(no subject)
I was writing a Bella-centric fic. I was. I swear. And then I got bunnied by my own comment over at SCUSA. Padmoon must be as addicted to me as I am to it, because it refuses to relinquish me even for the time it takes to write one Bella-centric.
The Best Laid Plans (HP; R/S; 5,515 words; PG-13 for language and implication, I suppose.)
When Sirius comes in from work, he is three things- soaked, irritable, and an hour late. All three states have their roots in the fact that he’s been playing the good little Junior Auror go-for all day, and it is pouring not buckets but great bloody vats, and he forgot his umbrella. Normally, he wouldn’t have needed one anyway, but his overseer told him he wasn’t to use magic for something as trivial as staying dry on Auror business lest the enemy detect it. It’s a load of bollocks, he knows, more a hazing ritual than anything- he was ferrying budget reports between the Ministry and St Mungo’s, for Circe’s sweet sake- but being a Junior Auror isn’t like being at Hogwarts, where one could skive off or do a bit of magic in the commons without anyone really caring. Disobey a superior for your own comfort as a Junior Auror, and you’re out of the program, it’s that simple, and Sirius doesn’t know what else he’d do. He could always fall back on his childhood dream of writing jingles for Zonko’s, he supposes, a career that would make good use of both his facility with rhyme and his extensive knowledge of the latest in pranking products. Unfortunately, in the face of the rumbles of encroaching war and the chance to be a hero, Zonko’s seems a bit unfulfilling as life’s work. Even if they would let him use an umbrella charm.
This explains the fact that he leaves a drippy path worthy of the Giant Squid up the stairs to the flat he shares with Remus; and the fact that, running along with the last batch of reports in an effort to get done a bit early, he had tripped over a slick fallen branch and went sprawling, sending the files into a massive puddle which even their water-resistant charms could not thwart (they are allowed charms, which just proves him right about the hazing,) explains the lateness and the irritability. He’d had to run back to the Ministry with the useless, soggy papers, and endure a lecture about having a sense of responsibility while the reports were recopied. All in all, by the time he finally climbs the last flight of stairs and reaches the door to his flat, the only thing he wants to do is fling himself at his Moony and be made much of.
This is exactly what he does, and with alacrity, as Remus is curled on the shabby little couch in the main room with a book and looks like he could do with some being flung at. He is met with an “oof,” and a “You’re quite wet,” but not the “Get off of me, you soaking animal,” or “This will teach you not to forget your umbrella, won’t it,” that he’s expecting. He nuzzles damply into Remus’s neck and garners so little reaction that he has to consider that maybe Remus isn’t in the mood to make much of him. It is bizarre, and it will not do.
“Oi, Moony,” he says, sitting back and flipping his sopping fringe out of his eyes, “What is it?” The fringe falls back into place, sticking wetly to his forehead, and he sighs.
Remus only shrugs, but the fact that he doesn’t even smirk at Sirius’s hair trouble belies the implied ‘nothing.’
“If it’s because I’m late, I’ll have you know it’s entirely that puddle’s fault. Really. I tried to hurry home to you, I did, but the life of a Junior Auror is-“
Remus cuts him off. “My mum phoned today,” he says quietly, not quite meeting Sirius’s eyes but rather focusing right below them on his cheeks. The eyes narrow in response, because though most people wouldn’t even notice the slight disparity in half a centimetre’s distance, Sirius is a connoisseur of the language that is Moony. Something is very much up.
“Did she?” he asks, arching an eyebrow. “Wonderful invention, that teller-phone thingy.” He doesn’t trust the telephone on principal, not because he doesn’t like Muggle things- he loves them, mostly, especially record players- but because he has enough trouble keeping his mouth in check when he can see the effect he’s having on people, and shudders to think what awful, arse things he’d say when given the opportunity to babble on into an anonymous mouthpiece as if he were talking to himself. Owls and floos are much more civilized.
“Telephone,” Remus corrects absently, though they both know that Sirius knows and is simply being disdainful. “Yes, she did.”
Sirius tries very, very hard not to expel a long-suffering sigh. Moony does this all the time, this thing where he makes a comment and then is dense about the follow-up, skirting around the story that he so obviously wants to tell until you go mad trying to coax it out of him. In his better moments, Sirius finds the obtuseness endearing, but he is wet and shivering and starting to get hungry. This is not one of his better moments.
“Well?” he asks, quelling his irritation as best he can. “Was it a nice conversation, then?”
“Err-“
“Out with it before I decide to drip all over you.” Never mind that he’s already done so.
“She and Dad want to come for a visit.”
Sirius breaks into a grin, because although he’s only ever seen Remus’s parents on the platform and for brief stints during the holidays when they’d drop Remus off for a week at the Potters’, he quite likes them. “Ace!” he says with enthusiasm. “I can’t fathom why you’re looking so blue about it, you know I’m all for spending time with anybody who regularly mails you massive amounts of chocolate. And they’ve already heard my rendition of ‘Penny Lane,’ remember I sang it on the platform fourth year, so it’s not like they can be any more horrified by me then they already are.”
But Remus still isn’t looking at him, has in fact transferred his gaze to a couch cushion. As Sirius speaks, he even begins to busy himself picking lint from it.
Sirius is a bright young man, and one who catches on quickly. Remus’s behavior has nothing to do with the innovative substitution of ‘in her rear and on her thighs’ in a Beatles tune. His stomach drops and twists unpleasantly. “Oh. Oh, you haven’t told them. I see.”
Remus’s blank expression and silence are answer enough.
Sirius swallows against the swirling mix of irritation, indignation, and hurt that’s catching in his throat. “I can’t- well, fine then. Fine, we can transfigure the bed into two, and put them across the room from each other. Roommates, right? In fact, maybe we ought to do that tonight-“
“Sirius, please,” Remus protests, but Sirius is too far along for that. He’s abruptly grateful for the water still dripping down his face. Not that he’s going to cry, or anything, he’s not that big a nance, but it’s comforting to have the excuse just in case.
“No, no, it makes perfect sense,” he continues as blithely as he can manage around the hitch in his throat, “I mean, it’s your choice. If you don’t feel secure enough to tell them about the four year relationship you’ve had with another bloke, who am I to question it? I mean, besides being the bloke, I’ve really got no investment in your life, have I?” He knows he’s being unreasonable even as he says it, but he can’t stop. He hadn’t thought Remus was ashamed of them.
Unfortunately, Remus too knows that he isn’t being entirely fair, and it shows in his voice. “Look, it’s not like you’ve told-“ he cuts off abruptly, looking contrite.
“My parents?” Sirius asks acidly, no longer feeling unreasonable. “Actually, Lupin, I have. It’s one of the last things I said to them before I left that house. ‘Actually, mum,’ says I, ‘I’m not too pure at all. I’m in love with a half-blood already, and furthermore he’s a boy, and furthermore he loves me better than you ever bothered to, and I’d rather live in the gutter with him then a palace with your kind.’ She didn’t like that at all, oh no. You missed the Howler I got at James’s. Actually, you missed all the Howlers I got at James’s, but there was one just for that. Called me a filthy little sodomite, I believe, right in front of James’s mum, by the way, and at tea-time with guests over. I hadn’t wanted to tell her that way. I’d wanted to wait until James was in bed one day, and go down to talk to her, and tell her then, because she was my mother, you know, in everything that mattered, and I wanted her to know who it was that I loved. So actually, Lupin, point at any of my ‘parents’ you like, and they know.”
Remus is staring at him in stunned silence by now, his thin lips parted and a shamed blush on his cheeks. Sirius doesn’t care. It hurts.
“I’m soaked,” he says shortly, and slams into the bathroom before his boyfriend can say a word.
---
The bed is far too narrow for the flailing that Sirius likes to do in his sleep, a fact that is keeping him awake and staring at the dark ceiling. He knew that it would be too narrow when he slammed out of the bathroom and into the bedroom, locked the door, and transfigured the double bed into two singles. He’d been too furious, too deep in his fit of pique, to care. In fact, he still is.
The door creaks when it opens, giving him enough warning to flip over so that his face is to the wall and his back is to Remus. Hmmph. There’s a pause as he does so, and then a sigh, and then the sound of footsteps coming close. Like the door, his bed creaks when another body settles onto it, and then there’s the warm weight of Remus spooned up against him over the covers. He shivers slightly, unable to remain totally indifferent.
“It’s not that I don’t want them to know,” comes the murmur against his ear. “Do you think I don’t know that I’m the luckiest bastard in the world? I want the whole world to know that you love me as much as I love you. It’s just-“ here a slight tremble creeps into the normally careful voice- “I don’t know how to tell them.”
Sirius is thawed but not entirely warmed by the words. “Saying ‘Mum, Dad, Sirius and I aren’t just roommates,’ might do the job.”
Remus’s sigh stirs the hairs at the nape of his neck. “I know,” he says after a minute. “I just- I’m not brave like you. You know that.”
Sirius flips over so that he’s lying on his back, forcing Remus to sit up. Once the weight is removed, he does so as well. “It’s not about being brave, you know.”
“It is,” Remus protests. “And I’m not.”
“At least half of that statement is wrong,” Sirius assures him.
Remus is silent for a long time, looking down. Sirius watches him, knowing that he wants the mercy of a cessation of scrutiny, unwilling to give him that. Finally he fidgets and looks up again. “I don’t want to lie to them about it,” he says softly. “You’re not my roommate. And I’d go mad if I had to sleep across the room from you.”
Sirius allows a slight, soft smile to work its way free. “All right,” he says simply, and reaches out for his Moony. They lie down together, Remus half on top of Sirius in the too-narrow bed, Sirius’s lips against Remus’s forehead.
He waits until Remus’s breathing is slowing and steadying to speak again. “I knew there was a reason you wouldn’t let me say ‘Sirius and Remus’s Flat of Shagging, we’re probably going at it and will call you back when we’ve gotten off’ on the answering thingy. I knew it wasn’t just that you didn’t want me to have any fun at all with the mellow-phone.”
“Telephone,” Remus corrects, and they both chuckle sleepily.
---
It is, Sirius thinks, the best meal he’s ever picked up from the shop down the street. It is not, however, as good as it would be if Remus had allowed him to cook himself.
“Remember when you spilled the catsup in the trifle and served it anyway?” he had asked pointedly when Sirius suggested it.
“It was an experiment,” Sirius had corrected, “And besides, it had its own sort of charm. Peter even said he’d eat it again if he were really hungry, and Lily said it was just the kind of thing she’s going to crave someday when she’s preggers.”
“She said that with fear, Sirius,” Remus had replied laughingly. “Anyway, what about the time when you forgot Peter is allergic to peanuts and he almost died while we tried to find the charm to make the swelling go down?”
“An honest mistake!”
“Or the time you decided that instead of going out to buy chocolate sauce, you were going to melt down some chocolate frogs, only you put the heat on too low and they all escaped and we were scrubbing half-melted frog out of the carpet for weeks? Or the time when you thought boiling a chicken in vinegar was the same as making a marinade? Or when-“
“Enough, enough!” Sirius had cried, throwing up his hands. “We’ll order in. But you don’t know what you’re missing!”
“And for that I am profoundly grateful.”
Still, he has to admit that the ordered food is quite nice, if neither very homey nor showing off the adventurous culinary spirit that he’d rather display to guests. The Lupins seem to like it, anyway. It goes quickly, and soon plates are being stacked.
Sirius scoops them up quickly. “I’ll do the dishes,” he says with a smile, shaking off all protests. There are two motivations for his solicitousness- one, he’d like very much for Remus’s parents to think him the most helpful, respectful, mature young man in the world and quite worthy of their son (not to mention, please Merlin, forget about ‘Penny Lane.) Two, he knows Remus wants privacy in which to tell them about his true relationship with his ‘roommate.’ Sirius understands that desire- three years ago, before the Howler, he hadn’t even wanted James or Mr. Potter in the room when he told Mrs. Potter, though James of course already knew and Mr. Potter was as much father to him as Mrs. Potter was mother. Besides, he doesn’t mind doing the dishes. It’s warm on the hands.
Of course, none of this is to say that he does not plan on listening in. He turns the water up just enough to rinse the dishes and make it sound like he can’t hear, but really he’s straining his ears over the flow to catch the words coming from the main room.
Unfortunately, all he hears is, “Remus, really, are you going to let that poor boy do all the cleaning himself? Where are your manners? We can talk to you later, dear,” from Mrs. Lupin.
It’s quickly followed by a muffled response from her son, and then Remus enters the kitchen looking sheepish. Sirius raises an eyebrow.
“I’ll dry,” is all Remus says.
They work in companionable silence for a few minutes, until Sirius happens to glance over and notice the strained, anxious look on Remus’s face. He can’t bear it, and so he flicks some suds at the werewolf, and then some more, until Remus is laughing and swatting at him with his towel. And of course then Sirius cannot help waiting until Remus has turned to put a bowl down, covering his hands in warm suds, and placing them on Remus’s hips. Remus jumps, and laughs again as Sirius says “Cleaning you up, you dirty werewolf,” and then leans back into him as Sirius snakes his arms around the Moonybelly. He stretches his neck to put his chin on Remus’s shoulder, remembering that once, when they first were together, Remus was shorter than him and he could do this easily. After a moment he sighs and leans his cheek against Remus’s back instead, closing his eyes and hugging a bit tighter, thinking how much he loves this, that the most mundane of tasks are made brilliant and beautiful by this man’s sheer presence. He is so, so lucky.
He has completely forgotten that Remus’s parents are in the flat, that they exist at all, until a startled cough sounds behind him. Remus, whirling, sends him off his balance, but he recovers in time to see Mrs. Lupin standing in the doorway, her eyes wide and a tomato-coloured blush creeping into her face.
“Oh, ah,” she stutters, and turns to leave.
“Mum,” Remus says a bit desperately, “Mum, wait.”
She stops and turns again, running a nervous hand through graying blonde hair. She and her son look at each other. Sirius wonders if Remus will get angry with him if he shows support, and then decides that the jig is up anyway. He grabs Remus’s hand in his own and is rewarded with a tight little smile.
Mrs. Lupin clears her throat. “So, ah, you’re…?”
Remus takes a deep breath. “Yes, we rather are,” he says, shaking Sirius’s hand off. For a moment Sirius is terrified, but then Remus’s arm snakes around is waist and he can breathe again.
“Oh.” There is silence in the kitchen for what feels like a thousand years. “I rather suspected,” Remus’s mother admits finally.
“Did you?” Remus asks, his voice a bit high with nerves. She nods.
And then Mr. Lupin appears behind her.
Remus’s arm tightens convulsively around Sirius, and then drops all together, but it’s too late, Mr. Lupin is already staring at the embrace and the wet marks on his son’s waist that are evidence of similar attention from Sirius and the way the young men are standing close enough that their hips and arms touch, and it is clear that he, for one, did not rather suspect. His eyes widen, and then narrow, and he goes an unflattering pink colour, and then his entire body stiffens. “Shite,” he grits out, and then he’s out of the doorway, and the door of the flat is slamming.
Remus deflates visibly. “Shite,” he whispers, echoing his father. Sirius looks at him in confusion. “He’s so- he’s going to be crazy- he’s so prejudiced- I wanted to tell him gently-“
His mother gives him a very pointed look. “Remus,” she says sternly, “You know he’ll get over any prejudice for you,” and then Sirius remembers Remus telling him that his father was, once upon a time, very much a part of the Anti-werewolf movement in the Ministry.
There is a momentary pause during which the tension in the tiny room absolutely crackles, and then Mrs. Lupin sighs. “I’d best go after him.”
“No,” Remus says. He squares his shoulders, sucks in a breath. “I’ll go. It’s, it’s mine to deal with. If I’d told you earlier, this wouldn’t…I’ll go.” He kisses Sirius quickly on the cheek, gives him a look that speaks volumes of terror, and then hurries out. Sirius and Mrs. Lupin watch him go.
After they hear the door shut outside, Mrs. Lupin turns to Sirius with a raised eyebrow.
“Er,” Sirius says, doing his best to keep from fidgeting. He feels like a first year under the scrutiny of McGonagall. “Care for some trifle? I made it myself.”
---
“Dad!” Remus calls; he can see his father several blocks ahead of him, walking quickly. He only speeds up when he hears the call. Remus has no choice but to pound down the sidewalk after him.
“Dad, stop. Wait! You owe me that much, at least,” he says when he’s directly behind the man. John Lupin merely hunches his back. He does not turn around.
“You’re, you’re being unreasonable,” Remus says before he can think about it. He’s never said anything so rude to his father, but he’s forced to remind Sirius of his unreasonableness so often that it’s a reflex accusation now. Unfairness is like a Doctor’s tap at his knee, getting a response without conscious thought.
“And you’re being a fuckin’ pouf,” his father shoots back, still not stopping. Remus winces, sighs, and lengthens his stride until he’s walking side-by-side with the man.
“Dad, father,” he corrects himself, going formal because John is not going to respond to entreaties, “I meant to tell you tonight-“
John cuts him off. “Tell me what? That my son’s a damn shirt lifter?”
“Well, not in so many words, no,” Remus says, hating the anxiety in his own voice. “But-“
“We thought we were coming to visit a man. A man! And you sit us down to dinner, and you let us believe you’re not degrading yourself with that…that-“
Suddenly, Remus has had quite enough. He stops dead, and before his father can walk on he grabs the man by the shoulder, forcing him to stop, forcing him to turn and look at him. John Lupin is a big man, but his son is a werewolf, and stronger. Try as he might to wrench himself out of Remus’s grip, he can’t.
“His name is Sirius, as you know quite well,” Remus says coldly. “He’s my best friend, and yes, my lover, and hell, maybe my soul mate, I don’t know. Either way, you’re going to call him by his name, and not whatever epithet you were going to spit out just then.”
John Lupin glared into his son’s face. “Don’t you talk to me that way, you ungrateful, filthy little-“
“Oh, no,” Remus says, feeling the boiling in his stomach that means he is furious. It’s a rare feeling for him, but powerful, and in this moment he cherishes it. “You do not get to call me ‘filthy’ for this. Do you know what else you used to call filthy, father?”
John’s eyes drop, but it doesn’t stop Remus.
“Werewolves. You used to climb up on your high horse and call werewolves filthy, and unnatural, and disgusting, and monstrous. And you know what else, father?” he hears finality in his own voice. “Now I am one. Because of that, I am one.” He has never once used this against his father before, has never even allowed himself to think it. He knows that John Lupin went through agonies of guilt when he realized which werewolf exactly had bitten his son, and why. He has never considered putting him through more. But this- it’s too important. Or maybe it’s simply that he’s spent too much time with Sirius and that temper is rubbing off. He rather thinks it’s the former. “Well, I’m also a shirt lifter, or a pouf, or a fairy, or whatever damn word you want to use. And it has nothing to do with you. It’s just who I am, and I would have been no matter what. And as long as there was going to be a Sirius, I was going to fall in love with him. And nothing you do or say will change that, because it’s part of me, and I am perfectly happy with it. It’s not some filthy animal that lives inside of me, father, it is just your son, and you are going to respect that. And if you can’t, if you call me dirty one more time, I’m…I’m…I’m going to punch you in the nose, and then I am going to turn around and go home, and you will not be entering my flat again. Do you hear me?” He has been getting fiercer and louder with every passing word, and by the time he comes to the end he is breathing as hard as if he just ran a marathon.
John Lupin is speechless and red-faced. Still, Remus thinks he detects something like grudging respect in his father’s eyes. See a man now, father? he wonders.
“Come on,” he says after a very long moment, and turns around, not waiting to see if the man will follow him.
He does.
---
Sirius clears his throat. It’s not that there’s anything in his throat; there couldn’t be, as he’s cleared it at least thirteen times in the last minute and a half. If there were still something in his throat, he’d be heading off to St. Mungo’s to ask a mediwitch about the overproduction of mucus in young male wizards.
Yet again the throat-clearing elicits no reaction from Mrs. Lupin, who is sitting on the couch with her elbow on her knee and her chin on her hand and is staring into the distance with the expression of one who has a lot of thinking to do. Sirius is not a man to give up on something just because it hasn’t worked thirteen times; still, he reasons, if it doesn’t work the fourteenth, maybe a new approach is necessary.
“D’you want more trifle, Mrs- ma’am?” he asks, because it is literally, literally, all he can think to say. Imagine, he muses, the Great and Eloquent Sirius Black brought to stuttering inane questions about desserts by his boyfriend’s nice mum! What’s next, a nice question about the weather?
Mrs. Lupin starts. “What, dear?” she asks absently. Clearly she barely heard him. He is perhaps a bit offended. It wasn’t a very good question, perhaps, but it still deserves listening to, surely. Is his voice that boring?
“Um, the trifle,” he says carefully, because really he’s more nervous- nervous!- then offended. “Want some more of it?”
“Oh, no,” she says just as carefully. “Thank you.” She returns to staring at the wall. Sirius follows her gaze. No, there isn’t anything that merits scrutiny there. It isn’t even one of the spots where the chocolate frogs left faint, delicious stains.
Finally, he can stand it no longer. This is ridiculous. Sirius Black is a Gryffindor, a Mapmaker, an Adventurer, a Marauder. He is not going to be cowed by the presence or person of the woman who gave birth to the man he has been snogging with regularity for years. After all, she had to snog somebody at some point to do the birth-giving, didn’t she? It isn’t so different.
“Look, Mrs. Lupin,” he says, and is only briefly held up when she looks at him again with eyes that hold the same sharp intelligence and warmth as Remus’s. Plunging forward is, after all, one of his specialties. “Mrs. Lupin, I love him. I love him a lot, actually it’s rather ridiculous how much I love him. Honestly, it’s saccharine, I actually leave love poems by authors he likes under his morning teacup, sometimes, so you can see that I must love him quite a lot. And I know you’d really rather I weren’t a bloke, but, but I have to believe that that’s the only problem, and if I were a girl and I loved your son like this you wouldn’t mind. And if that’s the case, well, I’m not a girl but that’s hardly my fault or his, and there isn’t a girl in the world who could love him as much as I do, and I’d really appreciate it if you could try to look at it that way instead of thinking ‘Oh heavens, this man is snogging my son.’”
Mrs. Lupin shuts her eyes briefly, and sighs.
“I didn’t mean it in an, an offensive way,” Sirius mutters desperately. Stuttering. Stuttering!
“I know, dear,” she replies, opening her eyes again. “And it’s not an issue of ‘Oh heavens.’ It’s just-“ she sighs. “Life is already so very hard for him, with what he i-“ she stops abruptly, looking at him with an odd mixture of suspicion, curiosity, and anxiety.
“I know what he is,” Sirius says bleakly. “I know he’s a werewolf. I’ve known it for years. And I love him anyway, I love him because of it, I just love him.”
She sighs again. There has been, Sirius thinks, an awful lot of sighing since supper. “That’s not what I’m worried about,” she says softly. And then, more resolutely, “Sirius, I’m going to be frank with you. My son has been a member of a reviled minority since he was four years old. The way the Wizarding world is headed, I suspect that that minority is only going to be more reviled in the future. Because of this, life has never been kind to him, and it is only going to get worse. To think that he is part of a second reviled minority- and Sirius, neither Muggles nor Wizards accept this easily, no matter what your friends may or may not have done- well, it makes a Mother’s blood run cold.”
Sirius has been biting his lip through this speech, but he has to answer her, he has to make her understand, for Remus.
“Well, ma’am, but with all due respect, he is this way. He likes men. I like men. It’s a fact, whether anybody else likes it or not. He’s been this way for, well, I assume he’s been this way since birth, but we’ve known about each other since we were fifteen.” He pauses briefly, wondering if Remus will mind that he’s let slip just how long their relationship has been kept from his mother, but it’s the only way he knows how to defend this. Them. “It’s not going away. So don’t you think that it’s better for him to have somebody who loves him this much, even if it means that he has to embrace another thing that other people might not like about him, than for him to hide it and be alone? Because, no offense, but I remember him before we figured out that he was a werewolf, and he was so alone, Mrs. Lupin. And it was a part of him whether he hid it from us or not. So we all thought it better to let him know we knew, and we were right. And I think this might be the same.”
She rubs a hand across her eyes before looking at him sideways. “Have you told him all this?”
“Not in so many words, no,” Sirius says, pulling nervously at his fringe. “But he knows.”
“I think perhaps you should,” Remus’s mother tells him. “Never, ever leave things unsaid, Sirius. Even if the other person knows. You’ll regret it.” A strange, sad look passes over her face. “I know that very often, Remus leaves things unsaid. I regret that I didn’t teach him better. You’ll have to do that for me, all right?”
“Of course,” he replied gallantly.
“Sirius. You’re the one who sang ‘Penny Lane,’ aren’t you?”
Sirius feels the hot blush filling his cheeks. “Yes.”
She chuckles. It sounds tired. “Are you always this polite and insightful?”
“No, ma’am,” he answers truthfully, because apparently it’s a day for truths.
“I appreciate the effort.”
Silence reigns for an increasingly long time. It takes all of Sirius’s strength not to give in and fidget like there’s a kneazle in his trousers.
Mrs. Lupin is the one who breaks the silence this time. “I wanted grandchildren, you know,” she says, her tone wry.
“My mum wanted me to nance around with a green sword and be a Scion all day,” he says earnestly. “The best laid plans…”
It gets a true laugh from her. “Sirius?”
“Yeah?”
“You can call me Mary from now on.”
---
Mary and John Lupin do not stay the night as they had planned to, a fact which concerns Sirius greatly.
“He needs time,” Remus says, back to his collected self. “He’ll come around. He always does. After all, if he can stand a werewolf for a son, surely he can stand a sodomite.” The words are bitter, but Sirius knows the peculiar language of Moony, and he finds the laughter in Remus’s voice. It’s all right, then. He slides into bed next to his Moony, wiggling his toes against the cool sheets, fitting his head into the familiar space between shoulder and jaw, the space where he fits with no spaces. At least not any of significance.
“D’you know what I told your mum tonight?” he asks, remembering something she told him.
“What?”
“That it is absolutely ridiculous how much I love you. Saccharine. Told her about the poetry.”
“Know what I told my father?”
“Hmm?” Sirius nuzzles up against his throat, humming against his skin.
“That I would punch him in the face.” They both laugh. And then Remus continues, in a very small voice. “And that you might very well be my soul mate.”
Sirius makes gagging noises, opening his mouth against his Moony’s throat. “You’re worse than me!” he crows in triumph.
“I rather think we’re exactly the same about it, actually,” Remus says.
“You’re probably right,” Sirius admits. “Go to sleep, you sentimental werewolf.”
“You too, you ridiculous puppy.”
They do.
The Best Laid Plans (HP; R/S; 5,515 words; PG-13 for language and implication, I suppose.)
When Sirius comes in from work, he is three things- soaked, irritable, and an hour late. All three states have their roots in the fact that he’s been playing the good little Junior Auror go-for all day, and it is pouring not buckets but great bloody vats, and he forgot his umbrella. Normally, he wouldn’t have needed one anyway, but his overseer told him he wasn’t to use magic for something as trivial as staying dry on Auror business lest the enemy detect it. It’s a load of bollocks, he knows, more a hazing ritual than anything- he was ferrying budget reports between the Ministry and St Mungo’s, for Circe’s sweet sake- but being a Junior Auror isn’t like being at Hogwarts, where one could skive off or do a bit of magic in the commons without anyone really caring. Disobey a superior for your own comfort as a Junior Auror, and you’re out of the program, it’s that simple, and Sirius doesn’t know what else he’d do. He could always fall back on his childhood dream of writing jingles for Zonko’s, he supposes, a career that would make good use of both his facility with rhyme and his extensive knowledge of the latest in pranking products. Unfortunately, in the face of the rumbles of encroaching war and the chance to be a hero, Zonko’s seems a bit unfulfilling as life’s work. Even if they would let him use an umbrella charm.
This explains the fact that he leaves a drippy path worthy of the Giant Squid up the stairs to the flat he shares with Remus; and the fact that, running along with the last batch of reports in an effort to get done a bit early, he had tripped over a slick fallen branch and went sprawling, sending the files into a massive puddle which even their water-resistant charms could not thwart (they are allowed charms, which just proves him right about the hazing,) explains the lateness and the irritability. He’d had to run back to the Ministry with the useless, soggy papers, and endure a lecture about having a sense of responsibility while the reports were recopied. All in all, by the time he finally climbs the last flight of stairs and reaches the door to his flat, the only thing he wants to do is fling himself at his Moony and be made much of.
This is exactly what he does, and with alacrity, as Remus is curled on the shabby little couch in the main room with a book and looks like he could do with some being flung at. He is met with an “oof,” and a “You’re quite wet,” but not the “Get off of me, you soaking animal,” or “This will teach you not to forget your umbrella, won’t it,” that he’s expecting. He nuzzles damply into Remus’s neck and garners so little reaction that he has to consider that maybe Remus isn’t in the mood to make much of him. It is bizarre, and it will not do.
“Oi, Moony,” he says, sitting back and flipping his sopping fringe out of his eyes, “What is it?” The fringe falls back into place, sticking wetly to his forehead, and he sighs.
Remus only shrugs, but the fact that he doesn’t even smirk at Sirius’s hair trouble belies the implied ‘nothing.’
“If it’s because I’m late, I’ll have you know it’s entirely that puddle’s fault. Really. I tried to hurry home to you, I did, but the life of a Junior Auror is-“
Remus cuts him off. “My mum phoned today,” he says quietly, not quite meeting Sirius’s eyes but rather focusing right below them on his cheeks. The eyes narrow in response, because though most people wouldn’t even notice the slight disparity in half a centimetre’s distance, Sirius is a connoisseur of the language that is Moony. Something is very much up.
“Did she?” he asks, arching an eyebrow. “Wonderful invention, that teller-phone thingy.” He doesn’t trust the telephone on principal, not because he doesn’t like Muggle things- he loves them, mostly, especially record players- but because he has enough trouble keeping his mouth in check when he can see the effect he’s having on people, and shudders to think what awful, arse things he’d say when given the opportunity to babble on into an anonymous mouthpiece as if he were talking to himself. Owls and floos are much more civilized.
“Telephone,” Remus corrects absently, though they both know that Sirius knows and is simply being disdainful. “Yes, she did.”
Sirius tries very, very hard not to expel a long-suffering sigh. Moony does this all the time, this thing where he makes a comment and then is dense about the follow-up, skirting around the story that he so obviously wants to tell until you go mad trying to coax it out of him. In his better moments, Sirius finds the obtuseness endearing, but he is wet and shivering and starting to get hungry. This is not one of his better moments.
“Well?” he asks, quelling his irritation as best he can. “Was it a nice conversation, then?”
“Err-“
“Out with it before I decide to drip all over you.” Never mind that he’s already done so.
“She and Dad want to come for a visit.”
Sirius breaks into a grin, because although he’s only ever seen Remus’s parents on the platform and for brief stints during the holidays when they’d drop Remus off for a week at the Potters’, he quite likes them. “Ace!” he says with enthusiasm. “I can’t fathom why you’re looking so blue about it, you know I’m all for spending time with anybody who regularly mails you massive amounts of chocolate. And they’ve already heard my rendition of ‘Penny Lane,’ remember I sang it on the platform fourth year, so it’s not like they can be any more horrified by me then they already are.”
But Remus still isn’t looking at him, has in fact transferred his gaze to a couch cushion. As Sirius speaks, he even begins to busy himself picking lint from it.
Sirius is a bright young man, and one who catches on quickly. Remus’s behavior has nothing to do with the innovative substitution of ‘in her rear and on her thighs’ in a Beatles tune. His stomach drops and twists unpleasantly. “Oh. Oh, you haven’t told them. I see.”
Remus’s blank expression and silence are answer enough.
Sirius swallows against the swirling mix of irritation, indignation, and hurt that’s catching in his throat. “I can’t- well, fine then. Fine, we can transfigure the bed into two, and put them across the room from each other. Roommates, right? In fact, maybe we ought to do that tonight-“
“Sirius, please,” Remus protests, but Sirius is too far along for that. He’s abruptly grateful for the water still dripping down his face. Not that he’s going to cry, or anything, he’s not that big a nance, but it’s comforting to have the excuse just in case.
“No, no, it makes perfect sense,” he continues as blithely as he can manage around the hitch in his throat, “I mean, it’s your choice. If you don’t feel secure enough to tell them about the four year relationship you’ve had with another bloke, who am I to question it? I mean, besides being the bloke, I’ve really got no investment in your life, have I?” He knows he’s being unreasonable even as he says it, but he can’t stop. He hadn’t thought Remus was ashamed of them.
Unfortunately, Remus too knows that he isn’t being entirely fair, and it shows in his voice. “Look, it’s not like you’ve told-“ he cuts off abruptly, looking contrite.
“My parents?” Sirius asks acidly, no longer feeling unreasonable. “Actually, Lupin, I have. It’s one of the last things I said to them before I left that house. ‘Actually, mum,’ says I, ‘I’m not too pure at all. I’m in love with a half-blood already, and furthermore he’s a boy, and furthermore he loves me better than you ever bothered to, and I’d rather live in the gutter with him then a palace with your kind.’ She didn’t like that at all, oh no. You missed the Howler I got at James’s. Actually, you missed all the Howlers I got at James’s, but there was one just for that. Called me a filthy little sodomite, I believe, right in front of James’s mum, by the way, and at tea-time with guests over. I hadn’t wanted to tell her that way. I’d wanted to wait until James was in bed one day, and go down to talk to her, and tell her then, because she was my mother, you know, in everything that mattered, and I wanted her to know who it was that I loved. So actually, Lupin, point at any of my ‘parents’ you like, and they know.”
Remus is staring at him in stunned silence by now, his thin lips parted and a shamed blush on his cheeks. Sirius doesn’t care. It hurts.
“I’m soaked,” he says shortly, and slams into the bathroom before his boyfriend can say a word.
---
The bed is far too narrow for the flailing that Sirius likes to do in his sleep, a fact that is keeping him awake and staring at the dark ceiling. He knew that it would be too narrow when he slammed out of the bathroom and into the bedroom, locked the door, and transfigured the double bed into two singles. He’d been too furious, too deep in his fit of pique, to care. In fact, he still is.
The door creaks when it opens, giving him enough warning to flip over so that his face is to the wall and his back is to Remus. Hmmph. There’s a pause as he does so, and then a sigh, and then the sound of footsteps coming close. Like the door, his bed creaks when another body settles onto it, and then there’s the warm weight of Remus spooned up against him over the covers. He shivers slightly, unable to remain totally indifferent.
“It’s not that I don’t want them to know,” comes the murmur against his ear. “Do you think I don’t know that I’m the luckiest bastard in the world? I want the whole world to know that you love me as much as I love you. It’s just-“ here a slight tremble creeps into the normally careful voice- “I don’t know how to tell them.”
Sirius is thawed but not entirely warmed by the words. “Saying ‘Mum, Dad, Sirius and I aren’t just roommates,’ might do the job.”
Remus’s sigh stirs the hairs at the nape of his neck. “I know,” he says after a minute. “I just- I’m not brave like you. You know that.”
Sirius flips over so that he’s lying on his back, forcing Remus to sit up. Once the weight is removed, he does so as well. “It’s not about being brave, you know.”
“It is,” Remus protests. “And I’m not.”
“At least half of that statement is wrong,” Sirius assures him.
Remus is silent for a long time, looking down. Sirius watches him, knowing that he wants the mercy of a cessation of scrutiny, unwilling to give him that. Finally he fidgets and looks up again. “I don’t want to lie to them about it,” he says softly. “You’re not my roommate. And I’d go mad if I had to sleep across the room from you.”
Sirius allows a slight, soft smile to work its way free. “All right,” he says simply, and reaches out for his Moony. They lie down together, Remus half on top of Sirius in the too-narrow bed, Sirius’s lips against Remus’s forehead.
He waits until Remus’s breathing is slowing and steadying to speak again. “I knew there was a reason you wouldn’t let me say ‘Sirius and Remus’s Flat of Shagging, we’re probably going at it and will call you back when we’ve gotten off’ on the answering thingy. I knew it wasn’t just that you didn’t want me to have any fun at all with the mellow-phone.”
“Telephone,” Remus corrects, and they both chuckle sleepily.
---
It is, Sirius thinks, the best meal he’s ever picked up from the shop down the street. It is not, however, as good as it would be if Remus had allowed him to cook himself.
“Remember when you spilled the catsup in the trifle and served it anyway?” he had asked pointedly when Sirius suggested it.
“It was an experiment,” Sirius had corrected, “And besides, it had its own sort of charm. Peter even said he’d eat it again if he were really hungry, and Lily said it was just the kind of thing she’s going to crave someday when she’s preggers.”
“She said that with fear, Sirius,” Remus had replied laughingly. “Anyway, what about the time when you forgot Peter is allergic to peanuts and he almost died while we tried to find the charm to make the swelling go down?”
“An honest mistake!”
“Or the time you decided that instead of going out to buy chocolate sauce, you were going to melt down some chocolate frogs, only you put the heat on too low and they all escaped and we were scrubbing half-melted frog out of the carpet for weeks? Or the time when you thought boiling a chicken in vinegar was the same as making a marinade? Or when-“
“Enough, enough!” Sirius had cried, throwing up his hands. “We’ll order in. But you don’t know what you’re missing!”
“And for that I am profoundly grateful.”
Still, he has to admit that the ordered food is quite nice, if neither very homey nor showing off the adventurous culinary spirit that he’d rather display to guests. The Lupins seem to like it, anyway. It goes quickly, and soon plates are being stacked.
Sirius scoops them up quickly. “I’ll do the dishes,” he says with a smile, shaking off all protests. There are two motivations for his solicitousness- one, he’d like very much for Remus’s parents to think him the most helpful, respectful, mature young man in the world and quite worthy of their son (not to mention, please Merlin, forget about ‘Penny Lane.) Two, he knows Remus wants privacy in which to tell them about his true relationship with his ‘roommate.’ Sirius understands that desire- three years ago, before the Howler, he hadn’t even wanted James or Mr. Potter in the room when he told Mrs. Potter, though James of course already knew and Mr. Potter was as much father to him as Mrs. Potter was mother. Besides, he doesn’t mind doing the dishes. It’s warm on the hands.
Of course, none of this is to say that he does not plan on listening in. He turns the water up just enough to rinse the dishes and make it sound like he can’t hear, but really he’s straining his ears over the flow to catch the words coming from the main room.
Unfortunately, all he hears is, “Remus, really, are you going to let that poor boy do all the cleaning himself? Where are your manners? We can talk to you later, dear,” from Mrs. Lupin.
It’s quickly followed by a muffled response from her son, and then Remus enters the kitchen looking sheepish. Sirius raises an eyebrow.
“I’ll dry,” is all Remus says.
They work in companionable silence for a few minutes, until Sirius happens to glance over and notice the strained, anxious look on Remus’s face. He can’t bear it, and so he flicks some suds at the werewolf, and then some more, until Remus is laughing and swatting at him with his towel. And of course then Sirius cannot help waiting until Remus has turned to put a bowl down, covering his hands in warm suds, and placing them on Remus’s hips. Remus jumps, and laughs again as Sirius says “Cleaning you up, you dirty werewolf,” and then leans back into him as Sirius snakes his arms around the Moonybelly. He stretches his neck to put his chin on Remus’s shoulder, remembering that once, when they first were together, Remus was shorter than him and he could do this easily. After a moment he sighs and leans his cheek against Remus’s back instead, closing his eyes and hugging a bit tighter, thinking how much he loves this, that the most mundane of tasks are made brilliant and beautiful by this man’s sheer presence. He is so, so lucky.
He has completely forgotten that Remus’s parents are in the flat, that they exist at all, until a startled cough sounds behind him. Remus, whirling, sends him off his balance, but he recovers in time to see Mrs. Lupin standing in the doorway, her eyes wide and a tomato-coloured blush creeping into her face.
“Oh, ah,” she stutters, and turns to leave.
“Mum,” Remus says a bit desperately, “Mum, wait.”
She stops and turns again, running a nervous hand through graying blonde hair. She and her son look at each other. Sirius wonders if Remus will get angry with him if he shows support, and then decides that the jig is up anyway. He grabs Remus’s hand in his own and is rewarded with a tight little smile.
Mrs. Lupin clears her throat. “So, ah, you’re…?”
Remus takes a deep breath. “Yes, we rather are,” he says, shaking Sirius’s hand off. For a moment Sirius is terrified, but then Remus’s arm snakes around is waist and he can breathe again.
“Oh.” There is silence in the kitchen for what feels like a thousand years. “I rather suspected,” Remus’s mother admits finally.
“Did you?” Remus asks, his voice a bit high with nerves. She nods.
And then Mr. Lupin appears behind her.
Remus’s arm tightens convulsively around Sirius, and then drops all together, but it’s too late, Mr. Lupin is already staring at the embrace and the wet marks on his son’s waist that are evidence of similar attention from Sirius and the way the young men are standing close enough that their hips and arms touch, and it is clear that he, for one, did not rather suspect. His eyes widen, and then narrow, and he goes an unflattering pink colour, and then his entire body stiffens. “Shite,” he grits out, and then he’s out of the doorway, and the door of the flat is slamming.
Remus deflates visibly. “Shite,” he whispers, echoing his father. Sirius looks at him in confusion. “He’s so- he’s going to be crazy- he’s so prejudiced- I wanted to tell him gently-“
His mother gives him a very pointed look. “Remus,” she says sternly, “You know he’ll get over any prejudice for you,” and then Sirius remembers Remus telling him that his father was, once upon a time, very much a part of the Anti-werewolf movement in the Ministry.
There is a momentary pause during which the tension in the tiny room absolutely crackles, and then Mrs. Lupin sighs. “I’d best go after him.”
“No,” Remus says. He squares his shoulders, sucks in a breath. “I’ll go. It’s, it’s mine to deal with. If I’d told you earlier, this wouldn’t…I’ll go.” He kisses Sirius quickly on the cheek, gives him a look that speaks volumes of terror, and then hurries out. Sirius and Mrs. Lupin watch him go.
After they hear the door shut outside, Mrs. Lupin turns to Sirius with a raised eyebrow.
“Er,” Sirius says, doing his best to keep from fidgeting. He feels like a first year under the scrutiny of McGonagall. “Care for some trifle? I made it myself.”
---
“Dad!” Remus calls; he can see his father several blocks ahead of him, walking quickly. He only speeds up when he hears the call. Remus has no choice but to pound down the sidewalk after him.
“Dad, stop. Wait! You owe me that much, at least,” he says when he’s directly behind the man. John Lupin merely hunches his back. He does not turn around.
“You’re, you’re being unreasonable,” Remus says before he can think about it. He’s never said anything so rude to his father, but he’s forced to remind Sirius of his unreasonableness so often that it’s a reflex accusation now. Unfairness is like a Doctor’s tap at his knee, getting a response without conscious thought.
“And you’re being a fuckin’ pouf,” his father shoots back, still not stopping. Remus winces, sighs, and lengthens his stride until he’s walking side-by-side with the man.
“Dad, father,” he corrects himself, going formal because John is not going to respond to entreaties, “I meant to tell you tonight-“
John cuts him off. “Tell me what? That my son’s a damn shirt lifter?”
“Well, not in so many words, no,” Remus says, hating the anxiety in his own voice. “But-“
“We thought we were coming to visit a man. A man! And you sit us down to dinner, and you let us believe you’re not degrading yourself with that…that-“
Suddenly, Remus has had quite enough. He stops dead, and before his father can walk on he grabs the man by the shoulder, forcing him to stop, forcing him to turn and look at him. John Lupin is a big man, but his son is a werewolf, and stronger. Try as he might to wrench himself out of Remus’s grip, he can’t.
“His name is Sirius, as you know quite well,” Remus says coldly. “He’s my best friend, and yes, my lover, and hell, maybe my soul mate, I don’t know. Either way, you’re going to call him by his name, and not whatever epithet you were going to spit out just then.”
John Lupin glared into his son’s face. “Don’t you talk to me that way, you ungrateful, filthy little-“
“Oh, no,” Remus says, feeling the boiling in his stomach that means he is furious. It’s a rare feeling for him, but powerful, and in this moment he cherishes it. “You do not get to call me ‘filthy’ for this. Do you know what else you used to call filthy, father?”
John’s eyes drop, but it doesn’t stop Remus.
“Werewolves. You used to climb up on your high horse and call werewolves filthy, and unnatural, and disgusting, and monstrous. And you know what else, father?” he hears finality in his own voice. “Now I am one. Because of that, I am one.” He has never once used this against his father before, has never even allowed himself to think it. He knows that John Lupin went through agonies of guilt when he realized which werewolf exactly had bitten his son, and why. He has never considered putting him through more. But this- it’s too important. Or maybe it’s simply that he’s spent too much time with Sirius and that temper is rubbing off. He rather thinks it’s the former. “Well, I’m also a shirt lifter, or a pouf, or a fairy, or whatever damn word you want to use. And it has nothing to do with you. It’s just who I am, and I would have been no matter what. And as long as there was going to be a Sirius, I was going to fall in love with him. And nothing you do or say will change that, because it’s part of me, and I am perfectly happy with it. It’s not some filthy animal that lives inside of me, father, it is just your son, and you are going to respect that. And if you can’t, if you call me dirty one more time, I’m…I’m…I’m going to punch you in the nose, and then I am going to turn around and go home, and you will not be entering my flat again. Do you hear me?” He has been getting fiercer and louder with every passing word, and by the time he comes to the end he is breathing as hard as if he just ran a marathon.
John Lupin is speechless and red-faced. Still, Remus thinks he detects something like grudging respect in his father’s eyes. See a man now, father? he wonders.
“Come on,” he says after a very long moment, and turns around, not waiting to see if the man will follow him.
He does.
---
Sirius clears his throat. It’s not that there’s anything in his throat; there couldn’t be, as he’s cleared it at least thirteen times in the last minute and a half. If there were still something in his throat, he’d be heading off to St. Mungo’s to ask a mediwitch about the overproduction of mucus in young male wizards.
Yet again the throat-clearing elicits no reaction from Mrs. Lupin, who is sitting on the couch with her elbow on her knee and her chin on her hand and is staring into the distance with the expression of one who has a lot of thinking to do. Sirius is not a man to give up on something just because it hasn’t worked thirteen times; still, he reasons, if it doesn’t work the fourteenth, maybe a new approach is necessary.
“D’you want more trifle, Mrs- ma’am?” he asks, because it is literally, literally, all he can think to say. Imagine, he muses, the Great and Eloquent Sirius Black brought to stuttering inane questions about desserts by his boyfriend’s nice mum! What’s next, a nice question about the weather?
Mrs. Lupin starts. “What, dear?” she asks absently. Clearly she barely heard him. He is perhaps a bit offended. It wasn’t a very good question, perhaps, but it still deserves listening to, surely. Is his voice that boring?
“Um, the trifle,” he says carefully, because really he’s more nervous- nervous!- then offended. “Want some more of it?”
“Oh, no,” she says just as carefully. “Thank you.” She returns to staring at the wall. Sirius follows her gaze. No, there isn’t anything that merits scrutiny there. It isn’t even one of the spots where the chocolate frogs left faint, delicious stains.
Finally, he can stand it no longer. This is ridiculous. Sirius Black is a Gryffindor, a Mapmaker, an Adventurer, a Marauder. He is not going to be cowed by the presence or person of the woman who gave birth to the man he has been snogging with regularity for years. After all, she had to snog somebody at some point to do the birth-giving, didn’t she? It isn’t so different.
“Look, Mrs. Lupin,” he says, and is only briefly held up when she looks at him again with eyes that hold the same sharp intelligence and warmth as Remus’s. Plunging forward is, after all, one of his specialties. “Mrs. Lupin, I love him. I love him a lot, actually it’s rather ridiculous how much I love him. Honestly, it’s saccharine, I actually leave love poems by authors he likes under his morning teacup, sometimes, so you can see that I must love him quite a lot. And I know you’d really rather I weren’t a bloke, but, but I have to believe that that’s the only problem, and if I were a girl and I loved your son like this you wouldn’t mind. And if that’s the case, well, I’m not a girl but that’s hardly my fault or his, and there isn’t a girl in the world who could love him as much as I do, and I’d really appreciate it if you could try to look at it that way instead of thinking ‘Oh heavens, this man is snogging my son.’”
Mrs. Lupin shuts her eyes briefly, and sighs.
“I didn’t mean it in an, an offensive way,” Sirius mutters desperately. Stuttering. Stuttering!
“I know, dear,” she replies, opening her eyes again. “And it’s not an issue of ‘Oh heavens.’ It’s just-“ she sighs. “Life is already so very hard for him, with what he i-“ she stops abruptly, looking at him with an odd mixture of suspicion, curiosity, and anxiety.
“I know what he is,” Sirius says bleakly. “I know he’s a werewolf. I’ve known it for years. And I love him anyway, I love him because of it, I just love him.”
She sighs again. There has been, Sirius thinks, an awful lot of sighing since supper. “That’s not what I’m worried about,” she says softly. And then, more resolutely, “Sirius, I’m going to be frank with you. My son has been a member of a reviled minority since he was four years old. The way the Wizarding world is headed, I suspect that that minority is only going to be more reviled in the future. Because of this, life has never been kind to him, and it is only going to get worse. To think that he is part of a second reviled minority- and Sirius, neither Muggles nor Wizards accept this easily, no matter what your friends may or may not have done- well, it makes a Mother’s blood run cold.”
Sirius has been biting his lip through this speech, but he has to answer her, he has to make her understand, for Remus.
“Well, ma’am, but with all due respect, he is this way. He likes men. I like men. It’s a fact, whether anybody else likes it or not. He’s been this way for, well, I assume he’s been this way since birth, but we’ve known about each other since we were fifteen.” He pauses briefly, wondering if Remus will mind that he’s let slip just how long their relationship has been kept from his mother, but it’s the only way he knows how to defend this. Them. “It’s not going away. So don’t you think that it’s better for him to have somebody who loves him this much, even if it means that he has to embrace another thing that other people might not like about him, than for him to hide it and be alone? Because, no offense, but I remember him before we figured out that he was a werewolf, and he was so alone, Mrs. Lupin. And it was a part of him whether he hid it from us or not. So we all thought it better to let him know we knew, and we were right. And I think this might be the same.”
She rubs a hand across her eyes before looking at him sideways. “Have you told him all this?”
“Not in so many words, no,” Sirius says, pulling nervously at his fringe. “But he knows.”
“I think perhaps you should,” Remus’s mother tells him. “Never, ever leave things unsaid, Sirius. Even if the other person knows. You’ll regret it.” A strange, sad look passes over her face. “I know that very often, Remus leaves things unsaid. I regret that I didn’t teach him better. You’ll have to do that for me, all right?”
“Of course,” he replied gallantly.
“Sirius. You’re the one who sang ‘Penny Lane,’ aren’t you?”
Sirius feels the hot blush filling his cheeks. “Yes.”
She chuckles. It sounds tired. “Are you always this polite and insightful?”
“No, ma’am,” he answers truthfully, because apparently it’s a day for truths.
“I appreciate the effort.”
Silence reigns for an increasingly long time. It takes all of Sirius’s strength not to give in and fidget like there’s a kneazle in his trousers.
Mrs. Lupin is the one who breaks the silence this time. “I wanted grandchildren, you know,” she says, her tone wry.
“My mum wanted me to nance around with a green sword and be a Scion all day,” he says earnestly. “The best laid plans…”
It gets a true laugh from her. “Sirius?”
“Yeah?”
“You can call me Mary from now on.”
---
Mary and John Lupin do not stay the night as they had planned to, a fact which concerns Sirius greatly.
“He needs time,” Remus says, back to his collected self. “He’ll come around. He always does. After all, if he can stand a werewolf for a son, surely he can stand a sodomite.” The words are bitter, but Sirius knows the peculiar language of Moony, and he finds the laughter in Remus’s voice. It’s all right, then. He slides into bed next to his Moony, wiggling his toes against the cool sheets, fitting his head into the familiar space between shoulder and jaw, the space where he fits with no spaces. At least not any of significance.
“D’you know what I told your mum tonight?” he asks, remembering something she told him.
“What?”
“That it is absolutely ridiculous how much I love you. Saccharine. Told her about the poetry.”
“Know what I told my father?”
“Hmm?” Sirius nuzzles up against his throat, humming against his skin.
“That I would punch him in the face.” They both laugh. And then Remus continues, in a very small voice. “And that you might very well be my soul mate.”
Sirius makes gagging noises, opening his mouth against his Moony’s throat. “You’re worse than me!” he crows in triumph.
“I rather think we’re exactly the same about it, actually,” Remus says.
“You’re probably right,” Sirius admits. “Go to sleep, you sentimental werewolf.”
“You too, you ridiculous puppy.”
They do.