Chapter Text
── ✵ ──
June, 1888.
Remus Lupin wakes at the crack of dawn, watching as sunlight washes through shutters, thin and watery and milky and precious, then dissipating, dissolving from blue to white to yellow. He takes his time stumping around the room, shoving his legs into trousers (too short) and throws on a shirt (stained), scruffing his scraggly beard, scratching his belly, while waiting for coffee (dark, bitter, tar) to overheat in its enamel saucepan on the stove. He gulps it down in a small, chipped mug (also dirty) and it delights him. This is not even the best part of his day.
By the time he is bounding out of doors, with only his palette and paints and a fierce tick in his veins, the wheat fields are golden-haired, gorgeous, sloping into a crystal river. He stands gazing at the water—azure, sloshing, bright—and he thinks, this is it, this was it all along, it is here. A feeling of relief is warm and thick and sticky, spreading throughout his chest.
This place, he realizes then, he never wants to leave.
As it is another burning day in midsummer, other villagers—their heads down, as usual avoiding his gaze—seem otherwise languorous, turned to marmalade in the heat. By the time it's noon, the light is unbearable. Unbearable for everyone except him, anyway, who is unbearable, too. After only an hour without shade, his face has reddened and he has to squint to make out shadows. Past the farms, the sleepy chapels, there is a stretch of wilderness more feral and abandoned by the world than anywhere else. Only a little longer he paints, hardly thinking about what he's doing, letting the colors bleed and gush and well. Only a little longer and then he can go. Only a little longer and he will stop. Remus can tell his skin has burned, but it does not matter, it all means nothing. Beauty, above all else, is a pain worth enduring, that he never is himself, but he can witness, if only for a glimpse.
By the time Remus returns to town, he is light-headed from exhaustion. At the tavern, he speaks with the barkeep, one of the few locals who doesn’t avert his eyes or take much stock in the rumors about him, far as he is aware, but otherwise is left alone, devouring cheese and meats like a wolf. He likes to be left alone, he thinks. It’s better. Simpler. What he’s used to and therefore prefers.
“Think someone came through for you,” the barkeep offers, which is all Remus gets as far as a premonition of what's to come.
“Who?”
“Some gentleman. Said he was a friend of a friend, sent here. On behalf of—”
“James Potter.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
As he chews, Remus considers what to say. Of course, he has known about this, been told of what would happen. Lily Potter, James’ wife, had sent the letter. It'll be good for you, and it'll be good for him, too. Other people, at booths further away in the café, meanwhile, are glancing at them curiously.
“Small town, everyone talks,” Remus grumbles.
“Well, I'd expect he'd be the sort to attract attention anywhere, so it's not all on them. This newcomer, he's a big fellow. Pale as death, they say. Pretty, for a man. Nearly as tall as you—”
But not in a wraith-like, mangy, underkept way, he assumes. At the word ‘pretty,’ Remus snorts.
“Great.”
Until then, Remus has spent day after day of splendid afternoons in a bounteous fashion, all alone, all to himself, soaking in the turquoise skies, basking in fine, fresh air, needing no company. Of course, at some point, he supposes, it has to end. Life takes its due. Remus scrubs his face, pushes back his plate, telling the server to put it all on his tab, as usual.
“You know, he said your name a lot, askin’ for you,” he gets told, as he's leaving. “Figured it's an associate, from the city. New business partner?” the barkeep asks.
Worse, Remus thinks. Much worse.
Grimly, he says, “New roommate.”
~
They were, as James explains, raised on opposite ends of the same island. Remus comes from the North—surrounded by hillsides, choppy waters, chilly winds, gray and slate. Sirius, however, was raised in London, downtown. James and him had met each other, apparently through the same posh boarding school, where they were the greatest of friends.
“I think you'd like him.”
In the letter Remus was sent, alongside the feeble, yet not insubstantial funds he requested (for paints, coffee, booze, in that order), James’ script lines up closely with that of his wife, Lily, with each of them passing on their blessings.
James says—“don't ask anything about his family, his job, or his funds.” Good thinking, as Remus isn't really the asking sort, anyway. “He's taking a turn with his paintings. Really interesting ideas. Reminds me of you.”
Lily says, meanwhile—“he's a stray. And you know how James likes his strays.”
“Yes,” Remus writes back, after crossing out a dozen or so other retorts. “I was his first.”
Thus, he doesn’t know what to expect.
On the night they meet, the village is bluish at dusk. Luminescent, twilight, and hazy, dusting the dirt roads, the weathered shops, in periwinkle glow. The stones still feel warm from baked sun. He doesn’t know what to think, really. Somewhere, at some time, Remus might have stashed the original note—the one that detailed how Sirius was an artist friend, who would help to improve his art, and in any case, he needs a place to stay, so this would help them both—but as the months of April and May were slipping by, blurring together, he had forgotten. And, returning to his senses, he realizes this rude intrusion now occurs at the end of June.
Sirius Black is sitting on the steps in front of the yellow house, smoking.
He doesn’t look up when Remus returns.
“So, you're Moony?”
The tall man is slumped with his forearms on his knees, wearing an untucked, billowy shirt, and a pair of trousers that may have once been very nice, but are now frayed around the cuffs. He is fidgeting with something in his hands. When he looks up, Remus sees it's a roll—some clean, white cigarette pricking in the dim, then tucked behind his ear.
Remus says nothing. Then, he supposes he has no choice.
“Yes.”
“Prongs says you don’t talk much. But he likes you.”
The man looks up at him. In the moonlight, his eyes appear very pale.
Remus frowns.
“Says you knew his dad. Childhood friends, I guess, neighbors near Highcastle.” Sirius says all of this very casually. “Said other boys used to pick on you because of your scars.”
“That's not true.”
A brow raises.
“That so?”
Sirius is, apparently, a person unaccustomed to being corrected.
“No,” says Remus. Then, irritably, he wonders if he should have said ‘yes,’ when what he meant was, ‘fuck off.’ “It wasn’t anything to do with that.”
“No? But you have so many.”
This is how he decides he doesn’t like this man, at all.
“How come you haven’t got any bags?”
Sirius, in the midst of twisting the end of yet another hand-rolled spliff, looks up, shaking ebony locks out of his face.
“You haven't packed anything. Where's all your clothes? Your—” Remus was told he would bring paints. He agreed to this for the paints, the canvas, the money. “Linen? Anything? You've got any coin?”
“Inside, innit? I broke in while you were gone. The lock's shoddy and your neighbor's an arse. Good thing you haven’t got anything worth stealing.”
~
Inside, Remus gives a begrudging tour. It is mostly pointless as the apartment is small and dodgy and peeling and Sirius has located, already, the second bedroom. Only a single, leather knapsack lies on the cot.
“Think it's fucking criminal, the way you live, by the way. What the hell is this?”
With dignity, Sirius lifts the lid to his shitty, little coffeepot.
“Moony, this is filth.”
“Don’t call me that.”
James calls him that. To James, he is Moony. To everyone else, Remus is no one and nothing at all and that is what he prefers; he certainly doesn't wish to be known at that moment, by him.
Another look comes his way. “You could get elves.”
“Reckon I can’t, actually, as there’s only Muggles around. And I haven’t any money.”
“You've got James’.” Another smirk. “And isn’t that what you live on?”
While Remus is leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, glaring at him, Sirius echoes the same posture as him on the other side of the room.
“Well?” he asks. “Aren't you going to show me?”
With great reluctance, Remus does just that.
The little hole in the wall on the second story of the yellow building where he lives is scarcely the size of three fishing boats tied together. It's all thin walls and cracked ceilings, old tiles split down the middle. Sirius has, undoubtedly by this point, seen some of what Remus can do, tucked around in piles, though he says nothing about it, nor does his face reveal much. Above the stove is a painting of flowers, slapdash, but pretty—he always looks at it and thinks of Lily. In the hallway, there are others. Still lifes. Landscapes. The colors are woozy and bloated, childlike. Crude, just like him.
But the best stuff is in his bedroom.
Upon closing the door, which reveals yet another landscape nailed to its back, Sirius rotates slowly, taking it in. There’s no discernible order to anything. Everything’s overwhelming, cramped, loud, and feels like home.
Remus wonders if he ought to say something, but he's never been good with words, so he shoves his hands in his pockets. He feels prickly and itchy, staring at him in profile.
Sirius spends a particularly long time looking at his favorite piece, then back at him.
“You don’t paint like anyone else.”
That, he knows.
“You don’t paint like you went to school.”
His second comment, uttered with some sort of intonation, makes Remus more irritated, raising his hackles.
“So?”
“So—it doesn’t follow any rules. None of this makes sense.”
“Who says?”
“People.”
“What people?”
Sirius gestures vaguely. “People with money.”
“And what do you know about that?”
In the dark light of the moon, coming through the window, Sirius kicks a jar by his bed. It obscured a sketch, which he stares at unreadably. Then, he finally looks at him.
“More than you, I'd wager. Did you grow up on a farm, Lupin?”
In fact, Remus’ father was a clergyman and his house, growing up, was far from shameful. Actually, he always believed secretly that he would be better suited to a farm, to the countryside, to peasant life, but he doesn't say so.
“No.”
“You look like it.”
“The hell do I look like?”
“You look like the man who created these paintings.” Then, as if pulled by the sound of silent music, invisible strings, Sirius begins looking around again, rotating slowly. Above his bed, Remus has captured the sky in cobalt and teal and smalt and blue, swirling like symphonies, like sound. “They look like how you feel.”
~
To his profound unease, Sirius insists on joining Remus while painting outdoors the next day and there's no argument to be had. For some reason, he seems to have a knack for getting his way without even trying.
“I like to go far. Hike for ten miles. Even more than that sometimes.”
“Bet you do.”
“Don't think you have the boots for it,” Remus says.
“Oh, these?”
In a swashbuckling kind of fashion, Sirius lifts his foot up to his lap, patting the buckled leather. “They were a gift,” he says.
“Well, fine.”
Over coffee that morning—yes, that dark, brackish stuff bubbled in the shitty pot, which Sirius has seemingly suffered a bit, pulling faces and eyeing as if some crude potion—conversation has been pleasant. Or, at least, Sirius has put on a show of pleasantness, if sardonically and with a kind of obliging amusement, like Remus is some eccentric, willful child. All of this, his staying with him in the yellow house, is carried out as though he were a man of civil tastes electing to rough it for the sake of academic investigation.
Simply put, Remus is beneath this man and they both know it.
He's annoyed by it.
“I can walk,” Sirius says.
“Fine.”
“So, I'll come with you.”
“Fine.”
“If that’s alright with you,” he says.
“I'd actually prefer to go on my own.”
Then, Sirius tips his head. “Why?”
Because it's none of your business, is the first thought, which didn’t get the opportunity to pass his lips, since Remus bites it back. Because it's beautiful and it's wonderful outside and my church, my worship, my entire world, all mine, not for you.
“Because I don't like distraction.”
“Right.” This, however, is only taken in the affirmative, as Sirius stands up. “After you. Let's crack on.”
That morning, when the two of them tramp off together—Remus’ supplies tossed haphazardly in a basket, thrown on his back, while Sirius seems to carry nothing but an elusive wooden box—they attract attention from passersby. People avoid Remus, balk at Sirius, then change their tune when they catch sight of his face, ladies especially.
“Where do you go?” Sirius asks, when they're heading down a dirt lane ebbing into meadow.
“All over.”
“I see.”
Once they're far out of eyesight from the others, by a stone wall, Sirius slows without saying anything. Beneath a crab apple tree in broad daylight, he unbuttons his shirt and starts to strip.
“The hell are you doing?”
Earning a sly smile for his trouble, which in no way is the appropriate response, Remus thinks, Sirius says, “Calm down.”
“Don't tell me—”
“Calm down, Moony,” Sirius repeats, which conjures a ferocious, black heat to writhe in Remus' chest, bursting up his throat to his head. How dare he. “Gods, you really do have a temper, you know that, don't you? James said so, by the way, but I—”
“I'm not some sort of—”
“Please.”
Yet before Remus can stomp away, convinced of the man's insanity, there’s a crack.
A pile of clothes are on the ground when he looks back. The wooden box. A stone wall. Fields.
Nothing. Nothing else.
Nothing in his stead except for a large, black dog.
He feels his tongue dry.
After a long minute, in which Remus doesn't budge an inch, but is merely staring, thunderstruck, still furious, the dog, with far more grace than one might expect, collects it's things in its mouth and trots to his side. The beast, as he takes it in, is huge. Wolfish. Wide paws. Thick pelt.
The rest of the walk is considerably more peaceful, in any case.
Finally, at a creek that Remus regards with a special fondness, where the water is sweet and cool and no one else really knows about it, Sirius changes back.
“When were you going to tell me about that?”
“Tell you what?” Sirius smiles.
Remus does not.
“Oh, please, Moons. Be serious. I figured you weren't the friendly sort, so I didn't want to bore you with conversation, explanation, whatnot. Who knew how you'd react to that, if I told you.”
Casually, with no self-consciousness at all, Sirius shoves on his trousers, forcing Remus to turn away.
“Plus, you're smarter than you look,” he adds, running a hand through his dark hair. Still, he stays shirtless. “So, I knew you'd figure it out eventually.”
Remus is quiet for some time. While he is still glaring away at patches of sun-bleached grass, he feels a breeze ruffle his hair and the heat of Sirius' smirk in his back, watching him closely.
“I didn't realize it wasn't just James,” he admits, at last.
“We did it together.”
Again, he doesn't know what to say.
“Prongs is smart,” Sirius goes on, and when his gray eyes cut his, upon looking up, Remus scowls. “And, I dunno if he's ever told you this, but when it comes to Transfiguration, I'm smarter.”
“That's bollocks.”
“Go on, ask him sometime, I dare you.”
Though the possibility of James ever conceding a point to his ego in his favor, Remus doubts, but does not say.
Later on, after a few minutes pass in silence and he's setting up an easel on the field, Remus asks, “what was the point?”
“Of what, doing it?”
Sirius has a dark, wicked glitter in his eye. Cool despite the sun, it immediately makes his pulse tick, like he's been shunted underwater. “Becoming an animagus, you mean? Well, James was secretive about it, the reason why he came up with the idea. Unlike him, really. But I finally pried it from him...”
He tosses hair out of his eyes.
“Apparently, so he says, James grew up with this boy who had a—furry little problem, let's just say. He couldn't meet with him at times of the month when he wasn't human, so he decided this, you know, it could help. And, besides, you know how he is with a challenge. And me, too. He did it to help and, well, became a stag.”
Remus says nothing.
“And he did it, so I did it, too.”
Since Remus can feel that Sirius is still watching him, he keeps his eyes deliberately averted, his throat bobbing as he swallows. After a few more minutes pass this way, he asks, “would you fuck off?”
Sirius snickers. “You know, when I was told about you, Moony, I didn’t know what to expect. Lonely, poor little Catholic boy, everyone says is mad, lives on his own. Always alone. Barely talks. But I needed the money, of course, so I couldn't turn it down when James offered. Free board and meals and I just have to put up with some eccentric of a roommate? If that's all, I thought I could manage it. And, honestly... it was Lily who convinced me.”
At the mention of Lily, an image of her face flits through Remus' mind. Cadmium red, magenta, and phthalo green, for her eyes.
“She spoke rather highly of you, strange as it is. Said she met you and trusted you 'without even trying.' And, you know, she doesn't even say that about James or me. It made me curious about you, I'll admit.”
~
After almost a week had passed, James joins them both.
Unlike Remus, who owns very few things, the wizard comes in tow of lots of luggage, glinting with brass embossage, tugging the hand of Lily when they both arrive at the station, and only breaks away to run at Sirius. The two men are dark-haired, tall, handsome, side-by-side as a matching set, clapping each other on the back and laughing. The force of Sirius nearly bowling James over in a hug half-way knocks the specs from his nose.
Lily, meanwhile, comes for Remus.
“You've let your hair grow!”
Indeed, he has, and it has given him the look of a madman, so Sirius says, although Remus thinks it's only right and suits him fine.
“You must let me tidy you up,” she coos, linking her arm with his. “Oh, Moony, I forgot your hair, it has red in it, too. No wonder I love you so much. How have you been?”
Remus has been well—shockingly, finally, although not without recent turbulence, in the form of an intrusive guest, who he doesn't mention. “Fine, fine. Are you eight months?”
“Seven,” Lily tells him, placing a hand on top of her belly, smiling proudly. “Though, I don’t blame you for thinking that, I'm so big. James thinks it's going to be a boy. But between you and me, I hope it's a girl.”
At the idea of another Lily in the world—glossy, auburn hair, bright and vivid eyes, her smile like a light—Remus finds himself filled, unexpectedly, with a strange and sunlit warmth.
“I hope so, too,” he says, and means it.
Sirius and James rejoin them, this time looking appreciably mussed and rowdy. They are rough and fond like brothers together, and the vision of them stakes a small, sharp pain in Remus’ chest, twisting slightly.
“Well, I'm glad you've gotten on,” James says, grinning. “Padfoot, I was worried about you at first, so far away from civilization, eh? The barbaric French. He's not as used to it as you are,” he tells Remus. “No bathhouses, no tea parlors, no dances.”
“Not a whole lot to do, but paint,” Sirius says, and looks at him, too. His glance is quicksilver, light grey, a passing cloud. “Perfect for me. No distractions.”
“Your letter said you're fitting in with the common folk, eh? I hope you didn’t mean our good Moony.”
As Remus stiffens, Sirius corrects, “Not at all,” before he has the chance to open his mouth. “He might be of the country,” he drawls, “but I've a fondness, now, for this part of the world. Touches me. Nothing like it. Besides, there's nothing common about him, eh?”
James and Lily both smile, which pricks Remus' discomfort, as he's not sure how to take the observation, anyway.
“Shall we go?”
When James is kissing the top of Lily's head, taking her purse, and the two of them are distracted, Sirius' eyes meet his.
“Let's.”
Then, the days pass in a haze.
By mid-July, the heat is such that the buildings slump and the farmlands shimmer and more and more people wake during night, ambling the streets, when the air is bearably cool. There are streetcorners that get loud after dusk, the kinds of which Remus only has visited very seldom, when he was in a worse state of mind, which, strangely, he hasn't been for weeks. It takes little for Sirius and James to become nocturnal, in any case. They take to gallivanting about, delighting in all their quaint and provincial finds, spending freely, particularly at the one Wizarding bar in town, which is lovingly referred to as the “night café.”
There, after talks about business—James deals in artwork, selling paintings in London, where the aesthetics are evolving rapidly—Sirius and him drink wine and become boozy and giddy with each other until the early hours of dawn.
Remus, who never enjoyed the night so much as the brilliance of day, conducts his painting trips alone.
“But you see why I hoped for this.”
On the last Friday they are staying, when Remus spends over ten hours at the edge of a meadow, painting a derelict church, he is told by the barkeep that they are waiting for him, upon his return. The two “posh gentlemen,” he is told with a smile.
“Now, you must see why I wanted you two to meet,” James says, at last, when he finds them and takes a seat.
Dirty and skin-burnt, still lugging his equipment, Remus is decidedly gruff when he slots into the booth. Due to his size, he has to bow to avoid the light fixture, casting a ghostly and gem-stained green on the table.
“Yes, I see what you mean.”
Sirius, to Remus' simultaneous shock and annoyance, stands as he approaches, hugging him bearishly before he can get away, causing him to halt in his tracks, astonished. He smells of booze and smoke and ash and sweat and something stirring and electric and incandescent, like turpentine and linseed oil, which makes his muscles clench upon contact.
“Didn't I say?” James grins, flushed, pouring him a drink.
“He's exactly what you said, Potter. This man is a machine with one purpose. Not a Renaissance man, not like me. A Romantic in the truest sense of the word.”
After releasing him, Sirius has pulled away and still grips Remus by his shoulders, close enough such that he can make out the masculine lines of his face beneath the cheap, glass-colored lights. He is carved harshly, smoothly, with the cut of his cheek, his jaw, his nose, like marble. Black hair, slate eyes.
He's not as pale as he was, but Sirius is still as beautiful as a ghost.
“What do you mean?” Remus asks.
“It's the way you paint, Moons.”
Then, finally, jostling the empty plates and glasses and a grubby ash tray, Sirius drags his own chair so they are sitting close together, their knees knocking, leaning excitedly close. The vibration of it causes Remus to jolt, sitting up straight.
“We were just speaking about it, weren't we, Potter? I've never seen anything like it, in my life. Lupin, you should be studied.”
Remus, not drinking, not amused, crosses his arms.
“You paint in a fury, you know that? Gods, like you have a fever, like you're raptured. Never second-guessing, no editing. It just spills out of you, doesn’t it?”
“Er—”
In truth, painting has always felt like a deeply private activity to Remus, akin to prayer or something rather more unrefined, more base, and a blush seeps up his neck to his ears, hot like iron. He doesn't particularly care for the assessment that is made about him by Sirius, but he can't say why.
“Sometimes.”
“He uses his palette knife like a spear. D'you know that? Slashing, barbaric.”
“Sounds like Moony,” James grins.
“Yes, but he's in a league of his own.”
As Sirius slumps back, he gestures loosely, leaning in his wooden chair, almost ignoring Remus while talking about him, which is a peculiar feeling. A tingling, half-annoyed sensation shivers down his spine and limbs, which he doesn't know how to name, whatever it is. Others, from remote corners of the bar, are watching him and them together, and he seems to be the only one who notices this and dislikes it.
“—And it's nothing like they do at the academy. Stilted hacks, everything's staged or forced. They all paint like they're imprisoned; they paint what other people see because they don't see anything. Nothing comes from passion, it’s all reason, tedium, tradition. Beautiful execution, no perspective. All that schooling for a mind as shallow as a ditch.”
This is, clearly, one of Sirius' favored topics.
“—Incapable of painting something that isn't there, that they haven't been told to paint—”
“But you have vision, Black,” James interrupts, drinking from his pint. “Still, I get what you're saying.” He scratches his face. “Lupin paints what no one else sees.”
They both look at him.
Feeling like he might be blushing, Remus says, “I paint landscapes.”
“See? Too modest.”
“—And still lifes. I paint what everyone sees, in a literal sense.”
“No, you don't.”
Sirius says so, assuredly, sharing a glance with his friend.
“In any case, when you're both finished down here, I look forward to showing your work.”
James moving past this, nonetheless, smiles broadly. He, too, stretches his arms, taking up space easily, and runs a hand through his curls. “Both of you, yeah?” he adds. “You'll show them how it's done in Paris, won’t you, Moony?”
Remus begins to speak. Yes, he has been working, he wants to say. Prolifically, in fact, almost like the urge to paint itself is a wound he can't stifle, and it pours, day after day, bleeding out. Yet, he doesn’t know if his work will sell, never mind impress the sorts of people he has never once felt comfortable around, nor accepted by. He doesn't paint what is liked. He knows this. He's read enough of the newspapers and journals sent by Lily to tell.
Besides, his interest in humble subjects, from a humble part of the world, done by a man no one expects much from, who is basically mad—certainly, there are others who employ similar techniques as him, but not in the same way. He doesn't paint in a way that others would love.
Each of Remus' paintings looks like his own. Like something he made. He doesn't know how to stop seeing himself in them, but wishes he could.
“We'll do a joint show.”
When this is said, Remus’ head whips up almost violently. “In spring next year,” Sirius continues, smirking over his glass. “It'll give us time, me and him, to finish things. Lupin and Black. Color and line. Padfoot and Moony.”
James replies with enthusiasm, laughing.
“Past and present, that's what we'll call it.”
“Who's the past, then?” Remus directs towards Sirius, his tone acidic. As his smile widens a tick, he says, “Me?”
“No.” At that, he blinks. “No, of course not, Moons, that's me. Can't get away from my past hard as I try, so why the hell should I bother in my art? Besides—” Just as he's reeling, Sirius continues, holding his gaze. “That's not you, not at all. You, Moony, you're the future.”
~
James joins them one afternoon on an excursion outdoors. Until this point, far as Remus can tell, Sirius, hasn't so much as touched a paintbrush.
Nor do either of them seem at all interested in being productive, as the entire walk there, the two men stride shoulder to shoulder, barking with laughter, and seemingly are utterly engrossed with themselves. They shove their arms and ruffle each other's hair. Sirius only notices Remus long enough to cast judgement on his apparel before they set off.
“You could be a maiden, Lupin.”
He's referring to his straw hat, which he knows, yes, is girlish. Remus wouldn’t have selected such a thing unless he was sick of getting burned, sick of being ugly, sick of looking poor.
“Well, Pads would know. Plenty of maidens around here, eh? Frequented that old place on the corner of main, have you?” James wiggles his brows. “That's what the barkeep says.”
Sirius grins wickedly while Remus stares ahead.
“Moony goes more than me.”
“Moony, you riot.”
James answers before he can so much as protest, splutter, turn red or anything else. “Is that how my coin is spent?” he follows up. “You said you needed new canvas, you dog.” Though far from seeming angry, the man only smirks and says, “Had a good time, eh? Well, I can't fault you, really, as there’s not much else to do around here.”
“It's good for his art,” Sirius says.
Fuck off, Remus thinks. Sourly, he adds, “And if you look ahead—” While the other two are exchanging looks and Sirius mumbles something else, he carries on, “That’s what I wanted to show you.”
By then, they have traipsed for miles and miles along gold-plated fields.
At the end of the lane, there are vineyards.
The earth before them caves open, plunging into valley, yellow and brown and razed by sun, doused in heat and scoured dry. There's so little in the way of shade that offers any reprieve from the furiously blue sky along miles-length scorches of land, that when they finally find a glade with canopied trees, it's an oasis. There, the leaves are bright as stained glass, filtering in green.
They're mostly panting and sweaty and dusty, collapsing amongst roots, dropping their things. At long last, it's as if a hush settles in their bodies, outside of them, too.
A stream is deliciously cold and gem-like, which Remus wades into, shoving shoes in his bag.
“See?”
“This'll do,” says Sirius, when they find stones not far away, upon which they set up their easels. He hasn't taken off his clothes, but drenches his whole face and chest in water, splashing clear.
“Sure you'll not be bored of this, Potter?” he asks, smirking.
With his shirt now transparent and dripping, Sirius, in particular, bears the air of a docked explorer, still donning the same, wide, black boots he hasn't parted with once. Remus is certain they're the only shoes he brought. Despite the fineness of his wares, everything Sirius owns is wearing at the seams.
James, tan-limbed, shoves his sleeves to his elbows, surveying the hills.
“This is where you go off to, when I can't find you,” Sirius says, once James procures a bottle of wine and they take turns drinking. Remus partakes, too, and the drink is tart, strong. “Here?”
He meets his eye and cocks a brow.
“Sometimes,” Remus says.
“Well, now I'll know how to find you. Lupin, you do like your secrets.”
“It's not a secret.”
“The shepherds know about it,” he adds, less gruffly after a pause, in which he swigs again. “That's how I found it,” Remus goes on. “Follow the sheep, figure out where they drink, simple as that.” Never mind the farmhand who was present but assuredly stayed as far away from him as possible, when he did so. “But the townspeople don't know about it, really, since they're never here. Think there's a spring nearby.”
“Hmm.”
“Reckon I'll take a nap,” James announces, after several minutes of companionable silence. In the interim, Remus has begun pilfering through his basket of paints, while Sirius stands apart from them, merely staring off, eyes unfocused.
“Wake me up when there's something interesting to see,” James says, folding his glasses in his pocket and slumping beneath a tree.
That, they eventually do.
As the entire afternoon is dedicated to painting, Remus hardly spends any time at all preparing his things and soon has it is all set up, palette in hand, to facilitate his quick movements. Harsh. Erratic. Energetic. He blusters through tube after tube of pigment—phthalo, turquoise, cyan, sienna—layering thickly, the trees turning prismatic, technicolor, lucid, washing through him like visions, the further into his world he goes. If anyone asked, he'd say this, right here, is the closest he's ever felt to dreaming while awake, when he's painting. It doesn't feel like he's hallucinating, exactly. It feels like he's experiencing life more directly.
Tempos of music crash through him, conjured by the chirpings of birds, the rustling of wind, his invisible orchestras. This is how it feels, when he feels most like himself. Gorgeous, lurid, swooping, and then, at long last, towering to crescendo.
Relief follows the final swipe of his brush.
It's done.
Remus wipes at his brow dazedly, feeling like his heart dropped out of his chest.
Unlike other occasions in which Remus has spent hours outdoors, his concentration has fractured on more than a few instances during this session beneath the trees. Sometimes, when James snores, or there's a sudden rustling of an animal, he looks up, his eyes snapping to Sirius who, curiously, has appeared not to do much of anything in the meanwhile. He doesn't paint. He doesn't even move.
He sketches.
He does nothing.
When the shadows are long, at last, he delivers his first stroke.
One by one.
After another hour passes, Remus is roused by the sound of James waking, yawning, and stretching. The tall man cleans his glasses, muttering something about stomping off to take a piss, then returns to find that Remus has, in that time, moved to stand behind Sirius without making even a conscious decision to do so. He is staring over his shoulder, at where his brush makes almost imperceptible lines, flatly against the linen.
He looks at the painting and feels like he is touched, very lightly, by a knife blade.
“Merlin,” James breathes.
Up until this point, Remus thinks, Sirius has hardly created anything at all, preferring to remain idle and lazy, or at least present himself in such a way to other people. It is only after scrupulous observation he has deduced, against his prior judgement, that the wizard is secretly productive, albeit cagily and almost always at night. As an insomniac, Remus hears Sirius through the walls sometimes, pacing around, transferring his own agitation to him, causing his veins to thrum, his blood to heat with every step. On occasion, he listens carefully, detecting the slight scratches of what could be graphite or charcoal on paper. Out of pride, he never asks Sirius what he makes.
Still, this is the first time he sees him paint.
While Remus' work is craggy, harsh, thick with pigment adhered in globs, primitive in pleasure—Sirius', by comparison, is subtle as sunlight on water. Every stroke is a ripple on a pond, smooth on its surface.
It's clear.
Crystal.
Beautiful.
He catches shadows and textures as though they are ghosts.
James mutters something about Impressionism being lucrative, the new fad, but Sirius, Remus thinks, must not know about this or, if he does, he doesn't care. Fame, money, approval, about any of it. Bit by bit, as his canvas fills, it feels like a weight is building in Remus' chest, slow and heavy, up his throat.
It's the feeling of being dragged out of water.
It's the feeling he's rarely ever felt.
It's the feeling of a memory hitting, slowly and all at once.
Years ago, when Remus was young, his mother had dressed him and his siblings up one day, bundling them in a horse and buggy to attend a church, where they would go to court the favors of other families. It was something they often did and he loathed each time, trundling far off the beaten path. On the way there, that time, he was scolded and clipped in the back of the head severely for his cheek, prompting his eyes to swim and the countryside to blot in blurry swirls, passing dizzily with every bump of the carriage. He was a bad kid, always a bad kid, and it was something he always knew, could never change, but he never felt more terribly than when his head throbbed that Sunday, dreaming of running away. It was such that when he arrived—sick, sad, scolded—Remus had been the last to follow behind his sister, feeling very small.
Then, when he stepped inside and the chapel was quiet and still, awash in streaming colors, it was the moment that everything changed.
“Well?”
Remus is struggling to swallow when James prompts, very low in his ear.
“Well, Moony, what d'you think?”
He flushes hot and then cold.
At last, when Sirius looks back at them both, setting down his brush, with a clarity, Remus remembers everything once again. The pureness of the glass, the sun behind the windows, the tallness, the depth of it, the way he had felt that day in church, like his life had changed, or one day it could, maybe, all of it. Somewhere deep down, he still feels like beauty can save him, somehow. He feels like he is floating and his voice is hoarse even after he coughs and clears it, twice.
“This look like you,” he tells Sirius, finally looking away from the painting and meeting his gray eyes. “This looks like how you feel.”