#phoebe's fics

[phoebe-writes]

Whatever's Left Over

Pairing: James Potter x Reader Summary: James gave away the one weekend that was meant to be just yours. The argument that follows isn't really about the barbecue. Tags: arguments, angst, hurt/comfort, established relationship, happy ending

It starts with the kitchen table between you, same as it always does when things go wrong. You're stood at one end with a tea towel in your hands, twisting it, and James is at the other, still in his coat, still holding his keys, his hair doing the thing it does when he's dragged a hand through it on the walk home.

"You said yes," you say, "before you even asked me."

"It's one weekend," he says, dropping the keys on the table with a clatter, "Sirius has had it planned for weeks, mate practically begged, I could hardly say no—"

"We had a weekend, James." You hear your own voice climb and try to bring it back down and don't quite manage it. "We planned it, a weekend just for us. Six weeks ago. You circled it on the calendar yourself, with a little star, I watched you do it."

"I know, and we'll do it," he says, easy, like it's obvious, like you're the one being difficult, "just — not this weekend, is all. We'll move it. It's not going anywhere."

"That's not the point—"

"So what is the point," he says, and grins, quick and automatic, the grin that's got him out of detentions and worse, "because from where I'm stood the point seems to be a barbecue versus my girlfriend, and I'm fairly sure I know which one wins—"

"Don't," you say, "don't do the charm thing, not right now."

That lands somewhere. His grin drops half a second too fast, and something flickers behind his glasses that isn't a joke at all. "I'm not doing a thing, I'm trying to—" He stops, starts again. "It's Padfoot. You know what he's like when he's organised something, he'll sulk for a fortnight if I pull out, and Moony's driving up specially—"

"And what am I meant to do," you say, "just... shuffle round in the diary until there's a gap left over? Because that's what it feels like, James. Like I get whatever weekend nobody else has claimed."

"That's not fair."

"Isn't it though." Your voice cracks a bit on it, which annoys you more than anything he's said. "This was ours. We picked it because it was the one free weekend we had. And you gave it away in about four seconds flat because Sirius asked nicely."

"So I forgot, all right," he says, an edge creeping into it too, because James hates this — hates thinking he's let you down, hates it so much he'd rather argue his way out of the feeling than sit in it — "I'm not allowed one mistake now, is that it? I have to run every single thing past you before I so much as say hello to my own mates—"

The room goes tense in the particular, horrible way it only can with someone you love. Nobody's shouting. That's almost worse.

You put the tea towel down on the table, right in the middle, like a small white flag neither of you asked for.

James looks at it. Then he looks at you. And something in his face changes — you watch it happen, watch the argument go out of him like a held breath finally let go.

"This isn't about the barbecue," he says, quietly, like he's only just heard himself.

"No," you say.

"It's about you thinking you come after everyone else." He says it plainly, no charm in it, no joke to soften the corners. "That you get slotted in around Sirius and Remus and the footie and whatever's left over."

You don't answer straight away, because your throat's gone tight, and because he's right, and hearing it said out loud by him is somehow harder than thinking it yourself at two in the morning.

"Yeah," you say, finally. "That's it."

He pulls out the chair across from you — the one that's always a bit too far from the table, that always gets shoved back in properly by whoever tidies up last — and he sits. He doesn't cross his arms. He doesn't make a joke about how he'd rather sit through his own dentist appointment than have this conversation, which is the sort of thing he'd usually say to get you laughing before you're ready to laugh.

He just sits, and looks at you, and says, "I'm sorry."

Properly sorry. The kind with nothing hiding behind it.

"I keep doing it because I don't think," he says, "I say yes because it's easy and it's my mates and I don't stop to think what it costs you, and that's — that's rubbish of me, isn't it."

"A bit," you say, and your voice wobbles on it.

He reaches across the table, over the tea towel, and turns his hand palm up. Doesn't grab. Just leaves it there, open, waiting.

You look at it for a second. At the space between his hand and yours, the little stretch of wood grain and one abandoned tea towel that's somehow come to mean everything's fine or everything's not, depending on who reaches first.

You reach first. You always do, in the end, because staying angry at James Potter has never once outlasted the sight of his open hand.

His fingers close round yours, and something in your chest loosens that you didn't know was wound so tight.

"I should've said something the second you said yes to Sirius," you admit, "instead of letting it sit for a week and stewing."

"And I should've asked before I said yes," he says, "instead of assuming you'd just... fit round it."

"Both true," you say.

"Both true," he agrees, and there's the ghost of a smile now, careful, testing whether it's allowed.

You let it be allowed.

"I'll tell Sirius it's just me this weekend," he says, "you and me, here, nothing else. I'll text him tonight."

"You don't have to cancel—"

"I want to," he says, and squeezes your hand, once, like punctuation. "The barbecue can wait. Sirius'll sulk for an hour and then forget he was ever cross. This can't wait. You can't wait."

You laugh, a small wet sort of laugh, the kind that comes right after nearly crying. "That's dead soppy, Potter."

"Yeah, well," he says, "you make me soppy."

The chair across from you isn't too far away any more. It's right where it should be, pulled in, close enough that your knees knock his under the table when you shift, and neither of you moves away.

The tea towel's still sat there between your hands, forgotten now, its little white flag job done.

"Tea?" he says, after a while, nodding at the kettle.

"Go on then," you say.

He gets up to put the kettle on, and on his way past he presses a kiss to the top of your head, easy, like breathing, like nothing at all happened five minutes ago. But something did. And you both know it, and you both let it settle, the way the kettle settles into its low building hum, the way his chair sits pulled in at the table now, waiting for him to come back and fill it.

He does.

[phoebe-writes]

Just the Umbrella

Pairing: Remus Lupin x Reader Summary: He only came to drop off the umbrella — then your two-year-old grabs his hand, hauls him onto the rug, and falls asleep on him, and Remus doesn't dare breathe. Tags: single parent, kids, tender, fluff, light hurt/comfort

He's only come to drop off the umbrella. That's the whole plan, the entire scope of the evening — hand it over, say something about the weather, go home before she's even properly clocked he's there. You'd been careful about that, careful in a way you hadn't quite admitted to him. She's met him once before, by accident, thirty seconds of him standing in your hallway with his coat still on while she stared up at him like he'd wandered in from another planet, and that was the whole of it. You hadn't planned past that. Tonight was meant to be the same — in, umbrella, out.

Instead he's sat cross-legged on the rug doing a very committed caterpillar voice, small and squeaky, nothing like his own, because she took one look at him standing in the doorway, decided he was staying, and hauled him down onto the floor by the hand before you could stop her. He'd gone along with it. Of course he had. And now it's turned into this.

She's asleep on him.

Two and a half years old and out cold, cheek squashed against his jumper, one fist still curled round his collar like she clocked off mid-sentence and never let go. You hear it before you see it — the particular quiet a toddler makes when she's finally lost the battle, the one that used to make your chest loosen with relief when she was tiny and still does now.

You come through from the kitchen with a tea towel over your shoulder and stop dead in the doorway.

Remus has gone completely still. Not relaxed-still — rigid-still, arms curved round her in a shape that looks like it's costing him something, like he's been handed a bit of glass and told to hold it exactly so, don't tip it, don't breathe wrong. He's the sort of man who'll read a room in half a second and can normally talk his way out of anything, cracks a joke before anyone else in it's had time to feel awkward — and here he is, wordless, eyes fixed somewhere over her head like he doesn't trust himself to look down. Like he knows exactly how much weight this is meant to carry, meeting her twice, and isn't sure he's allowed the second time to count for anything yet.

He catches you watching. His eyes go wide, and he mouths, what do I do?, not moving so much as his eyebrows.

You mouth back, nothing. don't move.

For a second none of you move. The lamp's throwing that low gold light it does in the evenings, catching the top of her head, catching the side of his face, and there's something about the two of them lit up like that — him holding his breath, her breathing easy — that does something peculiar to you. Terrified and tender, both at once, written all over him. Like he's waiting to be told he's got it wrong. Like some part of him assumed, walking in tonight, that thirty seconds in a hallway was as far as this would ever go, and now he doesn't know what to do with the evidence that he was wrong about that.

You cross the room slow, so the floorboards don't creak, and lift her off him. She stirs, does that scrunched-up toddler thing where her whole face works through an objection before she decides against it, then goes heavy again. Remus's arms come away from her like they're reluctant to, hovering there a beat too long after she's gone, fingers still curled round the shape of her.

"I've got her," you say, quiet, and he nods, doesn't quite trust his voice yet.

You carry her up. His hand comes with you halfway — not touching her, just held out and slightly behind, the way you'd walk under someone on a ladder, ready to catch what doesn't need catching. He follows you to the bottom of the stairs and no further, stands there with his hand still half-raised until you're out of sight, as if the habit of it hasn't caught up with the fact of her being gone.

You settle her with her rabbit tucked under her chin, pull the duvet up, stand there a moment longer than you need to just looking at her (you always do this — some old superstition that if you look long enough, nothing bad can happen while you're looking).

When you come back down, he's still on the rug, not the sofa, like he hasn't quite worked out he's allowed to move. Caterpillar book shut on his knee. Staring at the space where she'd been like it's left a mark on the air.

"She's out cold," you say, dropping down beside him. "Sorry. She does that. Ambushes people."

"I noticed." A small laugh, worn thin at the edges. Then, dry, not quite looking at you — "Didn't peg myself for the sort children conk out on. Thought I'd get the 'stranger danger' face again, if anything. Seemed to be the going rate last time."

"Last time you had thirty seconds and your coat on," you say. "This wasn't meant to be a repeat performance. I was going to keep you two apart a bit longer, work up to it properly."

"And instead?"

"Instead she grabbed your hand and that was that. Out of my control."

"She doesn't do strangers, then?"

"She just does you, apparently."

"Right." He turns the book over in his hands like it's evidence of something. "Good thing you were only supposed to be getting an umbrella back, then, and not — this."

"Is that a complaint?"

"No." Too fast, and he seems to hear it too fast himself, ducks his head. "No. Not a complaint."

You watch him for a second. He's still got that look — not quite gone, the glass-holding look, hands loose round the book now but somehow not fully unclenched, like they remember the shape of her better than he does.

"You alright?" you ask.

He doesn't answer straight off. When he does, it's low, barely above the hum of the lamp, and it comes out like something he's arguing himself into saying rather than something he means to.

"I could get used to evenings like this."

Then you watch the words catch up with him — half a second late, colour coming up under his collar, eyes flicking to you and away again, like he'd take it back if he could find the string to pull.

"Sorry," he says, quick. "Ignore that. I don't — I know we've barely — she's only met me twice, I don't want you thinking I'm getting ahead of myself."

"What if I don't mind you getting ahead of yourself?"

"Do you know what you're getting yourself into?" He says it lightly, like a joke, except it isn't quite one — there's something underneath it, some old rehearsed line about not being worth the bother, about people who fall asleep on you within twice of meeting you being easier to love than the man himself. "I come with a fair amount of… baggage is the polite word for it."

"She fell asleep on you the second time she's ever laid eyes on you," you say. "She's not a bad judge of character."

"She's two."

"She's two and a half, and she's still not wrong."

That gets him — a proper laugh this time, short, surprised out of him, and something in his shoulders finally goes, the rigid unwinding out of him all at once. You reach over and take his hand off the book before he can fold it back into that careful, glass-holding shape, and just hold it, plain, the way you'd hold anything you weren't afraid of dropping.

He looks down at your hands together like he's checking the join hasn't cracked. "Right," he says, quiet. "Well. Good."

"Good?"

"Good," he says again, steadier, like he's deciding to believe it rather than just say it.

You stay like that a while, hands together on the rug, lamp still burning gold over the pair of you, the caterpillar book face-down and forgotten between you — and this time, when you look at him, he doesn't look away first.

[phoebe-writes]

Somewhere Along the Way

Pairing: Sirius Black x Reader Summary: At James and Lily's wedding, Sirius stands up to give a speech with no jokes to hide behind — and loses his place completely when he finds you across the room. Tags: wedding, emotional, found family, fluff, family estrangement

The marquee's strung with fairy lights, hundreds of them, looped through the beams so the whole tent glows amber even before the sun's properly down. You're near the front, third row, and Sirius is up there in a suit that fits him like it was sewn on, hair tied back, sleeve of tattoos just visible where he's pushed his cuff up already, restless with it. You've told him he looks criminal. He'd just grinned and said, obviously, what else would I look like?

He's not grinning now.

"James Potter," he says, and his voice does something funny on the surname, "took me in when I had nowhere else to go. Sixteen years old, stood on his doorstep at midnight with a bin bag of my stuff, and he didn't even ask why. Just — opened the door. His mum made up the spare room and nobody in that house ever once brought it up again."

The tent's gone quiet in that way rooms do when everyone's decided, at once, not to breathe too loud. You know this story better than most — know the version he doesn't tell in speeches, the version with his mother's voice in it, the family photo he's not in any more. You watch him not tell that part now. Watch him choose the kinder ending instead.

"He's not my best mate," Sirius says. "He's my brother. The one I chose, and the one who chose me back, which — turns out that's the bit that actually matters, isn't it? Not the blood. Never was the blood."

His voice catches on matters. Just slightly. You watch him press his lips together, watch his eyes go too bright, and something in your chest pulls tight and aching, because you've known this man two years and you've seen him cocky, seen him wrecked, seen him half-asleep and unguarded at three in the morning with a cigarette he's forgotten to light — but you've never seen him like this. Not in a room full of people. Not with his heart just sitting there on his sleeve for everyone to look at, no jokes to hide behind, nothing clever left to say.

He finds you then. Across the marquee, over the heads of eighty-odd guests, his eyes land on yours and stop.

He loses the thread completely.

"Sorry — where was I," he says, laughing at himself, dragging a hand back through his hair, and Remus, at the next table, mouths something that might be the ring, you plonker and gets a swift, fond glare for it.

Sirius finds his place again. Finishes strong, raises his glass, says something about Lily being far too good for James and everyone laughing, the tension breaking like a held breath let go. You clap till your palms sting. You blink hard, once, twice, and tell yourself it's the lights making your eyes water.

Later, the dancing starts. Lily and James do their first turn round the floor, ridiculous and glowing, and then everyone else floods in after them, and the band's playing something slow with a lot of brass, and you're standing near the edge with a glass of something you've stopped drinking, watching the lights sway a bit with the breeze coming through the tent flaps.

"There you are," Sirius says, appearing at your shoulder, tie loosened now, jacket gone somewhere, sleeves rolled to show off the ink he's never once explained properly.

"Here I am," you say. "Good speech. Bit of a wobble in the middle. Thought you were about to do a runner out the back, actually."

"Me? Never," he says, but there's no real bite to it, just that old reflex, joke first, feel later, and he's already pulling you in by the waist, slow, like he's got nowhere else to be.

You go easy. Your hand finds his chest, his hand finds the small of your back, and you sway there together under all that amber light, not really dancing so much as just — holding on.

"You went quiet up there," you say, into his collar.

"Did I."

"You know you did."

He doesn't answer straight away. You feel him breathe, feel his chin come to rest against your hair, and the lights overhead do their slow gentle sway, and you think, not for the first time tonight, how strange it is to watch someone you love become someone new right in front of you.

"Watching James do that," he says, quiet, right into your hair so you feel it more than hear it, "stand up there and just — hand himself over. No hesitation. I used to think that was mad. Genuinely thought, rather you than me, mate. Thought forever was something that happened to other people. People who didn't come from where I came from."

"And now?"

"Now I reckon I stopped being scared of it somewhere along the way," he says. "With you. Didn't even notice it happening. Just looked up one day and the fear was gone and you were still there. Turns out I'm not her. Not him either. Took me a while to believe that, but — here we are, aren't we?"

You go still against him. The band's still playing, the lights are still swaying, and you have to blink hard again, and this time you don't bother blaming it on anything.

"That's not a proposal," he says quickly, and you can hear the smile creeping back into his voice, familiar ground, safer ground. "Don't panic. I've not got a ring in my pocket."

"Wasn't panicking."

"Just — wanted you to know. That's all."

You pull back enough to look at him, properly, in all that low gold light, his eyes still a bit too bright, his hair coming loose from its tie. "You've ruined your own reputation, you know that. Sirius Black, devastating heartbreaker, undone by a wedding toast."

He laughs — really laughs, the sound of it loosening something in your chest — and pulls you back in against him. "Good," he says. "Never much liked that reputation anyway."

The lights sway on above you, and you stay there, turning slow in the amber glow, not going anywhere.

[phoebe-writes]

Frozen Peas

Pairing: Sirius Black x Reader Summary: Sirius turns up past one in the morning with split knuckles and a grin that means something's wrong — so you skip the questions and get the peas. Tags: family issues, hurt/comfort, minor injury, angst, pre-relationship

It's gone one in the morning when the buzzer goes, longer than it needs to be held down, and you know before you even look who it is, because nobody else leans on it like that.

You open the door and there he is, hair damp from the drizzle, grinning at you like nothing's wrong, which is how you know something is. His knuckles are split on one hand, the skin gone dark and shiny across two fingers. There's a wildness in him, wound too tight, like he's still got somewhere to be.

"Don't suppose you've got a drink going," he says, brushing past you into the flat before you've properly said yes.

"Sirius."

"What? It's not even that late."

"It's gone one."

"Is it?" he says, like this is mildly interesting trivia and not information about his own life, and drops onto your sofa like he owns it, one leg jigging.

You don't ask what happened. You don't have to. You know the dinner, you know the house, you know the particular flavour of thing his family says to him across a table with the good silver out, and you know he swore blind last week he wasn't going.

You go to the freezer instead, find a bag of peas at the back, wrap it in a tea towel.

"Here," you say, holding out your hand for his.

"I'm fine."

"Give me your hand, Sirius."

He rolls his eyes, but he gives it to you, and you press the peas against his knuckles, and he hisses through his teeth and then laughs, short and humourless.

"Wall lost," he says. "Thought you'd want to know I won."

"What wall?"

"Does it matter?"

"Sirius."

"It was my father's study door, if you're desperate for the details." He says it breezily, like it's a funny story already, like the ink's dry on it. "Very satisfying, actually. Recommend it."

You sit down next to him instead of in the chair, because you know if you make this a Conversation, with a capital C, he'll be out the door in under a minute, cracking jokes the whole way. So you just sit. You put the telly on low, some rubbish nature documentary, and you let him hold the peas and jig his leg and make a comment about the narrator's voice, and slowly, slowly, the leg stops jigging.

"They said the usual," he says, eventually, eyes on the screen, not you. "Disappointment. Waste. All the family favourites."

"Sirius—"

"I'm not fussed," he says, too quick. "Water off a duck's back, me."

"Right."

"I mean it."

"I know you do."

He goes quiet after that, properly quiet, which is somehow worse than the noise. You watch a badger amble across the screen. You watch him not watch it.

"Didn't fancy James's," he says, after a while, like it's an afterthought and not the whole point. "He'd have made a thing of it. Tea, sympathy, 'mate, you don't have to go back there,' the works. Kind of him. Can't be doing with it tonight."

"So you came here."

"You don't do the fussing," he says, and there's something almost accusatory in it, like it's your fault he likes that about you. "You just let me be a prat about it."

"I'm letting you ice your hand and watch badgers."

"Exactly." He says it like you've proved his point. "No drama."

You don't tell him there's drama in the split knuckles and the study door and the too-quick laugh. You just let the peas sweat cold in his hand, and after a while he shifts, so his shoulder's against yours, and doesn't move it back.

"For what it's worth," he says, not looking at you, voice dropped down out of the performance for just a second, "I'm glad it was your door I ended up at."

You don't push. You know if you make anything of it, he'll bury it under a joke faster than you can blink, so you just say, "Peas are getting warm. Want new ones?"

"Reckon I've disgraced this pair enough for one night," he says, and hands them back, and the mask's mostly up again but not all the way, not quite, and something in that gap has shifted, something you've both been carefully not looking at for months.

He falls asleep sitting up, somewhere around three, mid-sentence about a badger he's decided to call Gerald. His head tips onto the back of the sofa. You watch him for a second — the split knuckles resting on his chest, the restless leg finally still — and then you fetch the blanket off your bed and put it over him, and switch off the telly, and go to bed, feeling something in your chest you don't examine too closely.

In the morning there's a racket in the kitchen. You go through half expecting him gone, engine already halfway down the street, but he's there, blanket abandoned on the sofa, shirt creased, filling your kettle like he's done it a hundred times.

"Didn't think you'd still be here," you say.

"Didn't think I'd want to leave," he says, and for once there's no joke riding shotgun on it.

He knows where the mugs are. He knows you take milk, no sugar. You watch him pour, steam curling past his face, and you think of the peas last night, cold in that same hand, and how it's wrapped round a warm mug now instead, knuckles scabbed dark.

"Your hand," you say.

"Feels alright." He flexes it, wincing only a little, covering the wince with a grin a beat too late. "Bit sore. Worth it."

"Was it?"

"Ask me again in a week," he says, "when I've stopped being smug about the door."

You laugh, and he looks pleased with himself for getting it out of you, and crosses the kitchen to hand you a mug, his fingers brushing yours in the handover, and neither of you moves away too quick.

"Thanks," he says, quieter now, the grin dropping half a degree. "For not making it a whole thing."

"Anytime."

"Don't say that unless you mean it."

"I mean it."

He looks at you properly then, none of the usual performance in it, and you don't look away first for once, and for a second the kitchen holds very still around the two of you.

"Right," he says, and clears his throat, and the grin comes back up like a shield sliding into place, except it doesn't quite hide what's under it anymore. "Well. Good."

Neither of you says the word for what this is. You don't need to. It's in the mugs, the milk no sugar, the blanket still warm on the sofa, the hand that went from frozen peas to holding your tea without either of you deciding it should. You just stand there in your kitchen on a Sunday morning, drinking tea that's slightly too strong, and let it be exactly what it's become.

[phoebe-writes]

The Wrong Way

Pairing: Drummer!Sirius Black x Bartender!Reader Summary: He plays like he's trying to break something, never pays for his pint, and walks you to the bus stop every week — the wrong way for him. Tonight you ask why. Tags: slow burn, mutual pining, fluff, getting together

Thursdays are the worst for your feet and the best for your ears, and that's down to one man.

You pull pints three nights a week at The Crooked Tap, and Thursdays are band nights, which mostly means some lad with an acoustic guitar and a lot of feelings about his ex. Not this Thursday. Not any Thursday for the last two months, because the loud one's got a residency now, four blokes who call themselves something you can never remember, and a drummer who hits the kit like it's done him a personal wrong.

Sirius Black plays like he's trying to break something, because he is, a bit — he told you once, straight-faced, that if he's not knackered by the last song he hasn't done his job properly. You watch him from behind the bar, sleeves shoved up, hair stuck to his neck, throwing his head back on every crash like the room owes him a reaction. He gets one. He always gets one. By the time the set's done he's soaked through and buzzing, grinning like he's just got away with something, and he swaggers over and leans on your bar like he owns it.

"Go on then," he says, chin on his hand, all cheek, "cheapest pint you've got, and don't tell the landlord I didn't pay for it."

"You never pay for it."

"I know. Isn't it brilliant?"

You pour it anyway. You always do. He's the sort you can't quite say no to and can't quite work out why, which is, you suspect, exactly how he likes it.

It becomes a routine, the kind you don't notice building until it's already built. He stays till you're flipping chairs onto tables, wiping down taps that don't need wiping, and he doesn't ask if he can hang about, he just does, perched on a stool with his jacket over one shoulder, holding forth about the gig or some row he's had with the bassist or nothing at all, restless the whole time, tapping a rhythm on the bar like he can't quite switch the drumming off. He keeps you company while you cash up, counting notes into the little bag, and when you're done he walks you to the bus stop.

It's the wrong way for him. You worked that out weeks ago — his flat's east, the stop's west, and he does it anyway, hands in his pockets, telling you some story that goes nowhere in particular, cocky right up until you catch him watching you instead of talking.

"You don't have to do this, you know," you tell him, most weeks.

"I know," he says, most weeks, and keeps walking. "Who says I'm doing it out of obligation?"

You tell yourself he does this with everyone. He's got that face, that reckless laugh, the sort of bloke who probably charms the woman at the chip shop and picks fights with strangers for a laugh and means both equally. You've heard the stories — sacked from two jobs for mouthing off, thrown out of his own family's good books years back, never stays anywhere long. Act first, think never, someone at the bar said once, fond and exasperated in the same breath. You tell yourself that's exactly the sort of man who'd try it on with anyone standing still long enough. Except he never does. Not a hand on your waist, not a lean-in at the door, nothing. Which should be a relief, from a man like that. Somehow it isn't. Somehow it's the thing that keeps you up a bit, turning it over, wondering what you're missing, because if there's one thing Sirius Black is famous for, it's not holding back.

Weeks go by like that. Pint, chairs, till, the wrong way to the bus stop. You start setting the timer of your evening by him without meaning to.

Then one Thursday the stage stays empty. No amps, no drum kit, just the usual quiz-night clutter shoved into the corner, and you think, well, that's that, quiet night, and you're almost disappointed in yourself for thinking it.

And then he walks in anyway.

No jacket over his shoulder, no story loaded up and ready, just Sirius, in a jumper that's seen better days, dropping onto the end stool like it's owed to him.

"No set tonight," you say, sliding a menu his way out of habit.

"I know. I'm not playing. Can't a man come to a pub without a drum kit strapped to him?"

"Suppose he can. What are you having, then?"

"Surprise me. Lemonade."

You give him one. He nurses it for four hours, which is not like him at all — he's not a man built for sitting still, you've noticed that much, always tapping something, jigging a knee, up and at the jukebox picking fights about the song choice. Tonight he just watches the room, restless in a smaller way, and glances at you often enough that you start counting. By closing he's the last one left, same as always, and you flip the last chair and he's already on his feet, hands in his pockets, ready to walk.

Except tonight you stop at the door instead of going through it.

"Sirius."

"What?"

"You don't come for the lemonade."

He looks at you for a second too long. You watch him decide something, quick, the way he decides everything — and then he says it plainly, no run-up. "No. I come for the walk."

"That's daft. It's the wrong way for you."

"Never said it made sense, did I?"

You cross your arms, more for something to do with your hands than anything else. "So why haven't you ever tried it on? You, of all people?"

That lands somewhere. You watch it land. For once there's no grin ready to cover it.

"Because I'm no good at what comes after," he says, fast, like it's easier said quick. "The chatting up — that bit I could do drunk, half asleep, upside down. It's the sticking around that trips me up. Ask anyone who's ever bothered with me. I get bored, or I say something stupid, or I just — go. Every time. And I like you too much to do that to you, so I didn't do anything at all. Seemed the safer option, didn't it?"

You stand there a second, taking that in. It's the plainest thing he's ever said to you, none of the swagger holding it up, and it lands harder for that.

"So you settled for walking me to a bus stop instead? For two months?"

"When you say it like that it sounds mental."

"It is a bit mental."

"Yeah, well." He shrugs, but his eyes don't move off you. "What's new?"

You think about all those weeks, the wrong-way walk, the free drinks he never needed, and you think, someone's got to be brave here, and it's clearly not going to be him — not this once, not about this.

So you take the two steps back to the bar, catch a fistful of his jumper, and kiss him.

He makes a small, startled sound against your mouth — Sirius Black, caught off guard, and you'd bet good money that's a first — and for a second he just stands there, hands hovering like he doesn't trust them. Then he catches up fast, the way he catches up to everything, hand coming to your jaw, kissing you back proper, none of the careful left in it now.

When you pull back he's still got that stunned look on him. "Well," he says, a bit rough. "Wasn't expecting that tonight. Or ever, really."

"Bit of a wrong way round, this," you say, "kissing you over the bar before you've even walked me anywhere."

"So I'll walk you now. What, you think I'm letting you get on that bus after that?" He's already got his jacket off the stool, already moving, quick as anything, like the decision was made before you'd finished the sentence.

"Wrong direction and everything?"

"Wrong direction's sort of my whole thing tonight."

He does. Same stop, same wrong way, except this time he's got your hand in his the whole walk, thumb moving over your knuckles, and he doesn't let go when the bus pulls up.

"Same time Thursday?" he asks.

"You're not even playing next Thursday."

"I'll come anyway. For the lemonade."

"You hate lemonade."

"I know," he says, grinning like it costs him nothing, though you're starting to suspect most things that look effortless on him don't. "Worth it, though. Isn't it?"

You laugh, and get on the bus, and watch him through the window walking off, hands back in his pockets, grinning like an idiot into the dark.

[phoebe-writes]

Ambience

Pairing: Remus Lupin x Reader Summary: The power's gone and the plans are ruined, so Remus decides you're both stranded — cereal in mugs, every blanket in the flat, and candles at half eleven in the morning. Tags: fluff, cosy, domestic, established relationship, comfort

The plan was a proper Sunday. A walk, a real lunch, the whole day out of the flat. Instead the rain starts at dawn, sideways, hammering the window like it's got something to prove, and by ten the power's gone with a small apologetic click and doesn't come back.

Remus stands in the kitchen for a long moment, staring at the kettle like it's personally betrayed him.

"No tea," he says, faintly tragic. "Well. That's the day ruined, then."

"We could still go out," you say, though you don't mean it, and he gives you a look over his glasses, the kind that says he's already decided.

"In that? I don't think so." He says it mildly, the way he says most things, but there's no arguing with it. "We're stranded. Might as well accept it with some dignity."

Within the hour you're under every blanket in the flat, all of them, piled on the sofa in a heap that makes you look faintly ridiculous. He finds the emergency candles in the drawer nobody ever opens, sets them out along the coffee table, lights them one at a time with the same careful patience he does most things — like it matters that he gets it right, even now, even for this.

"There," he says, when the last one catches. "That's the best I can offer by way of ambience."

"It's half eleven in the morning."

"Ambience doesn't check the time," he says, and settles in beside you, jumper sleeves pulled down over his hands, looking pleased with himself in a quiet, unshowy way.

The fridge is a whole negotiation now — open it too often and lunch goes off by Tuesday — so you eat cereal out of mugs, cross-legged under the blankets, and it's a terrible lunch by any reasonable standard, and neither of you minds.

His feet find yours somewhere around midday. Cold, always cold, pressed deliberate against your ankles.

"You're freezing," you say.

"Am I? Hadn't noticed," he says, entirely unconvincing, and doesn't move his feet an inch.

"Liar."

"Comfortable liar, though," he says, and that's that.

He digs a battered paperback out from behind the sofa cushions and reads to you by candlelight, doing the voices dry and deadpan rather than loud — a villain who sounds bored of his own villainy, a heroine delivered in the same flat register as the narration, so it takes you a second each time to realise he's even trying. It shouldn't be funny. It's funnier for that.

"Is that meant to be a different voice?" you ask.

"That was a very different voice."

"It sounded exactly the same."

"You've got no ear for nuance," he says, entirely serious, and keeps going anyway, because you're laughing, and he'll take the credit for that without ever quite admitting he wanted it.

The candle flames dip and steady, dip and steady, small and orange and patient, throwing shapes on the ceiling that move when he does. Outside, the grey stays grey. Time goes soft and shapeless — you couldn't say what hour it is, only that the cereal bowls are long empty and his voice has gone low and a bit rough from reading and neither of you has mentioned moving.

"This isn't what we planned," you say, at some point, watching the nearest flame lean and right itself.

"No," he agrees, and there's something almost careful in how he says it, like he's turning the thought over before he lets it out. "Better, though. Don't you think?"

You don't argue that. You don't need to.

The afternoon wears on, grey easing towards greyer, and it's gone four when the lights buzz back on all at once — too bright, too sudden, the telly blinking awake in the corner with a jaunty little jingle that feels like an insult.

You both groan, actual groans, like the electricity's done something personally unkind.

"Typical," Remus says, glaring at the lamp with real betrayal. "Absolutely typical timing, that."

He leans over without another word and blows the candles out. All three, one after another, small huffs of breath, and the room drops back into that low gold-going-dark you'd both got used to.

"Why'd you do that?" you ask, though you think you already know.

He shrugs, not quite meeting your eye, the way he does when he means something more than he's saying. "Seemed a shame to waste them."

You stay under the blankets. He stays too, feet still doing their small cold war against yours, book closed on his knee, the telly muttering to itself unwatched.

Neither of you says why.

You don't need to.

[phoebe-writes]

A Whole Speech

Pairing: James Potter x Reader Summary: James has been cagey and strange for a week, and you've feared the worst — but what he's trying to ask is much smaller, and much bigger. Tags: fluff, humour, moving in together, misunderstanding, happy ending

He's been weird for a week.

Not weird in the good way, not sock-on-the-wrong-feet, singing-in-the-shower weird. Weird in the way that makes your stomach sit low and heavy, like a stone you swallowed and can't shift. James Potter does not do quiet. He's the sort who narrates his own life at full volume, who captained the football team at school and never once let anyone forget it, who still can't walk past a mirror without a shove of his hand through that hair, more habit than vanity at this point. He was, by his own admission, an insufferable show-off at school, and he's never fully grown out of wanting the room to look at him when he's got something good to say. James Potter does not do cagey either. And yet here he is, a whole week of it — phone pressed to his ear in the loo with the tap running so you can't hear, conversations that stop dead when you walk into the kitchen, that too-bright smile he puts on a beat too late.

You've run through the list twice already. Someone's ill. He's leaving. There's another woman, another something, some secret so big it needs whispering and running taps and doors half shut. You know it's mad. You know him. But a normally loud thing gone quiet is its own kind of alarm, and you've been sat with it for seven days now, turning it over like a stone in your pocket, worn smooth from all the handling.

So when he sits you down on the sofa on a wet Tuesday evening, hand going through his hair over and over till it's a worse state than usual, and says, right, so, I need to talk to you about something, your whole chest drops through the floor. There are candles half set out on the kitchen side that he clearly meant to light and didn't, like his nerve gave out somewhere between the matches and the actual doing of it.

"Okay," you say, and your voice comes out smaller than you mean it to.

He doesn't look at you straight away. He's staring at the coffee table like it might help him out. Then he reaches into his pocket and puts something down on the wood between you — small, metal, catching the lamp light for half a second before it goes still.

A key.

You look at it. You look at him. Your brain, which has spent a week building the worst version of this moment, cannot make the key fit anywhere in it.

"I cleared out some drawers," he says, all in a rush, going pink from his collar up, hand back up in his hair like it'll help him think. "Few weeks ago now, actually. Bottom two of the wardrobe and the whole left side of the chest of drawers, I moved my jumpers into the airing cupboard, which Sirius says is mental but I don't see him offering better storage solutions —"

"James."

"— and I've been meaning to ask you properly for ages, only I kept losing my nerve, because what if you said no, and then I'd have cleared out the drawers for nothing and had to just... put my jumpers back, in front of you, which would be so much worse than never asking at all — I had a whole speech, you know, I was head boy at school, I stood up in front of the whole assembly hall once and didn't fluff a word of it, and I can't get through telling my own girlfriend I bought a spare key —"

"James."

He stops. Swallows. Looks at you properly for the first time since you sat down.

"Move in with me," he says, quieter now. "That's — that's what I'm asking. Will you."

For a second you just stare at the key on the table, and then the relief comes up through you so fast and so hard that a laugh gets out before you can stop it, this short, disbelieving bark of a thing, and his face does something complicated and hurt.

"Right," he says, already reaching for the key like he might take it back, "right, no, that's — fine, that's completely fine, forget I —"

"No — James, no," you manage, except now you're crying a bit too, which is not helping your case at all, tears and laughter tangled up together so he genuinely cannot tell which one's winning.

"Oh God," he says, going pale under the pink, "oh God, don't cry, I didn't mean to make you cry, we don't have to, we can just carry on as we are, that's completely —"

"James. Shut up a second."

He shuts up. Watches you with wide, wretched eyes while you get yourself together enough to say the actual word.

"Yes," you say. "Yes, you idiot. I thought you were about to tell me you were dying."

"I was clearing out drawers."

"I didn't know that, did I?"

And then it clicks for him, properly clicks, you can watch it happen behind his eyes — a whole week of tapped-down phone calls and shut doors, and you'd built a funeral out of it, and all that was ever inside was this. A key. Him, terrified, asking.

He laughs too now, delighted and disbelieving all at once, and hauls you straight up off the sofa and into him, feet actually leaving the ground for a second, so you have to grab his shoulders or go over backwards.

"Yes," he repeats, like he's checking the word still works if he says it himself. "You said yes."

"I said yes."

"Right side of the wardrobe's yours, by the way, I've already decided, don't argue, I did the maths and it's got better light in the mornings —"

"James."

"— and Remus reckons you'll want your own shelf for all your stupid mugs, which I told him wasn't stupid, that was me defending you —"

You're still half laughing, still a bit wet round the eyes, and he's off again, loud and bright and entirely himself, captain-of-the-team confidence back in his voice like it never left, the version of him that's been missing all week finally back in the room. (Sirius will take the mick out of him for a solid month after this, doing an impression of James rehearsing in the mirror, and James will pretend to hate it, and clearly won't.) The key's still sitting on the coffee table where he left it, small and unremarkable, and later, once he's finally stopped talking long enough to kiss you properly, you'll pick it up and put it on your own key ring, next to your flat, next to your mum's spare, one more small weight you carry round without thinking about it.

(You find out later, from Sirius, delighted to tell it, that James rehearsed the whole speech about the drawers forty times, in front of the mirror, hair getting worse each go. That the whispering wasn't a secret at all, not really. Just him, panicking down a phone line to the two people he trusts most in the world, asking how to do this properly, refusing to let either of them actually help him write the words because it had to come out of him and be right — and getting it right anyway, in the end, in his own loud, terrified way.)

[phoebe-writes]

Word Travels

Pairing: Poly!Wolfstar x Reader Summary: Your mate drags you to a gig and vanishes, leaving you at the bar with a dry, lemonade-nursing stranger — and his boyfriend, grinning at you from the stage like he already knows how the night ends. Tags: getting together, meet-cute, fluff, slow burn

Cass drags you to this gig by the wrist, practically, says it'll be a laugh, says you'll thank her later, and then the lights drop and she's gone, off into the crowd like she was never there at all. Typical.

So you end up at the bar on your own, watching a band whose name you didn't catch tune up under a single blue light, and that's where he is too — tall bloke, jumper with a hole in the elbow, nursing what turns out to be a lemonade like it's the last one on earth.

"They're alright," he says, not quite looking at you, nodding at the stage instead, "considering one of them once set a chip pan on fire trying to impress a girl."

You laugh before you mean to. "You know them, then?"

"Unfortunately." Dry as anything. "That one on guitar — the one currently deciding our corner of the room is more interesting than the actual song — that's my boyfriend."

You follow where he's looking, and there's a bloke with dark hair stuck to his forehead, grinning right at you both like he already knows how this evening ends.

"Sirius," the tall one adds, like it explains something, like a warning label. "I'm Remus."

"And you're not bothered? Him doing that from the stage?"

"Should I be?" He says it mildly, sipping his lemonade, eyes back on the band. "He does it to lampposts and dogs as well. It's not personal, it's just how he's built."

You don't ask what he means by that. You don't get the chance to, really — Remus keeps narrating under his breath, dry and unbothered, that one's on his third girlfriend this year, the drummer cries at insurance adverts, don't repeat that last one — and somewhere in there you stop feeling like you gate-crashed something you weren't invited to.

The second the set ends, Sirius doesn't walk off the stage so much as launch himself off it, straight at you, sweat-shining and reckless with it, hip-checking a stranger out of the way without appearing to notice he's done it. He drops onto the stool beside you like it's already his — the one Remus has, without a word about it, kept clear all night, elbow parked on it, never once looking like he was saving anything.

"You," Sirius says, "are new. Who let you in?"

"Cass did. Then she vanished."

"Sensible woman." He steals Remus's lemonade without asking, drains half of it, hands it back. Remus doesn't so much as blink, just watches him do it with an expression that says something you can't quite read yet — you'll learn later that's just them, mostly, whole conversations fought and won in a look. "Are you always this quiet, or is it just us?"

"Is that meant to be charming?"

"Depends." He grins, unrepentant. "Is it working?"

By closing you've got chips balanced on your knee outside, vinegar sharp, and a list of names thrown at you too fast to keep hold of — Cass has resurfaced, unbothered, entirely unrepentant — and when the drizzle starts Remus produces an umbrella from nowhere, holds it up without comment, and somehow you're the one underneath it with him while Sirius refuses to duck in properly, half in half out of the rain like the weather owes him something.

"You'll get soaked, stood like that," you tell him.

"Will I?" He says it like the idea's never once occurred to him and doesn't much interest him now it has.

Someone adds you to a group chat before you've even sobered up, thirty messages deep by the time you check it walking home, people you've never met greeting you like you've been expected for weeks rather than hours.

"Bit odd," you say, half to yourself, "everyone acting like they already know me?"

The chat goes quiet — not normal quiet, the kind with weight behind it. Sirius studies a lamppost like it's personally wronged him. Remus's grip on the umbrella tightens, just slightly.

"Small friend group," he says, after a beat too long. "Word travels."

You let it go. You shouldn't have.

Over the next fortnight it keeps happening. Sirius turns up wherever you are like he's got a homing instinct for it, steers you the wrong way down streets on purpose just to keep walking beside you, says things that land somewhere between a challenge and a confession and never explains which. Remus is quieter about it — a joke that lands at exactly the right moment, a look that holds a beat too long before he glances away and pretends he hasn't, self-deprecating enough about himself that you start to wonder what he's protecting.

"You do know why they're both like that?" Cass says one night, far too pleased with herself.

"Like what?"

"That." She waves a hand at nothing and everything. "Sirius, doing whatever he wants and daring you to mind. Remus, pretending he isn't doing anything at all."

You don't say you know. You're not sure yet that you do.

It's a Friday when Sirius walks you to your door, hands shoved in his pockets for once, restless with the effort of keeping them there, and Remus trails a step behind with the umbrella shut and tucked under one arm.

"Right," Sirius says, rocking back on his heels on your step, none of his usual nerve anywhere in his voice, "we wanted to ask you something."

"Both of us," Remus says, careful, watching your face the way you'd watch a kettle about to go. "To dinner. Would you come to dinner with us? Both of us, I mean."

The rain's stopped. The umbrella stays shut under his arm, and it hits you all at once, standing there on your own doorstep — the stool that was somehow always saved, the eyebrow conversations, the group chat that already had your name in it before you did, the whole chat going quiet the night you said everyone seemed to already know you (you'd put it down to a bad signal, at the time).

They had. Of course they had.

"You mean — together?" you say, and it comes out smaller than you meant. "All three of us?"

"That's the general idea, yeah." Sirius's hands finally give up on his pockets, come out with nowhere to land. "Is that — is that alright?"

Remus doesn't fill the silence this time. He just waits, the shut umbrella held between them like something they're both still holding onto, and you think of standing under it in the rain, the two of them either side of you, neither one minding how little room there was.

"Yeah," you say. "Dinner. Both of you. Okay?"

"Okay," Sirius says back, like he's checking the word still means what he thinks it means, and then his whole face does something helpless and bright. Remus just breathes out, slow, like he'd been holding it since the gig.

"Right, then." He opens the umbrella again — pointless, under a clear sky, just to give his hands something to do — and holds it up over the three of you on your doorstep, not a drop of rain anywhere in sight, and none of you move to get out from under it.