Remus was late to class.
He was running down the pavement from the closest place he dared to apparate in from East London at - but granted Remus Lupin running was about as fast as a snail moving up hill - and his bag of art supplies thumped against his hip as he ran into the front doors of the college, skid on the tile and paused outside the door of the art classroom, peering in the little window cautiously. When the professor's back turned away, he slipped through the door and into his seat next to Stewie.
Lula was absent.
"There you are," Stewie whispered. "Hells bells, I thought you weren't going to show and I was going to be all on my own back here."
"Sorry. Slept in." Remus was unpacking his things. Truth was, he hadn't slept in. He'd actually been up early. He'd been digging around in his old Hogwarts things until he'd found an old envelope that Newt Scamander had given him over a year ago, after Ned Veigler had been murdered, and he'd spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to talk himself into breaking the seal and reading the letter... So long, in fact, that he lost track of time and, well, here he was. "What'd I miss?" he asked, quickly flipping through his sketchbook to the next blank page. "What're we drawing today?"
Stewie raised an eyebrow and his eyes darted to the front of the class. "Well, we have our first model today."
Remus followed Stewie's gaze and gasped.
Sitting on a stool on top of a table at the front of the class was a man - dressed in nothing but a very small pair of underpants. He was a very good looking man, granted, a bit older, with salt-and-peppered hair but still rather toned. He reminded Remus of an old-fashioned movie star with the cut of his jaw. He stared out the window, not looking toward the people who were clustered about the room, focused on drawing him.
Remus stared.
Stewie laughed. "We're starting figures for the rest of this term and part of next."
Remus's hand clutched his sketchbook.
"Get yourself together while they're modest, Rey. Eventually they'll be nudes," Stewie murmured, and he turned back to his sketchbook, where he was working on drawing the side of the man's face, his pencil making deft swishes to shade in the curves of the ear.
Remus glanced up at the man, then back to Stewie's drawing, and he took a deep breath and selected a pencil and started sketching out a very basic form. When he'd got the bare bones of his drawing laid out, he turned to Stewie and whispered, "Where's Lula?"
"We had a row last night," Stewie said quietly, staring at the paper in front of him carefully. "She said she didn't want to see my face this morning."
"A row?" Remus asked. "What about?"
Stewie shrugged. "You know girls... I said something dumb and I'm going to regret it 'til my dying day."
Remus thought of Sirius and the melodramatics that he, himself, often faced when Sirius got going and he nodded, then turned back to his sketchbook, trying to decide what part of the figure ahead of him to focus on. A quick glance around the room and he could see everyone was working on some different aspect of the man who sat on the stool up front. Stewie was concentrating on drawing and redrawing the man's ear, trying to get the curve and the ridges just right, while the girl directly in front of Remus was very carefully drawing the man's hair, one long stroke of the pencil at a time.
Remus decided to draw the legs - for the man had chosen to sit with his knees bent and his ankles crossed beneath the stool at an interesting angle. It also meant Remus didn't have to look any higher, and he could keep his head down - which was very important because just thinking about what was happening was making him flush.
"Eventually they'll be nudes." Stewie's words echoed in Remus's mind and his head snapped up suddenly as he turned to Stewie.
"Were you serious?" Remus asked - and he heard Sirius's chuckle in the back of his head, which he pushed out quickly because the last thing he could do was think about his husband as he asked the question he needed to ask just now.
"About what?" asked Stewie.
Remus's cheeks were flushing, "About the nudes?"
Stewie laughed and raised an eyebrow, "Never done a figures class before?"
Remus shook his head.
Stewie laughed.
Remus flushed all the more and he looked away.
"It's all in the name of art, Remus," Stewie said, and he reached over and patted Remus's shoulder.
"Yeah well, it doesn't matter whose name it's in, Sirius is still going to lose it if he finds out I'm coming here to draw naked guys for class."
"Jealous?"
"Yeah -" Remus said, "Jealous he couldn't come along and watch."
Stewie snorted and the girl in front of them turned about and hissed ,"Shhh. Some of us are working."
"Sorry," Remus said.
"Yeah, sorry," Stewie added, smirking, and the girl turned back around with a sniff. He turned back to Remus. "Tell him it's the perk of being an artist. Besides, they won't all be guys."
This made Remus's face go from red to white-hot and back to puce. "We'll be drawing women, too?" he asked.
Stewie nodded, "Uh-huh." He'd turned back to his drawing.
Remus glanced up at the model's knees and crossed ankle and wondered how many times he would get away with drawing the peripherals and if the answer was enough times to get him through the class.
That afternoon, after his class, Remus shrunk his sketchbook and put it into his briefcase and, for the first time ever, locked the briefcase. He was sitting on the bottom step of the stairs up to the flat when he did it, worrying that Sirius might come out the door at any moment. It felt terribly clandestine, but he really didn't want Sirius arbitrarily grabbing the sketchbook and finding a sketch of man legs in there and to start asking questions.
Remus couldn't stand to try to answer them right then, and he knew that Sirius would go one of two ways with the information that there would be nude models at Remus's class - either he would tease the living daylights out of Remus and make many, many jokes that Remus would inevitably hear in his head during each of the modeling sessions for the rest of the year... or else he would get jealous for real, disliking the idea of his husband looking at models, and go the dramatic route. Remus couldn't decide which option he could imagine more vividly in his head. Worse, he could also picture a hot-and-cold response in which one day Sirius reacted one way and the next another and flip-flopped between them for the rest of term.
No, it was so much easier to just lock the damn briefcase. He would, of course, have to start working on alternate art pieces to show Sirius when Sirius asked what they were working on in the classes, but he could do that on days when Sirius was gone to work at Spiller's in Cardiff.
Briefcase locked, Remus trudged up the steps and let himself into the flat.
The living room was dark and Remus put the briefcase down on the coffee table, deciding not even bringing it to the bedroom would save him at least some questions. He dropped his bag of art supplies next to it and went to the kitchen for a drink and some food. He could hear music blaring from the bedroom, and he decided to nip in there to see if Sirius wanted anything before he made his lunch.
Remus pushed opened the door to find the room in semi-darkness, too, lit by candles. Sirius's record player sat on the bed on Remus's side, spinning Dark Side of the Moon. Sirius lay on the bed, flat on his back, hands folded over his chest, head on a pillow, eyes closed, and beside him, leaning against Remus's pillow was the portrait of Regulus Black, looking around with a bored expression on his face. Tilting his head as though to try to see 'round the frame but obviously unable to. The portrait paused and stared at Remus in the door and cleared his throat loudly.
Sirius opened his eyes, "Moony!" he said in a deeply morose voice.
Remus bristled, "Heyyyyy Sirius," he said slowly, unsure what to make of Pink Floyd, candles, and the Portrait's wakefulness. He hadn't yet seen the Portrait do much more than rub his nose and appear to sleep, despite Sirius's claims that he'd had at least one or two conversations with it by then, so it was still surprising to see something he'd drawn come to life.
A sudden worry struck him - if he was doing the figures class, what happened if he accidentally made something that came to life the way Regulus's portrait had done? What happened if they had another exhibit and something Remus had drawn decided to come to life at the show? His stomach started to twist imagining a naked woman suddenly shaking out her hair and announcing to the world that she was drawn by Remus Lupin and watching people run in a stampede for the door from the possessed drawing and bloody hell the Ministry would be involved and there would be an inquisition and he might end up in trouble and what if that somehow got him exposed as a werewolf and he ended up having to register and --
"Moony, I've been ill all day," Sirius whimpered and he sat up, holding out his arms for a hug like a child and Remus sighed and walked over.
"You have? What's the matter?" Remus asked.
"Morning sickness," Portrait Regulus said from his frame.
Remus said, "Morning sickness?" He raised an eyebrow.
"Stop saying that you sodcake." Sirius looked at Remus and said, poutily, "I've been -- been poisoned."
"Posioned?"
"Yes -- food poisoned."
"You mean you ate something turned funny," Remus said, calming himself from the spike of mild worry that someone might have actually attempted poisoning his husband.
"If you wish to make it sound so common and boring," Sirius said. He wrapped his arms about Remus's waist and leaned against his chest, "Either way, I'm dying, I'm sure of it."
"He's thrown up a few times," Portrait Regulus said in a bored tone, "He's hardly dying."
"Shut up, what do you know about it?"
"I know you don't die of morning sickness," said Portrait Regulus.
"Yeah? And what do I die from?" Sirius asked.
Portrait Regulus was quiet.
"Yeah see you don't know," Sirius snapped.
Portrait Regulus looked at Remus over Sirius's shoulder and raised an eyebrow.
Remus said, "What do you reckon you ate that's done it?"
"I dunno, must've been something at the Prongses last night," Sirius said.
"Are they sick as well?"
"I haven't been over there," Sirius said, "I've been here, ill... Wishing my Moon-Moon were here to administer healing kisses to me."
Portrait Regulus muttered something but neither Sirius nor Remus caught what he'd said.
Remus assumed it was something sarcastic. That seemed to be Regulus's style - even in his portrait. It was amazing how, even dead and in the form of a damn drawing Regulus was still a mouthy little brat, Remus thought. While it wasn't hard to see the resemblance to Sirius in both aesthetics and dramatic flair, Regulus's attitude was darker and sharper than Sirius's. When Sirius said things that were cutting and sarcastic, one could tell he was joking. But with Regulus - even as the portrait - there was always a smirk that accompanied the words that made it feel more like a stabbing.
Remus rubbed Sirius's back. "I'm sorry you were ill all by yourself. Are you feeling at all better? When was the last time you threw up?"
"Uhhh, after we listened to Dylan... but before we switched to Pink Floyd, right Reggie?"
The Portrait said, "Something like that."
"So around ten," Sirius said.
It was now afternoon.
"Maybe you should try getting up and getting a cup of tea. C'mon. Let's go out to the kitchen, shall we?"
"Alright," Sirius said.
Remus turned on the proper light and blew out the candles while Sirius stopped the record and put it away in it's sleeve carefully. He plucked the Portrait up from the pillows and said, "C'mon, little brother."
"Must I?" Portrait Regulus asked. "Haven't you tortured me enough at this point?"
Remus was honestly wondering if Sirius had to bring the portrait out, too, but he didn't say anything as they headed out to the kitchen, where Sirius sat down in the chair and started to lean the frame against the bowl of Costa Rican oranges on the table.
"Oh god," he said, making a face as he did it.
"What?" Remus asked.
"Those bloody oranges!" Sirius exclaimed, "They smell!"
"What?" Remus raised an eyebrow.
Sirius gagged and dropped the Portrait unceremoniously on the table top ("hey!" Portrait Regulus shouted) and grabbed the bowl, carrying it to the bin and upturning it over the bag, making a dramatic show of gagging as he pitched them. He closed the bin lid and went back to the table, putting the bowl down and paused.
"What did those oranges do to you?" Remus demanded, "They were perfectly fine!"
Sirius stared at the bowl.
"Don't you go whining tomorrow morning that you can't have your precious squeezed orange juice and just remember when you start to that it was you who's pitched the oranges for no good reason..." Remus waved his wand and a cup of tea appeared before Sirius next to the portrait frame. "There you are - made just as you like," Remus announced, and he turned to the fridge. "You don't mind if I eat something, do you? For once in my life, I'm actually famished and --"
"BE RIGHT BACK!" Sirius shouted and he ran out of the room.
Remus stood upright and looked over the door of the fridge as Sirius's back disappeared from the room. A moment later, the front door slammed opened and then shut and Remus raised an eyebrow.
"Mental, isn't he?" asked the Portrait.
Remus looked down at it laying on the table.
"Go on, you can say he's mental, he's not here to hear it and pitch a fit at you for it," Portrait Regulus prodded.
Remus had imagined himself saying sorry to the Regulus in the Portrait for the nasty things he'd said the last time he'd seen Regulus. He'd pictured himself having a good cry of it, perhaps, if the Portrait had forgiven him like he so hoped that he might've done if Remus had ever had a real opportunity to apologize if Regulus had lived and returned to the flat, like they'd all really hoped he might've done... But the Portrait was being so insolent and rude that Remus almost didn't feel sorry anymore.
"I mean he literally could not be any more dramatic about literally nothing - he's fine, obviously, people dying of gastrointestinal explosion - which, by the way, is what he was persisting he had and that's not even an actual ailment - they don't go running off like he's just done..."
Remus picked up the Portrait.
"Wait. Where are you taking me? Hello? Remus?"
He carried the Portrait back to the bedroom and hung it up on the nail over the nightstand on Sirius's side and, despite the Portrait calling him back, he closed the bedroom door and left it there before returning to the kitchen to make himself some lunch.