ᴍɪꜱᴄʜɪᴇꜰ ᴍᴀɴᴀɢᴇᴅ ~ Wolfstar

Year 6- Chapter 21: New Rose

***

All in all, Remus reckons he's got the right to be a bit distracted. As July drifts along he feels as if he's continuously drunk, strung out and stupid in a way that isn't entirely explained by his and Sirius' considerable marijuana consumption. He wonders if this is how people who regularly have sex always feel. He recognises that the lifelong strain between himself and his own body was significant and required all the time he gave himself to get over it; it's quite understandable that he didn't get around to it for a while.

Still. He feels like an idiot for having waited this long.

For weeks he wanders around London, muddy-minded and delirious, not noticing the heatwave or how sunburned he's getting or the funny looks his mum gives him in the evenings, not prepared to pay attention to anything that isn't Sirius. All he can think about is Sirius' sharp grin and torn shirts and soft hair and burning eyes and his jokes and his voice and the way he makes fun of him and tortures him on purpose and knows him better than anybody and his hands and his body and his laugh and him, him, him. Remus swears people must be able to see it. In his imagination it looks like the heart-shaped bubbles at the Slug Club party they crashed on his sixteenth birthday, floating out of him and popping overhead while he stands there sighing like a schoolgirl, Merlin, he feels so ridiculous sometimes. All the time.

So, he's distracted. He doesn't realise the extent of it, though, until one blisteringly hot day at the end of July when Sirius takes him to meet the famous Brianna.

"I've got an errand to run here anyway," Sirius says as they approach the storefront shop. He lopes over to the motorbike parked on the kerb and pets it lovingly. "Beautiful, isn't it?"

Remus raises his eyebrows. "Sure."

"I'm gonna get a go on it one of these days, you wait."

"I certainly hope not."

Sirius rolls his eyes. "Bloody prefect." He pushes open the door to the shop, steps over the threshold, and without preamble calls, "It come in yet?"

Remus follows him in just as the woman at the counter is putting down her magazine. "Yeah, got it this morning," she says. Her accent is buoyantly South London, vowels Cockney wide around a cigarette.

She's about thirty, round-faced and sandy-haired. She plucks a pamphlet of white paper from a thin stack on the counter and tosses it to Sirius. He passes her some coins and she drops them into the till without looking at them. She rolls her eyes, stubs out her cigarette on the formica countertop, and says, "I do stock proper magazines." She flips up the glossy cover of the Record Mirror she was reading. "Look, no felt-tip or nothing."

"Bugger off," Sirius says, flicking through the pamphlet-magazine, which looks suspiciously handwritten from where Remus is standing. Without looking up, he says, "Brianna, Remus. Remus, Brianna."

On cue, Remus steps up to the counter and sticks out his hand. "Hello, it's lovely to finally meet you. I've heard such wonderful things."

Brianna looks at his offered hand and balks at it.

"Aw no, he's so fucking nice!" she exclaims. She turns to Sirius. "He's perfectly bleeding respectable, what's he hanging round you for?"

Sirius shrugs. "Search me."

She turns back to Remus, who's frozen in place, and returns the handshake. "And it's lovely to meet you too, dearie— nobody's coming in here with no manners." She tips her head at Sirius. "When this one said he was bringing in a mate of his, I was expecting one of them delinquents who stand round on King's Road in bondage-wear sniffing glue."