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Sirius really should have known better than to agree to this. He wasn't, as his brother loved to remind him, responsible. And that was now more apparent than ever when he was supposed to just feed Regulus’ cat while he was gone on a trip for work and the cat was now nowhere to be found. He’d opened the door and the fucker dashed out. Now Sirius was going up and down the street yelling for the cat. “Ellie! Ellie, please! I’ve got treats!” He sighed. “Eclipse Black show yourself!” He yelled as if using her full name would change anything. “Fuck!” He wasn’t sure why he had agreed to watch her. The cat despised him and he wasn’t exactly her biggest fan either but that didn’t mean he wanted to lose her.
The last thing Sirius wanted to do was call his brother and tell him that he’d managed to lose the one thing he loved. He walked around the block in circles for over an hour. He walked by a post with a missing dog poster and thought that might just be his only option. Sirius found a printing shop that was nearby and walked there, making the poster on his phone with a picture he stole from Reg’s social media. Ellie was completely black except for the thin outline of a white circle on her forehead and her bright yellow eyes.
He walked in and found a girl at the front desk with light blond hair and a nametag that read Marlene.
“Hi. How can I help you?” She asked with a tired voice.
“Yes. I need to print out missing cat posters. I need them as soon as possible,” Sirius said, stressing horribly.
“Fuck. Yeah, we’ll push those to the top of the list,” she said, much more engaged in the conversation now. “Do you have it already made up?”
Sirius nodded, turning the phone to show her.
“Remus,” she called to the back. “Could you print something right now?”
He heard the man before he saw him, the sound of creaking and small rhythmic tapping on the floor. Out from the back came a man that short-circuited Sirius’ brain. A tall lanky man in the softest looking sweater came out. He had loose brown curls and scars that divided his face, a brown satchel that went across his body. And Sirius learned the culprit on the sounds, a pair of forearm crutches.
“Hi,” the man said a bit breathlessly. He stared at Sirius with wide brown eyes and a dopey smile.
“Hi.” Sirius smiled back, pulling his hair back into a quick messy bun, only now caring that it probably looked awful from running up and down the street.
They didn’t say anything, just failed at trying not to stare at each other. Until Marlene cleared her throat.
“You had something to print?” Remus asked, remembering why he’d come up in the first place.
Sirius cursed himself. Useless gay brain. “I need these printed,” he said, turning his phone.
The man snickered and all attraction for the man was instantly lost. Sirius really didn’t see the humor in the situation. His brother’s cat was lost and he desperately needed to find her. If something happened to the cat, Sirius was a dead man walking. “It’s not funny!”
“I’m sorry. Your phone turned off. You showed me your background which I’m assuming wasn’t the emergency print job.”
Sirius turned his phone around, mortified at the picture he knew would be there. A picture of him and his best friend, James, last Halloween both dressed as cheerleaders in very short skirts. His face grew a deep red as he opened his phone, showing him the missing cat poster.
“I see the emergency now. Here if you can send it to this email,” he said pointing to a taped-down paper on the counter, “I can get that started. How many do you need?”
“I have no idea. 20? 100? 500?” Sirius was becoming slightly panicked.
“How about we start with 50? If you need more, just call and we’ll have them printed for you before you get back here.”
Sirius nodded and sent the poster to the company email. Remus went to the back and while it was only a few minutes, Sirius felt like he was going to be sick while we waited. When he returned to the front, he leaned one of the crutches against the counter and used his free hand to pull the missing posters from the satchel.
“Thank you so much! How much do I owe you?”
Remus brushed him off. “Missing kitten poster? We do it for free.”
Sirius missed the look the girl gave Remus or he would have known it was a lie. “Thank you. Really I appreciate it so much,” Sirius said as he left in a hurry.
“Hope you find your cat!” Remus yelled as the door closed behind Sirius and immediately his head fell into his hands.
Sirius put posters up all around the neighborhood and surrounding places. He spent hours putting up the papers, making sure to call out to the cat just in case she was nearby.
It was the next morning when Sirius began to properly freak out. Regulus would come back tonight. He would ignore Sirius and try to immediately greet his cat, his cat that was nowhere to be found. Why did Sirius have to lose the one thing his cold-hearted brother actually cared about? Maybe he should get some more missing posters from the printing shop, but he felt like he’d covered more than enough ground with the fifty. He didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t just do nothing. He grabbed his coat after deciding to just try walking the streets again. He was returning back to Regulus’ place after a few hours, key in the door when his phone began to ring.
“Hello?” He answered intensely, hopeful.
“Hey, this is Remus. From the printing shop. I’m sorry but I took your number from the missing poster and I thought-”
Sirius deflated. “Listen, you’re really cute, and any other time I would have already asked you out by now. But my brother gets home in 4 hours and I have to find his cat.”
“That’s not - I was calling because I think I found her,” Remus said, obviously very flustered. “I just thought this morning that maybe someone had brought her to the animal shelter and it’s only a few buildings down from the shop so I walked over on my break. I looked at the picture from the poster and I think it’s her.”
“Thank you! Holy fuck, thank you. I will be there in 5 minutes.” Sirius hung up and practically sprinted to the animal shelter. He wasn’t sure how he hadn’t thought to check there.
Sirius burst through the door and grew disappointed when he was Remus holding the cat. Ellie was a bitch to everyone but Regulus. She didn’t let anyone else touch her, much less pick her up and hold her like a baby in their arms. But when he came closer, she immediately hissed at him and he saw her trademark white circle. He couldn’t believe that this was the menace of a cat all snuggled up against Remus.
“She does not like you,” Remus said amused.
“That’s how I know it’s really her. I’m going to go and talk to one of the employees so I can take her home.”
Sirius signed some papers and they lent him a carrier. Ellie was not fond of leaving Remus and scratched at Sirius as he locked her in the carrier.
“Thank you for finding her. You have no idea but you saved my life.”
“Of course. And now that you’ve found the cat I suppose you could ask me out,” Remus said with a smile. His cheeks were red, letting Sirius know that the confidence while maybe wasn’t natural was even more impressive.
Sirius blushed too at the reminder of his arrogant honesty. “I suppose I could. Would you like to grab some dinner tonight?”
Remus nodded.
“I’ll pick you up from work.”
“Sounds perfect,” he said with a wide smile.
Sirius went back to Reggie’s, dropping off the cat and making damn sure that she didn’t try anything funny when he opened the door to leave. Then he quickly drove back to his flat and got ready as if his life depended on it.
“Lils, which one makes my ass look better?” He asked changing back and forth into different jeans while on Facetime.
“Should I be worried about you stripping in front of my wife?” James laughed, appearing in the background with his son on his hip.
“I have a date tonight with a really cute guy who basically already saved my life. I just need an opinion from someone who likes guys and can tell me which accentuates my ass.”
“Those,” Lily and James both said at the same time.
“Thank you! Love you both. But I love Harry the most!”
Harry excitedly mumbled back pure nonsense.
Sirius ended the call and finished styling his hair and threw on his leather jacket. He drove over to the shelter, returned the carrier, and pulled up in front of the print shop. He walked in nervously and saw the same girl from yesterday at the counter.
She smiled at him before yelling to the back, “Remus, your man is here!”
Remus scrambled from the back, muttering for Marlene to shut up. He stopped dead in his tracks upon seeing Sirius and had to actively remind himself not to stare wantingly at the man.
“You ready?” Sirius asked, twirling his keys around his finger.
They went out to an Italian restaurant that was far too dimly lit to be able to read the menus clearly. They both ordered and fell into a conversation. Sirius told him all about Regulus and Ellie. He talked about his best friends, James and Lily, and about his favorite godson in the world, Harry. He told stories about all the insane shit he and James had gotten up to over the years.
Remus awkwardly explained a bit about the crutches and his Ehlers-Danlos diagnosis.
“You don’t have to tell me all about it if you don’t want to. I mean I’ll happily listen but don’t feel like you have to educate me on it. Just tell me what you’re comfortable with and if it’s okay, I’ll do some research later,” Sirius told him, not wanting Remus to feel like he owed him an explanation about the crutches.
Remus nodded and changed the topic to endlessly talking about his two best friends, Marlene, from the shop, and Peter who seemed to always be dragged into some kind of trouble.
The conversation soon morphed. It was more like they were old friends who’d known each other forever catching up as they shared funny stories from their own times at school. They talked forever, dragging out dinner as neither one would shut up to eat.
It was late when Sirius paid the bill and walked out to the car with Remus, sure to slow down his normal pace just a tad.
Sirius drove and Remus turned up the volume when he realized that there was an Aladdin Sane CD was in the CD player. Remus gave directions to his flat as Sirius drove him home. They lingered outside the building in the car, neither one wanting Remus to leave. The Prettiest Star played over the speakers.
Sirius leaned in closer, across the center console, his face close to Remus’. “Can I kiss you?”
Before Remus barely had a chance to nod, they were interrupted by Sirius’ phone ringing over the car’s Bluetooth, Regulus’ name appearing on the screen. Sirius hung up and before he could lean back toward Remus it began to ring again. “It’s my brother. I’m sorry. Just give me one second.” Sirius answered, annoyed. “What?”
“Did you lose my cat?”
“Is Ellie not home?! She was there when I was there earlier. I specifically made sure she didn’t get out when I left.” Sirius was panicking.
“No, she is. But there are missing posters all down the street with a picture of my cat.” Damn, he knew he’d forgotten something.
“It was an accident. The important thing is that she’s safe at home.”
“Get your ass here now,” Regulus growled.
“No, she’s safe and I’m trying to kiss a cute boy.”
“Sirius Orion Black, get your ass to my house right now or I will-”
Sirius hung up the phone and silenced it. He leaned in, lingering a couple inches from his face. “Sorry about that.”
Remus closed the gap between them. Soft lips connecting with his own. Sirius’s hand cupped his cheek, his thumb subconsciously migrating to the set of scars across Remus’ face.
And Sirius was a bit thankful that the bastard of a cat ran out the door in the first place.