Work Text:
july
The late morning sun beams down on the abbey ruins, painting long shadows across the windswept lawns and picking out the pinks and the rosy-tans of the old stone. A gull calls sweetly from the blue skies above, and Remus sets down his brush.
It's a typical sort of Saturday. Out of season, but the place still bustles with that sort of pleasant hum that only the early summer can bring. It's all young families with babies in carriers, and children running wildly through the stones, and elderly couples sharing ice cream cones from the gift shop, sitting side-by-side on the benches overlooking the bay. Remus watches two old ladies in matching pastel cardigans posing for their photograph in front of the ruins, arm-in-arm, grinning into the sun. He smiles with them.
"Nice picture, mister," comes a small voice beside him, and he turns to find a boy of about six or seven, with dark, messy hair, and glasses, and a smudge of pink ice cream across the end of his nose.
"Thank you," Remus tells him, and looks back at the painting. It must be the hundredth time he's painted the old abbey. There's really no reason to even make the journey anymore. He could stay at home, in his little house down the hill, and save himself and his poor knee the climb, and paint the whole scene from memory and he's quite sure, that if he were to do that, he wouldn't miss a thing. He'd remember the precise proportions of the gothic arches, and the three, towering windows at the northern end, and the way the grasses rush out from the stone and hurtle towards the cliff edge, and how the sun glistens on the waters as far as the eye can see. He'd remember the gulls, and the fluffy white clouds, and the way the ruins glow gold and pink and blue-grey as the light changes. He wouldn't miss a single detail.
But then, he thinks - as he watches the little old ladies still arm-in-arm, and the happy families, and the boy now studiously peering at Remus's work whilst absently chewing on his ice cream cone - maybe he'd miss other things. And maybe it's worth the climb after all.
"You a painter?" the boy asks, squinting up at Remus against the sun.
Remus grins. "I am," he nods, and points at his set of watercolours, and the roll of brushes next to his easel. "Do you like to paint?"
"Not really," the boy says airily, shrugging. He takes one last look at the picture, and sniffs, and then he's wandering off with his nearly-finished cone in the direction of a red-headed woman Remus hopes is his mother.
Remus chuckles, and rolls up his brushes. He stretches his shoulders out as he stands and gathers up his things; his fold-up stool, his nifty, collapsible easel. He plucks up his painting, already dry in the light sea breeze coming in over the cliff's edge, and tucks it under his free arm, and then it's one-hundred-and-ninety-nine stone steps down to the red-roofed, white-fronted cottage nestled into the hillside, weaving his way through the growing river of passers-by and shoppers to shoulder open his front door; sage green and flaking in the salt air, with a little round window like a ship's porthole. It's a quaint place inside, all uneven floors, and doorways so low he has to duck to pass through, and tall, sash windows facing out to sea. There's a bright, sunlit sitting room with a tiny but perfectly serviceable wood fire, and a kitchen with whitewashed cupboards and a wide porcelain sink, and a stove so old Remus has to light it with a match. A bedroom upstairs, and a bathroom just big enough for one, and a lofty attic space with slanted skylights and age-bleached wooden rafters and stacks and stacks of canvases, and boards, and paints and brushes.
It's small, and it's quiet, and it's home.
Remus squeezes himself up the narrow staircase, up past the bedroom and up again, and slots his new painting into the rack against the far wall, dropping his satchel and his brushes and his paints onto the desk below one of the skylights. His stomach rumbles beneath his button-down shirt, and he looks at his watch.
"Food," he mutters, and decides - on a whim - to forego the leftovers in the old fridge downstairs in favour of treating himself to a sandwich from the café along the lane; maybe even with a slice of lemon cake to finish, he thinks.
Brodie's stretching lazily in a patch of sunlight on the tiny first-floor landing when Remus passes.
"Busy morning?" Remus murmurs to the fat orange cat, and perches himself on the top step for a moment, leaning forwards on his elbows to rub at Brodie's fluffy white tummy when he rolls over. "Must be exhausting, being a cat."
Brodie lifts his head and blinks at him sleepily, then flops back down onto the carpet.
"I'll leave you to it," Remus says softly, and smiles as he gives him one last pat, the cat already snoozing peacefully again.
The sun is high and dazzling when he steps back out onto the cobbles. He latches the old door behind him, and steps out into the bustle of it all, and lets himself be swept along happily in the throng of sightseers and day-trippers and early-season tourists. He wanders down the lane with them, past ice cream sellers and old fashioned sweet shops and little newsagents selling postcards and magazines and stamps. There's a tiny pub, barely three window panes wide, and a row of holiday cottages, and a shop selling nothing but Whitby jet, the black, inky stones worked into earrings and necklaces and great, decorative orbs there in the leaded store window. A post office, more holiday lets, and then, as Remus rounds the gentle bend of the lane, something entirely new.
It's just a little hole in the wall, like all the other shops on the street. A tiny little place squeezed between a bookstore and a small café advertising herbal teas and fruit scones. The frontage - which Remus is quite certain used to be a peeling, sun-flaked shade of orange - is now a deep black, dark as the jet in the shop up the hill, and the bay window, when Remus takes a step towards it for a closer look, is filled with all manner of trinkets; tiny wooden boxes engraved with ivies and vines, and leather-bound books and silver knots worked into rings and necklace pendants, and little pools of crystal stones in lavender and plum and delicate, glossy rose-pink.
"Please come in and buy something," says a voice, and Remus turns to see a man peering round the doorframe from inside the shop. "It's our first day," the man says, voice slightly manic, eyes wide, "and I'm starting to panic."
Remus blinks at him, and is quite sure, as the man offers him a tentative, hopeful smile, that he's never seen anyone quite so beautiful.
He's wonderfully tall. A head taller than Remus, at least, and he's all dark hair half pulled back and half hanging loose and lovely around his pale face. His eyes are the most curious shade of grey, like the surface of the waters out beyond the bay on a winter's morning, and each of them edged with a dark, smudgy shadow-line of something. A delicate silver moon glints in the sunlight where it hangs from one ear, a matching silver star hanging prettily from the other, and when Remus glances down he sees intricate lines of inkwork weaving their way up from beneath the cotton of the man's black t-shirt, meandering in fine, tapestry patterns up the side of his pale neck.
It's not that Remus has any sort of innate sensibilities that keep him away from these places. The town is full of them; little witchy shops tucked away down cobbled lanes, selling crystals and candles and packs of cards that Remus doesn't understand. Cafés with dark corners where people will tell you your fortunes and read the lifelines on your palm like scripture. Windows stacked with artifacts and amulets and tiny silver good luck charms, all Celtic knots and gemstones. And that's all fine; it's just none of his business. He does well enough with his paints and his canvases, and his cat and his cottage and his lofty attic room with the golden sunlight. He'll leave the crystals and the incense and the magic of it all to those wild, wonderful people.
It's simply nothing to do with him.
The man is still smiling hopefully. Remus sighs, and follows him inside.
The shop is a treasure trove. Dark, and cave-like, the panelled walls painted the same jet-black as the window frames outside. The air is warm and perfumed, a heady wave of lavender and sandalwood washing over Remus as soon as he steps inside to find antique furniture in mahogany and cherry-wood lining every wall, bureaus and desks and collector's trays crammed into corners and all groaning under the weight of more trinkets, and talismans; rows and rows of crystals and stones, cases full of fine silver jewellery and knick-knacks. A bookcase stuffed with ancient-looking tomes and stack upon stack of cards painted with strange, cryptic imagery, all sprites and bones and celestial patterns. The floor, when Remus looks down, is a sea of faded and threadbare tapestry rugs, overlapping and piled on top of black painted boards that creak when he steps onto them, and then a counter, busy with glass jars and little velvet pouches and yet more trays of smooth, polished gems, in every colour imaginable.
And the tall, beautiful man, standing behind it, and smiling out at Remus.
"Thanks," the man says, and seems to sag in relief when Remus doesn't immediately turn around and leave. "Everyone said we were mental to put all our money into this place, and I really don't want to prove them right."
Remus nods slowly, quite at a loss. He slides his hands into his pockets as he takes in the rest of the funny little shop. "It'll pick up," he says eventually, and smiles at the man, and tries not to think on how he might be blushing as the man smiles back. "Next week. School holidays. Tourist season."
"That's what my partner said," the man nods eagerly, folding his arms and leaning back against the panelled wall behind him. "I'll tell him you said he was right."
If something small and lonely pangs inside Remus's chest at that, he pretends not to notice.
"Yeah," he says instead, uselessly, and wonders what on earth he's doing here.
"So, what are you looking for?"
Remus frowns at the man behind the counter. "Well, I was looking for lunch," he says, and the man grins, and Remus finds he can't help but return it. "But then I was accosted and dragged inside a strange shop, so..."
"Ah," the man says, arms still folded across his chest. "The skeptic."
"The unconverted," Remus shrugs kindly. He looks around at the stones, and the packs of cards, and the stick of incense smoking gently behind the counter, and shakes his head. "I don't really..." he tapers off, gesturing at the general air of it all.
"Sounds like a challenge," says the man.
Remus raises an eyebrow. "You're going to tell me what I'm looking for, are you?"
The man narrows his eyes at him. He's still grinning; it's utterly lovely. "What's your name?" he says after a beat, and Remus quirks his head.
"Is that important?"
"It might be," the man shrugs.
"It's Remus."
"Remus," the man repeats slowly, and it sounds like honey and lavender on his tongue. "Remus. I'm Sirius." He pauses then, still regarding Remus from behind the counter, and Remus feels his cheeks flushing again, warm and flustered. "What do you do, Remus?"
"I'm a painter."
Sirius smiles in delight. "And what do you paint?"
"The abbey," Remus shrugs. "The sea. The shopfronts, on occasion. Just tourist stuff, really."
"And you love it?"
Remus chuckles. "I like it well enough. Keeps the wolf from the door, anyway. Just about."
"So you don't need fame and fortune," Sirius says, nodding pensively.
"Not really my style."
There's another beat of silence between them. The bustle of the street outside feels wonderfully muffled somehow, existing on some slightly shifted plane, and not quite reaching them in the stillness of the strange little shop as Remus feels the perfumed air lull him away to somewhere softer, and quieter.
"How's your health?" Sirius asks then.
"That's a rather personal question," Remus says, but finds - happily - that there's no sting in it.
"Stones can be very personal things," Sirius shrugs.
"It's fine. I have a bit of a trick knee that plays up sometimes, but other than that."
Sirius hums. He's still watching him with a lovely smile and narrowed eyes, measuring and kind. He tilts his head, and regards Remus in a way that makes something strange and new twist somewhere in Remus's stomach, and says, lightly:
"Do you live alone, Remus?"
The air seems to crackle around them.
"I have a cat," Remus says softly. Sirius raises a dark eyebrow at him.
"You have a cat."
"Alright, yes," Remus says, shrugging, and feeling as if he's just been caught out, somehow. "I live alone."
"And how do you find that?"
"I like my space." He pauses, and swallows, and wonders why he's saying any of this at all. "And it can get a little quiet sometimes."
Sirius nods at that. He turns, reaching to lift a wooden tray of something from a low shelf, and when he turns back to set it down on the counter Remus sees that it's filled with naught but petal-pink stones, all nestled in a bed of sage green velvet. Some of them look glossy and polished, glinting in the sunbeams that filter hazily through the leaded windows. Some of them are craggy, and raw, as if they've just been carved from the very earth itself. The light catches in them as Sirius turns the tray; they seem to glow, milky and soft.
"They're all pink," Remus says flatly.
"What's wrong with pink?"
"Nothing," Remus says, and takes a step forwards despite himself. "I'm just more of a beige sort of guy."
Sirius laughs at that; a clear, happy thing, like sunlight and seaglass. "It's rose quartz," he says, and gently pushes the tray towards Remus.
"And what does rose quartz do?" Remus asks. He leans over the stones, and sees, up close, the planes and the fractals inside the crystals; the delicate fault lines and boundaries that run wildly through the gems, as if even the most polished ones have entire worlds beneath their glossy surfaces.
"Lots of things," Sirius says softly, resting his elbows on the counter and leaning down to peer at the quartz with Remus. "It's a very gentle stone. It's good for healing, and compassion. It can help with forgiveness, and empathy. And," he says, and Remus finds that he's holding his breath, and trying not to think on how very close Sirius's face now is to his own, "it can open you up to love."
There's something funny happening beneath the cotton of Remus's button-down shirt.
"I see," he says quietly. He nods at two stones in the corner of the tray nearest Sirius; small, carefully carved and shaped. "And the ones that look like little hearts. They're more powerful, I suppose?"
He looks up at Sirius wryly, and finds him smiling back at him.
"No," says Sirius, grey eyes glinting with something lovely and playful. "They're just prettier."
They seem to hang like that, for a moment; both bent over the stones, the air around them still heady with incense, and the gentle hum from beyond the door barely reaching them as Sirius smiles across at him, and Remus smiles back, and feels his cheeks grow warm and as pink as the gems on the counter between them.
"Well then," he says softly, and finds himself - quite without ever deciding to - reaching into his back pocket for his wallet. "I suppose I'd better take one of those."
Sirius beams.
"An excellent choice," he says. They both straighten up at that, and Remus feels suddenly bereft at the loss.
"You can tell your boyfriend the business is a roaring success now," he says quietly, handing over a note and tucking his wallet back into his trousers.
"Boyfriend?" Sirius says. He frowns at Remus as he jots the transaction down in a paper ledger on the counter, and tucks one of the heart-shaped stones into a little linen pouch.
"You mentioned your partner earlier."
"Oh," Sirius chuckles. He smiles, and passes the small bag across the counter to Remus. "Business partner. James. Married. Lily. One delinquent child."
"Oh," Remus repeats, dumbly. The pouch sits heavy and promising in his palm. He stares down at it; the funny thing is happening in his chest again. "So," he says, and looks back up at Sirius, "you live alone?"
There's a thrilling, heady moment of silence between them.
"I do."
"And how do you find that?" Remus says, echoing his words back to him, and wondering - wildly - at his own sudden boldness.
"It can get a little quiet sometimes."
Remus nods at the tray between them; the other heart-shaped stone sits still, and waiting, its planes and fractals and glossy, silk-smooth surface glinting in the warm sunlight from outside the bay window. "Maybe you need one, too."
"Maybe I do," Sirius says softly. He waits a beat, smiling across at Remus, and then he's reaching to pluck the gem from its velvet bed and slipping it neatly into his pocket. "So," he says then, and folds his arms back across his chest, and grins. "You were saying something about lunch?"
september
The waves crash against the beach, rolling over themselves out onto the foamy tide before hurtling back towards the shoreline, rough and abstract. It's an unseasonably cold first day of the month. The sky seems to be at rest after a summer of being too big, too blue; now a flat, misty silver-grey, like brushwater in one of Remus's mason jars after a morning up at the abbey in the wintertime. Pale, and quietly stormy.
Remus shivers.
"Chilly?"
"A bit."
He smiles as Sirius leans over and drapes his jacket over Remus's shoulders. The leather feels soft, and supple; it smells like lavender and sandalwood. Sirius's hand lingers for a moment, heady and wonderful on the back of Remus's neck and when he takes it away the warmth of it seems to stay, somehow. It always does now. Every accidental touch, every brush of fingers over lunch or pub drinks or the shop counter, when Remus ducks inside in the mid-afternoon lull of tourists and treats himself to another candle, or a book, or a sachet of the bath salts Sirius introduced him to a month ago and promised would give him the best night's sleep he'd ever had. It always seems to linger; a warm patch of sunlight left on Remus's skin long after they've parted ways and Remus has returned to his little cottage built into the hillside. A spark, or the earliest kernel of a dancing flame that would surely blaze gloriously if only one of them would dare reach out and let it catch.
He's quite sure they will, sooner or later. Sirius will let his hand rest on the back of Remus's neck for a moment longer than could be explained away, or Remus will lean into him intentionally, when they're sitting side-by-side on the seafront like this. He'll let his hand find Sirius's between them, and twine their fingers together without saying a word, and the past six weeks will suddenly make a wonderful amount of sense. The way they see each other every day now, never for any particular reason, and how right and how wonderful that feels. Their Friday nights at the pub down the road with James, and Lily, and Harry, who still doesn’t like painting but who loves strawberry-pink ice cream, even on the colder days. That first lunch together, in the courtyard of the café down the narrow, low-ceilinged ginnel, and how Sirius had talked and talked and talked and how they'd wandered blissfully back along the cobbles together, and Remus had wondered at the sheer unlikelihood of it all. He'd felt mad. Utterly mad. Swept away, spirited off entirely into a new and thrilling world that made absolutely no sense to him. It was surely madness that he - in his beige button-down, with watercolour paint staining his fingertips - should've been walking down the cobbles in the midday sunshine next to Sirius, with his wild hair and his tattoos and his silver-moon earring and his everything. He'd talked to Remus the whole way back, saying something about the abbey, and something else about the buildings that they were passing, and Remus nodded along until they reached the little black shopfront but was far too taken up with the unlikeliness of it all to really be listening, and the way he could still smell lavender, and sandalwood, and how he could feel the weight of the heart-shaped stone in his pocket as they walked.
"You're good for him," James had said quietly a month later, when Sirius had ducked into the back room to root around for a particular vial of oil that he said Remus ought to try in the bath that night to soothe his aching knee, and Remus had blushed, and muttered something about Sirius being a good friend, and James had smiled and gone back to his bookkeeping.
He thought on it, though. That night, tucked up in bed. The next day when Sirius had mentioned, in an offhand sort of way over lunch, a brother back down in London, and how he hadn't seen him in a while. A week later, when they'd been working together to stack a set of Remus's paintings on a new display by the bay window, and Remus had said something about going inland soon to visit his parents, and when that led - many hours later, after three rounds of drinks at the pub down the cobbles - to Sirius telling him that he didn't speak to his parents, and doubted he ever would again.
"Their loss," Remus had muttered quietly, and Sirius had smiled at him in the most curious way over the rim of his pint glass.
"I'm going in," Sirius says now, and Remus laughs.
"No you're not," he says, shaking his head and looking out to the slate-grey waters down the sands. "It'll be freezing."
"I'm going in."
He watches as Sirius stands, and toes off his black boots there on the sea wall, rolling his jeans up as far as they'll go and then he's picking his way along the stone and down onto the beach, hopping lightly over crabshells and tidepools and wet, glossy seaweed until he's standing ankle-deep in the foamy waters.
"It's lovely!" he calls back up the shore to Remus, grinning, and throwing his arms out wide.
"Well, I hope you have a wonderful time!" Remus shouts back, cupping his hand to his mouth to carry the sound on the breeze. Sirius gives him another grin, and two thumbs up, and Remus slips his other hand absently into the pocket of his cardigan under Sirius's leather jacket and thumbs at the familiar curve of the rose-pink stone there. It's always there, now. In his pocket, or the bottom of his satchel with loose brushes and bits of old sketching paper. Tucked onto his bedside table between his book and his alarm clock. Smooth as glass and the colour of flower petals. Small, and important.
He watches Sirius wander up and down the shore at the water's edge, stooping every now and then to peer at something in the sand, or to pluck up a shell and study it for a moment, or to gaze out to sea, with his hands in his pockets, and his hair blowing wild and pretty in the autumn winds. He thinks of candle-smoke and silver trinkets and the bath oils that have done wonders for his knee.
Reach out now, a voice whispers to Remus, from some quiet corner of his mind. Let the spark catch.
How perfect it could be, he thinks. His cottage is so small; so tiny, with its low-ceilinged rooms and doorframes that even he has to stoop to pass through. A bathroom barely big enough for one, and a snug, fire-cosy sitting room. Brodie in his little patch of sunlight on the narrow first-floor landing. His life feels small, and happily so; quiet and soft and small and lovely. There's room enough there for one more, surely. How lovely it could be.
He holds the stone in his palm as Sirius makes his way back up the beach, fingers curled tightly around it, and feels his heart thrum headily beneath his cardigan.
Reach out now.
"So," he says, when Sirius settles back onto the seawall by his side, bare feet dangling down towards the sands. He turns the stone over, and over, and lets his palm fall open in his lap, and hopes. "What's the timeframe on these things?"
A gull calls faintly in the sky above them, riding the winds up to the old abbey high on the cliffside. Remus holds his breath.
"Ah," Sirius says softly, and when Remus steels himself to look across it's to find Sirius grinning, first at the stone, and then at him, and saying, in a lovely, quiet way: "Have I converted him?"
Remus says nothing. The stone feels warm and heavy in his hand.
"Why?" Sirius says, quirking his head, and Remus watches as the sea breeze plucks at the untied trails of his dark hair. "Do you think it might be working?"
"Is yours?"
It comes out small, and fragile; tiny and wondering.
Sirius smiles. There's a beat of stillness between them then, just the waves, and the winds, and the gulls above, and then Sirius is reaching an arm around Remus to slip his hand gently into the pocket of the jacket that still hangs from Remus's shoulders.
"Do you know," he says softly, pulling his hand back, and letting it rest in the space between them. His own rosy-pink stone glows in the pale autumn light. "I think it just might be."
If Remus has wondered, on quiet nights alone in his cottage, what kissing Sirius might feel like one day, he's delighted to find how entirely right he's been when Sirius's lips press carefully against his own. It's soft, and pretty; delicate and curious. New and wild. He smells like lavender, and incense, and sunshine even on a stormy day. His hand, warm and feather-light, comes up to rest on Remus's cheek, the tips of his fingers trailing some heady and enchanting spell along Remus's skin as the loose waves of his hair dance in the wind that rolls in off the water and his smile, when he pulls back, is magic.
Remus grins, and laughs lightly. His stone seems to sing where it's still held tightly in his palm. He looks down at it, and sees its crystal planes, and jagged fractals, and smooth, petal-pink surface, and its twin sitting quietly in Sirius's hold across from him. And he nods.
"Me too."
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