Work Text:
Did we go too far?
Is that why your nose is bleeding?
Last night I dreamt
We kissed on a bench in the evening
Nosebleed - Maximo Park
--
Sunday night. Too much wine and a gaggle of old friends in a poky, hot kitchen in Islington, and Remus wants out.
“There is no way I’m doing a naked forfeit in the street,” he tells his so-called friends. “I’m a teacher. My job is to educate the brilliant young minds of tomorrow. Somebody will see me and I’ll lose my job.”
“You probably should have thought of that,” - that’s Benjy, his boyfriend of just shy of a year - “before you chose ‘dare’.”
It isn’t a helpful interjection. Remus scowls at him and he just laughs.
“We are too old to be playing truth or dare,” Remus protests. “Are we not? I’m going to be twenty-nine soon.”
“May as well just cash in your bus pass now,” Lily observes.
“Thank you, Lily. That’s what I’m saying.”
“You could always just do the dare.” There is a twinkle in her eye that’s positively evil.
Remus clenches everything from his nostrils to his buttocks.
“Do you need the toilet?” James asks him casually, and Remus flips him the V.
“I need some new friends,” he grumbles. He does a quick calculation in his head, resigns himself to it, stands, and puts the colander on his head. He hoists himself onto the table and climbs to his feet, very nearly jettisoning himself into the fridge as he wobbles and sways like a stick insect.
He clears his throat.
“Nobody loves me, everybody hates me-”
James grins so widely that it must hurt.
“I’m going down the garden to eat worms. Long thin slimy ones, short fat fuzzy ones.”
Lily’s laughter is so intense that it turns silent.
“Ooey gooey ooey gooey worms.” He looks down. “No! Absolutely not! No cameras! You are horrid little mites and I hate you all!”
The laughter takes hold, then, and Remus manages to slip back down to sulk in his chair without finishing his song and nobody says a word about it.
--
Wednesday night. A piano bar in Shoreditch. Too-tight trousers and stiff shoes that rub at the heel. A martini on a school night that he’ll regret when his alarm shouts profanities at him in the morning.
Benjy is wearing an elaborate, billowing shirt that one of his St Martins classmates will have designed and that probably retails for north of a grand. His hair is looking lovely. They haven’t spoken in at least thirty minutes.
Sometimes, frankly, it’s easier that way. Benjy is twenty-two and he seems it. That’s not a bad thing, it’s just an accurate description. He’s not even that much younger than Remus, but there’s a generational gulf between them. His friends are in polyamorous relationships. He knows what Tik Tok is and he doesn’t own a TV. He makes his own kombucha and has never possessed a yo-yo. All of it matters.
Back when they met, in a bougie coffee house in Stratford, Benjy pursued Remus quite aggressively. As a result, he never quite knows now whether he chose this or not.
Sometimes, he thinks that Benjy might only be with him because he’s tall enough to attend all those fashion events with him and not look tiny next to the models.
From somewhere deep in the belly of the bar appears a man who isn’t Benjy or Remus. Long black hair and these extraordinary grey eyes. Older than Remus, maybe, but not by much. White shirt cuffed and turned up so that it hugs his biceps. A tiny silver ring through his nose.
He’s the second best looking man Remus has seen in his life. The first was Hugh Laurie in a Marylebone bookshop seven years ago. He was quite devastatingly handsome in real life and Remus had just squeaked at the poor man and run away without purchasing a thing.
Benjy stares at the new arrival quite unsubtly and something ugly rolls in Remus’s gut.
“Oh, sorry!” the handsome man blurts out when he sees them. “Did I jump the queue?”
“No, no,” Remus assures him. “We’re being served.”
“Great,” the man grins, at Remus, and then Benjy, and it feels like the train he’s been on for months has changed track with a jolt.
This man might ruin my entire life, Remus thinks.
“Oop, I’m up!” the man declares, and trots over to the piano with his soda water, sits down on the stool and talks smoothly into the mic. “Good evening,” he purrs. “How about some Chopin?”
He starts to play and it stops mattering that conversation isn’t flowing freely, because the air is suddenly rich with music, the sort that Remus can feel in his bones.
He closes his eyes.
--
Thursday morning. An alarm that shouts profanities at him in his shoebox flat in Walthamstow. A snooze button that serves only to delay the inevitable.
A concerto dinking around in his head that he didn’t know he knew.
--
Thursday evening. Benjy has a sudden enthusiasm for piano music and simply must go back to the same bar they frequented the night before.
Remus is tired. He’s spent all day trying to get his sixth formers to write a decent intro for their essays on Mrs Dalloway - a task akin to herding cats - and he really could have done with some quality time spent with his sofa tonight.
Why did he come? Ostensibly, it’s because can feel himself losing his boyfriend. He wishes someone would tell him how to feel about it.
The musician is there again, tinkering at the piano keys like they’re an extension of his fingers. This time, he’s wearing his hair in a tight knot at the nape of his neck and Remus feels hot and sweaty beneath his collar.
For a second night, Remus sits at the bar and lets the music take him away. It’s only when the musician takes his break that Remus finds himself back in the room just in time to clock a pair of grey eyes on him. “You again.”
“Us again,” Remus agrees, trying to focus on his cocktail; on anything other than the elegant curve of the man’s neck. The thick stubble that covers his chin which would feel rough like sandpaper to the touch.
“How are you enjoying the music?”
“It’s lovely,” Remus says honestly. He braves a spot of eye contact. “Worth surrendering my sofa time for.”
The man seems pleased with this. He swirls his drink around in the glass and manages to judge it perfectly so that none spills over the sides. “Do you like classical music?”
“I don’t really know any,” Remus admits.
“What’s your favourite song?”
The questions are quick and disarming, and even though he’s an introvert’s introvert who hates talking about himself, he sort of hopes that they keep coming, because as long as they keep coming, Remus can let that lovely, deep voice wash over him like a current of warm air.
“He likes shit stuff,” Benjy smirks. “Old crooners. Sinatra. Stuff my dad would listen to.”
“The classics, we might call them.” The man’s mouth ticks up. “Alright, I can manage that.”
“No, I didn’t-”
“I’m Sirius,” he tells them, effectively ending his time as the charismatic bar stranger and commencing their new friendship - or whatever the fuck this is. “And you are?”
“Benjy!” Benjy shakes his hand enthusiastically.
Sirius looks at Benjy with bright eyes. “Lovely to make your acquaintance.”
Those eyes land on Remus and he extends his hand. “I wouldn’t say we quite managed it yesterday-”
“Remus.”
He smiles as their palms connect. “Remus.”
They talk for a while, the three of them. Or, Benjy does most of the talking and Sirius just takes it all in, lets his eyes flicker over both of them with amusement or interest, or maybe both.
Then he heads back to his piano and looks at them one last time before he launches into a particularly lovely cover of Strangers in the Night.
Remus’s cheeks heat as he sips on his cocktail.
--
They don’t go back to the bar for a week and Remus grapples with the fact that he feels restless; not quite right. When they do go, he needs little to no convincing. Benjy is looking particularly slick in a jacket that skims his slender frame, making him look expensive and handsome.
Sirius the piano man is nowhere to be seen, and for the first time in weeks, the two of them have a proper conversation that doesn’t end in bickering. It’s-
Nice. The sort of evening where they both remember why they bother to do this in the first place.
So maybe Remus isn’t losing him after all.
--
Mid-June. A long, balmy sort of evening punctuated only by vague plans to see his mother.
Unfortunately, the vague plans look set to become concrete when she rings him as he leaves the school gates.
“Where shall we meet?” he asks her over the phone.
“Ooh, there’s this wine bar in town that Hattie’s been going on about for yonks. Let’s push the boat out. My treat.”
“Fine, text me the address.”
This place, unlike the other, is surprisingly small and intimate.
A low voice sparks in his ear. “Fancy seeing you here.”
Remus gasps, knocks over his drink and he and Sirius stand for a second, watching as his glass rolls around on the table, coating itself in the sticky orange of his cocktail. When Remus picks the glass up, his fingers are tacky against it.
“Oh,” Remus laughs dumbly. “Hello. You made me jump.”
Sirius’s eyes are bright in the dimly lit bar. “No Benjy tonight?”
Ah yes. Benjy. Benjy on whom Sirius clearly has designs. Benjy who decided not to come because he got a better offer from his university friends.
It’s a mess, all of it.
“Not tonight. This is my mum.”
“Nice to meet you, Mrs...” He scratches at his chin and looks at Remus guiltily. “Ah, awkward time to realise I don’t know your surname.”
“It’s Lupin,” he tells Sirius with an awkward smile.
“And it’s ‘Ms’,” Remus’s mum confirms with a sly wink.
“Oh, dear lord,” Remus mutters under his breath, and when he looks up, Sirius’s eyes are already on him, sparky and curious.
“Can I buy you both a drink?” he asks.
Remus stares at him. “You want to buy my mother and me a drink?”
Sirius tilts his head like a dog, considering him for a second. “It would be my pleasure. And it’s only right that I replace the one you knocked over. That was clearly my fault.”
“Oh no, that’s just Remus. He’s always been a clumsy goose,” his mum chips in unhelpfully.
“Rude,” Remus grumbles, but Sirius is grinning at him and he’s beautiful, really, and Remus’s stomach feels all kinds of weird about it.
It doesn’t make sense that he’s being so lovely to them when Benjy isn’t around to see. It doesn’t make sense that he slinks off to the bar, then comes back with a full bottle of something pricy which Remus’s mum eyes up covertly.
“So how do you know each other?” she asks when Sirius, who has procured three clean glasses, pulls up a seat next to them.
Sirius pours them each a glass and shucks off the jacket, letting it hang loosely over the back of the chair. Remus can smell his deodorant. “Just from being... out,” he tells her.
“Of the closet or on the town?”
“Both,” Remus and Sirius chime at once, then burst out laughing.
Sirius looks at him for a good long while, then away again, mouth tucking up in the corner.
“Sirius is a pianist,” Remus tells her. “We’ve been to a bar where he plays a few times.” He pauses. “Benjy and me.”
“Oh, how nice!” she nods, slightly madly.
“It is nice,” Sirius tells her. “But I sort of prefer playing here, to be honest. It’s a bit less pretentious, all in all.”
“You know, I’m a bit of a musician myself. I just got my grade three on the flute.”
“Did you?” Sirius asks, all excited. “That’s brilliant! Well done, you.”
“I’m in a wind orchestra. They make me do the oboe part because it’s lower and sometimes I get a bit squeaky on the high notes. But I got ‘most improved’ at our end of year awards so I thought that was rather good.”
“A great achievement,” Sirius agrees, sipping on his wine and smiling at her, eyes flickering over to Remus then back again.
“Did you always know you wanted to be a musician?” she asks him.
“No,” he admits. “I was quite convinced I was going to make my living from the TV show ‘Gladiators’.”
She giggles and it’s mortifying.
“But then somewhere around puberty, my piano lessons transitioned from a weekly torture to something that I really began to enjoy. And it sort of escalated from there.”
“You’re very talented,” Remus blurts. Sirius stares at him as though he’s some sort of alien. “No, what I mean to say is that I could have put all the effort in the world into my year 7 keyboard lessons and I would never have reached your level of skill.” He takes a long, apologetic sip from his wine. “Talent counts for a hell of a lot.”
Sirius’s mouth twitches into a half smile. “Thank you, Remus,” he says. “And what is it that you do for a living?”
“English teacher,” he tells him. “A profession in which talent doesn’t matter so much as sheer grit and the ability to skirt over a million personal questions from nosy adolescents.”
Sirius smiles properly then. “Yeah, I can definitely see that,” he says quietly. “Right, I should be getting back.”
“Oh,” Remus’s mum sighs, “what a shame!”
“Any requests?” Sirius asks, not taking his eyes off Remus for a second.
“Do you know any Englebert Humperdinck?”
“Mum!” Remus wails. “He went to the conservatoire in Paris. He’s a classically trained musician. He’s not going to play-”
Sirius laughs softly, but there’s no derision in it. He runs a casual hand through his perfect hair. “I’m sure I can rustle something up.”
--
Another Thursday a week or so later. Another night in the wine bar when he’d rather be doing his marking or watching Married at First Sight in his slippers.
But that yearning gives way to another sort of tightness in his chest when a beautiful man waves enthusiastically from the piano; a man whose smile is so bright and so horribly lovely. And it’s probably all for Benjy, but Remus is human. And a human is allowed to indulge in the occasional distracting fantasy.
A persistent fluttering in his tummy that threatens to bed in for the night. He doesn’t get that on the sofa.
Sirius chatting earnestly to Benjy, throwing the odd glance at Remus in between sentences. Guilty, probably, that he’s sort of chatting up his man in plain sight.
Remus’s heart hammering away in his confused little chest.
--
“I don’t know what any of it means,” he whines the next night. “What does he want?”
Lily extracts a wodge of lint from the tumble dryer, attempts to throw it in the bin and misses. They both stare at it on the floor.
“Well clearly he fancies one of you,” she tells him sagely. “Trying to get close.”
Remus sighs. He thinks of how excited Benjy is about going back to the piano bar. “That’s what I thought. Benjy’s clearly keen on him, too.”
Lily considers the matter carefully. “You could always have a threesome.”
Remus is so surprised that a little bit of beer dribbles out of his mouth. “Excuse me?”
She shrugs, unrepentant, and Remus starts to think about things he’s never wanted to know about his best friends’ sex life. “You, Benjy and the enigmatic piano man. Might spice things up a bit.”
He sniffs. “Things are plenty spicy enough, thank you.”
It’s a lie, actually. Benjy and Remus have never had that clothes-ripping, heart-thumping, got-to-have-you-on-the-floor-right-now kind of chemistry. Which is fine. He’s had those relationships before and they’ve always burned out some time around the seventh date.
And really, this is easier. He hates dating. The thought of having to get back out there if things were to end with Benjy sends an icy bucket of water over his head.
So maybe they should just do the threesome thing. One last attempt to salvage this thing of theirs. Part of him - the horny part - thinks that having a threesome with Sirius would be pretty marvellous, actually.
The rest of him stubbornly argues that a twosome with Sirius might be even better, especially if he approaches his sex life with the same enthusiasm as he does everything else.
He shakes himself out of it.
“I can’t have a threesome, Lily. I do puzzles for fun. I drink Ovaltine. I have a mug that says ‘I heart spreadsheets’. And it wasn’t even a present; I went out and bought it for myself because I really do. I heart spreadsheets.”
James chews on his pen. “I don’t trust this handsome cad. Do we know that his intentions are honourable? Maybe he’s going to seduce your mother and then steal her fortune.”
Remus blinks at him. “She doesn’t have a fortune.”
“Maybe he’s trying to steal you from Benjy. Like a sexy coup. A stealthy overthrowing so he can throw you over his shoulder and bonk you to next Tuesday, that sort of thing.”
Remus’s nose wrinkles. “Even less likely.”
“Why don’t we all go to this piano bar?” James presses. “I want to meet him, see the whites of his eyes. I’m an excellent judge of character. We can take the opportunity to launch a covert surveillance mission and then we’ll all know for certain whether he’s a serial killer or not.”
“He’s not always there,” Remus points out.
“Well, if not, at least we still get to eat, drink and be merry. You can bring Benjy.”
“Hmm.”
Remus does invite Benjy but he’s already going to a gallery opening, or something, so in the end, it’s just the three of them. Remus has been at school all day so he showers and chooses a new shirt from the wardrobe, tells himself he would have done that regardless.
He even puts some of that fancy dust stuff in his hair that the hairdresser convinced him was worth the fifteen quid price tag. It means his hair is pushed back out of his face and more of his probably-a-bit-too-large forehead is on display.
He’s glad he made a bit of an effort, though, because when he gets there first, Sirius is already there and he hasn’t started playing yet. He leans on the bar and Remus permits himself to appreciate the long lines of him, the sharp cut of his jaw, the heat in his eyes that may or may not be for him.
“You’re looking very nice this evening,” he tells Remus with a twinkle in his eye, and Remus makes a noise that can best be described as an involuntary mewl.
“You too,” slips out when he finds his voice again.
He turns towards the door just in time to see James and Lily come in, and when he turns back, his favourite cocktail is waiting for him.
“Oh,” Remus laughs. “You’re very smooth.”
Sirius’s eyes flash. “And you’re very welcome. Would you like to go and sit down?”
“Actually, er- these are my friends just coming now.”
“Okay,” Sirius smiles. “I’ll leave you to it. Have a great-”
“Would you like to join us?” Remus blurts out, and the smile gets even bigger.
“Yes,” Sirius says.
“Are you not playing a set?”
Sirius smirks and shrugs. He runs a hand through his hair and turns to greet James and Lily. As ever, he strings his movements together with elegant lyricism and Remus can’t help but watch his every move. He is terrific to look at; clearly a man with whom many people have fallen in love. But there’s no danger of Remus falling into that trap because Sirius’s interest is in Benjy, probably, and Remus just needs to work out what that means for him - for his future - without getting too maudlin about the whole thing.
Something that doesn’t help matters much is that Sirius and James end up getting on. In fact, they don’t just get on, they might be two halves of the same whole, and Remus doesn’t know how he didn’t see it before.
It’s also the first time he’s seen Sirius so light, so at ease. And as layer after layer gets peeled off, he becomes less intimidating, more refreshingly human. Through James, he finds out that Sirius is a skilled chess player, that he grows all manner of vegetables on his sunny balcony in Lewisham, and that he once dated a Serbian pornstar named Radovan. He has an impressively dirty laugh and he licks his lips when he’s pleased with a joke he’s made.
And all the while he’s talking to James but he keeps casting glances at Remus, like he’s checking whether or not he likes this version of him that’s honest and genuine and bare; the version that maybe, just maybe, could exist one day outside of a piano bar.
Sirius does do a stint on the piano, eventually, and James waxes lyrical about how skilled and cool he is.
It’s only much later, and even then only because it’s a school night, that Remus manages to persuade James it’s time to go.
“I’ll, err-” He glances at Sirius whose set has just drawn to a close. “I’ll just go and say goodbye.
James smirks knowingly.
Remus ambles up to the piano. “We’re off,” he says. “Erm. Ah- this was really nice. I hope you had fun.”
“So much fun,” Sirius assures him. “Look, give me your phone, yeah? I’ll put my number in, and you should use it. Just once, it would be nice to bump into you on purpose.”
Remus smiles and hands his phone over.
“You and-” Sirius taps his fingers on the lid of the piano, distracted. “Ah, Benjy, of course.”
Disappointment hits Remus like a slap. “Of course.”
“We could all go for dinner, maybe.”
He smiles tightly and nods. Sirius looks at him for a long while. Then, quite without warning, he takes Remus’s chin delicately between finger and thumb and kisses him on the lips; lightly, just a fleeting peck. Just long enough for him to know what Sirius tastes like.
“Bonne nuit, Remus,” he says in a low voice.
Remus blinks dazedly.
Weird.
Must be an over-affectionate French thing that Sirius picked up in Paris. He yanks himself away, rejoins his friends in a half trance and as soon as they’re outside, James puts him in a headlock.
“You need to marry him.”
Remus splutters indignantly and tries to free himself.
“Let go! He’s not into me.”
“Remus,” Lily says softly, an admonishment, “is it so unthinkable?”
Remus is released and tries not to think about the stars in his vision. “Yes. Also, I am in a happy relationship.”
“Are you?” Lily asks, and he ignores her.
“I’ve got nothing against Benjy,” James clarifies. “He’s just not your one.” He glances back towards the bar, in the general direction of the deeply distracting man who will still be seated at the piano. “Him on the other hand...”
“You’ve all got this horribly wrong,” Remus protests. “Sirius is interested in Benjy, not me.”
James rolls his eyes. “You’re a supremely irritating person.”
“Thank you, that’s kind.” He stares intently at the dry skin on his hands. “I don’t even... you know, really like him like that.”
“Right.”
But the lie is brittle in his mouth and his overwhelming emotion is one of guilt. He’s being disloyal to Benjy by even thinking these things, and none of it’s fair. The easiest thing would be to shut it down. But that would mean stopping seeing him. And then the sharp thrill he gets in his chest whenever he’s around would go too. The nervous energy. The inexorable urge to extend the time they spend together.
--
Remus loves his mum, he does. She’s an affectionate and awkward person, and with her first wind orchestra concert approaching, he’s particularly proud of her. She’s never done anything for herself until now. But here she is, not only having picked up her flute again for the first time in fifty years, but positively thriving, meeting people, performing and grinning about it. It’s brave and it’s brilliant and he’s so proud of his dear old mum that he could cry.
It doesn’t change the fact that her phone call on a Tuesday (or is it a Wednesday?) is very unwelcome.
“Remus, we’re in dire straits. Will you ask Sirius if he’ll come and play piano for us?”
“No.”
“Oh, please, Remus.”
“No, absolutely not.”
“Cathy’s caught giardia from the guinea pig and the concert is tomorrow. I wouldn’t ask if I weren’t completely desperate.”
“I don’t even know him that well, Mum. I’d feel weird asking such a big favour.”
“Oh, but he’s so lovely. I bet he would do it.”
“That’s not really the point, is it? It’s asking too much.”
“Okay,” she sighs. “Such a shame, though. There isn’t anyone else who can cover so the concert will have to be cancelled. All that hard work down the drain.”
Remus sighs, and it’s so deep and so long that he feels it in his toes. “I’ll ask.”
When she speaks again, he can hear the grin in her voice. “I owe you,” she tells him, and that’s putting it lightly.
Sirius answers on the first ring. “Remus!”
“Sirius,” he laughs. “I hope I’m not disturbing. I have a favour to ask you and it’s kind of big. Before I tell you what it is, just know that I’m expecting you to say no. And when you do say no, there will be no hard feelings about it at all.”
There is a brief pause and it sounds like Sirius is moving to sit down. “I’ll do it.”
Remus laughs. “You don’t know what it is!”
“No. But I’m still very confident that I’ll do it.”
“You don’t even know if you’re free!”
“I’ll be free,” Sirius tells him, which is madness because he’s the busiest person in the world.
“It’s tomorrow.”
“Fine.”
“It’s not exciting, either. It’s playing piano for my mum’s wind orchestra because Cathy has caught giardia from the guinea pig.”
There is a brief pause. “And this is meant to be a chore?”
“Well, yeah. It’s playing piano and not getting paid for it while a load of pensioners murder Vivaldi on the tin whistle.”
Another pause. “You’ll be there, though?”
“Yes.”
“Want to get a drink beforehand?”
“Yes,” Remus says before his mind can catch up.
“Lovely. Text me the address and the time and I’ll see you there. I’m playing at the Grosvenor in town tonight so if your Mum could maybe bring me the sheet music over, that would be great. Means I don’t have to sight read it all and we can pretend I know what I’m doing.”
Remus laughs incredulously, unsure what just happened. “Deal.”
--
An hour before he’s due to meet Sirius, Benjy calls him.
“Listen, I’ve been thinking. Would it be terrible if I didn’t come tonight?”
“Yes,” Remus says right away. “It certainly wouldn’t be great.”
“It’s just... well, it’s really not my scene, Remus.”
“A wind orchestra concert? Shockingly, it’s not my scene either, Benjy.”
“And your mum is just so...”
Remus doesn’t care for his tone. He might complain about his mother, but he’s the only one who’s allowed to do so. Maybe that’s hypocritical, but it doesn’t matter because they’re his rules and Benjy knows it.
“My mum is just so...” Remus repeats, by now distinctly irked.
There are a million ways Benjy could decide to finish that sentence - embarrassing, uncouth, brash, insensitive - and none of them would be strictly untrue. But none of them would help him get out of this hot water either. He’s wise enough to drop it.
“Don’t be like that. I’m no good at this sort of thing. The small talk and the raffle and the laughing at shit jokes that aren’t the slightest bit funny. It makes me want to pull my fingernails off.”
Remus rubs at his tired eyes. “If you don’t want to come, that’s up to you. But it matters to Mum, and therefore it matters to me. You said you’d be there.”
“Look, I get it. Clearly, it’s a no go. I just thought I’d check the lay of the land. I’ll come, it’s fine.”
“Right. Very gracious of you. Well I’ll see you there because I’m heading out the door.”
“You’re leaving now?”
“I’m meeting Sirius beforehand.”
There is a moment’s silence. “Bit weird.”
“He’s doing me a huge favour. Taking him out for a drink to say thank you is the least I can do. You’re more than welcome to join.”
“No thanks, I’ll pass. I’ll see you at the church.”
When Remus hangs up, his cheeks are red with rage. Maybe he’s being unfair. Maybe he’s failing to account for Benjy’s perspective on all this. After all, he can’t exactly expect his boyfriend to want to come to something as remarkably uncool as this event promises to be.
But then maybe he’s already made far too many excuses for Benjy’s behaviour. In fact, he’s beginning to suspect that the issue isn’t that Benjy’s young, but more that he’s just not a hugely nice person. Remus was never like this when he was young. Youth never made him inconsiderate or dismissive.
He dresses in a flurry, throwing on a dark green jumper and the trousers that do good things to his bottom.
Sirius shows him up horribly when he is wearing a full tuxedo and Remus’s heart thumps in his chest at the sight of him. When Sirius spots him, he stands and kisses him on both cheeks. “I’m weirdly nervous,” he admits.
“You’ll be brilliant,” Remus assures him, fighting the urge to nuzzle into that lovely neck of his. “You always are.”
Conversation comes easily, and with it, the only remaining defence Remus has carefully constructed begins to fall away.
“I don’t know how you do it,” Remus says, “standing up in front of all those people. Performing. I get nervous just doing whole-year assemblies.”
“I’ve never minded it,” Sirius tells him. “But there are all sorts of things that people find difficult or scary. I had a childhood friend who was plagued by trypophobia.”
Remus raises an eyebrow. “Fear of...?”
“Holes,” Sirius confirms. “Specifically, the repetitive pattern that multiple holes make.”
“Niche.”
“Yes, and very easy to forget and misstep. I once made him crumpets and he lost his shit. I was just trying to feed the poor lad, but instead it was like... here is the source of all your anxiety, buttered.”
Remus laughs softly.
Sirius finishes his drink and looks at the empty glass ruefully. “Okay, I’d best head off then.” He stands up and puts his jacket on.
Remus stands up, too, and Sirius looks at him for a moment, at the outfit he picked out for the occasion. “You look really cute,” he tells him. Then he laughs, embarrassed. “Sorry. Sorry, I’m a bad man. I’ll stay on task from now on. Piano only. No rogue compliments. See you after the concert?”
Remus nods, watches him go, and grins into his beer.
When he arrives at the church, there’s a veritable flurry of activity. A warmup in one of the side rooms. A tiny old lady manning a refreshment stand with more punters than there is capacity to serve them.
Everyone is smiling.
His mum spots him and runs out of the warmup. “You’re here!” she beams. “And I told you Sirius wouldn’t mind. He’s caused quite the stir amongst the ladies, I can tell you.”
Remus huffs a laugh. “Yes, I bet.”
“I’ve got to go back, but have a look out for the raffle prize I made when you go past. She’s a duck. In a little dress. I knitted her from scratch from that book you got me for Christmas! Gosh, I do hope someone wants her and she’s not left there on the table all alone.”
“Someone will want her,” Remus tells her kindly, and he stops off to buy enough raffle tickets on his way to his seat to make sure he’s in with a decent shot of getting the duck a home.
Benjy is already seated. He’s probably there because it’s more effort to have a full blown argument than it is to just suck it up for a couple of hours. He glances up at Remus tentatively and has the good grace to look a bit guilty.
“I’m sorry I was an arse,” he says in a low voice as Remus takes the seat next to him.
Remus puts his hand on his thigh and lets out a little laugh. “I’m sorry you were an arse, too.”
Benjy laughs, too, and picks up the programme on the pew in front of him. “They’re going in for some Beethoven,” he tells Remus. “So I was wrong. This is going to be a real rager.”
Remus gives him the benefit of the doubt and throws a strained smile his way.
“How many raffle tickets did you get?” the woman behind them asks her husband.
“Only a couple. Didn’t want to risk getting stuck with the duck.”
The two of them laugh meanly and Remus shakes his head. “That’s so bloody rude,” he mumbles to Benjy.
“Well, they’re not wrong,” Benjy huffs. “Bit garish, isn’t it? I wouldn’t want to be stuck with it either.”
“Leave,” Remus tells him, something hot and corrosive bubbling in his gut.
Benjy laughs. “What? I just got here!”
“This is over.” He looks into Benjy’s deep brown eyes. “It’s over and you need to go.”
And so, Remus’s most successful relationship to date ends before the concert has even begun. Benjy doesn’t fight for it; for them. He stalks out of the church so quickly that people murmur amongst themselves.
Remus fixates on the programme clutched between his fingers.
The concert passes in a tear-filled blur that he tries to pass off as music-induced emotion. And as the orchestra take their bows, he takes himself outside to a dark corner so he can gather his thoughts before the pensioners start to come out and coo around him like he’s a twelve year old stuck at his mother’s dinner party.
He misses the raffle, but he can hear the muffled sound of the microphone as the winners are announced.
“Hey,” a soft voice comes from the black just as it sounds like things are drawing to a close. Sirius steps out of the shadow and Remus nods at him, wipes a tear from his cheek with the prickly sleeve of his jumper.
“What have you got there?” Remus asks.
“Aha!” He beams. “Look what I won! Isn’t she great?”
Sure enough, he holds out the relationship-ruining duck, gazing at her like she’s magic.
“I bought an obscene amount of tickets, but I just had to have her. Somebody made her especially, I think. She needs a name, though. Do you think she looks like a Wilhelmina? Wilhelmina K Duck?”
A tiny, disbelieving laugh escapes from Remus’s lips. He drops his programme which falls to the floor with a thump, cups Sirius’s face between two shaky hands, and kisses him.
Sirius makes a noise that’s at once surprised and pleased, and once he’s had a second to get used to the idea, he starts to kiss back, mouth soft and warm and eager.
Remus’s brain turns a bit fuzzy at that point and it doesn’t step back into proceedings for a minute or two. When it does, somehow Sirius is plastered against the wall of the church and Remus is all over him, pressed up against him, their bodies touching all the way from groin to shoulder.
Sirius shifts his head back an inch and raises his eyebrows. “You’re a bit weirdly into the duck.”
“Oh my god,” Remus groans, colour filling his cheeks. “I just completely ambushed you.”
Sirius looks at him. “It was nice. Kind of wish you were still doing it. If I’d known that the duck was what it would take, I’d have knitted something for you myself.”
Remus snorts. “I couldn’t give a flying fuck about the duck.”
Sirius laughs loudly. “Don’t be so rude about our duck child. She’ll hear you.” He glances up and something softens behind his eyes. “What happened to Benjy? I saw him leaving.”
“Ah.” Remus feels like he’s hurtled back to earth and landed with a sickening bang. “Well, he’s single now, if you wanted to give it a go.”
Sirius looks at him blankly, eyes still hazy from the kiss. “Okay, I thought I sort of knew what was happening but now I have no idea.”
“We’re not going to have a threesome, Sirius. I’m sorry, it’s just not going to happen.”
Sirius laughs nervously and scratches his neck. “What?”
“I’ve broken up with him. He never asked me questions. I never felt like my proper self around him.”
Sirius nods solemnly. “Right.”
“But that doesn’t mean that you two wouldn’t be good together.”
“Can you please stop talking so cryptically?”
“You like Benjy,” Remus sighs. “It’s okay, Sirius.”
Sirius touches two fingers to his lips and stares at Remus. “You think I like that prick?”
Remus snorts and Sirius shakes his head quickly from side to side.
“Clearly, I am a dreadful flirt. Lesson learnt for future endeavours. Must practise seducing tall, slightly clueless men.” A lovely laugh bubbles out of him and he gently shakes Remus’s shoulder. “No, I like you! A lot. Like, a lot.” He bites his lower lip, then releases it and Remus wants to be the one doing the biting. “And I assume my feelings are reciprocated, at least a bit, because you just jumped me in a churchyard mere seconds after ditching your boyfriend.”
“How do you know he didn’t ditch me?”
Sirius snorts. “Please.”
Remus can’t help it but he smiles at that. At the fact that Sirius was never interested in Benjy. At how dense he’s been since the very beginning.
Sirius’s grin cracks into a yawn and he pulls Remus forward again, ostensibly for warmth, but it’s nice in all sorts of ways, especially when he presses tiny little kisses to the curve of his neck. “I’m shattered. I stayed up all night practising the songs because I didn’t want to make a tit of myself in front of you.”
Remus’s heart squeezes. “That’s very sweet.”
“I also didn’t want Hope to have gone out on a limb only for me to fluff my lines.”
“If it helps. I think she was scraping the barrel a bit.”
Sirius laughs musically and presses a soft, lingering kiss to Remus’s lips. “It does help. Although it’s very rude of you to say it. But it’s fine, I understand. Now you’ve rinsed my piano playing fingers for all they’re worth, you don’t have to butter me up anymore.”
Remus wiggles his eyebrows provocatively. “I think we can still put them to good use.”
Sirius swallows thickly, all mirth wiped from his face. “Jesus.”
“Right,” Remus says, pulling himself away, “get off me. I hear old people just on the other side of the door. Time to act as if we’ve not sullied this consecrated ground. Let’s see if we can say a quick goodbye and sneak off.”
Remus’s mum rounds on them and Sirius oh-so-subtly adjusts his trousers. “What happened to Benjy?” she asks.
“Dumped,” Sirius tells her gleefully.
“Oh good.” She’s never been one to mince her words. “Bit stroppy wasn’t he, really? I much prefer you,” she tells Sirius. “You’re superb.”
“Mum!” Remus yelps, mortified. “Stop it, we’re not even...” He glances at Sirius, who’s eyes glint mischievously. “Together?”
Sirius tuts at him like he’s a bit of an idiot, but in a nice way that makes him feel wanted. “We absolutely are.”
The thought thrills him. And the sadness he feels about one ending is muted by the sharp optimism of a lovely new beginning.
Then Remus’s mum insists on taking them both out, and the new beginning has to get postponed for a few more hours while they get sloshed on pornstar martinis.
“Remus,” Sirius says at one point, “would you like to join me outside for a cigarette?”
“I don’t smo-” He stops when he sees Sirius’s pointed look. “Oh. Yes. I would love to join you for a cigarette. I love smoking. Gimme some of that sweet, sweet tar. I just can’t get enough of those delicious carcinogens.”
Luckily, his mum isn’t listening because clearly if she were listening, she would spot in an instant that he’s talking a load of tosh.
“You’re so bloody pretty,” Sirius tells him when the cool summer breeze hits them. “Can’t pull my eyes away. Can’t think of anything else. Since you walked into that bar, I can’t think of anything else.”
He kisses him in a frenzy and Remus honestly can’t wait to get him home so that they can kick things off for real.
Someone heckles them as they walk by and Sirius flips the V, not breaking contact for a second.
Sirius pulls away to look at Remus. He runs a light finger over the shell of his ear, exploring new parts of him in a daze. “I don’t mean to be disrespectful, and I think we are all united in wishing her a swift recovery, but I’m kind of glad Cathy got giardia.”
Remus cackles and pulls him back in.
Things go slightly wrong after that. There are too many cocktails and too much laughter, and Remus wakes up fully clothed on his mother’s sofa, mushed into Sirius’s chest with Wilhelmina K Duck wedged into the gap between the sofa cushions and the armrest.
“Ah,” Sirius says, voice scratchy with sleep. “Well, that’s not quite what I had in mind.”
Remus giggles as Hope bustles into the room, smirking.
“Tea or coffee, boys?”
“Coffee,” they say in unison, and she laughs, looking irritatingly sober.
Remus pushes himself up and hovers over Sirius, who still looks quite obscenely attractive, even in a dress shirt and boxers. “Shall we try this again tonight? Fancy going for dinner?”
“I fancy you.” Sirius laughs softly, running light fingers through Remus’s hair. “And a night in. Could you go for a night in?”
After all those cocktails, all the wanky mirrored walls and the impressive sleep debt he’s built up, he definitely could.
Sirius buries his face in the curve of Remus’s neck and takes a good hard sniff of his skin. “Come over at seven. Bring some slippers and we’ll cook and get cosy.”
“It’s midsummer,” Remus points out. “I’m not sure the slippers will be necessary.”
“Naked feet?” Sirius laughs. “On our first proper date? You’re such a renegade. I sort of dig it, though. In fact, if I get my way, we’ll be clothed for an hour maximum.”
Remus slaps him playfully over the back of the head. “My mum is just in the other room!”
Sirius shrugs. “I think she already knows about the birds and the bees. She also definitely knew what my intentions were long before you’d figured it out.”
“Hmm,” Remus laughs. “Bit of a trend there, if I’m honest.”
Sirius grins, pulls him down, and kisses him hard.
--
Six months later
It’s the night of the wind orchestra’s Christmas concert and it’s all his mother has talked about for weeks and he’s nothing if not supportive. Which is how he ends up back at the same church, wearing the same jumper and sitting conspicuously in the front row.
There had better not be any audience participation required. He wouldn’t go through that, even for his mother.
But there is another person present in the back somewhere; someone who could probably ask Remus to participate, humiliate himself, whatever, and he would probably agree to it.
His mum is one of the first to file in and take her seat. She spots Remus in the crowd and waves at him manically. He nods back in acknowledgement.
Sirius is the last to come out once the rest of the orchestra is seated. He looks ridiculous in a sparkly red bow tie and an equally spangly santa hat. He finds Remus in the crowd and winks.
Remus totally adores him. And after half a year together, he still wakes up every day completely stunned by the fact that they’re together. He’s not sure what’s happened to his life but he hopes he gets to keep it.
He checks his pocket for the hundredth time tonight, knowing himself to be capable of losing even something as important and potentially life-changing as the ring he’s got in there.
It’s quick. He knows it’s quick. But he basically doesn’t want to spend any more of his life not married to the man he loves, to his Sirius: Sirius who has lit up his life from the inside out; Sirius who has squeezed so much levity and laughter into their existence.
And now here he is, the orchestra’s new conductor, shining brightly in front of a room full of people. Remus loves how fully he’s embraced it all, how much he’s embraced him without looking back.
Sirius clears his throat and projects his voice so that everyone in the church can hear him clearly.
“Good evening everyone and welcome to our very special Christmas concert. As is only proper at such events, we’re going to kick things off with our version of Hark the Herald Angels Sing, featuring a solo on the flute from our very own Hope Lupin. We’ve been working very hard on this one so I hope you all enjoy.”
He turns back to the orchestra, stands up straight, and leads them into a piece that is... passably good, Remus’s mum’s solo included.
Nonetheless, Remus fumbles once more for the box in his pocket and indulges in a private smile. He can’t wait for what comes next.