Chapter Text
Remus had figured out a plan for the morning ahead of him: check in at the uni book store to see if one of the course books he’d been waiting on had arrived yet, make a quick stop off at the coffee shop to pass his banking form to Lily and discuss a tentative schedule, and get back to campus in time for his second class of the day. He hadn’t, however, been planning to leave after the second item on his list with a heavy head or his heart beating several registers faster than usual, but all in all, Remus never made plans for that as a general rule.
One could call the lengthy queue at the bookstore, at first, the only real hiccup to his plan. He’d been expecting a queue, but not one so long it seemed as though every student at school had been between classes when he turned up. It was a little stuffy in there too, but he read while he waited and managed to get out of there with what he’d come for before it got to be a bit too much. He caught the bus heading away from campus, feeling grateful for the time he’d allotted for travel, and walked across the parking lot toward the shop with ten minutes to spare.
Once inside, he stood in the doorway briefly debating his next course of action. He wasn’t entirely sure whether he should inform one of the baristas of his arrival or expected to head straight to the backroom, but it didn’t take long for him to decide that the latter would be a bit too presumptuous and wandered over to wait behind a couple standing ahead of the till.
Remus generally tended to run quite cold and often wore multiple layers to accommodate the fact, but he had not been prepared for the temperature to peak as high as it had over the course of the morning. The air-conditioning running through the cafe was an improvement to the book store certainly, but he did wish he’d gone and found a spot to set his things down while he waited. He toyed with the idea of removing some of his layers, but his book bag and laptop carrier were slung over his shoulders and he didn’t feel up to trying a balancing act just then.
The barista on till seemed to have little interest in moving the two ahead of him along; pulling his glasses off, using them to punctuate a few words Remus hadn’t been following, and lifting the lenses to breathe on them before wiping them off with the edge of his apron. He recognized him as the same worker who’d been on shift during his interview and noted the bloke’s hair stood out at odd angles today just as it had the other day. He was quite energetic, that much was evident both days as well, but Remus reasoned that an establishment would want that kind of personality to be the first thing customers see when they enter.
Remus had finally resigned to at least pulling his scarf off when a flash of red caught his eye from over behind the bar and Lily’s voice brought him to with the call of his name, garnering him to wave back at her. “Come on back once you’re done there,” she bid him, turning for the hall. “Move it along, James.”
Remus watched her walk back off the floor, looked back at the till to find the couple gone and James’s eyes now trained on him. “You going to get something?”
Well, he hadn’t been planning on it, but he did go from a little nervous to a lot just having stepped through the door and he was there now, wasn’t he. “Oh, tea’s fine,” he said, reaching into his book bag to pull out his wallet.
“We’ve a lot of tea here, mate. You’ll have to be more specific.”
Right. “Earl Grey,” he offered.
James blinked. “You want a particular size for that or d’you just want me to surprise you?” he asked, hovering his left hand over four different options for sizes.
Remus was a bit surprised to already be botching the act of ordering a tea this badly, but in his defence, he never could keep up with the names for sizes at this particular chain of coffee houses. “No, a small would be great,” he said of it.
He looked over at the total and plucked the amount out of his change pouch to slide across the counter toward him, but James merely smirked at the coins and turned around to start on the drink.
A minute or so later, he returned to set the tea down on the counter. “You’re hired, so,” he said, dragging out the vowel, “that drink is free.”
“Oh, right; thank you,” Remus offered, scooping the up the change to leave it in the tip box and setting off with his tea in hand.
He stepped onto the raised platform located behind the counters and took a quick right, blowing on the contents of his cup to cool it down as he headed down a hallway with shelves of various stock items lining either side of it and toward the backroom where Lily sat quite noticeably at a computer desk from where he was. She perked up as she heard his footsteps, turning her head away from the monitor and over her right shoulder to look back at him. “You can hang your things there if you want to use one of those,” she said, pointing him off toward a series of hooks on the far wall of the room and turning back to the monitor.
Remus did just that, leaving his jacket and scarf hanging from one of the unused ones and taking his book bag with him as he headed for one of the empty chairs sitting at a nearby table. He pulled it out a little, turned it around to face more toward Lily and the desk she was perched at, and took a seat, placing his book bag over his lap and looking around at the room while he waited.
This particular chain of shops wouldn’t have been Remus’s primary choice; that one would have gone to the independent coffee shop he frequented that was located much closer to his faculty building, but since that one hadn’t been looking for any new staff, he had to work his way out from there and he wasn’t exactly in the position to be picky. That said, he had felt quite good about how his interview with Lily had gone and received a callback the next day, so he couldn’t say he minded how things had turned out in that respect.
Lily swivelled in her chair so that she was now facing him and smiled bright. “Right, first things first, have you got your banking information?” she asked, plucking a nearby folder out from a shelf of many and opening it up ahead of the keyboard.
“Yes, right here,” Remus said, reaching into his book bag to pull out the folded sheet of paper he’d brought with and reaching it over to her.
“Fantastic,” she called it, slipping it into the left-hand flap of the folder. “Why don’t we get your schedule sorted out and then we can see about showing you around a little, let you get a feel for the place; that sound good to you?”
Remus smiled his first real one since he’d arrived. “Sounds great,” he said, his nerves easing up a little.
Lily stood and walked off up the hall while speaking back to him. “The schedules are posted on the bulletin board just down the hall, right before you walk onto the floor,” she raised, coming back into the room with two sheets of paper and setting them down beside the open folder on the desk. “If there are days you would like off in advance, there’s a whiteboard just near the schedules where you can book them; I try to have the schedules posted two weeks in advance so if there’s ever time you need to take off or a situation comes up, that’s something to be mindful of.”
Remus nodded, crossing his right ankle over his left one as he leaned in to get a look at the schedules. “I know we talked about the hours you were looking for and which evenings work best,” she raised, flipping back the right-hand flap of the folder and skimming her copy of his resume that Remus now noted a fair number of bullet points scrawled on it. “Tuesdays and Thursdays, right; are there any days you absolutely cannot come in?”
“Well, ideally, Sundays are reserved so I can keep on top of school work,” Remus offered. “Is that a fair request?”
“Completely fair.” Lily maintained. “Truthfully, Sundays are quite booked up around here and they aren’t the busiest days so that works out quite well, but I did want to ask you about a hole in our schedule that needs filling; our Saturday mid-shift can’t do it anymore and I’d understand if Saturdays may be precious considering your school schedule, but I thought I’d still ask.”
Truth be told, Remus had been so broke by the end of the previous term, he couldn’t say he minded the idea of tacking on another shift. “What would the hours be?” he asked.
“Eight to four,” she relayed. “Things are slower around here Saturday mornings, but I like to have the mid-shift in early enough so things run as smoothly as they can throughout the day.”
“I can do that,” Remus assured, excited for the prospect of another eight hours of work per week.
“Perfect,” she smiled. “I’ll add you to it, then.”
From there, they made quick work of finalizing his start times on Tuesdays and Thursdays, leaving just one issue to solve. “We should get you in for your first training shift,” Lily said, consulting the schedule and looking back over at him. “What’s this Saturday evening like for you? Normally you’d be on for eight, but Mary’s asked for the night off and has been aching to find someone to switch with so we could kill two birds with one stone here; it’d be from two to ten, what do you think?”
“That’s fine with me,” Remus echoed.
“Oh, she’ll be ecstatic,” Lily said of it, making note of the changes on the schedule before she went on. “And so will I, Sirius can’t be in until four that day so with you there, we’ll have the coverage we need and I’ll have you added to your regular schedule for next week.”
Remus, busy nodding and jotting his shifts on the back of his class timetable, hadn’t been expecting the back door to open up, but it also would have been fair to say that he hadn’t been expecting a rightful Adonis haloed by a cloud of smoke to be the reason for the sudden noise either.
Lily looked over to him and clicked her tongue. “Would you mind blowing that outside?”
The Adonis didn’t respond, merely tossed his pack onto a table and pulled his jacket off, but then he was coming closer and Remus’s heart rate went and tripled; there simply wasn’t enough room for anyone than the Adonis in here and really, he and Lily could just relocate.
“Actually, this is perfect,” Lily said. “Sirius is going to be training you.”
The Adonis named Sirius gave him a dismissive smile as he moved between their seats. “I — sorry, I figured you would be training me?” Remus raised.
“I’ll be there quite a bit over Saturday and help where I can, but Sirius leads most of the closing shifts and he’ll show you everything you need to know,” Lily explained, gathering her papers together. “Right, Sirius? Everything this time.”
Sirius sighed long as he tugged a green apron off of one of the hooks and reached his weathered leathered specimen to hang in its place. “Yes, dear,” he said flatly, and if Sirius's mere presence were already provocative, his voice was entirely too much. Remus needed to leave.
James stalked down the hall a true moment later. “Oi, care to get back up there so I can take my break?” he raised, staring directly over at Sirius; highly dangerous business, how had he been able to do that?
“Can either of you let a man smoke in peace?” Sirius put up, pulling the apron’s loop over his neck.
Up until that point, Remus had put quite a bit of effort toward avoiding eye contact with the man directly, but he moronically glanced over at his jacket while planning the quickest exit strategy possible for as soon as he and Lily finished, and ended up catching Sirius's eye as he tied his apron around his waist; he received a less haughty smile this time around and Remus felt weak.
“Hold on,” Lily said, reaching out toward James as he stepped into the backroom. “You can’t take your break now, it’s almost noon.”
Remus vaguely registered James speaking various words about labour laws and calling the authorities before Lily set off down the hall, beckoning Remus along with a call over her shoulder that wasn’t meant for him. “If you’re not back up there the moment there’s a queue…”
“Sure, sure,” James called, kicking back on the recently vacated desk chair while Remus followed Lily back up the hall toward the floor.
Sirius, having beaten them there, was now conveniently tied up with a short queue of customers and Remus certainly hoped he would continue to be for the remainder of the time he would be in the building. Lily quickly stepped in to help Sirius along, speaking warmly to customers, making a few drinks as she went, leaving Remus looking on from the sidelines as she and Sirius worked alongside each other at a concise rhythm he could only hope to be able to match.
It was likely no more than a few minutes of nose-to-the-grind, but it felt like one of Remus’s longer eternities before the last of the queue received their drinks and things calmed down to an energy he would normally be quite comfortable with. From there, Lily began to show him a tour of the greater shop, which wasn’t massive in scale and therefore they soon found themselves behind the counter once again where she talked of the various workstations, gave descriptions of what each barista was responsible for depending on which station they were assigned to, and described the differing responsibilities allotted to each member of the staff on shift; Remus hung on her every word, keeping his back turned to Sirius the whole time, and when Lily asked him what time he had to leave at, he saw his chance at an exit materializing in front of him.
“At one,” he lied, but he had the perfect out; it would give him more than enough time to get to his two o’clock class and even some spare time to walk off this terrible turn of events.
“Oh, you should have said something,” Lily insisted, rolling her eyes hopefully at herself and not at Remus. “Here I am going on and on, and you’ve got to get going.”
Sirius made an amused sound behind him and Remus glanced over his shoulder to see him leaning over the counter by the till. “She’ll do that if you let her,” he warned, pointing over at Lily with the marker in his left hand. “You’ll learn not to encourage her eventually.”
Remus gave him a tight smile in response, confirmed with Lily once more for Saturday, and quickly made his exit.
He set off toward the bus stop, giving himself a world of shit. The wounds were still too fresh and, in his mind, it was much, much too soon for getting weak-kneed and heady over someone. What the hell was wrong with him, comparing some long-haired posh bloke to a Greek God? He’d always gone for the studious types, introverted, mild-mannered, those were the blokes who caught his interest; men like Sirius were the ones he stayed far away from — he had his hair pulled into a bun for God’s sake, his whole look was just ridiculous.
And, really, Sirius? Incredibly pretentious name. Never mind that he had never come across anyone older, his age, or younger than him named ‘Remus’ — not important at the moment. Sirius, really? What had his parents been thinking?
After a little more grumbling, Remus decided he was being a bit hard on a bloke he’d literally just met and, truthfully, he did have really nice hair, and his name, albeit strange, only added to the man's intrigue; there was no pretending it didn’t.
Remus tutted his way to class, trying to find pros as to why the job was worth keeping. He needed the money, enjoyed sustenance from time to time, and liked a roof over his head, he liked Lily, the job itself seemed pleasant enough if slightly daunting off the bat, and it couldn’t hurt to have it on his resume. So what if an unarguably attractive person worked there as well and would be working with him in a matter of days, so what if the mere thought of Sirius brought forth feelings he'd pushed down and aside when leaving for uni and had not been prepared to revisit at this point in time; neither meant that Remus had to lose his nerve.
His pulse thrummed as he became suddenly and overtly aware that he’d never quite managed to feel his heartbeat quicken as fast as it did in that backroom, but after the turmoil the past few years had packed in, that fact alone was too much to think on and Remus pushed it down, vowed to pull himself together, and keep focused on both work and school.
It wasn’t the time to think about quickening pulses and flushed cheeks; there was plenty of time for that after he had a degree in his hand.
--
James was the barista on till once again when Remus made it to the shop for his first actual shift, as well as a girl he found out was Mary. She was just finishing her shift when Remus stepped up behind the counter and she thanked him twice over for taking her closing shift on short notice.
“You’re a lifesaver,” she insisted, pulling her jacket on. “Beyoncé tickets fell into my hands last minute and you can’t let an opportunity like that go to waste, can you?”
Remus shook his head good-naturedly. “Absolutely not,” he echoed, glad to have started out his job already on somebody’s good side.
Lily had him shadow her while she worked on bar, explaining the mechanics of what she was doing while she procured drink after drink as they came along and pointed off of a set of laminated charts that showcased various drink recipes by size, ingredients, and numbers for espresso shots that she suggested he use as cheat sheets until he was more comfortable going without.
Between orders, she detailed the more popular drinks, seasonal beverages, and specialties. Remus had gone into the situation expecting to have to memorize a plethora of drinks and originally thought he would have this in the bag, but what he hadn’t accounted for were the seemingly random departures between recipes and odd flavour combinations that, in Remus’s mind, didn’t necessarily belong in their respective drinks. On top of that, he foolishly hadn’t put enough thought into the wide array of blended drinks that he would need to memorize as well and hoped greatly that he would become much more comfortable with drinks of the hot variety before moving on to cold ones; it was autumn, after all, how many cold drinks could people really want?
On the whole, it was a lot of information to log away in the span of an hour and a lot of watching Lily make the drinks and narrate as she went. He found himself wishing for a chance to get a little more hands-on practice but unfortunately and seemingly on clockwork, any chance he was given to actually steam a milk pitcher was taken away by a queue forming and Lily having to take over at bar once again. He did understand the need to keep the drinks moving fast and in all honesty, he didn’t overly love the idea of the anxiety that would absolutely come with the crowds hanging around waiting on his beginner self to finish their drinks; perhaps when things died down, he would be given a chance to practice at it with at least some form of leisure.
There was a bit of an extended lull a little later on that Lily didn't take for granted and used for a quick escape out onto the floor to chat with a few customers at one of the tables. In her wake, James guarded the till and Remus tidied up the bar, slowly discovering where certain things were kept when Sirius arrived on the scene and gave him a vague nod as he moved in past the pastry case to get up behind the counter. However, headed past the tills, slipped right up beside Remus, and began making himself a drink, speaking to James as he went and barely paying a sliver of attention to the drink itself or sparing Remus a second glance despite putting himself right in his space.
Remus found a different spot to tidy from there so he wouldn’t have to be quite that close to the other man, and frankly, he was quite sure Sirius would be able to hear the pound of his heartbeat if he didn’t actively put some distance between them. Once finished, Sirius went off to the backroom and Remus kept his hands as busy as possible so not to spare too much thought toward the pace at which his blood was now running through his veins.
It wasn’t long before Lily came back behind the counter, sending Remus off to tidy up the condiment bar and gather the garbages throughout the café together, and once he brought the accumulated bags back behind the counter he was tasked with taking them to the dumpster out back. Eager to show sportsmanship, Remus headed straight there with the bags in hand, bumped the door open to find Sirius standing on the other side of it, and he probably should have done a bit more than freeze on the spot, but there it was; another person, a different one from Remus perhaps, might've gone and said hello, made conversation, but not he.
Sirius looked over at him, glanced down at the four garbage bags Remus had been attempting to carry out in one trip, and popped his cigarette in his mouth, holding his hands out to him. Mostly to get back quickly, Remus handed them off to Sirius with a quick thanks and went right back inside, his pulse absolutely thrumming.
Sirius started his shift ten minutes later, appearing on the sales floor looking downright fit, which didn’t make a whole lot of sense when, for all intents and purposes, he was wearing a plain white work blouse with a green apron that everybody else wore, but then he walked over to the till, typed a set of numbers in, and began rolling the sleeves of his blouse and Remus really wished he hadn't done that, looking pointedly away from them.
He couldn’t help it, really; forearms were a weakness of his, one which he was aware was an odd part of the body to get jelly legs over, but nevertheless, and just to add insult to injury, Sirius possibly had the best set Remus had ever come across.
Lily had a few things to take care of in the back which resulted in Remus standing around and waiting for any instruction from anybody while Sirius and James spoke amongst themselves.
“Well?” James bid. “Are you getting it?”
“Looks like there’ve been attempts to freeze it, but we’ll see,” Sirius offered. “Suspect they’re furious it’s as much as it is.”
“There’s no way they can do that,” James said, shaking his head. “It’s yours—”
A small queue formed, prompting Sirius to take over till while James grabbed bar, and with no instructions on what he should have been doing, Remus watched the two of them spring into work mode and couldn't help but find their energy a little overbearing; while he had been quite impressed by Sirius and Lily’s team effort, he was completely flabbergasted by the system these two had going for them.
Remus took in a breath. “Is there anything I can—”
James looked at him as though he had forgotten he was even there. “You can rinse these if you’re aching for something,” he offered flippantly, nodding at his two recently used milk pitchers.
Remus did do that, noting all the while that at certain times Sirius would deposit cups without any descriptions on them in favour of telling James what they were and other times would merely call out a customer’s name and that was enough for James; Remus hadn’t even given a thought toward regulars just yet or how fast he would be expected to memorize their orders on top of all the others and felt his stomach twisting up at the idea of both.
Fortunately — or unfortunately depending on how Remus chose to look at it — James was only scheduled on the floor for about twenty more minutes before he was just about finished with his shift, but Lily looked to have finished her work around the same time for she came back up front with her jacket quite on as Remus rinsed up the newest couple of pitchers sent his way.
“Right, I’m off,” she offered, holding a hand out toward him from over by the doorway to the hall. “I’ll see you Tuesday, and don’t be afraid to ask Sirius any questions you might have.”
Remus could do no more than nod while giving an incredulous look over at the bar as Sirius plonked down one last drink for James to make with extreme gusto. “They have their own system, as you can see,” she smiled, her eyebrows disappearing behind her fringe.
“I’m a little frightened to jump in on it,” Remus admitted.
“I think it’s best you forget everything you just saw,” Lily instilled, waving it off with a laugh. “That is nothing but a byproduct of far too many years together; you keep doing what you’re doing and it’ll all come eventually.”
Remus nodded, thanked her for many things in one, and looked on as she went around to the outer limits of the counter. “James, you’re off; let Remus handle that, and you,” she added, looking directly at Sirius, “help him if he needs it.”
James plopped the cup back down on the counter and looked round at Remus. “It’s an americano,” he said, and without offering any further information, walked over to jabber some more with Sirius at the till.
Remus stepped up to bar and stared down at the drink at hand. What was the difference for espresso shots between milk-based and water-based drinks again? He knew one existed, he remembered that mediums always took two shots for Americanos because he thought it would be important to remember a size so common, but he simply couldn’t remember the number for a large. He looked over to the left where the laminated charts had been stashed and caught Sirius’s eye for a moment; he smirked, held up three fingers, and Remus dropped his eyes to the cup again to begin figuring the rest out from there.
He wasn’t sure how much room to leave at the top or whether the customer even requested that in the first place, but Remus filled it to the halfway point between full and slightly not, hoping the lady who ordered it would take pity on him and leave it at that. The café was blessedly calm once the lady had left without a single comment toward the level of her drink and Remus let out a quiet, thankful breath as it could have been a lot worse, all in all.
And then, Sirius was right there beside him and Remus’s eyes widened as he tried not to step back out of reflex; he wanted to look calm, unaffected, but he was neither of those things. “An easier way to remember is through sizes,” he maintained. “Any latte gets one-one, two-two, and the americanos go up one, two, three, four; you’ll never have a problem if you think of it like that.”
Sirius had somehow zoned right in on Remus’s exact predicament and he didn’t love the man’s proximity or the fact that he knew Remus needed the tip in the first place, but he couldn’t argue that he’d been given a good way to look at it, even if it didn’t do great things for his pride. “Thank you," he said all the same.
Sirius wasn't listening. “Wait five minutes,” he bid, holding his hand out to James.
“Be quick about it, would you?” James requested.
Sirius nodded his compliance. “You sick of bar yet or do you want to stick with it for a while?”
It took Remus a second or two to realize Sirius was speaking to him. “Bar, if that’s alright with you,” he put up. “I could do with some more practice.”
Sirius shrugged for it as he undid the tie at the back of his apron, tossing the whole thing on the counter and heading off to the back without another word about it.
Remus dug out a washcloth and took it to the already incredibly clean counter in front of him for something to do with his hands, unable to decide if Sirius was naturally dismissive or just with him. He seemed helpful enough, but in the way that an irksome fly was the thing that needed help and, frankly, Remus wasn't very good at needing help. While he thought about it some more, James went off and chatted with someone at the same table Lily did earlier and Remus looked around quickly, desperately hoping no one would step up to order while he was doing that and Sirius was more or less gone. He hadn’t had a moment on till yet and that would mean both he and any hypothetical customer would be subjected to a fair amount of fumbling that neither of them needed.
It was all fine for about a minute before someone popped up ahead of the till, of course, but thankfully James made his way over to ring them through and Remus eased up some. He made the corresponding drink without any complications and once that was finished, he looked over the recipe charts once again to familiarize himself with the menu even more. He began to notice a bit more of a pattern on this walk-through and noted with some amount of begrudging that Sirius’s shot tip could be applied to syrup shots as well; depending on the size of a respective drink, most drinks required the same amount of syrup in them save for a few deviations that Remus already accepted he would have to keep in mind, but for the most part, he felt he could get the hang of it with a little more practice.
Once Sirius reappeared on the floor, James began making a drink and since no customer had come along for a few good minutes at least, Remus could only assume it was for himself.
Sirius, on the other hand, moved up beside him and gave the charts a once-over. “Lucky for you, fall drinks started up again,” he offered, tapping the orange-accented section on the chart. “At least seven times out of ten you’re going to get one of those, so I’d memorize those ones real quick if I were you.”
Remus nodded while Sirius continued on. “'Course, then comes Christmas and you’ll have those to deal with,” he put up, “but really, most of those can be made all year round, they just put a different name on it, charge an extra couple pounds, and voila: holiday drink.”
He stole a glob of whipped cream off the top of the swirl James had been taking extra time creating and gave little to no reaction toward the thwap he received for it, meanwhile Remus glanced over at the blenders along the opposite wall. “What about…?” he raised, half-gesturing toward them before waving it off himself. “Well, I suppose you don’t get many at this time of year.”
“You would think so, but no, we do,” Sirius informed him.
“Could be minus forty, doesn’t matter,” James added, popping a lid atop his drink while Remus glued his eyes to the chart, noting the purple-accented section detailing quite a few options offered for blended beverages. “And those aren’t even all of them; people make up new drinks all the time.”
Remus glanced up at James hoping he was merely taking the piss out of him, but he said nothing else as he went off down the hall and left him looking in the general direction Sirius was still standing in. “Is he taking the piss?” he checked.
“I'm afraid not,” Sirius said. “And then you’ll be expected to know the exact recipe for a drink some clown made up online, so look forward to that.”
Remus had time to give one nod with a tight frown before James turned back up again with his things and picked up his drink. “Pete says we can swing by ‘round eleven,” he raised. “I’ll meet you here, yeah?”
Sirius nodded once. “Order something at two minutes to close again, and I’ll—”
“Yeah, yeah,” James echoed, heading for the door.
Remus rather missed having him as a distraction from Sirius now that he was greatly alone with the man. “I'll just be a second,” he insisted, slipping into the hallway to consult the schedule, but it was just as much an act of steeling himself.
He had been quietly hoping Lily might've changed her mind or had a sudden urge to work a few evenings for the next while, but no such luck; a quick comparison between the next two schedules showcased his Tuesday/Thursday shifts corresponding quite commonly with Sirius’s many more evening shifts throughout the week and though he knew on quite a few levels that this would be the case, it came with a laborious sigh that they would be working together for the next foreseeable future.
Sirius whistled to grab his attention, slapped a cup down on the counter before raising his eyebrows at him, and Remus fought a pang of irritation as he stepped back over to bar and quickly set to making the drink.