Work Text:
Remus shuffles drowsily through the shabby little flat, long threadbare dressing gown hanging loose off his shoulders, still rubbing sleep from his eyes as he yawns widely. He leans heavily on the door as he undoes the lock and charms, opens it just enough to reach out and retrieve his milk and paper.
What he encounters, instead, is long, coarse fur.
Startling, he looks down to see the familiar shape of a large shaggy black dog transform itself into the frail frame of his best friend, sitting in a limp ball and looking up at Remus with weary, haunted eyes.
“Sirius! Oh, Merlin’s- come inside, quickly,” and he ducks down to help pull Sirius to his feet.
“But what are you doing here?” Remus asks, as he lowers Sirius into a chair at the kitchen table, and pulls out a seat to face him.
Sirius keeps his head bowed, mumbling into his chest “Dumbledore, told me.. to come stay with you a while- while they sort things out..”
“About Voldemort, you mean?”
Sirius lifts his head and Remus draws back, slightly, still taken aback by how deep, how sunken and dark those once piercing grey eyes now are. “I’m not ready for another war, Remus.”
Remus holds his steady gaze for a few, heavy moments, before he has to turn away from what he sees there.
“Come on,” he says as he turns his back on Sirius, “I’ll make you a cup of tea,”
( double bagged, three sugars, let it sit, Moony, geez, a teaspoon of cream and then a dash of milk, so that it’s strong and sweet and just the right temperature to be downed in one go )
It’s been six days. Sirius mostly stays shut in his room with the curtains drawn, sometimes buried deep in the sheets, sometimes huddled against the wall. Remus pretends he doesn’t hear him screaming in the middle of the night.
When Sirius does emerge, Remus serves him a lukewarm bowl of thin, weak soup and a plate full of small hunks of soft, crust-less bread.
It feels like torture, but after Sirius spent his first night here vomiting repeatedly everything he had been fed in the last 36 hours, and a couple of days of trial-and-error, it soon became apparent that Sirius’s system could not yet handle rich, solid foods, after 14 years of extreme malnourishment. The only things he can really take are soups, plain breads, and tea.
So this is what Remus does. He makes him tea.
( double bagged, three sugars, let it sit, Moony, geez, a teaspoon of cream and then a dash of milk, so that it’s strong and sweet and just the right temperature to be downed in one go )
After a couple of weeks Sirius sits at the kitchen table, watching Remus pour a tiny amount of cream onto a teaspoon, and then tip it into a mug, before milk, a vigorous stir, and having it handed to him. He wraps his fingers around the warm mug and sips at it, thoughtfully.
“You still remember how to make it,”
“Hmm?” Remus responds, humming around his own mug, eyes on the paper in front of him.
“My tea,” he clarifies, though he is sure Remus understood. ”You still make it perfectly,”
“Oh, well,” his surprise is mild, and fake. “I guess.. old habits…” he trails off. Sirius watches him for a moment, thinking of a time when they were just ‘habits’.
Remus flips a page, absently, mind lost in the past.
( double bagged, three sugars, let it sit, Moony, geez, a teaspoon of cream and then a dash of milk, so that it’s strong and sweet and just the right temperature to be downed in one go )
********************
“Moony, you never get my tea right,” Sirius says, sounding disappointed.
“What?” Remus looks around. Sirius is sitting on the couch opposite him, fingers wrapped around his mug, staring into the depths. Remus wants to laugh – Sirius actually looks hurt.
“You just can’t get it right.” he repeats. James laughs at his mournful tone. “I don’t know what you’re doing wrong. What are you doing wrong?”
“I don’t know! I double bagged it!”
“What kind of bags?” Peter pipes, and then chuckles to himself as Sirius swings a cushion at him.
“Yes, I see that. And you’ve got the three sugars. But.. there’s something. Make me a cup of tea,” he says decisively, getting to his feet.
“Are you just going to complain?” Remus asks, warily. ~Really, these boys, they come to his house and they insult his tea-making.
“No, I’m going to supervise,”
“What?” Remus says, incredulously. James laughs again, raising his hands in a ‘don’t get me involved’ gesture when Remus rounds on him.
“I am going to supervise you making me a cup of tea,” Sirius says again, tone verging on the one he used as a kid, regal and commanding, born from all those years of being able to tell people exactly what he wanted, and expect to get it.
In the kitchen, Remus puts the kettle on again, taking Sirius’s mug peevishly and emptying it into the sink. He adds two bags, three sugars, the water as the jug clicks, reaches for the cream.
“No no no, what are you doing?!” Sirius grabs his wrist frantically.
“What?!” Remus stops, teaspoon poised over the cup.
“You’re putting the cream in!” As if it’s the most obvious, horrendous thing in the world.
“You said you liked a teaspoon of cream!”
“I do, I do, but- let it sit, Moony, geez!”
“What?”
“You have to.. you put the tea and the sugar and the water, and then leave it, for ages. Do a jig. Read a book. Have a wank. Something, just do not touch the tea,”
“I.. I don’t..”
“No, look, you have to give it at least five minutes before the cream, okay? It has to have time to brew. And then the cream. And then a dash of milk. So that it’s just the right temperature to be downed in one go.”
“You are impossible,” Remus says, defeated, leaning back against the counter to wait.
“I have good taste in tea,”
“You have unnecessarily complicated taste in tea,”
Sirius doesn’t say anything. He jumps up onto the table and sits, looking around the small kitchen. James and Peter laugh in the other room. More than once Remus looks toward Sirius only to find him turning his eyes hastily away.
After a few minutes he looks back at Remus, at the mug. “You can probably add the cream, now,”
Remus does, and then the milk, and stirs it.
Sirius pauses at the door, mug in hand. “Thank you. For the tea,”
Remus looks after him for a moment. He shakes his head, filling the kettle again, since his own tea by now will be only half-warm, and he can’t have it any other way than still steaming.