Chapter Text
July 7th, 1976
Remus had stolen a couple of his mother’s cigarettes; gold Marlboro’s that she did a very terrible job of hiding in the back of the silverware drawer. One for him, one for Fabian, and one for Gideon.
He knew that Gideon and Fabian had both smoked due to their father—a large man without a hair on his head, standing over six feet and containing muscles Remus would’ve thought impossible if not for seeing the man in person—and his nasty tobacco habits. It was a known fact that Thomas Prewett did not care are at all for keeping his sons from following his footsteps.
Their mother, Layla Prewett (née Palmer) had a silent disagreement upon the matter. Remus could tell by the way she looked at Thomas in distaste whenever he lit up a cigar around the twins and himself, but only regarded silently without any action herself. Remus did not know what to think of smoking. Surely, if his mother did it, it could not be all horrible. She was the light of life itself, and the light could not be smothered by smoke, only improved on. So, naturally, he wanted to try smoking himself.
The three cigarettes burned a hole in his pocket as he left the house, letting the door slam shut as he called a goodbye to his mother, who was cutting up her eggs at the dining room table. Remus had eaten breakfast with her quickly, then left for fear she would ask him to turn out his pockets. (Which had never happened before.)
It was an incredibly short walk to the Prewetts, only taking a minute or so walking at an incredible speed. They were very close neighbors, closer than any other houses around them were, and shared a large paddock, as well three stables, between their houses. The stables inhabited many animals, like cattle and chickens, but Remus cared the most about the horses. There were five of them, two belonging to him and three to the Prewett family. Betsy, the younger mare belonging to Remus, was a stocky quarter horse of just about sixteen hands and the pattern of a dun. She had been a birthday present from the Prewett family, having been born from their mare, Dahlia, just six years prior to his fourteenth birthday. In the six years before Betsy was his, she had taken extremely well with Remus, often following him around curiously when he did his rounds feeding the other animals. She seemed to take humor in nuzzling him and running, stopping when he turned, then resuming when he stooped away. They had formed a friendship that was beyond the barrier of horse and human, able to play like they were one and the same.
And when she had been gifted to Remus at the age of six, Remus was patience in breaking her, never frustrating when she bucked and soothing her when she was angry. Before the year was up, Remus was galloping alongside Gideon and Fabian, outrunning them in fields with a smile on his face.
The other horse owned by the Lupins was a black gelding, named Marcellus, standing a regal seventeen hands and adorned with a sliver of white down his face. His eyes were bright and mane was wavy and shiny, despite being nearly twenty-seven years old. He was a gift from Lyall to Hope in the early years of marriage, but Hope never got around to riding quite as much as Remus liked to.
Remus trudged through the thick summer grass, walking between the paddock fence and the dirt road leading to the Prewett house. He was nearby, not even fifty feet away from their back porch. Remus looked up momentarily from watching his feet shuffle to see Molly Prewett outside, with an easel and paint-splattered green dress with thin straps and lace on the front. It looked much too short, and was likely one that was old and didn’t fit quite right anymore. He waved and smiled jovially and watched as she returned the gesture. When he got closer, in distance where she would be able to hear him, Remus called out a greeting.
“Hello, Remus! Gosh, it’s been awfully hot this summer, hasn’t it?” Molly had sweat dripping from her forehead, and reached to wipe it with the back of her hand, careful to keep the paintbrush away from her skin.
“Damn right it is. Mols, I haven’t seen you much this summer,” he said in a teasing tone, climbing one of the steps to stay at eye-level height with her.
She blushed, which was hardly noticeable for someone that didn’t know her well, due to the heat, and gave a shy smile to herself, taking her lovely brown eyes away from Remus to her painting. She dipped her brush in a dark green and silently added strokes to what was no doubt a landscape, letting the tense silence simmer for a moment. But then the moment passed, as moments tend to do.
“Well, I suppose I have been seeing Arthur a little bit more this summer…Never mind that, Remus! I know you’re not just here to catch up with me,” she said, rather quickly, meeting Remus’ eyes with a vague sort of panic. She set down her brush.
“Ah, so it’s going well?” He smirked suggestively as Molly flushed harder, pulling him by the shirt collar up the next step and pushing him towards the back door. “Molly-“
“No, that’s quite enough, Remus!” She used both her hands to slowly push a begrudging Remus, who was just smiling obliviously and crossing his arms, pushing back against her force. Just as he had moved a couple inches forward, looking back in amusement at Molly’s furrowed face, the screen door slammed open, revealing Gideon in cutoff jean shorts and a band tee.
“Molly, what are you doing to poor Remmy?” He said mockingly, pushing past the both of them as Molly let up, breathing hard and righting herself quickly. Remus was about to say something to her as she went back to her easel when Fabian appeared in the doorway.
Remus lost all words. There was indefinitely something different about Fabian looks from Gideon, Remus had always known that. But this summer he seemed to notice it even more. The way his hair waved in slight disagreement with Gideon’s, the way his eyes were just a shade darker green, the way he did not have as large muscles as Gideon, was not as toned, how he had more freckles on his forehead, ways that Remus was sure no one else noticed except for himself and perhaps their mother.
And Remus would have found it perfectly normal—differences observed by a friend of friends who he’s had for years—if it was not for the pure adoration Remus possessed of Fabian’s’ soul. The way he claimed to hate poetry and reading, calling Remus a nerd, but read Remus’ books anyway, stealing them from his bedroom and returning them with more dog ears and the occasional comment written in pencil in the margins, in Fabian’s uppercase handwriting. Or the way he tended to his sister when their father had rattled off something horrible to her when he was drunk, or when Gideon roughhoused her maybe a little too much, giving her silent looks and touches of the arm that meant he cared, deeply. Or the way that when Remus first met him, he had—
“Remus? Are you okay?” He came to to see Fabian’s furrowed face and drawn together eyebrows. Face flushed, he looked to his feet a moment before gathering his nerve and nodding. Remus snuck a glance towards Molly to see if she had regarded any of his awkwardness, but gratefully she was mixing green and white with a deep-set expression.
Fabian did not look convinced, but he just stumbled past Remus with an increasingly more confused look rather than inquire again, which Remus was thankful for. He didn’t even know what he would say if asked why he was acting the way he was around Fabian.
After a few moments of Fabian walking off alone into the yard, he turned back with a crooked smile and a giddy laugh. “So, Remus! Ya coming or not?”
He found himself involuntarily smiling in a sort of bashful way as he jumped down the porch and followed Fabian. When he was close enough to reach, Fabian wrapped his right arm around Remus, pulling him in for an Indian sunburn. And Remus couldn’t help the sort of emotion that bubbled up inside him—completely bathed in comfort and jubilance, freedom and youth. If asked to describe what his future plans were, he would have smiled stupidly and with ecstasy, answering with a simple, “What future?” and giggling like tomorrow would never come.
And so the boys smoked; up in the loft of the barn, which admittedly, was pretty stupid of them.
Gideon lit up first out of the three of them, smiling slyly and puffing out smoke, leaning coolly back on his arm, looking out at the pale blue of the mid-morning sky.
“Damn, Gid,” Remus said, staring in awe. Fabian snickered and caught eyes with Remus.
“Look like a damned fool, Gid,” Fabian laughed, holding his cigarette up to his mouth. He motioned to Remus, looking away to the same sky Gideon was dead-set on. Remus quickly lit up for him—an unnecessary motion due to Fabian having hands and fingers that worked perfectly fine—but Remus did not complain a bit. He got to watch in reverence as Fabian sucked a little, with little fear of being caught.
And so he was caught. Fabian’s celadon eyes flickered from the sky to Remus’ so obviously admirable expression, and Remus would have been embarrassed if not for the way Fabian blushed.
Remus’ lips parted and he breathed in soft tufts as the tension between them seemed to boil; so much so that Gideon was forgotten altogether until he coughed from the smoke.
As if snapping out a trance, both boys pivoted their heads away from each other, cheeks flushing in shame. Remus swallowed and brought his cigarette to his mouth, lighting it quickly and taking a drag.
“So, boys.” Gideon was always the first to talk after a stretch of silence. “What are we doing today?”
Remus cleared his throat, puffing smoke out and answered, “I’d quite like to go to Little River.”
Both twins groaned at the prospect.
“You always-“
“It’s never anywhere-“
“Fine, fine! We can go wherever the hell y’all wanna go then!” He waved his cigarette around, eyes wandering until they caught Fabian’s, and they caught a slight smirk. It made Remus smile, despite his annoyance.
Fabian gently shouldered Remus, interrupting his incoherent grumblings and blowing smoke in Remus’ face as soon as he looked up. Remus scrunched his nose and closed his eyes tightly as it wafted over him.
“Well, boys,” Gideon said, much a mirror of his earlier tone, “We don’t have all day, do we?”
He smirked extravagantly before sliding down the ladder, running off. Fabian was only a second behind him, and Remus another behind him. The three boys ran through the fields, into the woods, before eventually slowing to a walk beside an old railway, covered in weeds.
All three were breathless—Gideon less so, but still nonetheless—and laughing carelessly. Along the run, Gideon had yelled to call the beginning of a race, which of course he had won. He was the quickest by far out of the three of them, and the only one to ever call for a race. Remus and Fabian knew they stood no chance against his athlete lungs and muscled body. He did a multitude of sports in school, half for the passion and half for the prospect of getting girls which had not worked out much to his favor. From Remus’ perspective, he was the boy who had gotten the farthest in relations with the opposite sex. It was a bronzed girl, Joni Michaels, who lived just about five miles from the Prewett and Lupin farm. She always had her hair perfectly curled—much like Molly’s—but Remus had never seen her adorned with curlers in the six months they had been “dating.” It was as if she had that perfect hair from natures dealings, but Remus knew this was not the truth due to having gone to school with her since they were little. At first, when she had seemingly taken interest in him, he worried about her opinion on his scars. But he never voiced this concern aloud, only assumed that it must not bother her all that much since she had known him as long as he had them and still decided to entertain this relationship with him.
She had deep, understanding brown eyes that someone could melt into, a short bob of much a similar color with bangs for hair, and had a pale orange like blush, which did wonders accompanied with her complexion. She wore large bell bottoms and flowing shirts with psychedelic patterns usually, one of the few girls to do so. Joni enjoyed fashion and radical magazines, enjoyed cutting out the outfits pictures and sewing them together with an ancient machine of a vending machine, a hand-me-down of her grandmother’s. It was to Remus’ understanding that her great-great grandparents had come over from Algeria many years ago, but they had long since passed, and she did not know anything of the country herself.
On their first date, Millie had sewn a beautiful baby blue dress and a matching headband. She wore insanely high heels of the same color that rivaled Remus’ height, and trudged through the dirty roads to get to the diner their date was set to be in, testament to her determination to look stunning. But there was more to Joni than just her appearance.
On his dates with her, which had come about once a month, Remus had unveiled her passion for renewing this knowledge to her family, and her studious endeavors in history. Although he did not understand it much, he listened to Joni’s feverish rantings with a reverence and deep appreciation for her brightness. It seemed that Remus could not offer much back, with what his humble farm life and simplistic view of the world, as she had broken up with him the day after they had made out in Betsy’s stable, claiming she could never imagine a life with Remus. She broke up with him in the beginning of June, Remus’ least favorite time of year.
Remus had briefly been devastated. He did not leave his bed very much except to tend to his animals, and did not read or watch anything for the time he spent alone in his room. His mother worked long shifts at the hospital, never around enough to see the impact on Remus created from Millie Michaels’ rejection. But the Prewett twins had noticed. Remus stopped hanging out with them, as he always did during summer, and they worried. They got Molly to paint a beautiful picture of Betsy grazing in the field, and baked chocolate chip muffins along with their mother’s help. It had snapped Remus out of his daze. Who was he, Remus Lupin, to be upset over a girl? He had never been crazy about them before, why start now?
So for the following weeks, he spent as much time as he could with the Prewetts, doing anything and everything—including stealing shitty things for Gideon—to get his mind off of it. And it worked.
He worked more than he had to with the animals, taking care of most of the Prewetts’ workload before they had even woken up. He spent the late mornings on the porch with Molly while the twins did little tending to their animals, talking to her about whatever the hell happened to be on their minds. Remus had a different, familial connection with her that seemed to transcend blood. And just past noon, the twins would come in from the field to bother Remus, and they would hang out until late at night. It all kept Remus in a routine, tightly knit so that he would never even have time to think about Millie. Which he was doing less and less of anyway, now that summer started.
So, walking along the railroad tracks with the twins nearly a month later, Remus found that he had no cares in the world about romance. Or just girls, he thought shyly, glancing sideways at Fabian balancing on the railroad track, freckled arms outstretched. He was laughing childishly as he nearly lost his footing, to which Remus immediately braced himself for, walking on the flat ground beside the tracks and subsequently, the flailing Fabian.
For a brief moment, Remus felt shame rise within himself. How could he be this way towards another man? He knew it was not right, but made no effort to put distance between them regardless. It was perverted to be thinking so passionately about someone in the way he did.
But he could not stop.
Being around Fabian was nearly addicting. Remus did not fully understand why, only that his morals should override this insignificant personal error as soon as possible. But, he found himself thinking as he followed Fabian dumbly, was it really all that wrong?
His hands guided a fumbling Fabian back onto the rails as his eyes stared into the side of his head—the splattering of freckles, the deep set flush, the slight dampness of his fiery hair from the heat—all of it, openly roamed by Remus’s wandering eyes.
His hands lingered far too long; a good couple of moments of contact. And Fabian noticed. But rather than laughing and commenting loudly like his brother would have, he smiled softly, turning his head so that his sparkling eyes would meet Remus’. He had a soft smile remaining from his previous laughter, stretched on his pink lips in a way that taunted the other boy.
“Hey,” Fabian breathed, jumping down from the tracks heavily to be closer to Remus. He kept the contact, despite how unnecessary it really was.
“Hey yourself,” Remus replied, breathy and unlike himself. It did not feel like his real voice.
Fabian gently slid his arms in Remus’ grip, and Remus assumed he was detangling himself from the hold until he moved so that they were nearly holding hands. Just shy of full on, a few fingers of both hands latched together. Remus wasn’t sure if he was properly breathing or not.
Probably not.
Fabian’s fingers slid to rub small circles on Remus’ and he felt the world tilt on its axis. What the fuck?
He looked down momentarily at their hands, shielding himself from the intense gaze of Fabian’s eyes, before glancing up again. Fabian opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but Gideon’s teasing tone cut through the tension.
“Y’all slow as Dottie!”
And the regular Fabian look returned—slight mischief and slight boyishness—and the moment was gone. It slipped out Remus’ fingers, just how Fabian was slipping his hands away at the moment. It was as if a light had switched.
Without taking a moment to properly mourn what might or might not had been happening, Remus flipped his switch along with Fabian, grinning slyly and saying, “Bet you can’t beat me.”
And they were running, pushing each other foolishly, and laughing without worry. The only thought in Remus’ mind was, those thoughts don’t matter as long as I can keep this.