Chapter Text
On really bad days, when he relived that moment in his dreams, it worked out differently. Maybe he would see someone with long, dark hair walk past the shop and that flutter would move through his chest and he would have to remind himself that it wasn’t who he thought it was. Maybe the face of his mobile would light up and for just a brief moment, he would expect that message to be from someone else. Whatever the circumstance, sometimes it hurt more than usual. And it changed things.
The dream didn’t replay every night. When he hadn’t thought about it in a very long time, he wouldn’t have that dream for months at a time. Or sometimes, his mum would make an off-hand comment about seeing a familiar face on the television and he would remember why he’d made the choice he’d made, despite the hole it left behind. On those days, nothing changed. The dream was just a memory, and he still made the right decision, just as he had that day. On those days, he wondered if he liked the other dreams better. The ones where things worked out differently. The ones where he stayed.
It wasn’t that he didn’t like the life he’d built for himself over the last ten years. It was more perfect than if he had intentionally planned it. Well, not perfect. There was a single glaring imperfection, an emptiness that greeted him every morning and followed him to bed at night, but he could wade through that hurt most days. Today was just a little heavier than usual. It happened sometimes.
Maybe it was the impending holidays. Christmas was just over a month away, and it was always one of the harder times of the year because it brought too many memories of nights spent helping out at his dad’s Christmas tree farm, kissing under mistletoe, sharing a cup of cocoa with marshmallows. But, if he was honest with himself, Christmas wasn’t the problem. No, it was mostly the holiday that followed.
Not to mention the pregnancy. Not that Remus wasn’t delighted by the news, of course. He was thrilled for James and Lily, thrilled that they had chosen him as the godfather, thrilled that he got to pick out a tiny jumper for a child who wouldn’t be born for another seven months. No, it wasn’t really the pregnancy, if he thought about it (though he tried rather hard not to). It was the domesticity of it. It was knowing that, at the end of the day, he’d missed his chance to have that. More than missed. Obliterated.
Maybe he was just having an off day because his dream last night had been one of those where things worked out differently. Where he’d said yes instead of no. Where he’d gotten a glimpse of a domestic life with a loving partner and the home they could’ve built together. After ten years, he would’ve thought those dreams would stop coming. If anything, they had only gotten more frequent.
After locking the front door to his flat, he staggered down the stairs, holding onto the wall for support. He and Pete had stayed at James and Lily’s flat far too late last night, celebrating the news of the baby for the fourth time that week. It was mostly his own fault, he should’ve waited to give Lily that baby jumper when James wasn’t around, because he got more emotional about it than Lily had. And then, of course, Remus and Pete had to stay for dinner and dessert and coffee to spend the night reminiscing.
At the bottom of the stairs was another door with a glass frame that looked out onto the street and Remus could see that there were already people on the pavement outside, waiting to get into the café next door. Luckily, he still had about an hour before he had to open shop, but he still couldn’t afford to wait in that line to get his morning coffee. Mostly because he knew Pete would undoubtedly be early.
“Marlene!” Remus leaned in the doorway to shout over the bustling crowd outside the coffee shop, sparking the attention of the platinum-blonde girl with a septum ring running the front counter.
“Remus!” she shouted back in kind, a wild grin on her candy-apple red lips.
“Bring me an extra-sweet two-shot latte when you get a break! Wait, make that two!”
“What’s in it for me?” she asked, raising her voice over the coffee grinder.
“I’ll trade you a salted butter caramel and a raspberry pistachio!” he bartered, waggling his thick, dark eyebrows in some attempt to woo her into complicity. Her smile widened, like it did every morning.
“Throw in a smoked bacon and you’ve got yourself a deal!” she said with a victorious whoop.
“Anything for you, Marlene!” Remus winked, waving as he walked to the front door of his own shop, not at all surprised to find that the door had already been unlocked, the lights still off.
“Is that you, Remus?” Pete called, as he did every morning when Remus walked into the shop, alerted to his presence by the delicate tinkling of the bell that hung over the front door.
“It always is, Pete!” Remus laughed, shedding his jacket and wondering why he’d even bothered to put it on, since he only had to step outside a single moment between the stairs to his flat and the front door of his shop. Ever since he’d bought the shop downstairs, he had been waiting for the tenants in the flat just above it to vacate, and now that he’d finished moving in, the amenities just kept accruing – an extra fifteen minutes of sleep every morning, minimal excursions into the cold on his way to work, free coffee personally delivered by his friend who owned the café next door (well, negotiated free coffee).
As Remus turned on the front lights and hung his jacket on the coat rack in the corner behind the front counter, Pete emerged from the back room, wiping his hands on a black apron that bore sets of sepia handprints. “I’ve just molded some more chai spice and there are some soufflés in the oven.”
“I knew you were baking,” Remus grinned, taking in a deep breath to enjoy the earthy, sweet aroma of the warm chocolate. “Those soufflés take a long time. How long have you been here?”
Pete shrugged. “Only since half past, I had some chai spice crème leftover from yesterday and I’ve only just put the soufflés in,” he rationalized, nonchalant, but Remus knew what he was doing. Pete was his best friend after all, surely he could tell all the reminiscing last night at James and Lily’s would have left Remus in somewhat of a strange mood today. But Remus wouldn’t let it get to him.
“I could never run this shop without you, Pete,” Remus said, straightening the apron around Pete’s neck. With a pleased grin and a pink blush, Pete just shrugged again, pretending to be unaffected.
“You’d probably have a lot more product without me,” he laughed.
“Nonsense,” Remus hummed, leaning over the counter to swipe a white chocolate with a yuzu lemon curd center and pop it into his mouth. “I sample the chocolates much more than you do.”
“In that case,” Pete said with a smile so specific, Remus knew exactly the intent behind it. “Maybe we should sample a soufflé when they come out of the oven. You know, quality control.”
Remus returned a mischievous smile of his own. “We can’t very well expand into baked goods if our baked goods are shit from the beginning.” With a nod, Pete spun behind the counter.
“I’ll get the milk,” he grinned, disappearing into the back, and Remus was quick to follow.
“Anything I can help you with?” Remus asked two young girls who had been standing in front of the counter for what felt like ages, whispering back and forth between each other.
One of them blushed, the other spoke up. “We’re arguing about what to get. I told her that the smores flavor is the best and she’s trying to tell me that coconut cashew praline is the best.”
“And I agree with both of you,” Remus said, opening up the cabinet underneath the glass countertop to pull out a couple brightly colored chocolates. “But maybe you could compromise and try something new to each of you.” He handed them each one. “Here, hazelnut cheesecake.”
Eagerly, the girls simultaneously sampled the chocolates, looking over at each other with identical expressions. The first girl spoke up again. “We’ll take one of all three,” she nodded, eyes glimmering.
“Good choice,” Remus replied with a soft smile, moving to box up the purchase as the girls rescinded back into talking between themselves, though a little more vocally than the first time.
“Anyway, I’m telling you. Penelope told me she saw him in town,” the more outspoken of the two girls said, taking some time to eyeball the unchosen chocolates behind the glass.
“I don’t know why you believe anything she says. You saw his last Instagram post, he said he was locking himself in the studio for the next six months,” the timid girl added quietly.
“Well, we don’t know, maybe there is a studio at Grimmauld Place.” Immediately, Remus went still, except for the sudden fluttering of his fingers, audibly shaking the thin wrapping paper he was using to cradle the delicate chocolates. The girls stopped talking, watching him intently.
“Grimmauld Place?” he clarified in a small voice.
“Yeah, Sirius Black is in town,” the first girl stated assuredly, as Remus found that his breath had suddenly vanished from his lungs at the sound of that name. A name he usually tried to avoid.
“No, he isn’t,” the second argued emphatically, oblivious to Remus’ struggle to find new air.
“Why is it so hard to believe? He’s from here, his younger brother still lives here, his late parents’ mansion has recently been renovated,” the loud one rattled off as proof of her secondhand claims.
“And?” the other said, growing louder in her pressing insistence. “He hasn’t been back in –”
“Ten years,” Remus finished the thought for her on an empty whisper. “He hasn’t come back in ten years.” To steady himself against the dizzying breathlessness, Remus placed an open palm on the glass countertop, the other hand going to his forehead in some futile effort to hold himself together.
Before Remus could recover, Pete was next to him, taking the small box and finishing the transaction in Remus’ place. “You ladies have a wonderful day and enjoy the chocolates.” As they said their slightly confused thanks, they exited the shop in the same moment that Marlene entered it. By then, Pete’s fingertips were already making lazy, placating circles at the center of Remus’ spine.
“Remus,” she said immediately, in some terrible tone that relayed worry and sympathy and comfort all at once. He felt a warm paper cup pressed into his hand before he could stand up straight.
“Thank you, Marlene,” Pete stated in nearly a whisper, taking a cup of his own.
“I owe you a smoked bacon and a … raspberry pistachio and a … a …” Remus started to list off the goods of their bartering agreement but found himself unable to think of anything except piercing silver eyes and long dark hair and the disheveled way they looked together the last time Remus had seen them.
“I’ll get them later,” Marlene waved it off and Remus could feel the look that was being shared between Pete and Marlene over his hung head. “I guess it must be true if this many people are talking about it at once.” A sharp stinging went into Remus’ chest and he winced at the sensation.
“You don’t have to see him, Remus,” Pete reminded him gently, but Remus could barely hear anything he was saying. In his mind, he was eighteen again. And Sirius Black had just proposed.
On really bad days, when he relived that moment in his dreams, it worked out differently. Maybe it was just a face in the crowd when he sang a lyric that he had penned specifically to reclaim that moment in his favour, and that face was similar enough that it left a dreadful ache in his chest. The eyes were never right, though. It was usually the hair – dark at the roots with a kiss of honey at the ends from all the time spent in the sun when they were younger, always disheveled with perpetual bedhead, always wild like a set of fingers had just been run through it. In the source’s case, his own usually had.
That dream didn’t replay every night. If he hadn’t thought about it in a very long time, he wouldn’t have the dream for months at a time. But sometimes, his younger brother would call and give him updates from his hometown and he would be reminded of that moment and the hole it had left behind. On those nights, the dream wouldn’t change. He would still be left there standing alone, wondering what signs he had read wrong, trying to decide what to do with his life. He liked the other dreams better. The ones where things worked out differently. The ones where he stayed.
Very rarely did his personal mobile ever go off for something that wasn’t, in some way, business related. A calendar reminder for that photo shoot he was supposed to do for a clothing line so exclusive that he’d never even heard the name anywhere else, a callback from that magazine reporter to discuss the interview that he kept rescheduling, the executive from the record label demanding a progress report on the album he was meant to have finished a month ago. For once, he wanted a social call.
And then he got one. A voice he hadn’t heard in months because his schedule was always too busy, and his agent always rejected calls that were deemed unimportant, and the messages somehow never got to him anyway. Lucky for him, that voice he hadn’t heard in months had always been persistent, even in their childhood, even in their adolescence. Even after all this time and distance.
Not that Sirius wasn’t delighted to speak to James, after having been missing him for so long. But with James came the memory of someone else he’d left behind, and he didn’t like to think about that someone else very often. That didn’t mean his brain didn’t remind him of that someone every single moment of every single day in imaginative ways. A jar of honey on his kitchen counter, just barely catching the sunlight streaming in through the skylight of his loft in London looked a lot like the unparalleled amber color of his eyes. The tall, lanky record producer at the recording studio had held him by the shoulders the other day as he squeezed by in a narrow hallway, and the shape of his broad hands and his lengthy fingers on the nape of Sirius’ neck was so familiar that Sirius spent the next ten minutes in a closet trying to choke down tears that he hadn’t felt threaten that badly in half a decade.
Lily was pregnant. That was the news that James had called to tell him. They wanted Sirius to be the godfather. It didn’t require any effort on his part, James was quick to tell him – he didn’t even have to come back home if he didn’t want to, there were no legal documents that he needed to sign for it to be official. At first, Sirius felt relief at that lack of obligation. After all, he had an album to finish and an advertising campaign to model for and an interview to confirm. But the moment he realized that he didn’t want to do any of those things, that he would much rather go home to spend time with James and Lily and help them prepare for the birth of their first child, his godchild, he cancelled everything.
Armed with some bullshit excuse about focusing on completing the new album, he made a few vague social media posts and left his work phone in London. Even with his highly recognizable face, he could simply stay tucked up in James and Lily’s flat, or in Regulus’ house (because he was not ever going to call that monstrous childhood prison his home), or … he stopped at the last one. Lying low at the Lupin’s was no longer on his list of options. He wasn’t even sure if Pete would let him stay at his.
Ten years. He hadn’t been home in ten years. There had been a few times when Regulus or James had made the trip to London to spend a few days with him, but this was so different. And there was one glaring reason why. If he really thought about it, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to avoid the part of his life that he had been trying to close off for the last ten years or if he wanted to open it up one last time.
Despite the obscenely long drive, he’d opted out of taking a public flight to avoid the attention he knew it would bring. For the same reason, he’d left his loft in London just before four in the morning to prevent any pictures or questions. Once in town, he stopped close to the main street that housed all the shops and restaurants and pubs in town. There were still a few other people in town that he kept casual contact with, Marlene being one of them, so he knew she had bought the café on the corner that used to be one of their favourite places to hang out. He also knew she could brew a damn good cup of coffee.
After a few good stretches to get the kinks out of muscles that had been stuck in one position for far too long, Sirius slipped on a pair of dark sunglasses and a slouchy, grey knitted cap in some effort to avoid being easily recognized. As he made his way over to the shop, he adjusted the edge of the cap, as he could feel the material gathering and catching on the piercings along both his ears. There was a small line outside and Sirius smiled at Marlene’s success for a moment before turning to leave. If he waited in that line, there was no doubt someone would recognize him. Besides, the more he thought about it, the more he realized Marlene would most definitely call him out, just to tease him.
Just as he turned the corner, he heard someone shout “Marlene!” in a voice that was so achingly familiar that it tore the breath from his lungs. Without hesitation or thought, Sirius gripped onto the corner of the brick building with trembling hands, peering around the edge to see Remus Lupin leaning into the open café door, a single raised hand to garner Marlene’s attention. Just as Sirius remembered, his eyes were translucent and golden, his hair disheveled and wild, dark at the roots with a kiss of honey at the ends, and it brushed across the scar that had notched an empty space in Remus’ brow. But as much as his hair was exactly the same as it was when Sirius had walked out of his life, it was also so different – he had greys at both temples, just like Sirius had, and longer now than it had ever been.
“Remus!” he heard Marlene call back with a laugh. The smile never dimmed from Remus’ face and looking at it just then was like watching an old home video of someone he could never get back.
“Bring me an extra-sweet two-shot latte when you get a break! Wait, make that two!” he requested, holding up two fingers, and Sirius was surprised at the breath he let out, seeing Remus’ hands for the first time in ten years, broader now than at eighteen, slender fingers with rougher knuckles.
“What’s in it for me?” Marlene quipped and that smile grew on Remus’ face, stretching all the ways to the ends of his cheeks until the skin under his stubble folded underneath the pressure.
“I’ll trade you a salted butter caramel and a raspberry pistachio!” he seemed to bargain for his coffee, the laugh lines at his eyes deepening as he pushed the curly hair covering them over his head.
“Throw in a smoked bacon and you’ve got yourself a deal!” Marlene cried, sounding victorious.
“Anything for you, Marlene!” Remus laughed and Sirius felt himself get light in the head at the sound of it – deep like it was when he’d just woken from a long night, soft like it was when he’d told Sirius he loved him for the first time, kind like his voice had been since the day Sirius met him. With a playful wink that sent Sirius clutching at his chest in some effort to tear out the sting it left behind, Remus disappeared into the shop just next door to Marlene’s café. And Sirius still couldn’t breathe.
Ten years. Ten years and three albums and six world tours and dozens of endorsements and hundreds of interviews and Sirius realized he hadn’t changed at all. He was a bit more cocksure and chaotic in front of a crowd than he was a decade ago, but in the wake of Remus Lupin, he was just as vulnerable and fragile as he was at nineteen, left on one knee, ring in hand, when Remus said no.