FIC: The Look of Love for maraudorable
Nov. 16th, 2019 08:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chromat1cs posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
small_giftsAuthor: Chromat1cs
Recipient: Maraudorable
Rating: PG
Contents or warnings: a touch of survivor's guilt, some carefully-covered grief, new-wave 80s jams, achy fluff near as sweet as fresh caramel.
Word count: ~3000
Summary: The flat is too small for Christmas with four. It should be three, really, and Harry only counts as one half of a full person at this size but for his high-chair and—yes, there are four of them. Remus counts himself terribly lucky that his mother has an extra few seats at her table.
Notes: I'm so sorry, I made it a walkup instead of a cottage, but I hope it still feels cozy enough to be a cottage and that the song reference more than makes up for it <3
<lj-cut text="The Look of Love">
"We should have brought something."
"She told us not to, Sirius, and I asked twice."
Harry makes a burbly little hum that sounds vaguely like Gueriglim. Sirius shifts him to his other hip, his overcoat hissing softly against Harry's marshmallow of a jacket there on the stoop on the edge of London this unusually-quiet late afternoon—it seems Christmas Eve has chased everyone inside to their own hearths, leaving silence for the rest of them. "Well, you know what they say about third time's and all that."
Remus can feel Sirius’ smirk like the breeze that sighs past, rattling the dry branches of one of the trees along the sidewalk as though laughing at Sirius' joke in Remus' stead.
"Just saying, if we're suddenly in need of a second ham you can't say I didn't offer."
"We won't need two hams, we—"
The door does Remus the service of creaking open quite loudly just then to deliver him from the sublime exasperation of the constant insistence that We're Fine, Sirius, Everything Is Alright. Standing there with all her delicate ferocity, offset now by a rather large pair of red bauble earrings and a bright green jumper, Hope Lupin opens her arms with a very obviously Harry-angled smile.
"Happy Christmas!" She cries, even more obviously for the baby. Harry smiles the chub-cheeked grin he only uses on his favorite handful of people and opens those sausage roll hands of his covered with a pair of knobbly second-hand mittens to her like a mirror. Sirius braces Harry when he wriggles forward to reach out for Hope and passes him over, pell-mell little limbs and all, over the threshold and into Hope's arms where she presses a noisy kiss to his forehead. "How was the journey over then," she asks to Remus and Sirius both without looking at either of them, "not too cold? Didn't get lost?"
Hope's new townhouse is, by Remus’ suggestion that ended up being more of a demand after all, completely disconnected from the Floo network and free of any and all magical bits and bobs save for a little Protean jar Remus has coached her to use in the event that all this postwar quietude shatters someday and leaves her in need of someone with more defensive spells than a good hard slap—although he doesn’t doubt that an angry Hope Lupin would be far more than enough to send a Pureblood extremist tucking tail before they could draw a wand. Keeping his mother well separated from anything that even vaguely smells of magic is Remus’ own way of coping with all the shit of it as the dust has settled, just as Sirius tends to take very long solo rides through the skies of the countryside when it’s particularly cloudy or buries himself bodily in his latest venture into building and painting model Muggle airplanes before not-Muggle charming them to fly around for Harry. They’re both going more than a little grey around their temples before even hitting 30, and Remus has gotten very good at shrugging off the way Hope’s eyes linger with a shudder of sadness on their collective stress of survival.
It is, at the end of the day, enough. Their cobbled-together family is enough, the strange flex of their weekly schedule is enough, Remus’ work-when-you-can-get-it with all sorts of remote defense texts is enough alongside the carefully-meted-out support of Sirius’ inheritance, and Hope’s efforts at the end of it all to tie them together in a tidy bow of their own brand of Traditional is, as it turns out, enough.
Finally situated around the table after the bustle of How are you’s and How has he been directed at Harry in all manner of cooing, after finding ways to trick Hope in letting him and Sirius help around the kitchen to Hope’s hostess chagrin, Remus is silently relieved they honestly didn’t even need that second ham.
“Don’t tell me you like cranberries now?”
Remus shakes himself out of a fog, Tuesday’s moon still playing a minor riot in his skull just behind his eyes. Hope’s table is set for three who can eat like human beings and one with the motor skills of a very fussy goblin, with Hope at one head of the shallow oval tabletop and Harry at the other with Remus and Sirius seated slightly staggered across from one another—Remus a tad nearer to his mother and Sirius closer to Harry, as the only one who can really get him to eat anything these days. Harry is beaming at Sirius’ curiosity and currently has the evidence of a bright-red smear across his face, missed his mouth maybe twice or three times before getting it right with Hope’s cranberry sauce, while he makes very happy sounds and gums it as though it’s meant to be eaten alone.
“He’ll need a bath later,” Remus says around a bite of the ham that’s better than anything either he or Sirius would have magicked together anyways, slightly dismayed at the very real possibility of having to haul the baby home on the tube while trying to keep him from sticking to every surface along the way.
Hope makes a sound of agreement and gestures with her fork, wiping at one corner of her mouth with her napkin as she smiles across the table at Harry’s abject and destructive glee at what’s steadily looking like a Christmas massacre along his chubby cheeks. “Of course, I’ve still got all the baby things in the bathroom.”
Ignoring the implied suggestion that he and Sirius stay any later past exchanging gifts, Remus screws up his eyebrows and tilts his head at Hope. “You’ve saved all that?”
“Of course I’ve ‘saved all that.’” Hope mimics Remus’ more angular, deeper brogue with a cheeky glimmer in her eyes that makes Remus grin a little in spite of himself—holidays are not His Thing, far more Sirius’ bag of comfort, but damn it if his mother doesn’t know how to drag some cheer up out of his depths after twenty-odd years of prodding it out. “I always knew either of you would find a way to get yourself saddled with a baby, one way or another. Call it maternal instincts.”
Sirius takes the tease with an earnest grin and a laugh, the sort of laugh that means he doesn’t find the same pain deep down in it that Remus does. Sirius spent far too many years at the outset of his life covering up all the hurt to go hunting for it now between the lines, both in his childhood and the implosion of catastrophe that stole their friends away and plopped Harry down into their life together. He rebels against the dark by pushing it back instead of ripping it open, shutting away all the bitter memories Remus knows shudder through him when his defenses are down, while Remus takes solace in diving in and trying to smash it all together again to make sense of the chaos. In this, Remus has always supposed, they make a perfect complement to one another.
But it’s Christmas, so Remus pushes the old and new wounds alike aside to deal with later. “That would be lovely,” he says gently to Hope, accepting that unsaid invitation with so rarely-open arms, “thank you.”
They wash dishes and rinse off Harry’s dinnertime performance art as best they can before settling in the sitting room for gifts. Sirius spells up a cozy fire despite Remus’ order to do it without his wand drummed up behind his teeth—and he gets the look from Sirius without even needing to say it, summoning the flames with a snap of his fingers while his eyes sparkle with the mischief inherent in But I didn’t use my wand that Remus can hear clear as a bell without him speaking a word. Harry makes excited little screeching sounds at the blinking lights threaded through Hope’s little tree as they each find a good spot around the room; Remus in the armchair that was almost exclusively his father’s until Lyall disappeared into eastern Europe, Hope folded gracefully onto the close end of the sofa, and Sirius on the floor at Remus’ feet while Harry todders around on his shaky little proto-feet with his arms wheeling out for balance as though Sirius won’t be right there to catch him at the first whiff of a stumble.
Hope is quietly thrilled by the new cocktail watch clumsily wrapped in Remus’ less-than-crisp foil paper, and she puts it on immediately. “And instead of the second hand,” Sirius points out, leaning across the rug with his thumb and forefinger holding the watch face steady as Hope bends to watch his instruction, “I’ve charmed it to track the lunar cycles. I know you like my tattoo, but I figured this was a little more elegant than cajoling you into a parlor in SoHo.”
Laughing with her head thrown back, the sound carrying with it the reckless abandon of that unique mixture of relief and love Remus is sure she’s feeling for the same roiling hum of it in the pit of his own guts, Hope pats Sirius on the cheek and kisses him on the forehead. “Careful, darling, you don’t know what I got up to when I was your age.”
Sirius crows his own barking laughter, surprised into it, which makes Harry giggle along for nothing but the glee of being in on the unknowable social current. Remus sniffs his own chuckle and can’t help but smile warmly at Hope as she looks at each man in turn with adoration full behind her eyes, fiddling with the watch happily. “Thank you, truly. I love it. I’ll wear it every day.”
The limited combinations of their exchanges go around in full quite soon: Remus receives a new set of quills from Hope and a pair of stunning gold cufflinks from Sirius—his instinctual insistence of But when on earth would I wear these dying on the back of his tongue as he leans down and kisses Sirius, kisses him with surprising fervor as though the world might end again without it; Sirius is thrilled into another laugh with a new box of tinkering tools for his bike from Hope and shares another indolent kiss with Remus when he opens the set of model paints Remus ordered special from Denmark; Harry becomes the proud owner of a new plush animal shaped like an elephant who he promptly christens as “Bibi” to everyone’s staunch agreement, as well as two pairs of footie pyjamas and a hat Hope bought on a whim in Brighton some months ago with Cool As A Cucumber embroidered above the brim.
“I thought it was so funny,” Hope says through a laugh, adjusting the too-big cap atop Harry’s flyaway hair with tender delight. It slides down at a jaunty angle and Remus’ heart flexes when that makes Harry grin wider, his few little gapped teeth showing. This is a blessing, Remus tells himself as he sips deeply on the mulled wine Sirius has just ladled fresh into mugs for all of them, despite everything, this is a fucking blessing and you will treat it as such, goddamn you.
Later, Sirius is flipping through Hope’s record collection once Hope has whisked Harry into the bath and insisted that Remus and Sirius both Stop it, sit, relax. Let a gran be a gran every once in a while, won’t you? The hearth crackles calmly and the tree continues twinkling with its silent winks like a white blush on the smear of the low lighting, and Remus watches the glimmer of it dancing along Sirius’ hair there to his right crouched in front of the record cabinet.
“I don’t know when on earth I’m ever going to wear those cufflinks, truly.” Remus sucks his last sip of wine around the edges of his tongue, pleasantly spinning into tipsiness for the rarity with which he drinks anymore, and stares at the way Sirius’ fingers flick expeditiously along the record spines. Flik, flik, flik, the sound of it comforting with the way it recalls the days before the stress and the grind and the sorrow of it all when he and Sirius could just splay out on the floor and do nothing for hours but listen to records.
“It’s not about wearing them,” Sirius hums, drawing out a new-looking single from the fold of Hope’s radio subscription gifts, “it’s about having the option to look nice if you have to.”
“Whenever will I need solid gold cufflinks?”
Sirius shrugs as though everyone owns a pair, as natural to the wardrobe as sock garters or several reliable pairs of pants. “You have that one suit, or that set of purple robes.” He slips the single out of the sleeve and squints at the title—he’s going to need glasses soon if he already doesn’t, but Remus doesn’t know how to press to fact without making it sound as though he’s pushing at the sore spot of either of them having the chance to get older.
Shrugging to himself through another sip of his drink, still hot, oh, the perfect idiot charmed his mug warm, Remus adjusts his feet in their fold beneath him. “Right, but the occasion on which to use those outfits? When’s that?”
He doesn’t see it happen as Sirius faces the turntable and sets the record on the slip mat, but the eye-roll is evident in his tone; “I dunno, Remus, how about Friday? The entire month of January? For a few hours in the afternoon? Wear dress robes to the book shop, the world is your oyster.”
Adoration and bitterness war behind Remus’ teeth. The world is your oyster, almost an act of warfare in words these days—the bait to Remus’ habit of insisting they don’t deserve this, what the hell did the two of them do to be the ones who got to survive this, out of all their friends, why the couple of volatile berks who can hardly make it from Sunday to Sunday on a good week? Remus stills himself, takes one breath, two; it’s Christmas. If only as a gift to Sirius, he won’t take up arms against their shared fate tonight. “I’ll wear them to buy groceries then,” he murmurs, “next time we’re out of milk.”
The needle hisses briefly in the record’s grooves before the tune picks up, volume low, gentle in the thrumming calm of the sitting room despite the declamatory synth pop that begins warbling from the record player. Sirius turns to face him with a small smile, one eyebrow raised. Remus’ weakness to that look is obviously evident, for his grin widens a little. “There’s my Moony,” he murmurs as he rises to his feet. Adoration blooms low in Remus’ gut at the same time Sirius begins to shift his hips in campy time to the record’s beat, beckoning Remus to stand up and join him.
“When your world is full of strange arrangements,” the record sings, the single playing on every station these days with it’s candy-pop bounce Remus has always found it insufferably impossible not to bop his head along with whenever he hears it, “And gravity won't pull you through, You know you're missing out on something, Well that something depends on you!”
“All I’m saying,” Sirius sings along softly with that gravel-scratch voice of his, still bidding Remus to stand with rhythmic crooks of his fingers, “It takes a lot to love you; All I'm doing, You know it's true…”
“Does it now?” Remus deadpans, challenging Sirius with a stoney glare only made halfway of exasperation. Sirius shimmies over to him until their knees touch before leaning down to bunt their foreheads together.
“That's the look, that's the look,” Sirius hums at him, the glassy wail of synthesizers and pop drums underscoring him, “The look of love, that’s the look, that’s th—”
Cutting him off with self-righteous decisiveness, Remus leans up and kisses Sirius squarely on the lips. Sirius stumbles, off-kilter for less than a second, before he catches himself and leans fully into it with his hands sliding up to cradle Remus’ face. He always kisses Remus like this, as though nothing is too much and he might lose the chance tomorrow so he might as well drink it all up while he can—they learned to do this, after all, while war shuddered its madness just outside their doorstep. He might never unlearn the habit. Remus isn’t quite sure he would want that anyways.
“I love you,” Remus whispers, matter-of-fact, against Sirius’ mouth when they separate to hover in the soft press of closeness. Sirius whuffs an airy chuckle and nuzzles his way over to Remus’ cheek to drop another slow kiss into the space beneath Remus’ ear.
“I love you more. Now it’s Christmas, get up and dance with me.”
Complying, Remus lets himself shrug off the constant weight of worry on his shoulders for the length of the rest of the single. But Sirius re-sets the record twice, three times, four times, and by the end of the fourth whirl around Remus is smiling without realizing it and doesn’t quite remember to reassume that dour mantle again when Hope comes back out into the sitting room with a clean and newly-pyjamaed Harry.
After all, it’s Christmas. They’ve all survived a year past the worst of it and will very likely survive another, and another, and however many beyond that they have left.
Remus can enjoy it in spite of his frustration, his short fuses, his helplessness, his guilt; as he looks down the barrel of the impending new year he can stand up and slog his way onward or he can let Sirius take him by the hands each time and dance forward instead—however questionable their sense of rhythm together, all bandy legs with a baby held between them—together, despite every attempt to tear them apart left conquered behind them in the muddied London snow.
</lj-cut>
no subject
Date: 2019-12-01 04:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-12-02 09:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-12-01 06:06 pm (UTC)What I also wasn’t expecting was to get into full-on Christmas mode on the first of December, but your story was so warm, cosy, so full of love, that I just couldn’t resist. Had I been alone in the room when reading it, I would’ve cried at Remus’s heart clenching when he was looking at laughing Harry. I’m soft like that. I’ll probably do it when I reread it.
I know what Remus is feeling - I know how hard it is to allow yourself to be happy again after losing someone close to you, to stop telling yourself you don’t even deserve it. I’m just so glad they have each other and Harry (and Hope!). Screw canon.
Thank you so much for this wonderful gift ❤️
(By the way, flats are even better than cottages because they’re smaller and can be even cosier (and because I’m a city girl living in a walk-up myself), so don’t you dare apologise.)
no subject
Date: 2019-12-02 09:27 pm (UTC)Screw canon indeed, it's Christmas <33333
You're so welcome, thank you for such a lovely wishlist!
no subject
Date: 2019-12-01 07:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-12-02 09:29 pm (UTC)Thank you so much :>
no subject
Date: 2019-12-02 12:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-12-02 09:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-12-02 05:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-12-02 09:31 pm (UTC)The choice makes the strength, with happiness and love and all things in-between. Remus is one of my favorite studies in unexpected strength, thank you so much for reading!
Thank you for such a sweet comment <3
no subject
Date: 2019-12-02 01:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-12-02 09:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-12-02 06:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-12-02 09:33 pm (UTC)Thank you so much!
no subject
Date: 2019-12-02 10:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-12-02 11:50 pm (UTC)Sirius stumbles, off-kilter for less than a second, before he catches himself and leans fully into it with his hands sliding up to cradle Remus’ face. He always kisses Remus like this, as though nothing is too much and he might lose the chance tomorrow so he might as well drink it all up while he can—they learned to do this, after all, while war shuddered its madness just outside their doorstep.
Sirius cradling Remus’ face and kissing him for dear life !!!
Also I loved baby Harry! Awww