Work Text:
Sirius hasn’t been able to breathe right since Friday night. It seems ridiculous to say it’s because of a boy, but of course that’s why. This one… he’s different. He can’t put his finger on why, he just is.
His name is Remus, for one. Isn’t that just the most beautiful thing you’ve ever heard? Mary, on one side of him, said, “Sirius, that’s just a white man,” but she just doesn’t get it. Did she miss the hint of hazel in his eyes when they were caught under the streetlights? Did she miss the way he tucked his head over to one side when he was trying not to laugh, and threw it back all the way when he did laugh?
They’d happened upon each other at the same club, one that Sirius went to nearly every weekend. He’d never seen Remus there before, which wasn’t unusual, this was New York City, after all, but something in his bones told him that he would have seen him before, had he been there. He held the utmost certainty that this was the first time they’d crossed paths. In this lifetime, at least. There was no way to account for the others.
Sirius didn’t think they flirted, but they spent most of the night together, friend groups merging with ease. Remus was there with another man and two girls— his bandmates, he’d said. Sirius was a musician as well, he’d told him, and they’d discussed the industry until they’d gotten so off track that it was hard to find a way back to their initial topic of conversation.
It was Sirius’ favorite way to talk, meandering and casual and entirely enrapturing. They didn’t part until six in the morning, at which point Remus was swept away by his friends, off into the night. Sirius blinked, and he was gone, like he’d never existed at all. He didn’t even get his number.
It’s Monday morning, and the magic of the weekend usually would have worn off by now, but Sirius thinks of Remus while he brushes his teeth, while he eats breakfast, while he rides to the studio where he’s supposed to sing songs about people who aren’t Remus, which feels like a waste.
He nearly crashes into a wall, twenty feet from the studio, because it’s as if his thoughts have conjured Remus, standing right outside the studio, guitar case slung over his back, making small talk with one of the sound engineers, Marlene.
He doesn’t crash, but he does accidentally hit something of an Akira bike slide into the parking lot, which draws both sets of eyes his way. Remus’ eyes light up in recognition while Marlene’s roll back into her head.
He pretends not to notice them as he parks properly and takes off his helmet, shaking out his hair. When he deigns to acknowledge their existence, Remus is staring at him with hard eyes, entirely unreadable. He looks angry… or maybe desperate? Sirius has no idea what that’s all about.
“Fancy meeting you again,” Sirius says, because it’s obvious they remember each other.
“I told you I’d be here,” Remus says.
Had he? Sirius feels like he would have remembered that. Then again, he’d spent most of their conversation staring at one of the scars crossing over Remus’ lips, wanting to kiss it, so he didn’t hear much at all. He was drunk on the gestures of Remus’ hands, the fall of curls into his eyes, so much so that his head was dizzy and confused all night, despite the fact that he’d only had one drink.
“Right,” Sirius says. “You’re in a band.”
“I am.” Remus’ eyes aren’t as intense anymore, something like bemusement lighting them from within. Oh, god, not that pesky hazel.
“Where are your bandmates?” Sirius asks.
“Inside,” he says.
“Shall we, then?” Sirius gestures inside. Marlene mimes sucking cock behind Remus’ back. Sirius is too flustered to be annoyed with her.
“Are you with us today?” Remus asks, and Sirius almost responds, before he realizes Remus is talking to Marlene. Marlene says something Sirius can’t hear over the lovestruck static in his head, and the two of them disappear inside, leaving Sirius catatonic on the sidewalk. That seems about right.
He shakes his head. No more Remus. Not until he’s done with his work for the day. He can’t abandon the million songs he’s working on for a million more about freckles and brunette curls and dirty white converse.
He does a good job, for about two hours, but when he goes outside to smoke a cigarette, halfway through his session, he finds Remus there too. So much for his plan.
Before he says anything, Remus holds out an extra cigarette and hands it to him.
“How’d you know?” Sirius says, half joking.
“You strike me as the type,” Remus says, lighting it with the end of his.
Sirius pulls back quicker than he intends, nerves on a fraying wire. “Why haven’t I seen you here before?” The studio he recorded at was quite popular for musicians in the area who were known enough to play shows, but not enough to be recognized on the street outside of a blue moon.
Remus lifts a brow. “Were you that drunk Friday night?”
No. “Yes,” he says, no other excuse for forgetting everything Remus had told him.
“I’m not from here. Minnesota,” he says.
Right, Sirius remembers that. He remembers making a stupid joke about it. He remembers Remus throwing his head back.
Sirius feels himself start to smile and cuts it off before it can overtake him. “I’m afraid to ask you anything else, because I’ll bet I asked you everything I wanted to ask the other night.”
“You probably did,” Remus agrees, “But I’m fine repeating myself.”
“You must have a lot of patience,” Sirius says.
“Maybe I just like the way your mouth moves when you talk to me,” Remus says.
It takes Sirius so off guard that he chokes on his inhale of smoke and ends up coughing, rather inelegantly, into his hand.
“Sorry, did I say something?” Remus asks, feigning innocence. Or maybe he isn’t faking. Sirius honestly can’t tell. Remus is impossible to read, but so genuine all the same. He’s a once in a lifetime man, that much Sirius knows without hesitation.
Sirius bites his lip, hope caught in his teeth. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you wanted my mouth to do more than just talk.”
“And what makes you say that?” Remus asks, and suddenly he’s closer to Sirius, close enough to touch.
“Maybe the fact that you just stepped closer to me,” Sirius says.
“Hm,” Remus hums, considering.
Sirius meets Remus' eyes and knows that falling in love with him is the easiest thing he's ever going to do. So he falls.
Half pathetic, half brave, Sirius pulls the cigarette from Remus’ mouth and replaces it with his lips, falling in perfect unity. This is so much better, he thinks, than if they’d kissed outside of the club on Friday night. That could be explained away with alcohol, or forgotten as quickly as it began, but there’s no hiding here, in broad daylight, with the crisp air of early autumn thrumming in their bones.
Remus wastes no time cupping Sirius’ face into his hands, holding him like his hands were made for it. No one has ever touched Sirius quite like this while locked in an embrace. It feels like they’re a painting, something that generations of people, from now until forever will look at and think, wow, I wish someone loved me like that .
Not that this is love, but… isn’t it?
It feels like love when Remus presses him up against the wall and kisses him into oblivion, it feels like love when Sirius tucks a poem into his back pocket, because underneath their guitars and pianos and mixes and melodies, the two of them are poets at heart. It feels like love when Remus puts his poem to melody and sends it as an audio file at four in the morning, his first night back in Minnesota. It feels like love when Sirius counts the miles between them to fall asleep at night. It feels like love when Remus smiles at him over facetime, and Sirius knows what he’s thinking without saying a word. It feels like love when they say it, in a cafe, two months after they met, halfway between New York and Minnesota, feet hooked underneath the table.
One night, late February, feet dangling out the window of his apartment, Sirius holds his phone as gently as he would a butterfly. He holds it as if Remus lives there. He does, in a way, all their conversations going until three, four, five in the morning, and all it does is leave him wanting more.
He runs his tongue over his teeth, feels the hope there, as steadfast as it was that day outside the studio.
He texts Remus, and instead of saying I love you , he says, come to nyc, pls .
Two weeks later, Sirius steps off the plane in Minnesota, his whole life on his back, and Remus is waiting for him with a key in his hand.