“I want to make tea in the morning for you before you wake up. I'll boil the water and put a teabag in because I know the one you like. I want to spend afternoons folding clothes on the carpet with you. You’ll complain about the way I roll my socks and I'll make fun of you because of the way you put your underwear in the drawer. You like everything neat and perfect but I can never keep it that way for longer than a week. I’ll do the shopping and buy the moisturiser you like, and the cereal you like, and the beer you like. And you’ll go to the fresh fruit shop and get me mandarins because you know I love them and we only get them when they’re on special. I want to feed the ducks with you, not bread because we know it's not good for them. We give them oats and lettuce that we bought especially and you get scared of the geese and love all the dogs. I want to pass by a flower stand on my walk and buy you the bouquet I know you’ll love even though it’s not a holiday. I want to read next to you at night in bed. We don’t talk, we just lie under the covers next to each other. I’ll show you a poem I like, and you’ll show me something funny you saw on your phone. And then we turn off the lights and you wrap your arms around me and we go to bed”
Remus sits on the curb, the streetlights casting an orange glow into the night. Sirius stands next to him, cigarette held in one hand, barely ever touching his lips. Remus keeps his eyes on his shoes, never looking up at Sirius who's still unmoving above him.
“In some other life, I really would have liked to just do laundry and taxes with you”
Sirius says. Remus looks up at Sirius at that, whose cigarette is burning between his fingers but still he never takes a drag. Sirius is looking at him with a small, soft smile on his face, something delicate and tender and bittersweet. Like a cut lemon, its juices and pips squeezed out into a little bowl. Remus lifts his lips slightly and hopes it is a smile that conveys all that he feels without having to say a word.
