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Sirius is in Flourish and Blotts for the third time this week for simple reasons: 1. to loiter for a few hours. 2. to harass his brother. 3. to steal a cup of coffee.
As he always does.
Unfortunately, today the modest bookshop is much more crowded than usual. He normally enters through the front doors, since for legal reasons he isn't “employed” there, but for some reason there's a line outside of them today, so he instead finds his way around the building to the employee entrance.
“‘Morning Ru,” Sirius says brightly to the large man organizing boxes as he passes him. Rubeus is a very kind man, but he's tall and hairy and intimidating, so Flourish and Blott keep him mostly away from customers.
“‘Morning Sirius! Careful in there, we're packed full! Got some author coming in for a signing or somethin’,” he continues on his task as he speaks, barely needing to look up.
“Huh. Odd,” Sirius says calmly before ducking out of the storage room and into the main area.
And to no surprise, Rubeus wasn't kidding. Twisting through the aisles and out the door is a long line of people, mostly looking to be in their early twenties at the oldest, almost all either women or obviously queer men. They all seem to be holding books of the same size, but all seem to have different covers.
Sirius doesn't question it too hard, and instead starts looking around the small room for his brother.
Unfortunately, he doesn't find him. Fortunately, he does instead manage to find a tall, sexy man with light brown curls combed back out of his eyes and a sweater that seems to be swallowing him whole.
Sirius doesn't take his eyes off the man as he maneuvers through the tight aisles, finally coming up beside where he's looking through a display of fantasy books. Sirius steps closer, and manages to see the title of the one in the man's hands.
“The Darkest Side of the Moon”
Gross.
“Don't buy that,” Sirius says, leaning against a shelf behind him. The man quickly turns to look at him.
“Excuse me?” He asks softly, an eyebrow raised. Damn, he's got pretty eyes.
“That book. It's horrible, don't buy it,” Sirius repeats. The man drops the brow and lowers his eyes.
“Is it really?” He asks again, standing up straighter.
“Oh yes,” Sirius continues, “I mean, the writing is pretty and all, but it's way too philosophical, and all the romantic aspects were so obviously written by a straight woman who fetishizes homosexual men, but also holds a grudge against the male species in general for whatever reason and therefore refuses to let love have a happy ending.”
The man laughs, and Sirius feels himself smile in response.
“What's your name, darling?” The man asks.
“Sirius. And you are?” Sirius holds a hand out to shake, but the man doesn't even glance at it. No, his eyes are on Sirius’, in a way that makes him feel like his soul is being stripped naked.
“Have you ever actually been in love, Sirius?” He asks instead of answering.
Sirius hesitates a moment.
He's dated. He's made out. He's fucked. He's been in long term relationships that were never really going anywhere anyway. But been in love? Well…
“No. I haven't,” he finally answers, “have you?”
“Yes,” he answers almost instantly. “More times than I'd like to admit. Enough that I consider myself an expert on the subject. And do you want to know what it feels like, Sirius?” His voice lowers while he asks it, and Sirius is mesmerized.
“What does it feel like?” Sirius parrots back, copying the tone and all. A corner of the man's lips turns up at the words. He sets the book down behind him, moving closer so he has to lean down to look Sirius' in the face. No wonder he's been in love so many times, he's clearly got flirting down to an art.
“It's the worst pain imaginable,” the man starts. His voice is down to a whisper, and now his entire mouth is twisted into a sad sort of smile, and Sirius is hanging onto his every word. “It's like every bone in your body is burning from the inside out. Your soul is exhausted; stretched and bent and split into two for your lover. Your heart is running a million miles a minute, and your lungs can't even breathe anymore because your lover is the air. Your brain can't decide if you're the happiest or saddest you've ever been. Nothing has ever hurt so much, and yet you'd trade your entire life to feel it for one more minute, because in spite of it all it is still the most beautiful feeling in the world.”
“Why would anyone ever fall in love then, since it hurts so bad?” Sirius whispers the question in response. How could someone have failed love so many times that he gets an outlook like this?
The man leans back and smiles in a much more playful manner now. “It's intoxicating. Why else?”
“You seek out pain, just because it's intoxicating?”
“I don't seek out anything,” he answers this one rather quickly. “It just…finds me.” Sirius smiles.
“Where has your lover gone now?” Sirius tilts his head to the side like a little puppy dog while he asks; a move that always works like a charm.
The man turns away from him. “He says I'm mean,” he answers calmly.
“Are you mean?” Sirius steps closer to see when he talks to him.
“Yes,” he answers quickly. Sirius hums in response.
“What's your name?” He asks after a moment. The man turns to him again. There's a debate in his eyes, but Sirius can't hardly tell what about.
“Remus,” he answers after a moment.
“What the hell kind of a name is that?” Sirius asks without thinking.
Remus laughs in mock offense, and Sirius wishes he could drown in the sound of it.
“Now Sirius! Do you really get the room to judge my name of all things?” He raises that eyebrow again.
“I get an excuse, my parents are fucked. What’s yours?” Sirius stuffs his hands in his pockets while he says it, bracing for questions about his past.
“Similar. But my parents were just hippies that really wanted a tortured poet for a son. I don’t go by Remus much anyway though.” Remus matches the stance, and Sirius can only hope he looks as good as Remus does when he stands like that.
“What do you go by then?” Sirius asks. Remus glances away for a moment, then brings his eyes back to Sirius again.
“I’ll let you figure that out, love,” Remus adds after a few beats. Sirius decides not to linger on it too much.
“Fine then. It’s too crowded in here, let’s go somewhere,” Sirius turns and starts to walk away, glancing back to find that Remus isn’t following. Sirius holds his hand out to him to lead the way, “c’mon, let’s go.”
“I can’t. I’m here for the book signing,” Remus motions with his head to the line of people behind them. Sirius rolls his eyes.
“Who’s even here? My brother knows all the authors that end up in here, I can probably get you a private meeting some other time,” Regulus really did have a lot of connections for a part-time employee in a local bookshop.
“RJ Lupin,” Remus says calmly. He stares at Sirius like he’s waiting for him to get something, but he’s still lost.
“That sounds familiar…” Sirius mutters, trying to remember where he heard it. Remus just stares at him while he debates it, until eventually his eyes land back on the book from earlier. The Darkest Side of the Moon, RJ Lupin. “Ah. That’s why you were over here.”
“It is.”
“Have you read it before then?” Sirius is really, really hoping he doesn’t look like a snobby idiot right now.
“Only a few hundred times.”
Shit.
“Who could possibly want to read The Darkest Side of the Moon hundreds of times?” Sirius tries to break the awkwardness he just created.
“Likely nobody but me,” Remus smirks a little when he says it.
“Maybe the author herself,” Sirius tries to joke.
Remus shakes his head, “Nah, nobody but me.” Remus turns to look at the long line again, then looks to each of his wrists as if for a watch, but he doesn’t have one.
“Eleven thirty-four,” Sirius reads off his own watch. Remus looks up to him, the slightest hint of panic in his eyes.
“Ah, you distracted me too long, Sirius,” Remus says with a smile. He looks around for a moment, then pulls a copy of the book from the shelf and a pen from his pocket.
“Don’t do that, you’ll have to buy it,” Sirius remarks as he watches the man start writing on the title page. He tries to peek at what he writes, but Remus holds the book closer to himself.
“The owners won’t mind a bit, I’m sure,” he says, finishing off his writing and handing the book to Sirius. He places a gentle kiss on Sirius’ cheek with it, then turns and walks away, disappearing into the crowd of bookworms waiting for their author. Sirius watches in awe until a voice interrupts his staring.
“I thought you didn’t want to meet RJ,” Regulus says from behind him, making him turn around.
“I don’t,” he answers, still holding the book to his chest.
“You did.”
“Did what?”
“Just met him,” Regulus is looking at Sirius like he’s stupid now, which isn’t new, but he doesn’t know the cause for it right now.
“Just met who?”
“RJ Lupin.”
“I never met an RJ Lupin.”
“You just did,” Sirius really feels like he’s missing something. Regulus motions in the direction the man just went.
“Remus?”
“Yes.”
“Remus is RJ Lupin?”
“Yes, Remus John Lupin, RJ Lupin.”
Sirius’ eyes go wide at his baby brother at the news. He just had an entire conversation about how horrible that book is…with the author of the book. He opens the book from his hands to read what he had written for him.
Sirius,
I hope you feel silly.
Give me a call, we can go get coffee and discuss you editing my next book since you feel so strongly about it.
- Remus Lupin.
P.S. Page 146, Paragraph 2.
Sirius reads the short note and the phone number written under it with a dropped jaw. He really did insult this author’s work to his face, and he still got a date with him out of it? Sirius flips through the book to find page 146 and reads through it quickly.
“But the wolf wasn’t dressed in the clothes of a sheep, not like the fairytales say. Really, the wolf wasn’t dressed like anything but a wolf, but the sheep did not know what a wolf looked like without the sheep's clothing. The wolf wore white and offered a gentle smile, and the sheep called it a sheep. It’s no fault of the poor sheep for falling victim to the cruel wolf, nor is it any fault of the wolf for falling in love with the sheep that wore a mean grin and black wool and pretended to be a wolf itself. But when both animals realize they were human all along, what then?”
Sirius can’t help but laugh.
“Tortured poet, alright.”