! I mean, what an ass.”
“I bet he regretted that,” Remus laughs. He’s known Lily long enough to know that she is enviably quick-witted and has the ability to completely destroy a man’s ego should she so wish to.
“Oh, I made sure of it,” Lily says with a smirk. “I told him I’d sooner walk to Slytherin on foot than ever set foot in his compensating-for-something egomobile.”
This earns a round of laughter from the group and Peter snorts Sex on the Beach from his nose, which leads to hysterics.
Marlene heads to the bar and brings back a tray full of shots topped with whipped cream. “Blowjobs for everyone!” she announces, plopping the tray onto the table. “Everyone except for James Potter, that is.”
Marlene makes everyone take the shots “the correct way,” which means that they can’t use their hands. They have to crouch before the table and take the glass into their mouths and tip their head back to drink.
Peter refuses to do it and just picks up the glass to drink his. Dorcas tries, and ends up knocking the shot glass over onto the table because she is already pretty drunk. Lily and Remus do it the proper way, but it’s made difficult because they keep laughing whenever they look at each other and it takes several minutes before they finally manage to drink them.
Marlene puts on a raunchy show of licking the side of the glass while making eyes at Remus before finally drinking hers. She removes the glass from her mouth and winks at him. “So, did that do anything for you, babe?” she asks, batting her lashes.
Remus laughs. “Sorry, Marls, still a raging homosexual.”
“Damn.”
“I love this song!” Lily gasps suddenly, leaping to her feet and grabbing at Remus excitedly to pull him up with her. “Come on, bestie, let’s dance!”
They head downstairs to the dance floor, joined by Dorcas and Marlene, and dance through the next several songs while Peter remains upstairs to hold their seats. The club is packed full tonight, and a few club-goers actually approach them asking for a dance--usually Marlene, but Lily and Dorcas are approached occasionally, too.
One guy even approaches Remus and offers to buy him a drink, which is a surprise since Godric’s Hollow is not a gay club and most people assume that Remus is with Lily when they go out together. The LGBTQ+ crowd tends to gather at Honeydukes, a popular gay strip club in Hogwarts that is very exclusive and extremely expensive.
Remus turns him down.
“Don’t you think it’s about time that you try to meet someone new?” Lily asks him somewhat breathlessly as they make their way back upstairs to the lounge. “You and Jonah broke up like, two years ago, right?”
“We’ve had this conversation before, Lily,” Remus sighs. “I don’t date anymore.”
“I’m still hoping you’ll change your mind,” Lily says, voice light. “You can’t really be set on living alone for the rest of your life just because your ex was an ass.”
“That’s not the reason,” Remus says simply. She brings this up every opportunity she gets, and he knows it comes from a place of caring, but he really wishes she would just drop it.
“That guy downstairs seemed nice,” Lily ventures innocently. “And he was really cute.”
He looks at her once they reach the top of the stairs. “Do we really have to talk about this tonight? I was actually having fun for once.”
“Oh, fine,” Lily sighs in defeat. “I’ll stop talking about it.”
“Thank you.”
They return to the upstairs lounge and collapse into their seats, sweaty and breathless. Lily grabs a drink menu to fan herself. “You should come down and join us sometimes, Pete!”
“I can’t dance,” Peter responds, cheeks flushed pink from the alcohol, phone held idly in his hand.
“Neither can Remus, and he still comes out.”
“Hey!” Remus protests over the rim of his tequila sunrise. “See if I come along next time after that snide remark.”
“I was joking!” Lily plants a kiss on his cheek and links her arm with his. “And you love me too much to stay home and you know it.”
Remus snorts and takes a drink of the cocktail in his hand as Marlene and Dorcas reappear. Marlene practically sprints towards them, eyes wild with excitement. “Open your phones!” she orders as soon as she’s close enough to be heard. “Hurry! Go to Twitter!”
Remus and Lily take out their phones at the same time. “What are we looking for?” Lily asks as she opens the app.
“Just look at the top trends,” Marlene urges.
Remus pulls up the Trends page and scans the hashtags:
#GoGoGryffindor
#SsslytherinSnakes
#SiriusBlackGay
#Honeydukes
Remus taps on the third top trend and quickly scrolls through some of the tweets.
“Sirius effing BLACK is at honeydukes. This is not a drill.”
“Wait sirius black is GAY?”
“I’m not homophobic but those pics of sirius black at honeydukes are lowkey disgusting.”
“YO @OrionBlackCEO, u still gonna fund shitty anti-gay politicians now that your son is outta the closet or nah?”
“Guess who's on his way to honeydukes right now since he officially has a shot with the man voted Slytherin’s Hottest Bachelor of the year? Today is a WIN for the gays”
“Those pics of sirius black at honeydukes should be taken down. Its disgusting, we don’t want to see that shit.”
Remus scrolls until he finds the pictures. There are several of them, taken and posted by people who are apparently at Honeydukes right now on their cell phones. It’s dark, but the photos clearly feature Sirius Black inside the popular gay club in Hogwarts. He’s dressed in the trademark black-on-black suit that he typically wears to events with his parents but the jacket is open and the black dress shirt has the top three buttons undone and collar popped. His hair is loose and braided on the sides and he appears to be wearing eyeliner and nail polish and an eccentric array of necklaces, earrings, bracelets, and rings.
Some of the photos and videos are just of Sirius standing around, talking or stopping for a drink, while others are a little less PG: Sirius Black grinding against another man on the dance floor. Sirius Black doing a body shot off a half-dressed male club-goer. Sirius Black receiving a lap dance from a male stripper dressed in nothing but a g-string. Sirius Black making out with another man.
“Whoa,” Remus mutters aloud as he scrolls through the posts. He looks up to find that all of his friends are staring at him, and he blinks back in surprise. “What?”
“You met him, right?” Marlene asks. “Did he strike you as gay?”
“I wouldn’t say I met him. He ordered a drink, which I proceeded to spill all over him, and he ripped me a new asshole.” He realizes what he said as it leaves his mouth and Marlene bursts out laughing. “Oh, God. Not like that. He was a huge jerk about it.”
“So he didn’t set off your gaydar?”
“No, but to be fair, my gaydar is basically nonexistent,” Remus says with a shrug.
“And Sirius was too busy being a pretentious snob,” Lily sniffs.
“Aren’t his parents, like, crazy conservative?” Dorcas asks, eyes on her phone and a small frown on her lips.
“Oh, yeah,” Remus says. “They support the worst politicians and just last year, they donated an obscene amount of money to literal hate groups campaigning to criminalize homosexuality.”
“Oof,” Dorcas mumbles. “I bet they aren’t too happy with their little bundle of joy right about now.”
They don’t dwell on it. They have another round of shots and dance a bit more before piling in the Uber to carpool home, and Lily tips the driver the last $200 of her James Potter tip cash.