Aisles

Chapter 3

Friday, September 20th

On the morning of Remus' second day of work, he stood in his bathroom, staring at himself in the mirror and giving himself a pep talk - he was only doing a half day, so only had to avoid Sirius for a limited time and could instead spending the majority with James and Lily. This was good. At least he could get quite a lot of work done and ignore how the sight of Sirius made him too pissed off to be able to focus.

I mean, who the fuck leaves the new guy alone in the shop? Remus could only hope he'd remembered to lock up right and that the shop hadn't been ransacked overnight - although he probably would have heard from Lily if that happened. And it was only his second day of work; as much as he didn't want to be a doormat - yeah, sure, I'll lock up and serve these twenty customers, you just fuck off home! No problem! - he didn't quite want to start any kind of trouble. They'd all certainly pick Sirius' side, since they'd known each other for years.

Besides. He barely knew the guy. He could count the things he knew about the guy on one hand, one of them being "his name is Sirius" and another being "he looks like he was carved by gods". He sighed as he got off the bus and headed into the shop. Lily waved at him from the till and Remus headed to the back to put his things inside a locker, before returning to the front of the shop and getting to work.

--<>--

It was near the end of Remus shift, when he spied James approaching Lily, just an aisle over from himself - Remus could see the two of them through a gap in the shelf and pretended to be straightening some boxes..

"Evans, can we talk?"

Lily stood and frowned up at James.

"Is this about Sirius?"

"Yes,"

"He better have had a good reason for leaving Remus like that, it was fucked up, James, you have to admit,"

"It was, I promise," James sighed deeply and ran a hand through his already messy hair. "Reg showed up, he was waiting out back for him. Told him it was urgent, he was in danger and needed Sirius' help,"

"Oh my god, is he alright?"

"Well, see, that's the fucked up thing. He was fine, it was just an excuse to get Sirius to go with him, back to Grimmauld. They staged a fucking intervention, Lil, it was awful. They all ganged up on him. I mean, he doesn't really care about that bit, they've done that before but it was the whole Reg thing. He feels really betrayed," James sighed again.

"I can give him as much time off as he wants, is there anything else I can do?" Lily wrung her hands.

"Thanks, Lil. Not sure, I'm just trying to be there for him, whilst giving him space, you know? I'm trying to get him another appointment with McGonagall, he always feels better after seeing her,"

"You're a good friend, James. I'll just ring Frank about the schedule,"

--<>--

Friday, October 11th

Remus went three weeks without seeing Sirius. He met Frank, met Lily, wrote essays, worked, went out for drinks with Mary, attended lectures. No Sirius.

The atmosphere at work was tense. No one spoke about his absence and Lily and James would often have conferences in the office, leaving Remus alone to man the shop. He picked up some of Sirius' shifts too, grateful for the money. Selfishly, he was glad that he could focus on the work and getting the hang of everything without having to worry about impressing Sirius (as his first shift had been preoccupied by), but as soon as he thought that he cursed himself for his self-absorbedness.