Lunch wasn't anything special. They just went to a little cafe that had sandwiches and soup. Remus got himself a cup of tomato soup and some soda crackers while Spencer got a salad and some cut up fruit in a cup. Remus listened while Spencer talked, rambling on about anything that wasn't Lula, it seemed. He was talking about the Art History course he was taking and how they were studying various art periods of Picasso and how he felt that he, Spencer, had gone through a period of fantastic realism but was ready to move on to more detailed art.
"I want to find one thing that really fascinates me and draw it over and over and over again until I'm perfect at it," he said.
Remus laughed, "I've been doing that trying to draw my husband's eyes. I can't ever get them right."
"Eyes are hard," Spencer nodded, "Capturing all the life in them and the emotion is impossible."
"I drew a portrait of my brother-in-law that captured the eyes right," Remus said.
"Portraits just seem to come alive, don't they, when you get the eyes right?"
"Mhm," Remus nodded, keeping his eyes on his soup.
Spencer was waving a bit of melon that was pierced on the end of his fork as he talked, "All the great artists repeated subjects, it's like they wanted to see how they'd grown over time."
"It makes sense."
"I have an entire series of portraits of Lula I've done - ranging from when we were kids to just a couple weeks ago - the last time she sat for me..." He sighed, "I feel like it's my fault she's into the modeling thing now. I've always encouraged it. But I suppose I won't be doing that any longer..." Spencer frowned and looked down at his fruit.
Remus sighed, "You lot have been going out so long, there's no way you won't be able to make it up. Just give it time, Stewie."
He shook his head, "Not this time, I don't think... Too much stuff got said."
"Like what?"
Spencer looked up at Remus, then back down, "Just a lot of stuff that's been bubbling under the surface for... years." He took his fork and pushed the salad around as he spoke. "You know how sometimes you don't say something for such a long time that it becomes something you can't say? That's the type stuff we were saying. All the things you can't say."
Remus stirred his soup as he thought of the prank in fifth year and of the whole debacle that took place over the summer. He wondered what could ever come between him and Sirius that could be worse than all that? Nothing, he reckoned. Perhaps they'd been through their worst of times already? he theorized.
"Do you and Sirius ever fight?"
Remus laughed, "Of course. All the time. Everyday, nearly. Sometimes more than others - or at least about things that are more worth fighting about. My husband has a very Sirius opinion about practically everything and once he's made his mind up in a way, it takes a miracle to talk him out of it. He's stubborn as hell and unfiltered. You never know what sort of rubbish is going to come out of him. But does that mean I love him any less? Even when I want to strangle the bejebus out of him, I still don't stop loving him."
Spencer said, "I don't stop loving Lula, either; I could never stop loving Lula. She's been my best friend since forever..." He shook his head.
Remus sighed.
"I've told her every secret that I've ever had," Spencer said, "And she used them against me in an argument."
Remus frowned, "I'm sorry. That's not fair." He hesitated, then said, "Sirius has used my secrets against me before, too; and I know it's not very fun... You feel all... raw and exposed. Betrayed, almost."
"How did you forgive him?"
"One step at a time... with a lot of patience and some time apart and then just... trying. Trying because not trying meant not being together and that... wasn't what I wanted. I wanted to be with Sirius. I want to be with Sirius forever. So every day I try as though my life depends on it because... it does."
Spencer suddenly seemed to change the subject then. "If Sirius grew up on Grimmauld Place then he must've come from a well-to-do family, like my grandfather was. Very aristocratic, very by-the-book and focused on perfection, on being enviable and being top of the pile, if you know what I mean. Things had to always be respectable and proper and it was very hard being a creative person in an environment like that... Creativity comes out of making a mess and I was being stifled. I wasn't allowed to make mistakes."
Remus nodded slowly, listening.
"Everything I did reflected on the family. I couldn't be me because I was so busy pleasing them. And not that I don't love them. I love my family --"
"Ah, well that's where you differ greatly from Sirius," Remus smiled sadly. "Sirius's family is... quite awful and he didn't try to please them. At least not after I knew him. He took every value they had and shoved off." Remus's smile deepened as he thought about what a rebellious soul his husband was.
Spencer stared at Remus, then said, "You really can tell how much you love him. It's written all over your face when you speak of him. I've never seen anyone look the way you've just done."
Remus laughed, "You'll find your person - whether it's Lula or some other girl --"
"Or guy?" Spencer said quietly.
Remus paused, pep-talk forgotten. Suddenly an echo of something Lula had said before fluttered through Remus's mind and he bit his lips, the inquiry hanging between them, unspoken, until finally Spencer said, "Yeah."
Remus swallowed back his apprehension, "Really?"
Spencer said, "It was one of the things that came up when we were fighting."
"Did she not know?"
"She knew. She knew before I did. She acted as though she had no idea, like it was sudden, me being bisexual, but it wasn't sudden and she did know. She's always known." Spencer sighed and rubbed his eyes and pushed his plate of salad away.
Remus was still biting his lips. Then, deciding, he said, "I was uncomfortable with her modeling, too, because -- I am, too."
Spencer looked at Remus with interest. "Yeah?"
Remus nodded.
There was something relieving about it - about someone else knowing something about him that he'd only recently discovered himself. And there was a weight off his chest, which had been pressing at him for some time - he hadn't even realized it was there but now that it was lifted he felt like he could breathe for the first time. And it was nice to have someone who understood it. When he'd told Sirius, Sirius hadn't understood the idea of bisexuality. He'd thought Remus was weird, even if he hadn't said It, Remus had felt it lurking in between the words that Sirius did say. But he didn't feel weird. Not deep down. It made sense to love both men and women to Remus. Why should he have to choose? Shouldn't he just love whoever it was he was in love with, regardless of what physical markers they did or did not have? Loving Sirius made sense on every level - but if he'd met a woman he loved before he'd met Sirius, wouldn't that have made sense, too?
Spencer looked relieved, too, and he said shakily, "I am so glad you don't think I'm crazy."
"I don't." Remus said sincerely. "I get it."
Spencer said, "See, that's part of what I like about you so much. You're empathetic in ways immeasurable."
"Well I don't know about empathetic but I am certainly pathetic," Remus said self-deprecatingly.
"Nah," Spencer said, and he concentrated on his salad as he said, "You're not pathetic."
When they'd finished eating, they said goodbye and Remus walked to the bus stop with Spencer. The bus he was waiting on came sooner than Spencer's so he actually took it - though he'd been planning on walking 'round the bend and disapparating after Spencer left. Luckily he had enough muggle coins to pay for the ride. The bus was crowded and Remus had three stops before they'd let off at the corner across from the flat. He sat next to the luggage rack and hugged his arm about the pole as the bus stopped and started in the early afternoon traffic.
A flash of blue caught his eyes and he looked up.
A young man about his own age - or perhaps a bit older, maybe? - was peering at him over a newspaper he had unfolded. The blue was the flash of his hair. It was electric blue, the sort of blue that in a drab grey space was shocking to look at it and certainly not a color that Remus had ever seen a muggle manage to color their hair before. There was something familiar about the grey eyes, too, that unsettled Remus and he tilted his head. The young man stared back into Remus's eyes for a moment, then hurriedly looked down at his paper.
Remus should've looked away - it's rude to stare, after all - but he couldn't bring himself to. Instead, his eyes traveled over the young man. He wore trainers and denim jeans that had a hole in the knee and an orange jumper that was several sizes too large for him so that it hung, baggy, about his shoulders. When he shifted his newspaper to keep his face covered, Remus could just see the bottom of the Chudley Cannons logo peeking out below it.
"The Cannons are having a good season," Remus commented. Now, to be fair, he had no idea what sort of season the Cannons were having. Sirius or James certainly would know, but he, Remus, had no idea. Actually, now that he thought of it, he was fairly sure the Quidditch season may not have even started yet. James had only just refereed the first Hogwarts match the weekend before, hadn't he? Wasn't Hogwarts ahead of the actual league? Gods - for being married to one nut and good friends with the other he really wasn't much at knowing about Quidditch.
The young man lowered the paper and looked over at Remus again. Again, those eyes -- Remus felt his stomach lurch at them. They looked like somebody's - sort of like Sirius's but not enough to say they were like Sirius's aside from color but --
"You like the Cannons?" the young man asked.
Remus said, "I recognized the logo on your jumper."
"Oh." The man looked down, then up at Remus. "Yes. Good team."
There was an awkward silence between them.
"Sorry, do I know you from somewhere?" Remus asked, "It's just that you look terribly familiar."
The young man laughed. "Do I?"
"Yeah, like I've met you before and I'm sorry if I've misplaced where from, I --"
"It's alright."
"So I do know you from somewhere?" Remus asked.
The young man smiled rather sadly and shook his head, "No. You've never met me yet."
The bus came to a stop and he quickly folded his paper. Remus stood up, meaning to follow him - he didn't know why he felt so strongly that he should, but in the flurry of people trying to get off the bus, the young man had slipped away. Remus looked around the streets outside the bus as the door wrenched closed and he spotted the electric blue among the drab world outside, the orange jumper with the name KENT across the back shoulders wasn't too hard to miss, either - but both the hair and the jumper were out of sight as the bus turned the corner by Waterloo and rumbled down the road toward the flat.
Remus settled back into his seat, brow crunched in thought.
Who was it that man had reminded him of? And why did Remus feel like he ought to pull the emergency lever and go after him?
He looked up and spotted the man's newspaper on the seat across from him, folded neatly.
Remus leaned over and grabbed it.
None of the headlines made sense. None of what was being covered sounded familiar and Remus had just read the paper that morning. He turned it over and his eyes went over the date. He laughed.
Thursday, 28 March, 2024.
It was some sort of prop newspaper or something, obviously. The man must be in a play or something.
He shook his head and dropped the paper back onto the bench as the bus rolled to a stop, announcing Remus's stop and he could see Peter on the corner in front of the curry shop across the street. He got up, pulling himself by the pole, and hurried off the bus, carrying his briefcase as he let the blue-haired man slip his mind.