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“Mr Lupin, is it?”
Christ.
Remus nods slowly, shaking the other boy's hand. "If you like," he mutters. If I must be, he thinks.
What a mess. What an absolute pain in the arse. "Two strong lads," Lyall had asked the agency for, and Remus knows because he was in the next room listening, and still smarting over the fact that his old dad wanted to hire help anyway. "We'll be fine," Remus had insisted, shaking out his left arm in proof that his shoulder was mostly healed, which it was. They would've managed fine; he still had his other arm besides, and all the ewes looked in good health so far, and bringing in two strangers to help run the season seemed like a fine waste of money to Remus and something they'd not done since he'd turned fifteen and proven that he was good and capable of handling just as much work as Lyall during the lambs, and he'd felt all kinds of embarrassed when Lyall had implied that this year he might need some help. As if he were now a problem to be solved, or somehow less of a man this year than he was last year, and certainly less than he ought to be.
But if they must get help - if Lyall must hire someone for a few months - then at the very least Remus had hoped that the workers who arrived would be up to the job. A couple of veterinary students, or something; someone who knew their way around a sheep, and it hadn't seemed too big an ask. As it is, the two boys standing dumbly in front of him on the station platform look less suited to farm work and more like they should be standing in a shop window somewhere, with their brand-new boots and spotless, neatly-pressed cream trousers. Cream trousers, and all.
Remus remembers, one night in the late winter not long after the accident, being laid up in his bed in front of the fuzzy little television Hope had insisted on setting up in his room to keep him occupied during his recovery. It had a remote held together with Sellotape and a funny round aerial which didn't quite pick up the Freeview signal, and he'd been mindlessly flicking through the scant channels when he'd happened upon some reality programme or other; something about a load of toffs titting about London with daft haircuts and those cream trousers, and he wonders now if the two boys standing in front of him have seen the show, or realise how ridiculous they look.
Or at least, one of them looks ridiculous. The tall one with the glasses and the palm that's far too smooth to have seen any real work in its life. He's still beaming down at Remus with a sort of manic smile, which sets Remus's teeth on edge - man looks insane - and then Remus lets his eyes slip away to the shorter boy standing next to him. And he's something else altogether. He's all cheekbones and soft, shoulder-length hair, the colour of Whitby jet, and it's tucked on the one side back behind his ear and then there's one pretty strand hanging loosely over his brow, and he's watching Remus uncertainly and when they make eye contact - when the noise of the four-by-four across the car park fades away to static, and the train on the platform huffs out a great cloud of smoke that Remus doesn't see - Remus feels his cheeks grow hot under his tan and something funny happens in his throat, and he thinks to himself: "Wow," and then, straightaway: "That’s bloody inconvenient."
They drive back to the farm in silence, mostly, and Remus swallows three times before asking the boy in the back seat for his name. Sirius, as it turns out; the dog star, and Remus suddenly recalls a night a decade ago when they'd been up on the fell and the air had been balmy and close and Lily had been reading out of that funny old book about the constellations. "What's that one?" Remus had muttered, pointing at a cluster of stars somewhere over the top paddock. Lily had yawned, and flicked over a few more pages. "Canis Major," she'd said around another yawn, and then: "That bright one's called Sirius, it says here," and Remus had squinted up at it, and frowned, and thought it was pretty good, as stars go.
***
By late morning, Remus can't decide what he's most cross about: the fact that the two lads are going to be as much use as a chocolate teapot, or the way the back of his neck feels all hot when he stands with them in the barn and points them up the ladder to the loft above, and Sirius blinks at him dolefully with those big grey eyes of his. He stalks back inside and slams the door behind him for no good reason, and Cecil grunts in annoyance at his ankles, and Remus grunts back.
"Yeah," he mutters, kicking his boots off in the hallway. "I know."
"Everything alright?" Hope calls, poking her head out around the doorway to the kitchen.
"No," Remus spits, ambling through to join her and flopping down into his chair at the end of the table. "They've sent us a right pair of wallies."
"Oh well," blusters Hope as she fiddles with the catch on the oven. "I'm sure you'll all be friends soon enough."
"They're not here to make friends, mum."
"Well, you never know," Hope says kindly, and Remus shakes his head and rubs at his shoulder when she's not looking. It really is fine. Mostly it's fine; it's just the odd morning, if he's been driving or lifting stuff or out on the quad. It just gets a bit stiff, and feels a bit funny when he moves his arm, like the bone doesn't quite sit where it used to and the muscle around it is still getting to know its new configuration; like everything's shifted a hair's breadth as it's healed. "Is your shoulder alright, love?" Hope calls from the oven without turning around, and Remus frowns. "Your mum's got eyes in the back of her head," Lyall used to whisper to Remus sometimes when he was young, if they'd been caught trying to enter the kitchen with muddy boots or Lyall had snuck the last hash brown off the tray at breakfast and Remus thinks, more and more, that Lyall might've been onto something.
"It's fine," he mutters, pushing himself up from the table as if the simple act of standing on his own two feet might prove to her that he's fully healed, and never been fitter. He scoops Cecil up with his bad arm just to labour the point, and feels a horrible twinge in his shoulder as he does. "Dog needs his tablet," he murmurs, and stalks out of the kitchen.
They're there when he gets back. The tall one, and the other one. The one that's going to be a big problem. Sitting there, bold as brass, at the kitchen table and chatting away with his old mum about London and all sorts; they're all clipped consonants and good manners and oh thank you so much, that's perfect when Hope pours one of them another cup of tea from the pot. Remus ignores them, as best he can, and busies himself with stuffing Cecil's pill into a hunk of cheese he breaks off the block in the fridge, and nearly loses a finger when Cecil snaps it from him. He wipes his hand on his trousers.
"Everything alright, love?" Hope murmurs, passing him a crumpet with a kiss near his temple that makes his cheeks flush pink and his stomach do something horrible because then they're muttering to each another at the table, Sirius and the other one: hunkered over their plates and empty mugs and whispering about god-only-knows.
Remus nods, and huffs out a sigh. Yeah fine, mum, he thinks, dumping Cecil on the rug near the range and fetching himself a mug for tea, shutting the cupboard door with entirely too much force and making the glass rattle in its panes.
I'm just fine.
Want to marry that bloke at the table, that's all. You don't mind, do you? We'll do it in the village, everyone's invited.
Everything's just fine.
***
"We lamb most of the flock up on the fell," Remus is saying. "So one of you'll need to be up there most days with my dad. It's not so far, so you'll not need to stop up there overnight much unless one of the ewes is having trouble."
The two boys stare at him stupidly, and Remus knows already that they're lying, and that they've probably never even seen a sheep before never mind pulled a lamb from one. And what he should do - what he definitely ought to do - is march back inside and call the clot at McGonagall's who arranged the placement and give him a piece of his mind, because what a colossal waste of everyone's time this is. "What's the point," he'd say, standing there in Lyall's office, "in sending us help who've not stepped foot on a farm before?" He'd scowl at the calendar pinned to the noticeboard and the long, arduous twelve weeks of work stretching out in front of him, and sigh, and demand the agency send someone else, and then he'd slam the receiver down and stalk back outside and tell these two idiots to pack their bags and clear off.
He doesn't, though, and he knows why, and he tries not to think about that as Sirius blinks at him nervously and looks every bit the man condemned. It won't be that bad, Remus thinks desperately. I promise it won't be that bad.
"Other one of you'll be down with me for the season," he goes on, clearing his throat, and looks back to James because that feels safer, and easier. "We always bring the first-time mums into the barn and lamb them inside."
"I'll do that," Sirius says, and his answer comes so quickly that the funny thing happens in Remus's throat again. It's only because the barn's obviously the better deal, he knows. It's only because a season spent in the barn with the new mums is much easier than long days up on the fell, out in the elements, and obviously Sirius would rather stop down here than trek up there every morning with Lyall. That's all it is, and actually it's really bloody inconvenient because if Sirius is going to keep looking at him like that all spring then Remus isn't going to get any work done at all, and they'll have stray lambs wandering all over the yard because how can a man be expected to keep his eye on the ball when there's a Sirius standing around, looking at him like that? And then his mind's wandering like the little lambs, and he's seeing balmy golden evenings in the hay and hands touching as they walk side-by-side through the wildflower meadows over the hill, and it's embarrassing, and senseless, and he despises everything by the time they all set off up to the high paddocks.
"Stupid," he mutters to himself, and to Cecil, as they climb, and feels Sirius's eyes on his back as he and James lag behind in their smart shirts and daft trousers. In James's wellies and Sirius, kitted out with Remus's own boots. Maybe Remus should lend him a jumper, too. His jumper. "Bloody stupid," he spits, and scowls, and stuffs his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans.
Lyall looks as bemused as Remus expected when they reach him and he's presented with James and his silly cream trousers, and for a brief, horrible moment Remus thinks he's going to send them away himself. Maybe he'll ring the agency tonight and have a word with them, and Remus will wake tomorrow to find the pair of them gone - and what a relief that would be! - and they'll be replaced next week with a proper pair of farmhands, and they can all actually get some work done. He doesn't, though. He just shakes his head and mutters something to himself, then carts James off across the paddock, and Remus finds himself alone with Sirius for the first time, and the sun feels so much hotter than it did a moment ago.
"He's never even seen a sheep, has he?" he asks after a moment of watching James, and he knows the answer already, and he's only saying it for something to say.
"Never."
"Proper James Herriot though, you."
"Who?"
It should be annoying. It is annoying, in its way, but then he's glancing sideways at Sirius and seeing those big grey eyes behind the pretty strand of loose hair and he thinks: stop looking at me like that. I need you to stop that.
When Lily had just turned fourteen and Remus was still thirteen, a travelling library had started coming to the village; some council outreach idea to get the wild folk out in the country reading, or something, and Lily had dragged Remus along one morning and made him stand in a queue in the scorching sun whilst they waited their turn. It was a sort of blocky cabin on wheels, towed by a Land Rover; like the temporary classroom he'd spent an autumn in once during primary school when the old school building had flooded and needed all new floors everywhere. The library only came that one summer, and he's never seen it since, but he remembers that first day and how they waited in the queue and then stepped inside where it was hot and stuffy and hemmed in by sterile metal shelves crammed with what, at the time, felt like thousands of books, and Remus had thought immediately how there surely could be nothing in that trailer for him. It wasn't that he couldn't read; of course he could read, and he had lots of fond memories at the time of Hope reading storybooks to him at night when he was younger, all dragons and mist and castles. It was more just that as he got older there always seemed to be so many other things to do; helping his old dad with the animals, for one, and learning how to drive the quad by himself, and when he did read, it tended to be the farming magazines they got delivered weekly because they'd have news in there of upcoming auctions they might go to, or offers on feed that he'd cut out with his mum's kitchen scissors and keep in a stack in Lyall's office, and all of that seemed so much more important than stories and books. Lily had been the reader of the two of them, and she'd spent forever in that stuffy caravan trawling through the shelves to find a book about stars she said she wanted, and Remus had wandered aimlessly down the narrow aisle to a shelf groaning with silly titles for bored housewives; romance and corsets and kissing and such rubbish. He'd pulled one off the shelf at random for lack of anything else to do, and turned it to look at the cover, and he remembers even now how he'd stopped and blinked down at it and wondered why he didn't just put it back straightaway, because it obviously wasn't for him. It had some silly name, all calligraphy and flourishes, but it wasn't that that would stick with him through the days and the weeks and the months after; it was the photograph on the front cover, and the way the model - reclining back on a haystack, for reasons Remus assumed would be explained in its pages - stared back out at him with soft, grey eyes, and long hair pulled back in a messy, devil-may-care knot, and his flannel shirt tugged open across his broad chest.
He didn't take the book, but he also didn't complain when Lily dragged him back to the travelling library every weekend for the rest of the summer, and if he found himself at that shelf for bored housewives almost every time then he didn't let himself wonder why, too much, and he pretended he didn't notice Lily noticing, and when the autumn came and the library stopped coming back he felt, mortifyingly, as if something important had just been snatched away from him, like an August romance doomed to last only until the leaves on the old oak tree at the head of the trail began to turn.
And there are a thousand reasons why he might be thinking about that book now, and they're all embarrassing and awkward and inconvenient, so he just sighs, and gestures vaguely at the fell, and says: "fell," and "flock," and then, "tour complete."
The walk back down the hillside is about as uncomfortable a thing as Remus can remember. He mutters the odd thing over his shoulder to Sirius; something about the old Beech Hall, and a tumbled-down drystone wall they'll have to fix at some point. It's all filler. His palms feel damp and horrible; his neck prickles in the sun in a way he can't ever recall it doing before. Sirius is jogging to keep up with him - stumbling here and there on sandy rabbit warrens and dense tufts of woody heather - and Remus should wait. He should slow down to an amble, and offer Sirius his arm when he trips. Maybe just carry him the whole way. Nip over to Lily's stables and borrow Abigail for the morning; gallop bareback across the fell and scoop Sirius up to sit like a maiden behind him. Arms around Remus's middle, lovely hair blowing in the wind.
Shut up.
Shut up, shut up, shut up.
The shadow of the barn calls to Remus when they finally reach the yard, and he closes his eyes in relief when he slips inside and feels the heat on his cheeks temper, and fade. The air hangs still and cool below the rafters, hay-strewn stone solid beneath his feet, and for a moment he feels grounded again, and safe, and not at all mad.
And then Sirius is there, standing right beside him, and that undoes it all.
"We move the first-time mums down a month or so before they're due to lamb," Remus says, for lack of anything else to say, and steps away between the bales towards the lambing pens. The distance does little to clear his head.
He hears Sirius murmur an exclamation over his shoulder as they round on the ewes, fat and happy in their stalls.
"This one'll be along soon, I reckon," says Remus, stopping to scratch at a wiry chin. The ewe in the pen stops her pacing, and leans into his touch, huffing lightly. "Why on earth did they send you here?" he asks then, knowing the answer won't matter one jot at this point. Clerical error, downright subterfuge. Sirius is actually a nefarious spy from a rival in the Cotswolds, sent to snaffle their prize-winning rare breeds and ruin Remus entirely.
Wouldn't matter. He can stay.
He sniffs, and steels himself, and looks sideways at Sirius. Even in the shadow of the barn, it's like staring directly into the sun.
"I have no idea."
Remus sighs, and motions Sirius closer, and it's with a weary, inevitable sort of resignation that he reaches out and gently takes his hand. It's all soft skin and lightness; he plays piano, Remus thinks, and for a moment entertains the prettiest fiction in his mind, all serenades and love songs. Sparks might fly. Fireworks might crackle and erupt at the point where their skin touches. If they do, Remus barely registers any of it, and it's all just a strange, flat buzzing between his ears, numb and distant, and if asked later he'd barely be able to recall anything of what was said, then. He moves Sirius's hand to feel the springy wool of the ewe in front of them, and they might speak about her, for a moment. Cecil appears, and then they're both slipping into the pen, and Remus is miles away as he walks through the motions of the whole thing. Something about the ewe's fleece, and what she eats, and then it's just the way Sirius is blinking at him in awe and speaking in the softest, warmest voice to him there in the hay, all quiet questions and wonder.
They trek back out into the yard at length, and spend a heady hour hauling a new delivery of feed from the cobbles back into the barn. It's arduous, and the most fantastic distraction: Remus's arm aches something rotten as he heaves the hessian sacks onto his shoulder, wiping at his forehead with the edge of his t-shirt and huffing out a resolute breath, and definitely not looking at Sirius beside him. Until he sees him slip away, and return a few moments later with his hair tucked rakishly back into a loose knot, that one strand still falling prettily over his damp brow.
Remus actually welcomes the sharp twinge in his overworked left shoulder then, and the way his stomach turns over at the pain, bringing him violently back to himself.
"Right," he says, rubbing at his arm and ignoring the way Sirius's smart shirt clings to him after their exertions. "Cup of tea, I reckon."
And stop ogling him. Be normal.
Sirius nods, looking wan, and tired. "Sounds perfect."
"Do you not get much exercise in Kensington?" Remus murmurs as they amble inside, and Sirius sinks weakly into a chair at the old kitchen table.
"Not that sort of exercise."
"Let me guess," Remus says. He smiles to himself as he fills the kettle from the tap. "Croquet on the lawns?"
"Something like that," comes Sirius's breathless reply from over his shoulder, and then Remus is passing him his mug, and lowering himself into the seat across from him, and twisting his fingers loosely in Cecil's wiry fur when he launches himself up into his lap. They banter back and forth for a few moments; about Cecil, and about the alpacas beyond the wide kitchen window, and Hope out there in the garden with the pair of them. Remus smiles into his tea. They share a tin of biscuits - Sirius nibbling delicately at a custard cream as they lapse into silence - and the clock on the wall ticks pleasantly, and what a few short hours ago seemed something cruel and insurmountable to Remus suddenly, wonderfully, doesn't feel quite so difficult; not quite so overwhelming, not quite so much. It's just quiet, and soft. Easier than it should be. As if they both crossed some liminal boundary together in the kitchen doorway and all the worry and the dread has dropped away at the simple flick of a switch, and the way Sirius is smiling at him over the biscuits; a radio suddenly turning over from noisy static to something mellow, and warm, and welcome.
It's wilful delusion, Remus knows - how violently he'd surely be cast out of the whole story if Sirius, or James, or anyone at all knew the truth of the whole thing. James, with his height, and his broad shoulders and his big hands that could probably knock a few of Remus's teeth out if he were caught looking at his mate the wrong way. How quickly the two of them would get back on that sainted train if they knew.
But they don't have to know. James doesn't have to know. His old dad, and his mum, and the village. Sirius. No one has to know. It can be small, and secret, and his alone, and all those happy fictions can remain just that and spring can trip over into summer, and Remus thinks achingly that he can surely last the long days if he allows himself the most fleeting of moments, here and there, to think on things that could never, ever be. Small things. Sirius, brushing their hands together as they walk side-by-side through the meadows. Silly, unbidden things that bring a blush to his cheeks; things he knows will send him reeling into dark nights alone in his bed, feeling like a rat and a cheat and the most horrid sort of person.
And then Hope's blustering into the kitchen and fussing about the alpacas eating her tulips, and Sirius is looking right at Remus with those soft, grey eyes, and hiding a grin in his mug of tea, and Remus thinks: it's enough.
If that's all I'm allowed to have.
It's enough.