#was not in a state to watch ten hours of skating then
What? You’re still writing this? The hell I am! This is a short-ish revival montage, then plot will be coming, I promise!!
“Hello there, Remus,” Lily said sweetly.
“Mmh. I’ve missed you. Where the hell have you been?”
“What, I thought I was giving you and Sirius some space.”
Remus’ head snapped to her, looking scandalised, “excuse me? That’s what you’re call gallivanting around with James?”
“What was I supposed to do when you were off with Sirius all the time?”
“Well what if I thought I was ‘giving you and James some space’?”
They narrowed their eyes at one another.
“Let’s drop it.”
“Hm.” Remus hummed sceptically.
“Alright! I’m sorry!” Lily said, “Your love life is not my excuse! Neither is mine yours. Happy?”
“Fine.” Remus crossed his arms, “so it’s a ‘love life’ you’ve got now?”
“Oh you know,” Lily looked on the verge of blushing.
“What have you gotten up to?”
“We— ended up going on a few dates. And umm, went back to his, when Sirius was out,” she was undeniably red now. Remus smirked and punched her arm. “Hey! Not so fast. When Sirius was out— with you, I presume?”
Remus thought about it. “I think that’s when he came to have dinner with me and mum.”
“Getting cosy, are we?”
“Well. Then there’s that time we biked to the regional park? That wasn’t cosy at all, that was quite cold. And he had the bright idea of hitchhiking to Glasgow to go to an arcade. That one didn’t really work out, obviously, we ended up on the train. Got back in the middle of the night.”
Lily looked at him in wonder.
“He did get to go to the arcade, though. I quite enjoyed watching him go berserk alongside a bunch of children.”
“Have you—” Lily asked curiously, “talked with him about it?”
Remus took a long moment to sigh, then looked back at Lily. There was no question what ‘it’ was. The ‘it’ between two people that sometimes had a name but Remus simply didn’t yet want to name.
“Maybe. No. Not exactly.” Remus said, “We did decide to just be comfortable around one another. Physically too, to some extent. Doesn’t mean it has to be a— thing.”
The look Lily was giving him resembled how one might look at a cute little puppy about to make a fool of itself, brows drawn and holding in a laugh.
“Oh shut up.”
She continued to regard him with a tilt of the head, “but do you want it to be ‘a thing’? Have you really thought about it?”
“I— don’t know.” Remus muttered, and shrugged. “I sort of have a lot on my mind.”
-
“Do bandaids work on lips? Bandaids don’t work on lips.”
“Huh?” Remus looked up at James, who stood looming over Remus as he sat in the stands hunched over a pile of files “what in hell are you on about?”
“Can’t put a bandaid on your lips, so you should stop biting them, before they start bleeding.”
“Oh.” Remus poked at his bottom lip with his tongue. It did feel rather tender, “I didn’t even realise.”
“Stressed?”
“A bit, I guess.”
“What are those?” James sat down next to him and gestured at the pile.
“Oh. Just trying to figure out my jumps. Key word trying. And not getting very far.” He flicked through the top few sheets to display pages full of component score calculations.
“Blimey. All this for that? Sure you aren’t overthinking it?”
“Course not. And no, most of the pile is just class schedules for McGonagall, which I also still need to figure out, shit—”
“Oh. Chill, Remus, it’s fine—”
“—Oh and she’ll be hounding me about the free skate music again.” Remus didn’t like the way his head was almost going dizzy, “James—”
“C’mon Remus.” James wrapped an arm around his shoulder, “take it easy, yeah? It’s really all fine. Lord knows me and Lils are nowhere near the end of bickering about it too.”
Remus huffed through his nose but said nothing.
“You’ve got no need to be so wrung out about the jumps at all, either.” James declared, ever the pep-talker, “It’ll all make sense the moment you got your music sorted.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I suppose.” Remus sighed, and ran both hands over his face, “thank you, James.”
“No problem. And hit me up if you want me to take over a couple of classes, yeah?”
Remus knew that James knew he’d never actually accept the offer, but it was nice to hear, regardless.
“Sure.” he said with a little smile.
“Alrighty.” James nodded satisfiedly, and moved to stand up, “See you around, Moony.”
“Hmm.” Remus replied distractedly, before a thought occurred to him. “Wait— you wait just the moment.” he started, pulling James by his sleeve, “I’ve got a couple of questions about you and ‘Lils’, Mr Potter.”
James smiled sheepishly. Remus smirked.
-
“Oh my god, what are you doing here now?”
Remus sighed at another interruption. Though it was probably a good thing. He might be doing his head in at this rate.
It was Dorcas this time. She breathed heavily and her face flushed olive— most likely due to having run across campus from her dance session.
“Oh I, have a class to take in—” Remus said distractedly, checking his watch, “an hour.”
“Again, why the fuck are you here? Where’s Sirius?”
“He’s visiting Benjy’s studio in town for choreo.”
“Of course.” Dorcas muttered, “so what, you’re just going to coop in here all day because no one’s dragging you out?”
“It hasn’t been all day— and wasn’t going to be all day!”
“Yeah, ‘cause you’ve got dinner plans with Sirius?”
“No!”
“I know you do, love, he told me himself.”
Remus groaned. “What, you think that’s something you’ve got over me?”
“Why were you so quick to deny it then?”
“Well you made it sound like— something it’s not!”
“I said nothing of the sort. Have you considered this concept called projecting?”
“This is ridiculous.”
“Yeah, I agree.”
“So can you leave me alone to my brooding now?”
Dorcas rolled her eyes. “See you in a bit, nerd.”
