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Sirius, in a tour-guide voice: “The White Cliffs of Dover, part of the North Downs formation, is the region of English coastline facing the Strait of Dover and France. The cliff face, which reaches a height of 110 metres, owes its striking appearance to the composition of chalk accented by streaks of black flint-”
“Padfoot, mate, you never told us you could read,” says James. Sirius whacks the back of his head with the guidebook.
James is not meant to be driving the car. He has no license. But Remus is bone tired, achy and stiff, and after an hour of driving he’d begged off and asked to switch. They’d rolled down the windows of his dad’s Ford Cortina to stop the air conditioner rattling in the dashboard like a living thing, and the sun is warming his face, the air smelling broadly of salt - he’d worry about getting pulled over if he could summon the energy to be worried about much of anything.
“We’ve got to be getting close,” Sirius says. They’ve got the Kent Downs to their left at this point, meaning they’ve only got about 45 minutes left until they’re free of the car. He lays down in a huff, puts his head in Remus’s lap, shoves the guidebook into Remus’s hands. “Hey. Read to me, you.”
Remus can see James grinning in the rearview mirror as he flips the book open to a section marked Geology. “Alright, how’s this.” He puts his own tour guide voice on. “The cliffs hold quartz silica filled cavities left by dead marine creatures, found as flint fossils. Several different ocean floor species such as brachiopods, bivalves, crinoids, and sponges can be found in the chalk deposits, as can sharks’ teeth.”
“Mental,” says Sirius. “Mental. Sharks’ teeth! And the muggles learn about this in school!”
“You could learn about it too, if you picked up a book once in a while,” Peter mumbles from the front seat, his voice a half-asleep blur.
“And you’d know, Pete, since you’re such an academic,” Sirius says. James snorts.
Remus flicks Sirius’s forehead. “Listen to this. Since bluebirds are not indigenous to the UK, some believe that bluebirds, as mentioned in the classic song ‘(There’ll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs of Dover’ may actually refer to swallows and/or to house martins, which make an annual migration to continental Europe at least twice a year, during which they cross the English channel.”
“Boring.” Sirius throws an arm over his eyes. “Tell me more about the sharks’ teeth.”
They’re staying in James’s family cottage in Dover proper. It’s lovely, Remus thinks, as James pulls the car around to park; whitewashed and clean, sides of slatted wood and age-warped glass in the windows. The sea spits at them as they get out of the car, unfolding, groaning as they stretch. Peter, who had been sleeping with one foot out the window, is conveniently in too much pain to carry his suitcase. (“He’ll be sleeping on the floor for that,” James gripes.)
The screen door clatters against the front rail as James undoes the protective enchantments. The house seems to sigh as they step into the front room; threads of magic gone, it settles back into itself. James goes straight to his room to unpack, leaving Remus, Sirius and Peter to fight over the remaining sleeping arrangements.
“The master bedroom’s huge,” says Peter, sticking his head into the bedroom and looking around. “Two people could sleep in here, and one person could sleep on the couch.”
“Fleamont and Euphemia love me most,” says Sirius, “So I should get to sleep in their bed, because they’d want me to. Peter, you bastard, don’t laugh-”
“I’ll take the couch,” Remus interrupts. “I don’t mind.”
“You’re not really in any state for that,” says Peter mildly.
Sirius, already taking advantage of Peter’s distraction to levitate his own suitcase into the bedroom, says, “Pete’s right. This soon after the full moon? You’ll put your back out.”
For the rest of the afternoon, Sirius naps on the bed as Remus goes around opening windows - unpacking in a haze of breeze and crying birds, the sheer curtains fluttering, yellowed by late afternoon sunlight. The room is pale blue; the floor and baseboards are painted white. Putting his shirts in the dresser’s bottom drawer, Remus matches his breathing to Sirius’s.
They pack dinner in a cooler, which they take to the beach. Peter lays a blanket out flat and weights it down with their shoes; James has a cursory glance around before taking out his wand to light a fire; Sirius rolls up his pants and goes to stand in the water. Remus has brought a book which he takes out, planning to read before dinner, but he ends up gazing over the top of the cover at the backs of Sirius’s legs, his knees, the spot where the water licks his calves. He’s not swimming, just staring out at the horizon, his palms facing forward in a half-submerged mountain pose.
“Must be an interesting book, that,” says James, kicking sand onto Remus’s stomach. “Been reading the same page for a while.”
“It’s a bit dense,” Remus says, turning the page immediately.
Dinner is sandwiches and halved peaches and warmish cans of cider. James and Peter start to tell a story about a recent altercation with ancient Professor Nettle, which is initially a serious performance piece wherein each character gets a voice done, but quickly devolves into a sandy wrestling match when James pitches his voice up high to pretend to be Peter. The sun goes down orange and streaky, burning red and diffused at the horizon, a riot of color.
There’s families here. Muggle ones, Remus assumes, but he supposes there could be magical ones too; furtively lighting magical fires, carrying food in coolers that never get warm, buoying their children over the waves from a distance. Remus, hazy with cider and the edges of pain, watches a woman with a long brown braid touch a man on the shoulder, say something in his ear. Watches the man laugh, full and loud. Watches three girls race up to them from the waterline, shrieking with laughter. Looks away.
“Alright, mate?” Sirius touches the base of Remus’s spine with an open palm. Remus shrinks forward.
“Stomachache,” he says, closing his eyes. “From the cider, I think.”
It takes a while to get home. The shambling road is cast with spots of yellow street lamp light; in shadow, the whitewashed houses become twins, and the Potters’ cottage is nigh indiscernible from its neighbors. James knows, though. Recognizes the posture of the stairs, the slump of the empty window boxes, the pattern of cracks in the front window.
Remus has not known a house that closely for a long time.
They all shuffle in for bed in varying states of drunkenness. James falls asleep with his shoes on. Peter spreads a blanket on the couch, props himself up on a pillow, and takes out the muggle Sudoku book he’d picked up at a petrol station on the drive in. Remus changes into his pajamas slowly, wary of disturbing the ladder of scratches climbing up his ribcage. By the time he climbs into bed, Sirius is returning from the bathroom, a fleck of toothpaste at the corner of his mouth.
“You’ve got-” Remus says, and mimes wiping his own face.
Sirius swipes at the wrong side.
“No, other side.”
“You get it.” He leans forward.
“I’m not your mum,” Remus says, but he sits up and brushes the toothpaste away anyway.
“Thank God for small miracles.” Sirius leaps into bed beside him. The joints of the bed frame shriek with stress.
It’s probably because of this conversation that Sirius’s mum is in Remus’s dream at all, snarling and swathed in black. A stress dream - she tells the whole of Hogwarts that Remus is a werewolf and he's forced to leave. This one is slightly worse than usual, as it turns into a nightmare wherein James, Peter and Sirius are trying to kill him. Unrealistic, but no less horrifying for it.
He wakes with a start right as Sirius is putting a stake through his chest. Lying on his back and staring at the ceiling, he can hear waves hitting the shoreline; a constant whisper, even through the closed window. He’s breathing very quickly but not taking in any air. His heart is pounding in his throat.
“Hey.” Sirius’s voice; a murmur. Remus startles at the sound of it. “You cold?”
His face is pressed into the pillow, but one of his eyes is open, made dark in shadow.
“No,” says Remus.
“You’re shivering,” Sirius says. His eyebrows furrow; confusion, concern. Remus wants to press his thumb to the line between them and smooth it out. Remus wants to smother himself with a pillow.
“Just a nightmare,” Remus says. “I’m alright. Go back to sleep.”
There’s a moment of silence in which Sirius stares at him, his expression difficult to parse. Then he lifts one arm, making a cavern of the blankets, and pats the mattress next to him. “C’mere.”
Remus blinks at him. “You don’t have to. It’ll stop in a minute.”
Another moment of quiet, then: “Do you not want to?”
“What?”
“If you don’t want to, that’s fine,” Sirius says. “But if you’re saying you’re okay because you think it’s better for you to suffer on your own, I’m going to clock you upside the head tomorrow morning.”
Remus breathes out a shaky laugh. “What, not now?”
“Too tired.” Sirius pats the mattress again. “C’mon, my arm’s going dead holding the blankets up.”
Remus scoots over. The mattress is colder in the middle, but Sirius drops the blankets onto his shoulder and curls an arm around Remus’s ribs, the lines of their bodies slotting together like snakes. They are two S-curves under the quilt. Sirius’s kneecap sits behind the back of Remus’s knee, his foot tucks between Remus’s ankles, the ridge of Remus’s spine rests against Sirius’s chest.
Sirius’s breath tickles the back of Remus’s neck when he speaks. “Go to sleep.”
For once, Remus does.
The next day, they take the Cortina to the cliffs. Familiarity makes James flippant; he’s seen them a thousand times and doesn’t care to see them again. But Remus stands still for a while, staring at the jagged line they make on the horizon.
“Can you see France?” Sirius asks, coming up beside him.
“Not today,” Remus says. “Just those house martins.”
“They might be French,” Sirius says. His pinky finger brushes Remus’s. “You’re probably French, with a last name like Lupin.”
“It’s Anglo-Saxon, actually,” says Remus. The cliffs are making him feel absent. He wants to hold Sirius’s hand. “Aren’t you French?”
Sirius’s nose wrinkles. “Partly.”
“Have you ever been?”
“Once.” His knuckles bump Remus’s as he extends a hand to point. “There, actually. Calais.”
His pronunciation is lyrical and lovely. Remus wants to hold his hand. “Do you speak French?”
“Only a bit.”
“Say something?” Remus turns to look at Sirius. The whole scene is very painterly. Study of a young man in profile. Landscape of Aristocrat-on-sea.
A wince. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not.”
“Oh,” Remus says. “Of course. Sorry.”
They’re both silent for a while. The house martins have a call like clacking stones; it echoes off the cliffs around them.
“We’ll go sometime,” Sirius says. He’s looking out at the horizon at the suggestion of Calais, his expression cloudy. “Then I can speak French and think of you instead of my mum, maybe.”
The house martins still sound like clacking stones. Sadness comes up like a wave inside Remus’s ribs, sloshing and heavy.
The rattling of the engine, the roar of the wind, Peter and James chattering excitedly about all the horses they’d seen, the full-volume radio; the car ride home is an explosion of sound. Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy comes on, the connection ragged with static. I can dim the lights and sing you songs full of sad things, we can do the tango, just for two. It makes Remus feel warm and cold at the same time.
Oooh, love, oooh, lover boy, wails Freddie Mercury, and Remus feels a hand brush his knee; Sirius’s, snaking around between the passenger seat and the door. Remus ignores him until he yanks on the leg of Remus’s pants, flipping his palm faceup, fingers wiggling.
Remus takes it. Says Freddie Mercury: think of me always. Love you. Love you. He can feel Sirius’s heartbeat in his wrist like a tiny bird, and holds it until they get home.