For my best friend in the whole wide world who is definitely going to hate me when they finish reading this.

Happy birthday!

Looking back, there were a lot of things that coloured Remus' experience on his first day.

The briefcase that exploded in the car park because he'd jammed too many books inside.

The fact that he got lost on the way to his building three times (and lost on the way to his first class twice).

The nervous butterflies that were naggingly persistent and never let him have a moment of peace.

He'd managed to get this job in the midst of the toughest hiring season yet, a feat he still couldn't quite believe he'd accomplished. He'd published, sure, he'd practically killed himself trying to do all the things he'd needed to before going onto the market, but the search had been tough. Incredibly tough. There were forty jobs in his test run year, and, unbelievably, only two dozen explicitly in his field when he went on the market officially a year later. He'd thrown his hat into a few more rings, applied to some cultural studies jobs, some new media jobs, but those were long shots and largely about improving his chances in the numbers game.

He'd gotten MLA interviews for eight jobs, eight, a number he still couldn't believe, even now. He'd gone up against people who went to grad school "just outside Boston," pricks, but in the end, he was the one with three campus visits and he was the one with two job offers to juggle at the end.

So all those just-outside-Boston arseholes can fuck off with their red jumpers and know-it-all smiles.

It had taken him a few weeks to pack up everything he owned, another week to drive from Virginia to his new home for the next, well, eternity, in sunny southern California, and in the flurry of all that activity, Remus hadn't had time to properly sit down and let anything really hit him. It wasn't until he was on campus (or, rather, driving around Los Angeles screaming because the traffic absolutely was as bad as everyone said it was and he had no idea how to get anywhere and he just kept getting lost) that things really started to sink in.

He'd finally achieved what he'd been working towards for a decade. And damn if that didn't make it a little hard to breathe.

There were a lot of things that characterised that first day for Remus, but nothing stuck in his mind more than when he dropped his giant mug of tea on the ground outside the department office and the department manager came striding out to see what was going on.

He hadn't meant, obviously, to drop an entire mug on the ground, especially not the brand new mug that one of his mates had literally just sent him in congratulations, but shit happens when you have an entire stack of books under one arm, a bulging briefcase with a now-faulty latch under the other, and you're trying to take a very ill-advised sip of your tea even though you know it's boiling hot because you're running on nerves and nerves alone, and maybe you just need to drink something already before you die of dehydration in the middle of your next class in front of all your students.

He'd managed, luckily, to keep from spilling the tea actually on himself (a feat, if he was honest), but he was still surrounded by a pile of books and a briefcase that had since burst open and had a stack of ceramic shards in his hand when the department manager walked out.

'Hey, do you need some help?'

Remus had just looked up to say, 'No, so sorry I'm being disruptive, no I don't need help, no really it's fine, can you just point me to the toilets so I can get some towels to mop this up,' and nearly dropped everything all over again.

The department manager was gorgeous. Stupidly, obnoxiously gorgeous.

And judging by the jaunty smile on his face, the pieces of hair falling out of his bun (his bun), the leather jacket he was sporting, and the general air about him… judging by all that, he bloody knew it, too.

Were you even allowed to wear leather jackets to work here? Maybe he'd just come in from outside or something, but even still it was like thirty that day, or, shit, eighty-five, and shouldn't he have been sweating or something at least? Shouldn't he at least have looked a little bit flustered, because Remus was certainly flustered, and it wasn't fair that he was smiling at him like that as he crouched down beside him, that he was looking at him like that while Remus' hands were covered in tea and shards of ceramic and his face was beet fucking red.

'No,' Remus cleared his throat, 'No, thanks, I'm alright. Sorry, I — '

The manager held up his hand, 'No need to be sorry, just let me — ' and he reached out, took some of the more precariously balanced bits of mug out of Remus' hands.

Remus almost made a sound so embarrassing that he literally would have just pitched himself out the nearest window if it had managed to escape him.

They both stood up, and Remus followed him back into the department office. They dumped Remus' mug into the bin just inside the door, and the manager walked over to the table outside his office, grabbed a roll of kitchen towels, and headed back towards the door.

'I can,' Remus held out his hand, 'I can mop it up, it's my mess.'

The manager grinned, knelt down, and wiped up the tea. 'It's alright,' he said, and he looked up at Remus, beaming. 'I keep paper towels around for a reason.'

Remus sucked in a sharp breath that he hoped wasn't as audible as it sounded, looked anywhere else than at the devastatingly attractive man kneeling on the bloody ground in front of him.

He found that the wall of posters behind the manager's head was a great distraction.

After a few moments, the manager stood up, leaned back in through the office door, and dropped the sopping wet towels in the bin. He used one more to dry off his hands before he turned back to Remus and smiled.

'I'm Sirius by the way,' he said, and he extended his hand for Remus to shake, 'Sirius Black. We've probably emailed, but it's always nice to put the name to the face.'

'Remus Lupin,' Remus said, he took Sirius' hand, tried to ignore the way that his heart was now hammering, tried to get himself together enough to just get out one more civil sentence.

'Oh,' Sirius said, lighting up, 'our new faculty. I should have known with that accent.'

Remus flushed, 'I — '

'I'm glad it was you,' Sirius said, not appearing to notice the fact that Remus was quite literally dying in front of him. 'I'm probably not supposed to tell you this, but,' he stepped closer and Remus' heart jumped into his throat, 'the other people they interviewed were kind of terrible.'

He smelled like a campfire. A warm, spicy, fit as fuck campfire.

Remus cleared his throat, 'I'm sure they would have done well in the department — '

Sirius laughed, and it was loud and boisterous and Remus would have sworn that it shot a hole straight through him, like a giant cannonball sized hole.

'You're too modest,' Sirius said, grinning at him, 'Just trust me, okay. You were the only one that bothered to email and thank everyone. You even emailed me and I didn't even talk to you while you were here.'

Remus had to look like a fucking human tomato now, he just had to. 'Well, that's just basic decency, I had to thank everyone.'

'See,' Sirius tilted his head, his smile somehow getting wider, 'and that's why I'm glad you're here.'

Remus chuckled, shifted his weight in a way that he hoped wasn't noticeably awkward. 'My Catholic guilt?'

Sirius laughed even louder then, clapped him on the arm, 'You're hilarious. I'm going to like having you around.'

Remus offered him what he hoped was a normal smile.

Sirius turned to walk back into his office, but said 'Oh,' and paused at the door before Remus could escape.

'You settling in alright? Got everything you need?'

Remus did some kind of nod and shrug combination that completely cancelled each other out. 'Yeah, I think so.'

Sirius grinned. 'Good. Just let me know if you need anything. I'm right down the hall if you need me.' Then he walked back into his office and Remus practically ran down the corridor to his office.

If he needs him. If he needs him.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Remus saw a lot of Sirius Black over the next few weeks — so much, that he wasn't sure if Sirius was intentionally trying to torture him into confessing whatever vaguely defined feelings he may or may not have developed or if Sirius was actually just doing his job.

Though it nearly gave Remus a stroke to acknowledge it, he did need Sirius a lot over the first few weeks of term. He didn't know how the copier worked because there were far too many buttons and it was completely unreasonable how many fucking options there were, he could not, for the life of him, find the damn blue books he needed for his midterm exams in early October, and, to top it all, he was completely and totally useless when it came to budgeting or using the University's budget software and he had no idea whether or not his start-up funding had been deposited into his research account and apparently he couldn't book travel or anything until that was done and he had a conference to go to and he'd been looking at a writing retreat — just sitting and thinking about it almost stressed him to death, but Sirius was absolutely astounding. It felt almost insulting to be as surprised as he was, but Remus really didn't know how he would have gotten through those first few weeks without him.

He'd only made the mistake of telling him this once, a fierce blush creeping up on his cheeks halfway through because the devilish grin that had bloomed on Sirius' lips was just too much for Remus to handle. He'd spilt a bit of tea on himself as he darted out of the main office, but it was still better than that first meeting.

Though he had adjusted to Sirius' presence, and the way that his heart decided to fucking give out every time he was around, Remus still wasn't able to conduct himself in a way that didn't make him look like a complete fucking lunatic. He was in the central office all the damn time, Sirius was, and try as he might, Remus still hadn't figured out how in the hell to walk in there casually and just make copies like he wasn't thinking about pushing Sirius back up against the copier and having his way with him. He'd thought, at first, that the copier would be a really uncomfortable place to start any kind of nonsense like that, but then he'd walked into the copy room one day and Sirius was bent over the damn thing, smacking the side of it angrily, and Remus — well. He'd never turned and run out of a room faster in his life.

From then on, Remus tried to keep his visits to the central office brief — he got in, made tea, got his mail, made copies, and got the fuck out of there — but that was still enough time to have a stunted and awkward conversation with Sirius, who always hopped up from his damn chair and sauntered into the copy room or leaned up against the door frame of his office while Remus made tea. Remus, desperate to appear normal, tried to focus on things like not burning himself on the tea kettle or accidentally stapling his hand to his exams (and not to look like he was thinking half the things he was thinking whenever Sirius started leaning up against things like he did and Remus was suddenly made keenly aware of his broad shoulders and long legs and — ).

He wasn't even safe in his own office — when he wasn't sitting in there slopping tea down himself and obsessively editing his syllabi or the article he'd been working on for the last fucking year, Remus was largely just sitting in there telling himself that, no, he couldn't hear Sirius' laughter from down the corridor and that no it absolutely was not as attractive as he thought it was. All of that was bad enough, but then, then, about a month into the term, Sirius had started hand delivering Remus' mail (probably because Remus had had to stop going into the central office altogether after he walked in one day and Sirius was grabbing some old books off the top shelf in the department library and his shirt had ridden halfway up his stomach and Remus had damn near died).

Sirius delivering his mail, in itself, doesn't seem that terrible (something that James, his best mate and a right bastard, had pointed out when Remus had texted him crying about it), but when you factor in the fact that Sirius also took this as an opportunity to settle himself in the chair opposite Remus' desk and chat with him — well, honestly, it was just a fucking miracle that Remus made it out of October alive.

Because it wasn't like Sirius was just fit (though, fuck was he fit), he was also incredibly easy to talk to in a way that Remus still found a little confusing. He was used to being guarded, and he was, but there was something about Sirius that had Remus talking about things that he hadn't talked about in years. He thought, maybe, that it was because he'd now spent five years away from his best friends, five years away from home, that he'd made friends in his doctoral program, but not friends, and now here Sirius was looking like he wanted to be friends. Or maybe, you know, that he was still getting used to living in America when he'd up and left the east coast and moved west for this job, and now he needed to start all fucking over because Los Angeles is not like rural Virginia, believe it or not. It had to be the complete fucking hurricane that was his life that was getting Remus to open up.

That was definitely it.

No matter what it was, Remus started looking forward to Sirius' mail drop off, found himself thinking about the stories Sirius had told him about growing up in New York, and, even worse, had started repeating the stories to James and Lily whenever he called. They'd humoured him at first, had found his "crush" amusing, but it wasn't long before James and Lily were both tired of Remus and his overwhelming desire to complicate what they saw as a very simple situation.

'Jaaaames, you just don't get it.'

It was early one Saturday afternoon in November, and Remus was sitting on his couch, flicking through the television guide while he tried his best to eat a burrito without getting it all over himself. He hadn't talked to James or Lily in weeks and he desperately missed hearing their voices (even if they were just taking the piss out of him the entire time).

'Literally, mate,' James said, laughing, 'what is there to get? You want to fuck him and you're being dramatic about it.'

He heard Lily shout at him over the end of the line ('James, Harry is right here! He's going to get in trouble at school again! Harry, go upstairs and play.'), heard James grunt like she'd elbowed him. Remus rolled his eyes, tried his best to bite back his laughter — no matter how much it made him miss them, he was glad that those two were still the same idiots he'd left back in England.

'He works in my department,' Remus said, moving the phone to his shoulder and plucking a bit of rice off his t-shirt, 'I can't just go into his office and be like "Howdy, want to fuck?"'

James burst into laughter, and, judging by Lily's raucous laughter in the background, Remus guessed that he was on speaker. 'Americans really don't say howdy, do they?!'

Remus groaned through another bite of burrito, 'That is not at all the point here, James.'

'Look,' Lily's voice was louder over the line and Remus wouldn't have put it past her to have grabbed the phone out of James' hand and started walking away. 'For the millionth time. You're making this way more complicated than it needs to be, Remus,' she said. 'There's no reason that you can't ask him to drinks or something.'

'I think there's actually something in the faculty handbook that says — '

'You know we don't care about that,' Lily said. 'And anyway, it's just drinks. Make it coffee if you're really going to be so "by the book" about it. Just meet him outside your office for once and have a proper fucking chat.'

'I can't — '

'Yes you can,' Lily said, 'you just don't want to for some probably very ridiculous reason.'

'Yeah,' James was back, 'what's the deal with this bloke anyway? Why are you so — '

'Anyway,' Remus said, desperate to change the subject, 'how're you doing, Lils? How's my next godchild?'

James laughed, 'She's as big as a house,' before Lily could reply, and Remus heard another dull thud over the line.

'What,' James said, still laughing, 'so you can say it, but I can't?'

Remus could imagine the look on her face, the one of utter indignation that was, somehow, still amused. 'It's my house!'

'It's kind of my house, too,' James said, and Remus gagged into the phone. 'Alright, you fucking breeders, enough of that. I'd like to keep my lunch in my stomach please.'

'You're the one who asked for more godchildren, Remus,' Lily reminded him. 'This is partially your fault.'

Deciding that this was not going down a road he was comfortable travelling, he reversed into safer territory. 'How's Harry, speaking of?'

'He still hasn't stopped playing that damn game you got him for his birthday. He's fucking obsessed.'

'Well, I'm glad he likes it,' Remus said, but his reply went unnoticed because James had started shouting.

'Harry,' James had turned from the phone and was shouting back into the house, 'come say hi to Uncle Remus…. No, Harry, just — just save it, come on…. What — no, Harry, he's in America, come on!'

No one said anything for a few moments, and Remus finally heard the surprisingly loud pattering of feet on the other end, followed by the skittering of paws that had to be James and Lily's giant fucking dog.

He tried to pretend that he didn't hear the huge, dramatic sigh the preceded Harry's shouted, 'Hi Uncle Remus!'

Harry sounded so different from that last time that Remus had talked to him — he still sounded tiny, he probably was tiny, but that distinctly toddler-tone was edging out of his voice now and was being replaced with a voice that was a little bit older, and, thankfully, a bit easier to understand.

'Hey, Harry,' Remus said, grinning, 'how're you, mate?'

'He's gone,' James was back on the line, 'he literally ran over, shouted into the phone and then ran off. Poor Padfoot is livid that he had to come all the way downstairs.'

'I still can't believe you named your dog Padfoot.'

'Harry named him,' James said, 'what were we supposed to do, tell him no?'

'Yes, James,' Remus said, rolling his eyes. 'He was four. It's literally your job to tell him no.'

'Well, whatever,' Remus knew James was waving a dismissive hand at him, 'tell me more about this man you're in love with.'

Remus scrubbed a hand over his face and sighed. 'I'm not in love with him.'

'That's convincing.' Remus could feel James' grin through the phone.

'I just — ' Remus sighed, and though he was tempted to attempt to turn the conversation back towards lighter ground, he knew that once he got James started on something, that he was going to have to talk about it one way or the other. It was like that all through bloody secondary school, had only gotten worse when he'd met Lily at university and they'd started teaming up against him, and, really, Remus knew that if he didn't start talking about it, that he was probably going to have a heart attack in the middle of the corridor one day because he just couldn't take the strain.

He sighed again, almost angrily this time, and let himself loosen the pressure valve just a bit. 'I just worked so fucking hard to get here and my entire fucking career is going to come crumbling down because I work with a literal fucking GOD and I can't keep it in my pants. I've killed myself for years, years, and none of that is going to fucking matter.'

'Wait, wait, wait,' James said, clearly unable to keep up with the twist this conversation had taken. 'Mate, why do you think that this'll destroy your career?'

'Because this won't last, James, christ,' Remus snapped, 'We'll go out a few times, probably have great, mind-blowing sex in my weird, furniture-less flat, and then he'll realise that I'm a loner for a reason and then he'll stop talking to me. I'll be hopelessly fucking in love with him at this point, so then I'll probably start loitering outside his office like a fucking madman and then he'll report me and then I'll get fired!'

For some reason, the idea of Sirius never talking to him again bothered him almost as much as the complete collapse of his career. It bothered him less, obviously, but nothing terrified him as much as the prospect of his entire career imploding and leaving him stranded in America with nothing to show for all his pain and suffering but a degree that overqualified him for any other fucking career path he could possibly pursue once he finally found enough money to drag his pathetic arse back to England.

Still, it seemed significant that his Sirius-based concerns even registered.

'Remus,' James said, 'none of that is going to happen.'

'You don't know that.'

'Yes, Remus,' Lily said, 'we do. First of all, you never look as mad as you think you do from the outside — '

'How that's true I'll never know.'

' — and second,' Lily continued, completely glossing over Remus' interruption, 'you're basing this whole thing on the fact that Sirius will come to realise that he's not interested. And I think he's made it pretty clear that he's interested.'

'But — '

'Mate, come on,' James had to be smiling now.

'What if he just feels bad for me or something? What if he realises how completely pathetic I am and this is just some pity thing that he's started and now he's trying to figure out how to get out of this whole thing gracefully but I'm too clingy?'

'You are so fucking dramatic, Remus, I swear to god,' Lily said, laughing.

'I'm nooooooot,' Remus said, thoroughly proving her point.

'Just — ' James paused and Remus knew that he was probably raking his hand through his hair, maybe shooting Lily a can you believe that we're raising a grown man look. 'Can you just promise me that you'll try to make a bit more of an effort where this bloke is concerned? That you'll, you know, flirt a little more obviously? Put yourself out there a bit more?'

'Why would I promise that? That sounds fucking terrible.'

'Because,' James said, 'you were the one complaining just the other night about how you haven't gotten laid in, I quote, "a fucking geological age," and you're never going to remedy that if you keep acting like this.'

Remus groaned angrily into the phone. 'But — '

'Remus.'

Remus groaned louder. James' dad voice was always hilarious until he was using it to shout at him or shame him into acting like an adult. 'Fine. I hate you and we're not friends anymore, but fine.'

True to his grudgingly given word, Remus did make something of an effort over the next few weeks.

It was often awkward and Remus was sure that he was flushed a brilliant red the entire time, but he did it. He flirted.

When Sirius brought his mail, now almost a daily occurrence, Remus started the conversation. He laughed more easily, smiled more readily, leaned forward in his chair just a bit, and let his eyes hover over Sirius as he moved out of the corridor and settled in the chair across from Remus' desk. He lingered longer in the main office, made more cups of tea than was probably advisable, pretended to be looking for random office supplies, that kind of thing, and eventually "gave up trying to find that damn chalk" and leaned against the frame of Sirius' door and chatted his ear off. It wasn't the most aggressive flirting game, sure, but it was the one he had, so it was what he was going with.

Besides, he was still lowkey terrified (as his students would say) that he was going to get fired for being a fucking creep, so he needed to at least keep it together a little bit until he figured out where Sirius' head was at.

The trouble was, it was damn near impossible to pin down just where Sirius was. Remus, used to a country full of emotionally and physically repressed lunatics, had a hard time deciding if the way that Sirius touched his elbow when Remus made a joke was flirting or if it was just an American thing. Americans were touchier, he'd had enough hands brushing along his back and shoulder claps from strangers since moving to the States to last a fucking lifetime, and it was damn near impossible for him to figure out if Sirius was that kind of American or if the way he let his fingers brush against Remus' when he passed him his mail was something else entirely.

Remus let himself freak out about it privately because James and Lily were no longer willing to talk about it with him. Yes, accidentally calling them at one in the morning London time had been a mistake, but he'd apologised! And anyway, how was he supposed to fucking figure out time difference right after Sirius had popped into his office at five to say goodnight just as Remus was getting ready to leave, too, and then they'd ended up walking out to the carpark together and Sirius had done that thing with his eyes where he drags them slowly over the whole of Remus' body that makes Remus feel like his blood is on fire and then Sirius had gotten on his motorbike and Remus' thoughts were totally and completely indecent as he watched Sirius swing one long leg over the thing and — well, honestly, how could James and Lily have expected him to do something like addition when he was still hyperventilating from all of that?

James, unhelpful arsehole that he is, said that Remus should just fucking ask Sirius out to lunch already. As if he and Lily hadn't already given Remus that advice.

'If I wanted the same advice over and over again, James,' Remus had snapped, 'I wouldn't bother calling you, I'd just replay our fucking conversations in my head!'

He'd felt bad about it later and called James to apologise. At a decent hour London-time.

He knew, logically, that he was being completely ridiculous. Knew, logically, that this whole bloody thing could be sorted, as James and Lily kept insisting, in two relatively painless seconds with a simple "fancy getting coffee with me." The trouble was, though, that the moment Remus' heart got involved, any and all logic he might have applied to the situation went out the window. He was pathetic in the best situations, when the bloke he was lusting after was definitely available and obviously interested, but this. This thing with Sirius, whatever it was, had made Remus the most pathetic that he'd ever been because it was an emotional fucking minefield.

It was all of Remus' usual twisted up feelings and his utter terror at being even remotely emotionally vulnerable and his overwhelming desire for self-preservation to the point of self-sabotage thrown into a workplace dynamic that he had no fucking idea how to navigate.

He never stood a chance.

Still, James and Lily were never going to talk to him again if he didn't make an effort that they felt matched the level of drama he'd introduced to the situation, and, if he was honest with himself, Remus was glad of the excuse to push himself a bit. He made a valiant effort through the rest of November, but once December started and, with it, finals season, Remus was no longer concerned with trying to flirt with Sirius enough to indicate that he was interested. He was more invested in things like getting his final exams written, grading his students' last essays, and making sure that he kept his students from dissolving into full-out tears in his office during office hours.

He was the only one allowed to act like that in his office, thank you very much.

He was sitting in his office one Thursday afternoon, door open because it was still his damn office hours, and a fresh stack of papers on his desk from his morning class that he was determined to grade before he let it sit too long and then he fucking forgot to do them and then he needed to rush grade them to factor them into his final grades, when someone suddenly spoke from the doorway.

'You coming to Dean's Desserts tonight?'

Remus jumped, and his pen (bright red because of course) slid halfway across the page he was marking. Sirius laughed from the door, that deep, rumbling laugh that fucking haunted Remus' dreams (and daydreams and fantasies and — )

'Sorry,' Sirius brushed a piece of hair out of his eyes, smiled that devilishly cheeky smirk that would have made Remus weak in the knees if he weren't already sitting down. 'Didn't mean to startle you.'

'No,' Remus set his pen down before he accidentally wrote anything else, 'You, uh — you didn't.'

Sirius raised an eyebrow, looked pointedly at the paper on Remus' desk. Remus wiped at the line like an idiot, smudged the still-wet pen and made it worse. He heaved a sigh, ignored (committed to memory) the way that Sirius was chuckling at him, and pushed his papers away.

'What's Dean's Desserts?'

Sirius pushed off the door frame, stepped into Remus' office, and put his hands on the back of the chair across from Remus' desk. Remus desperately hoped that his face didn't reflect a single fucking thing that went through his mind then. Things like asking Sirius to shut the door, pushing Sirius' back into the wall, finally grabbing him by the lapels of that damn leather jacket… those things were not things that he needed to be thinking about while he was at work and certainly not while he was in front of the subject of his truly embarrassing number of fantasies.

He could think about those at home and then say approximately a hundred Hail Mary's like a normal person.

'They do it every semester,' Sirius said, 'it's a thank you thing the Dean does. She gives us wine and cookies and shit, so it's usually pretty fun. Or, you know,' he shot Remus a cheeky grin, 'tolerable once you've got enough wine in your system.'

It took nearly everything Remus had to ignore the way that smile shot through him. 'Is everyone going, or?'

'Minnie and I are going,' Sirius said, 'and we usually have the new faculty come along.'

'So that's me, then.'

Sirius laughed, 'That's you.'

'What time is it?'

'An hour or so?' He checked his watch, 'Yeah, an hour. Starts around three.'

'Where is it?'

'It's in the Dean's conference room. You know where that is?'

Remus must have continued to look confused because Sirius grinned, pushed off the back of the chair, and straightened up. 'How about I just stop by on my way and we'll walk over together.'

'Uh,' Remus hastily cleared his throat, 'S-sure. That sounds great. I'll see you round three, then.'

Sirius took a few steps back towards the door, his eyes on Remus', before he turned and strode back out of the office.

Remus spent the next hour teetering on the edge of mania.

He pulled his mobile out of his jacket pocket, fumbling the damn thing a few times because he'd fucking worn the jacket with the really small pockets and he never remembered that his phone barely fit into those pockets until the damn thing is already in there and he's swearing the most colourful things that he can think of under his breath, and texted James and Lily a sort of desperate plea that was a complete mistake because his two best friends were complete arseholes. His fuck fuck fuck Sirius is going to come pick me up for this dessert thing and I'm goign to drool all over him or somethng what the fuck am I supposed to say to him while we're walking to this thign what if I let it all slip out fuck fuck fucK FUCK was met with a bunch of very rude and very unhelpful gifs and then made worse by their actual "advice" —

James Potter: I dont see why drooling on him is a problem mate. Maybe thats what hes into

Lily Potter: Yeah, that's how James seduced me. And look at us now

James Potter: I think i did more than drool on you love ;)

Lily Potter: mmm yes you certainly did xx

Remus Lupin: STOP FLIRTING AND HELP ME YOU FUCKS

Lily Potter: Sorry mate, we'll be back, we've got very important things to do

Remus Lupin: IT IS TEN IN THE EVENING THERE YOU DON'T HAVE ANYTHING TO DO

Remus Lupin: I FUCKING HATE YOU BOTH SO MUCH

Remus Lupin: WHEN I DIE OR GET FIRED THIS IS YOUR FAULT

Finally deciding that it wasn't worth continuing to bombard them with messages now that they were otherwise occupied, Remus tossed his mobile onto his desk, and pulled the stack of final papers back in front of him. If his best friends were too busy fucking to rescue him and he was too busy freaking out to think clearly, his only fucking option was to sit in his chair and grade furiously in an attempt to distract himself.

It was only mildly effective, but as this point, he'd take what he could get.

By the time Sirius appeared back in his doorway, a few minutes before three, Remus had managed to get through the rest of his grading. It was rushed, sloppily written, and he certainly could have done it with a bit more care, but the students weren't going to come pick up the damn things anyway, so what did it really matter? As long as he could read the notes that he'd scribbled at the end for the electronic grading system, he was set.

'Ready?'

Remus stood up a bit too quickly, blinked through the rush of blood to his head and prayed that he wouldn't pass out and knock his head on the desk and die right in front of the man he was not in love with.

'Yes,' he buttoned the top button on his blazer as he walked out from behind the desk. 'Perfect timing. I just finished up my grading.'

'That's awesome!' Sirius grinned at him and Remus would have sworn on his life that he felt the ground shudder to a halt underneath him. It was a miracle that he kept walking.

'So, are you going home for the holiday or,' Sirius asked as they turned the corner from the English hallway and started up the stairs to the fifth floor. Remus sighed, shook his head. 'I want to go home and see my mates, but I've got an article to finish. And anyway, I'd waited too long to start looking and tickets were way too expensive.'

Sirius nodded knowingly. 'Yeah, I can't imagine tickets back to London would be cheap. Especially this time of year.'

Remus hummed in agreement. 'Nope, they're right fucking expensive. James and Lily offered to fly out here, but Lily's like eight months pregnant and Harry's still kind of small and — I just felt bad asking them to do that.'

'It's great that they'd do that, though,' Sirius said, glancing at Remus as they turned and started walking down the long hallway towards the Dean's offices. 'They sound really great. I hope they fly out here eventually, I'd love to meet them.'

'They'd love to finally meet you,' Remus said and — fuck — he flushed as soon as he realised what he'd said, prayed that Sirius wouldn't have caught it, but —

'Finally? Are you talking about me to your friends, Lupin?' Sirius quirked an eyebrow at him, a knowing grin tugging at his lips.

Remus cleared his throat, shoved his now trembling hands into his trouser pockets. 'Might've come up once or twice,' Remus said. Sirius' grin widened.

'What about you,' Remus asked. 'You going back to New York?'

Sirius barked a laugh, shook his head. 'Fuck no,' he said, 'I've had enough of Manhattan at Christmastime to last a goddamn lifetime. New York isn't home anymore anyway — it's been LA for the past decade.'

'What do you usually do for the holiday?'

'Go to the beach,' Sirius said, turning and smiling at him. It was warm, a bit soft, a smile unlike any of the others that Remus had seen on Sirius before, and though it sent Remus' pulse skittering and his mind swirling with threats to keep it together, more than anything else, the quiet smile on Sirius' lips endeared him to Remus, made Remus want to stop them walking and just talk to him, to see what it would take to get Sirius to smile like that again.

'I like to go to Venice and wander around with all the weirdos, but it's been getting so tame lately, I'm starting to think I might need to find something else to do. Though if you're going to be around, maybe we could spend the holiday together?'

'S-sure,' Remus cleared his throat, 'I've never been to Venice. Maybe we could — '

Sirius beamed. 'Yeah, that'd be fucking awesome. Maybe we'd luck out and find some super weirdos while we there. Get you the real California experience.'

Remus was, luckily, saved from having to come up with something else to say, something that wasn't well I'm not doing anything, why don't we hop on your bike and go now, because as they turned a corner, they could hear the raucous laughter of some of their colleagues from the conference room and Sirius sighed audibly next to him.

'Prepare yourself,' Sirius said, leaning sideways into Remus' space and tilting his head up a bit so that he could speak more softly, 'Tom, the Econ chair, always gets insanely drunk at these things and he's so fucking obnoxious.'

'Oh,' Remus raised an eyebrow. 'Anything else I should know?'

Sirius hummed, slowed to a stop a few metres from the conference room. 'The red wine is the best, always, don't even try for the white, it's some nasty sweet shit. Unless that's your thing, but — ' he grimaced, and Remus laughed. 'Don't worry, it's not my thing.'

Sirius sighed, 'Thank god,' and wiped a fake bit of sweat from his brow. Remus grinned.

'Be on the lookout for Margaret from History,' Sirius continued, a smile on his lips now. 'She gets drunk at this thing, too, but she's fucking hysterical. If you really want to get her going, start her talking about medieval sex — she gets so into it and it's hilarious watching people try to remain professional when Margaret is in the corner yelling about nipples or whatever she gets started on.'

Remus snorted, 'Alright, duly noted. Anything else?'

Sirius thought for a moment before he slowly shook his head. 'I can't think of anything else that exciting. Amelia will come and talk to you at some point, but she's got so many people to mingle with that she doesn't usually stay long. Otherwise, the food's usually pretty good — Amelia's staff have been doing this for so long that they all know what we like — and they really do just want you to have a good time.'

Remus nodded, cleared his throat, but his nerves must have been showing, because Sirius reached out and placed a firm hand on Remus' elbow. 'It'll be alright. If all else fails, just hang with me and Minnie in the corner.'

Remus laughed, felt his shoulders loosen and the tension seep out of him as Sirius dropped his hand. 'I can't believe Minerva lets you call her that.'

'She's got a soft spot for me, our Minnie.' Sirius shot Remus a wink before he turned on his heel and strode easily into the conference room.

Remus took one more deep breath before he stuffed his hands into his trouser pockets and followed him.

He had more people to talk to than he expected, especially considering the fact that he was pretty sure he had been a weird loner all term and hadn't met anyone. The Dean ('Amelia, Remus, please! We're colleagues now!') had, as Sirius promised, made a point to talk to him, but Remus had spent most of the afternoon, wine glass in hand, floating between groups of new faculty and bonding in quiet whispers over how terrifying the first term had been.

'Did you get lost here?! I've gotten lost here so many times!' Mary, a new assistant professor in psychology said as she leaned conspiratorially into the middle of the group of new faculty that Remus had found himself in.

'I got lost like six times my first day,' Remus said, laughing. 'And then I had my students do a library day later in the term and I got lost trying to find that lab and they all laughed at me when I finally showed up.'

Dean's Desserts was nice, nicer than Remus ever expected. Mary had ended up inviting him to start getting lunch with her and a few other new professors ('It's just people in our department, really, but now that you're here, maybe we'll become interdisciplinary enough to call ourselves a working group and get funding!'), he'd met Margaret from History and gotten her to start talking about condoms ('They used to use linen and intestines, Remus, did you know that? Incredibly ineffective and can you imagine how that must have felt?!'), and through it all, he kept looking up, warm, wine-induced smile on his face, and finding Sirius across the room. Every time Sirius was smiling at him and every time it made Remus' chest ache.

Remus was laughing at some story Mary and her colleague Jake were recounting from their department meeting the week before when his eyes flicked up and he found Sirius watching him again. There was something different in the way that Sirius was looking at him this time, something that rushed through him, and so when Sirius tilted his head slightly towards the door before he turned on his heel, Remus didn't hesitate.

'I,' he slapped a hand to his pocket, clicking the button on the side of his mobile as he pulled it out so the screen was lit up. 'I'm sorry Mary, Jake, I've got to — ' he nodded towards his phone before he smiled at them. 'But email me, okay? We'll definitely do lunch!'

They nodded and Remus smiled his thanks, slid his finger across the screen as he walked back out into the corridor, setting his empty glass on the sideboard as he slid out the door.

Sirius was standing a little way down the hall, the wine glass he'd had in his hands all afternoon absent. He was fiddling with the end of his jacket instead, that damn leather jacket that haunted Remus' every waking moment, and — Remus couldn't be reading him correctly — he looked a bit nervous. Remus cleared his throat and Sirius' eyes shot up, met his across the corridor, and he broke into a wide, easy smile.

'You were having the time of your life in there,' Sirius said.

Remus shrugged, walked slowly towards Sirius. 'Wine helped.'

Sirius chuckled, 'It also helps that you're just a great guy, Lupin.'

Remus shook his head, 'I'm awkward.'

'You're not awkward. Did you see how happy everyone was when they were talking to you?'

'That was the wine, too.'

'No, it wasn't.'

'You seem pretty sure about that.'

'I happen to have a lot of experience talking to you.'

Remus hummed and they were standing so close now, closer than Remus realised and this was definitely not the best idea, not with everyone just down the hall, but his head was a bit soft from the wine and his chest was warm and the tugging in his gut was too much to ignore and he couldn't — why was he bothering to continue to force this distance between them? He couldn't honestly think of an answer that made sense.

'I suppose you're right,' he said. 'I still can't believe you'd want to be talking to me, though.'

'Why wouldn't I want to be talking to you?' Sirius' voice was quiet, a bit breathless, and it went straight to Remus' head. 'You're — Remus, you're — '

They were standing dangerously close now and Remus felt Sirius' soft exhale on his neck.

It wouldn't matter, in retrospect, that Sirius smelled even better up close or that the way his chest just brushed against Remus' as he leaned in was going to be burned into Remus' memory for eternity or that Sirius' lips against his own were just as indescribably perfect as Remus had thought they would be. None of it mattered because the moment Remus leaned down and brushed his lips against Sirius' and the world crumbled underneath his feet and everything, everything about Remus felt like it was caught in Sirius' gravity — the moment Remus admitted, finally, fully, just how much he wanted Sirius was the same moment that he realised that they were standing, barely concealed, in the corridor outside the conference room that had all their colleagues in it, that had their bosses in it, and so it didn't matter that everything in him was screaming to press closer, to run his hands under Sirius' leather jacket, to feel his skin under his fingertips.

It only mattered that Sirius had gone completely still the moment Remus had kissed him — everything else that Remus might have felt was immediately doused in a wave of regret and anxiety and terror.

'Fuck,' Remus jumped back like he'd been burned, took a few steps backwards, 'I'm — fuck, I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry, fuck.'

And, before Sirius could say anything in response, before Sirius had even moved, Remus turned on his heel and bolted.

He spent the entire night concocting bigger and more fantastic ideas about how he'd be fired the next day.

Maybe Minerva would call him into her office, fully drafted letter of resignation already sitting on her desk, and just hand him a pen and point, a look of complete and utter disgust on her face.

Maybe, fuck, maybe the Dean would be there. Maybe Amelia would look him right in the eyes and tell him that he was such a profound disappointment that she couldn't even put it into words.

Maybe the College wouldn't even deal with him, maybe this was such a flagrant violation of every sexual harassment policy the University has that he would just be marched right into the Provost's office and he'd have to sit there while she reamed him out for thinking that he could just throw his dick around at people in his department.

He highly doubted the Provost would word it like that, but she could.

He didn't sleep at all that night.

It took him forever to convince himself to leave the house the next morning. He brewed one cup of tea, and then another, and then another, anything to keep from actually being able to say 'you know, I've run out of things to do, guess I better just head in and pretend to work for a few hours.'

It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he was trying to miss Sirius' morning mail run. Nothing at all.

When he finally gave up and got into the car, he turned on the radio as loudly as he could manage, switched to NPR so that he could hear about the tragedy of a country he was living in instead of thinking about the rapidly deteriorating disaster that was his own life. It helped, at first, but then the fucking moron the Americans elected started talking and he got so angry he had to switch it off.

He got to the carpark outside his building forty-five minutes later, tried to pretend like he didn't notice Sirius' motorbike in its spot in the corner of the lot, and walked as quickly as he could into his building, head bowed as he mumbled a last few dozen good luck Hail Mary's under his breath, purposefully taking the long way round to avoid catching Sirius by accident.

Because wouldn't that just be brilliant, he'd be walking up the stairs alone and then there would be Sirius and he'd freak out because there's that predator, the new professor, and then Minerva would show up and she'd be like I was looking for you, see you've cornered Sirius again, and then if he wasn't going to get fired before, he was definitely going to get fired now.

Remus took a deep breath (settle the fuck down, you're alright… for now) and turned down the final corridor towards his office.

He unlocked the door as quietly as he could (because nothing says innocence like creeping around your own office space) and slipped inside, shutting the door behind him and thanking past Remus for the decision to put that flag up over the window on his door.

When he turned around, he noticed that there was an interoffice envelope sitting on his desk.

'Fuck,' Remus set his briefcase down on the floor beside his desk, walked around and sat in his chair, 'Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.'

It was, it had to be, something terrible. Maybe Sirius copied the sexual harassment policy and highlighted the bit that said whatever you do, don't kiss your department manager without asking first, or maybe this is a note from fucking Minerva that nevermind about the tenure Remus, you're a harassing creep and you're fired and good luck ever getting a tenure-track job, now you have to live in the gutter forever which you deserve anyway for making moves on unsuspecting employees.

His hands were trembling as he picked up the envelope, and his fingers slipped a few times trying to unwind the red string holding the envelope closed. When he finally managed it, and slid out the packet of papers inside, it took him a moment to realise what he was looking at.

There was a bright orange post-it on top, positioned just so so that it obscured the title of the documents underneath. And on the post-it, unmistakably, was black sharpie in Sirius' untidy scrawl.

Go to dinner with me — we can fill these out afterwards if you're interested

Remus peeled the note off the top and a breath of nervous laughter burst out of his chest.

Relationship Disclosure Form

Remus' hands were shaking again, now for an entirely different reason. His ran his hand down the side of the paper, felt something sticking out of one of the back pages. He flipped to the back and saw the 'Sign' flag Sirius had dropped on the second signature line, but it was the second orange post-it overtop to first signature line that made Remus' heart skip.

I'm clearly already interested

Happy birthday, best friend. Also, go check your email.