Chapter Text
YORKSHIRE, JULY 1998
Shoot.
Apparently, Sirius has already come back, earlier than he’d expected him to. Very apparently indeed, given that his head is currently peering around the door of the kitchen, clinging onto it so tightly you’d be forgiven for suspecting he’s a dragon in disguise hiding a particularly precious hoard of gold in there. It’s odd: Sirius doesn’t hide things from him, nor does he, usually, spend much time in the kitchen.
Then, Remus realises something far odder and certainly far, far worse: Sirius’ eyes are red-rimmed and kind of glassy. He’s been crying. He’s done his fair share of it recently – they all have, after the battle of Hogwarts. Still, he hasn’t cried in weeks, and a day spent with Harry is usually not the sort of day that invites tears.
Oh God. Oh God –
‘Did something happen?’ Remus starts. His shopping bag – just butter in it – falls to the floor with a loud thump. ‘Is – is Harry okay? What’s going on?’
‘Oh – no, no, everything is fine. We had a lovely time.’ Sirius says reassuringly, absentmindedly running the back of his hand under his eyes. ‘The Falmouth Falcons won.’
His voice does sound… well, mostly normal; not at all choked up. However… he’s still just a head sticking around a kitchen door: refusing to open it, refusing to step out into the hallway to greet Remus with his customary welcome-home-peck.
The situation is still, definitely… strange. Something is up. Has to be.
Oh no.
Does he know?
Has he figured it out?
Somehow?
Did he go into the fridge for a little snack and find Remus’ batter, find the wrapped-up cheese, and put two and two together?
Is he – maybe he’s been emotional over the thought of Remus proposing? Or mortified by it, given how he’s hovering and refusing to let Remus even try to return to the scene of the crime?
Best to play dumb, Remus reckons, and act like nothing’s going on. That way he can’t accidentally give away more than he should.
‘I was going to cook us dinner.’ He tries to sound calm and uninvested, rather than antsy and (let’s be honest) a little desperate.
‘Oh,’ Sirius’ head responds, equally breezily, while the rest of him still hides behind the door. ‘No worries. Now you don’t have to, because... I was going to cook dinner for you tonight – and I already started, so...’
‘You were? But you don’t usually – I mean… you usually prefer washing-up duties.’
‘Well, you know. Just got the urge, so...’ Sirius says, making to close the door.
‘But I had dinner planned,’ Remus argues a little more loudly, in a desperate attempt to signal that this conversation is anything but over.
Reluctantly, Sirius’ head reappears. ‘Your plan could wait until tomorrow, maybe?’ he suggests, still in a light and casual tone.
‘Well,’ Remus starts, doing his best to sound reasonable to the utmost highest degree. ‘Maybe if you’d told me that you wanted to cook tonight, I wouldn’t have started preparing dinner earlier, but I have, so I think I should -’
‘Well, I’ve started preparing too. Only been chopping a bloody bag of onions for the last half hour -’
Onions?
He supposes that least explains the eyes…
‘You’ve been chopping them by hand?’
Remus realises too late that he may have sounded a tad too amazed, that some of his façade may be starting to drop.
‘I have.’ Sirius nods, and makes to close the door again.
‘Great!’ Remus responds loudly. ‘Well, why don’t we put them in a container and save them for tomorrow? Make something real nice with them.’
He may be coming of slightly rude at this point, but he doesn’t care anymore. Something’s happening, and it’s weird, and he doesn’t like it, because this is the one night where he definitely wants into the kitchen, the one night where he needs to be in the kitchen. He needs to make sure everything goes to plan and that they walk out of that bloody kitchen as fiancés later.
‘But I wanted to cook tonight,’ Sirius’ façade is seemingly starting to drop too: he’s almost pouting now.
‘Why?’ Remus finally demands.
‘Why what?
‘Why is it so important that you cook tonight?’
This growing argument strikes him as uniquely bizarre; two thirty-eight year old men with limited interest in cooking fighting over who gets to make dinner, when more nights than not, they end up with a take-away curry.
‘No reason,’ Sirius says quickly. ‘There’s just a little something I wanted to talk to you about. Over dinner. Or before, maybe. Or after. I haven’t decided yet.’
‘Well, if it doesn’t matter when we discuss it, maybe we could discuss it now?’
‘No! It’s nothing! Not important.’
‘Well… there’s something I wanted to talk to you about, too,’ Remus responds, equally as quickly before the kitchen door can close again. ‘Over dinner. And my thing actually is important. So if yours can wait, then… how about you just – let me back in so I can finish making my pancakes.’
Sirius is quiet for a moment, his expression shifting ever so slightly. When he speaks, his tone is a lot softer.
‘You were going to make us pancakes?’
Shit. Has he said too much?
‘Yeah… well, maybe. Don’t worry, I was going to make you savoury ones.’
‘Why -’ Sirius starts, his voice still soft, ‘- why were you going to make pancakes?’
‘Uhm. Well. Just because… pancakes are good?’
‘But we never have pancakes for dinner,’ Sirius protests, his eyes tracing Remus’ face. ‘Other than on Pancake Day.’
‘Well,’ Remus says, and instead of soft, he can feel himself sounding slightly exasperated. ‘Why have you been hand-chopping bloody onions? That’s not a common occurrence either.’
‘I’m doing that because you said you taste more love when food’s prepared the muggle way.’
‘I mean… I -,’ Remus is taken aback.
Why does he want him to taste extra love in his food, tonight, specifically?
Surely he can’t be thinking – no! He must be imagining it, just because he, himself is planning to… and after all, Sirius said whatever he wanted to talk about was not actually important. He takes a breath, wiling the ridiculous notion from his mind, and is pleased to find he sounds much calmer as he continues: ‘I mean, yes. I do say that. But why on earth would you start a mission to muggle cooking by chopping up an entire bag of onions of all things, on a random Thursday?’
Sirius hesitates and looks at the floor, still clinging to the doorframe.
‘I was going to make onion soup,’ he finally says, voice barely a whisper now.
‘You were -’ Remus’ breath gets caught in his throat. ‘- onion soup?’
‘Yeah. Don’t worry, I got the cheese too, and some nice bread. I think you’re really going to like this dinner if you just – if you’d just let me make it.’
Shit, shit, fuck.
The onion soup. The pancakes.
‘Sirius.’ He swallows hard, then forces himself to continue. ‘The thing you wanted to talk to me about, was it – were you… going to ask me something?’
‘Maybe,’ Sirius shrugs. ‘As I said, it’s not important, so -’
‘I was going to ask you something too,’ Remus quickly interrupts, before he loses his nerve.
Sirius’ eyes shoot up, back to studying Remus’ face.
‘Yeah? And it was… and you said… you said it was important?’
‘It was. It is. It’s possibly the most important thing I’ve ever asked you.’
Sirius’ face breaks into a smile as he finally removes his death grip from the door and sprints into the hallway, throwing his arms around Remus’ neck.
‘Then the answer is yes. Yes! Of course yes. You don’t need to make me bloody pancakes to get me to say yes to you.’
‘You don’t need to make onion soup to get me to say yes to you, either,’ Remus smiles. Smiles into Sirius’ hair, smelling like some unholy combination of his lovely shampoo and about six-and-a-half chopped onions. Nevertheless, Remus’ arms are wrapped tightly around Sirius as he kisses his ear, his cheek, his lips, over and over and over again.
‘Yes,’ Remus whispers. ‘Yes, of course I say yes too.’
‘You realise neither of us actually asked?’ Sirius asks as they’re curled up in bed about an hour later, still panting.
‘Suspicious,’ Remus agrees, then teases: ‘do you even actually have a ring?’
‘Of course I do,’ Sirius says in mock-offence. ‘Do you?!’
‘Yes.’ Remus pulls Sirius’ body even closer to his and kisses the crown of his head. ‘It’s waiting patiently in the kitchen cupboard.’
He can feel Sirius smile into his neck as he whispers: ‘mine’s in the drawer.’
Still, they don’t make it back downstairs that night. The exchanging of rings will have to wait. They’ll end up exchanging them tomorrow, just not exactly in the way that either of them had planned.
Until then, they’ll remain in their little hiding places in the kitchen, along with an abandoned bowl of pancake batter, six-and-a-half fully chopped onions still on the counter, and enough Beaufort cheese in the fridge to cover it all thrice over.