Aisles

Chapter 12

Thursday October 31st (early hours)

Remus felt confident in the moment of posting the photo but was slowly starting to regret it.

Fuck it - they've all seen it already, taking it down now won't do. Just move forward.

And although Remus was predicting it to be the topic of a few group chats of ridicule, he decided that he did not care. Mary was right. He looked good in the photo, it was a nice photo of their friendship and something that reminded him of happy memories. However, it did take Remus a couple hours to come to this conclusion and so he was only just starting to go to sleep at 1:47 am when his phone buzzed.

He rolled over and unlocked it to see a text from Sirius:

nice photo

Remus' blood ran cold. Or hot. He couldn't tell, to be honest, it just ran a very extreme temperature.

thank you

why you up so late?

Why are you?

come onnn, I asked first

couldn't sleep

ah. not tired?

nope

want company?

Remus shot out of bed. What the fuck does "want company?" mean?! He figured out pretty quickly when his intercom buzzer went off. He crept towards it and pressed on the mic:

"Hello?"

"Come on, Moony, you know it's me," Sirius drawled through the intercom. Remus buzzed to let him in and in the minute it took Sirius to go from the main entrance to Remus' flat's door, he had managed to work himself into a frenzy about the connotations of 'company'.

But you must give Remus a little credit here - he was not completely pathetic and therefore did not let a single bit of this show; instead, he let Sirius in and set to making some tea.

"How'd you know I was awake?: He asked, his head bent over the mugs in front of him.

"I didn't know, I just hoped. Was in the area," Came Sirius' reply.

"You never answered my question as to why you were up so late," Remus remarked.

"I was out and I didn't want to go back to James. Besides, it's Halloween morning!" Sirius collapsed into a stool at Remus' counter, but Remus did not miss Sirius' incoordination and general posture - he was drunk.

"Heard you were fighting," Remus said flatly.

"Hmm," Sirius confirmed, "He disapproves of my behaviour. Course, not all of us were virtually married by the age of seventeen,"

"Behaviour?" Remus said casually, pushing a mug of tea in Sirius' direction, along with a glass of water (which Sirius raised an eyebrow at).

"You ever read Dorian Gray? You seem like the type to have read Dorian Gray,"

"I have..." Remus skimmed over what being 'the type to have read Dorian Gray' could possibly mean, reserving it to analyse another time.

"He compared me to the main guy in that, whatever that means," Sirius rolled his eyes dramatically. Sirius may not know what James had exactly compared him to, but Remus knew:

"At least now you aren't lying to Marcus when you say you've moved on with someone," Remus said, although it came out slightly sharper than he meant it to. He softened it with a smile and: "Although you shouldn't feel bad about lying to a guy who slept with his step-brother,"