Chapter Text
“James,” Sirius murmurs under his breath, staring out across the tiny station car park in horror. “What the fuck have you done?”
“It’s fine,” James nods through gritted teeth and a pained, straining smile as he waves jovially at the man clambering out of the ancient four-by-four. “It might not even be him.”
The man starts to approach them. The car idles behind him, spitting out great huffs of grey smoke, back end held together by rust and a prayer. Sirius feels like he might throw up.
“It’s definitely him,” he whispers in a low, panicked voice. “James, you fucking idiot. Where even are we?”
“Maybe he’s just the uh...” James flounders, still waving like a loon, even though the man can’t be more than ten paces from them now. “Maybe he’s the groundskeeper or something.”
“James Potter?”
It’s him. It’s actually him, and as he reaches James and Sirius where they stand on the edge of the station platform Sirius finds himself torn between wanting to throw himself in front of the next passing train or - in fact - throwing himself at the man now standing in front of them. None of this is ideal; it’s so far from ideal Sirius wonders how he could’ve been so dense as to trust James with any of it because they’ve barely been off the train for five minutes and it’s already a disaster. But the man now frowning sceptically at them in the car park - with his freckled, wind-beaten cheeks and chapped lips, and his broad shoulders, and his curly hair the colour of biscuits - is almost enough to momentarily distract him from his panic.
That is, until Sirius notices the mud-encrusted wellington boots on his feet and the way his ripped jeans look to be covered in some sort of animal hair, and then he’s right back to wanting to dive onto the tracks again.
“Mr Lupin, is it?” James attempts affably, offering a hand that really belies the fact that Sirius knows he, too, wishes he were dead right now.
“If you like,” the man says, eyeing James’s hand warily before taking it in a hesitant grip. He’s all low vowels and short, clipped consonants, everything flat and one-note. “Most folk just call me Remus.”
“Wonderful to meet you, Remus,” James nods. Sirius can tell he's straining not to wipe his hand on the back of his chinos when he pulls it back.
“McGonagall’s sent you, did they?”
There’s a horrible, drawn-out silence as Remus continues to eye the pair of them dubiously. Sirius catches him raking his eyes slowly down their chinos, and up their wax jackets, and over the supple leather weekend bag sitting in the dust next to Sirius’s brand new Dubarry boots.
“That’s right,” James says at last, sounding as if he’s just agreed to be court marshalled and extinguishing any remaining hope Sirius might’ve held that he had any sort of plan to get them out of this mess. “That’s us.”
“Right,” drawls Remus. “And you know what you’ve come here to do?”
“Mhm,” James nods.
There’s another long silence, and then Remus sighs, and motions to their bags with a curt nod.
“Best get your stuff then. Come on.”
***
The ride is ghastly. James clambers reluctantly into the front seat - which he deserves entirely, all things considered - and perches daintily on the bench, weekend bag balanced on his lap like a grandmother at a bus stop whilst Sirius, holding his breath, hauls himself into the back. There’s a small terrier in the other passenger seat that smells like manure and growls when Sirius looks at it.
“What do they call you, then?” Remus says, and Sirius looks up to meet his eyes in the rear-view mirror. There's a dappled patch of light, conker-brown freckles that starts deep in the crease of his right eyelid, fanning out prettily from impossibly long eyelashes. Sirius swallows.
“I’m Sirius.”
“Funny name,” Remus mutters, and Sirius blinks dumbly back at him before one of the tyres hits another rut in the trail and he’s jostled horribly, grabbing at the door handle to steady himself.
"Is it?"
There's silence for a while then, and the four-by-four heaves its way down long, twisting lanes, little more than dirt tracks scuffed into the surrounding fields and hemmed in by serpentine walls of flat, grey stone. They truly are in the middle of nowhere: the countryside rushes past, all rolling green hills and vast, endless skies, and it's odious. Sirius wants to murder James with his bare hands.
They come to a break in the road where a low river meanders lazily in their way, and Sirius thinks for a moment that they must've taken a wrong turn, or else some bank has burst somewhere and cut the road off and Remus will have to turn around, now, and then he might as well take them back to the station because clearly the road ahead is entirely impassable and they'd do well to simply hop back on the train and head back south. But then Remus knocks the car down a gear and fords the river with such ease Sirius is momentarily taken in by it all, and the way he can see Remus scowling in the rear-view mirror, and the way his left hand curls over the gear stick.
The terrier growls.
"Gosh," says James, all nervous laughter and bluff. "This is quite the adventure."
Remus casts a sideways frown at him, and says nothing.
It's an age and many a bruise on Sirius's backside before they're finally trundling down one last track and pulling into a wide, sunlit yard, bordered on the one side by a sprawling, stone-built barn stacked with bale upon bale of hay, and on the other by a long whitewashed house with a bright red front door and a fat ginger cat sitting on the step licking its paws. Remus turns the ignition off and the car splutters and groans as he slides out, and then he's blinking back in at James and Sirius, who - on Sirius's part, at least - find themselves quite unable to move.
"You coming or what?" Remus says flatly, then slams his own door shut before rounding the back of the car and yanking open Sirius's door, and for a moment Sirius is overcome entirely by what seems such a gentlemanly gesture until something small and reeking darts across his lap, leaving muddy footprints in its wake, all over his chinos.
He follows the terrier out, and tries not to wince when his boot squelches into a small mound of steaming, grassy something - pig or cow or unicorn, Sirius truly would rather not think on it - and then James is there next to him looking white as a sheet and Remus is scowling at the pair of them again with the same sceptical distrust he'd shown back at the station.
"You've done a lambing season before, then?"
Sirius swears he feels James go cold beside him.
"A what?" he hears him ask in a small voice. The terrier growls at them from its spot near Remus's ankles.
"Lambing," Remus says slowly. "You're here to fetch lambs, aren't you?"
Truly nothing - nothing - could be worse than this, Sirius thinks. James makes a noise that might be agreement or might be his soul leaving his body, and Remus narrows his eyes at the pair of them before shaking his head and muttering something under his breath. He nods wordlessly in the direction of the barn and orders Sirius and James to get their bags from the car, which they do, and then they're following him across the yard, sidestepping piles of dung and sacks of something and a goose that hisses at Sirius as he passes.
"You'll be bunking in here," says Remus, and there's a faint hint of something in his voice that might be amusement as James and Sirius enter the barn and follow his gaze up a long, wooden ladder, leading up into the rafters somewhere above the hay bales. "There're a couple of beds up there for you. Sleeping bags and the like."
Sirius looks from the ladder to James - whose face is still sheet-white - and then to Remus, and prays to all known gods that this is some sort of joke. Never, in his twenty-two years, has Sirius set foot anywhere quite as objectionable as this, and the thought of sleeping in a barn - in a sleeping bag, no less - is simply unconscionable, and James will pay with his life.
"My mum's done you a late breakfast," Remus is saying, walking away from them now, terrier in tow. "You're to come in't house and say hello when you're done faffin' in here."
And then he's gone.
"James," Sirius says slowly. "I am going, to fucking murder you."
James gulps.
"Maybe we should, erm," he mutters, eyeing Remus's retreating back and then glancing up the ladder.
"Oh, be my guest," Sirius spits, and feigns a bow, ushering James up the rickety thing. He follows him, bag slung awkwardly over his shoulder, and can already count two splinters in his palms by the time they're at the top. It's a long, open hollow of a space, half taken up with hessian sacks of something, and it's all warm wooden beams and lofty rafters, floorboards scattered with hay and stubby, yellow straw, and dust motes glowing golden in the still air as shafts of sunlight filter through narrow windows lining the walls. There are twin army-style cots along the back of the mezzanine, each with its own thin mattress and rolled up bale of blankets and pillows, and, between them, a rickety old table with a white enamel pitcher and basin atop it.
Sirius hates it all.
"Well, this is," James blusters, dumping his bag on one of the beds and rubbing his hands together, “this is alright, isn't it? This'll do us for a few months."
He's looking at Sirius with a tentative, careful smile that makes Sirius want to drop-kick him back down the ladder.
"This absolutely will not do," he hisses instead, livid. "What the fuck are we doing here? You said we were going to go work at a sodding castle, James! I thought we were getting picked up by the local laird!"
"Okay, well, it was never actually a castle-"
"You told me it was a castle."
"Yes, well, it wasn't," James says hurriedly, raking a nervous hand through his hair and making it stand on end. "It wasn't a castle, but the agency said the work was at Beech Hall, and to me," he laughs manically, shrugging at Sirius, "to me, that says stately home at worst, doesn't it? Beech Hall."
Sirius stalks over to one of the mounds of hessian sacks at the edge of the mezzanine, and jabs furiously at the faded, black lettering printed on the top bag.
"Beech. Hall. Farm. You idiot."
"Look, I really did think it would be a house," James splutters, all red in the face now. "I thought it would be a big house - nice big house, somewhere - and I thought they'd just put us in the gift shop, or something!"
A pigeon flaps across the rafters above them. They both flinch.
"The gift shop?" Sirius says darkly.
"Or, you know," says James weakly, sinking down onto the end of one of the cots. "Guest services, or something."
"We didn't even have to do this, you know," Sirius snaps. "Mum and dad would've bought us the tickets and helped us get set up out there. They wanted to help us. But no," he spits, shaking his head mockingly at James. "You said we'd appreciate it more if we worked for it. You said we'd do it by ourselves."
"We will!"
"Obviously I am not staying here, James."
"Look, it's three months," James reasons, squaring his hands out in front of him to block out the time. "Twelve weeks, we get paid, and then we go to Hong Kong. We'll have enough for the tickets, we'll have enough to rent somewhere for the first month, and we'll get ourselves properly set up, and it'll be great."
Sirius eyes him furiously. Hong Kong has been the plan for as long as Sirius can remember. It was always: finish school, go to university. Finish university, move home for the summer. Go to Hong Kong, get a little experience, and then start the consulting agency they'd talked about since they were sixteen. It was going to be perfect. Just the two of them, in a fabulous apartment, down near the waterfront. Somewhere along the way the actual purpose of the agency did get a little muddled - Sirius thinks it started off as something to do with web design, back when he'd got really into coding their MySpace pages for the two of them, and then it became more about SEO, or something. Or maybe it was branding, now. Regardless, that was what they were going to do, and it was going to be wonderful. And they could be halfway there by now if James hadn't insisted that they save up for the tickets themselves.
"Three months is a long bloody time when we're sleeping in a barn, James."
"It'll go so quickly, I promise."
He's blinking up at Sirius from his bed, all sad eyes behind his glasses and a bit of straw, already, poking out from his mop of black hair like an antenna.
Sirius sighs, and collapses onto the twin cot next to him in defeat.
"I literally hate you."
***
Hope Lupin is a lovely woman. As affable as her son is gruff, she greets Sirius and James both with a kiss on the cheek and a breathless welcome, ushering them into the farmhouse and through to a long, bright kitchen, pewter pots balanced on every surface and a herb garden lining the window frame that stretches out behind a stove, a counter dusted with flour and bits of pastry, and a wide, porcelain sink, where a bunch of tulips sits in a jug of water, waiting to be trimmed.
"A little different from the boys McGonagall's usually sends us," she says brightly, all white teeth and wide, friendly eyes as she looks down at their shirts and chinos. "Very smart. Crumpet?"
They sink down into chairs at an old wooden table, helping themselves to butter and jam from the jars Hope brings over, and it's all perfectly civil and marvellously awkward, and Sirius longs for the bed he left at four in the morning to catch their early train up. His bed in wonderful Kensington, where there's never a goose in sight.
"Remus'll be along," Hope says as she pours them both a cup of tea and pulls out the chair at the head of the table. "He's just deworming Cecil."
There's an ugly, snarling howl from down the hall, and a moment later Remus appears with the scruffy terrier tucked under one arm and a big, white tablet in an outstretched hand.
"He'll not have it, mum."
He stops short when he sees Sirius and James at the table, and the dog - predictably - growls.
"Well, pop it in a bit of cheese for him," Hope says, still smiling. She has a nice way about her, Sirius thinks, as he gladly accepts another cup of tea. Everything's a little rushed, a little manic; she reminds him of Fleamont in that way, stumbling over words and tasks as if in some hurry to move on to the next favour, or the next smile, or the next pot of tea. Everything at a slightly breathless pace, and as she reaches over to top up Sirius's mug it begins to make him feel - to his wonder - rather at home.
"Daft thing," Remus mutters, and Sirius looks over to watch him by an open fridge, stuffing the pill into a small wedge of cheese and poking it temptingly at the dog's snout. It relents, eventually, and nearly takes Remus's fingers off as it lurches for the food.
"So where are you boys from?"
Sirius looks back to Hope, beaming across at him expectantly.
"Uh, London," he murmurs as James wolfs down another crumpet, melted butter everywhere. "Sort of central."
"Are there many farms there?"
Sirius swears he hears Remus snort.
"Not- not many, no," Sirius says kindly. He doesn't have the heart to tell her that this is the first farm he's ever set foot on in his life. "It's more shops and hotels, really."
"Oh, exciting!"
Hope bustles off to the oven then, and pulls out another tray of crumpets that she's been keeping warm. Sirius watches over his plate as she butters one and spreads it thickly with what looks like lime marmalade, and then she's passing it to Remus with a deft peck on his cheek and a soft question that Sirius can't make out, her hand resting gentling on Remus's shoulder. Remus nods.
"Love her," James mutters as he polishes off his sixth crumpet and leans back in his chair, patting his stomach, shirt buttons groaning. "I'm going to enjoy this."
"Did you forget about the sodding lambs we're apparently here to deliver?" Sirius murmurs in a low voice.
James stretches his back out in his seat. "It'll be fine," he says, glancing over at Hope and Remus on the other side of the kitchen. "How hard can it be?"
***
They amble outside a few crumpets later, Hope waving them off and going back to her tulips, and Remus follows them out into the sunlit yard, Cecil glued to his ankle. The horrible goose is still pecking its way across the cobbles when they come to a stop, and Sirius swallows as Remus folds his arms and appraises them both, eyes squinting slightly against the late morning sun.
"Please tell me you've got proper boots with you."
Sirius blinks down at his feet.
"I'm wearing boots," he says quietly. James shifts beside him in his trainers.
"Work boots," Remus drawls, looking across at Sirius flatly. "Not fashion boots."
"I have wellies in my bag!" James nods, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his chinos. "I brought wellies."
Traitor.
"How big?"
Sirius looks up at Remus dumbly and finds him staring back at him, face pinched in annoyance again.
"H-how big?"
"How big are your feet?" Remus says impatiently, motioning at Sirius's Dubarrys.
"Er, ten?"
"Right, I'll fetch you a pair of mine, then. Now," he huffs out a breath, and rubs absently at his left shoulder with a broad, tanned hand. "We lamb most of the flock up on the fell, so one of you'll need to be up there most days with my dad. It's not so far, so you'll not need to stop up there overnight much unless one of the ewes is having trouble."
Sirius stares at him. Sleeping in a sleeping bag on a cot in the barn is one thing; there is simply no way he's sleeping up in the hills with the sheep and Remus's dad and god knows what else. Mud and rain and horrible things like that.
"Other one of you'll be down with me for the season," Remus is going on, looking between the two of them. "We always bring the first-time mums into the barn and lamb them inside."
"I'll do that," Sirius blurts out before James can, and he feels him physically deflate beside him. Which is hilarious, and entirely deserved.
"Alright," Remus says slowly, narrowing his eyes at Sirius before looking to James. "It'll be you up on the fell, then."
James gulps.
Remus marches off then back into the house, and appears a moment later to thrust a pair of old, mud-speckled wellies into Sirius's chest, telling him to put them on and for the both of them to meet him out round the side of the house when they're ready. Sirius tugs the boots on, and James scales the ladder in the barn to retrieve their jackets from the bunks, and then Sirius is swallowing and wiping his sweaty palms on his chinos as they drag themselves out of the yard as if to the gallows. Remus is there with his horrible dog, ushering the horrible goose into a pen.
"Ready?" he says flatly when they reach him. Sirius doesn't think he has much choice. "We'll have to walk up today," Remus is saying, setting off up the track away from the yard. "Unless one of you knows how to drive one of them?" he adds mockingly, and motions to two battered old quad bikes tucked away next to a low shed at the end of the house. "Didn't think so," he mutters at their dumb silence, and stalks away up the lane, Cecil the terrier in tow.
"He absolutely hates us, doesn't he?" James mutters, and Sirius watches him wince as his wellies flick up a smattering of dirt onto his beige trousers.
"Wouldn't you?"
They reach the top fields by noon, and Sirius can feel his hair clinging disgustingly to the back of his sweaty neck as he heaves himself over the last stile, hands grubby and raw from clambering over stone walls and latching heavy, metal gates. James pants beside him, face pale and sickly-looking, and then Remus comes to a merciful stop up ahead and waves across the hill to a lone figure amongst a flock of fat white sheep. The man ambles over, slowly, and as he gets closer Sirius sees he can only be Remus's father. There's the same wind-beaten cheeks, although his father's are dark with stubble, and the same amber eyes that narrow sceptically at the pair of them as he approaches. Sirius feels about three feet tall.
"Now then," Mr Lupin says, and raises his eyebrows at his son. There's a black and white dog glued to his ankles, all sleek fur and sharp, bright eyes. Cecil growls at it.
"Lads from the agency," Remus mutters, jerking his head at James. "He'll be stopping with you."
"Right."
Sirius hears James swallow beside him.
"Nice to meet you," James stutters weakly, holding out a hand for Remus's father, who takes it with the same bemused hesitation Remus had shown at the station.
"Likewise," he says flatly. He looks back to Remus, who just shrugs, and something passes silently between them before Mr Lupin shakes his head and looks back at James. Much the way one might look at a particularly disappointing child, Sirius thinks. "Come on then," he mutters, nodding back to the flock, then stalks away with a visibly trembling James in tow.
"He's never even seen a sheep, has he?" Remus murmurs once they're out of earshot, and Sirius shakes his head numbly.
"Never."
"Proper James Herriot though, you."
Sirius glances at him sideways.
"Who?"
Remus just sighs.
"Fell," he says flatly, pointing up at the vast, sweeping hill ahead of them. "Flock," he says, pointing at the sheep, and then: "Tour complete."
They head through the fields around the far side of the hill after that, leaving James a tiny, incompetent speck in the distance, and amble along another track out towards the open moorland. The barn and farmhouse are like toy buildings down in the valley below, and Sirius has to jog to keep up as Remus leads them over streams and gullies and yet more stiles, pointing out a few more empty paddocks and a long, crumbling wall that he says they'll have to fix at some point, and then - as they round a wide hillock onto what Sirius thinks might be the north side of the fell - a dark, looming pile of rubble up on the horizon, all collapsed chimney stacks and old stone pavings taken over by heather and gorse.
“The old Beech Hall,” Remus murmurs as they pass it. A family of rabbits scamper out from the ruin and across the track in front of them, Cecil tearing after them into the grass. “Burnt down ages ago; farm used to be part of the estate, back in't day.”
“Wow,” Sirius murmurs, peering up at the one remaining edifice standing at the far end of the old manor; a blackened, wind-beaten archway with moss growing in every crevice. It’s all very Brontë, and Sirius has a brief flash of Remus as Mr Rochester; gruff and misunderstood and alluringly misanthropic. Or perhaps he’s Heathcliff, roaming the fells on horseback. Sirius thinks he wouldn’t mind seeing that one day.
They set off back towards the lowlands, trudging down the gentle slope of the moors until the farm pops back into view, nestled in its hollow in the valley between the surrounding green hills. There’s a series of ramshackle outbuildings that they pass to come up on the rear of the whitewashed farmhouse and, down a narrow path along the side of the kitchen, a small patch of garden occupied by two animals that Sirius thinks might be llamas. One of them is eating a bunch of pink tulips.
"Mum's alpacas," Remus mutters as they pass them. "Don't ask."
The goose has escaped again by the time they get back to the yard. It hisses at Sirius as they pass, and Remus waves it away with a scowl and a sharp tutting noise, and then Sirius is being led into the barn, cool and dark and quiet after the midday sun up on the fell.
"We move the first-times mums down a month or so before they're due to lamb," Remus is saying, his voice low as he strides through the hay bales. "Keep 'em in the back paddock. Then bring them in here a few days out."
Sirius blanches when they round upon a row of six small pens, metal bars fencing the areas off from the open barn, half of them occupied by its own fat, white sheep.
"Oh wow," he murmurs, his mouth dry.
"This one'll be along soon, I reckon," Remus says, stopping at one of the middle pens, the occupant of which is pacing lazily in circles. He leans up on the gate of her pen, and Sirius watches as he reaches out and scratches gently at the underside of the ewe's chin as she passes him. She stops pacing, then, and seems to calm a little, leaning up against the side of the pen herself after a while and into Remus's touch.
Remus turns his head then, and gazes across the barn at Sirius.
"Why on earth did they send you here if you've not done lambing before?" he asks quietly.
"I have no idea."
Remus huffs out a breath, and looks back to the sheep, still running his fingers repetitively over the wiry hair of her chin. "Come here," he mutters, and it takes Sirius a long moment to realise he's speaking to him.
He approaches hesitantly, keeping his eyes on the ewe the whole time. He scuffs his shoe on the stone floor when he reaches the pen, Remus's boots a shade too big for him, and the sheep flinches a little before Remus shushes her, and motions for Sirius to give him his hand.
Remus's hands are big and warm. Broad, and freckled; calluses on the thumbs and dirt lined into the pads of his fingers, as if it's always there no matter how many times he scrubs them. There's a thick, white scar running along the back of his left palm, and a cut that looks new and painful darting across three of the knuckles, a triple-stop of red dashes, raw and scabbed over. Sirius swallows as he lets his own hand be led, held gently in Remus's right, until he can feel the sheep's wool beneath his fingers.
"There you are," Remus says quietly.
It doesn't feel how he thought it might. Not that Sirius has given much thought, ever, to what a sheep might feel like under his touch, but even if he had, he doubts he would've come up with this. It's coarse, and bristly; not cloud-like or cottony, or silken like the lambswool scarf he used to wear at school. A little oily, even, and springy when he pats her carefully under Remus's watchful eye.
"She's not so bad," Sirius whispers, terrified of spooking her.
"Nah, she's alright."
There's a low huffing sound from behind them then, and Sirius looks over his shoulder to see Cecil nosing around in a mound of loose straw at the entrance to the barn.
"He knows he's not allowed over here," Remus explains quietly, watching the terrier flop dolefully onto his makeshift bed. "He just pisses the mums off."
"Quite a cross little dog, isn't he?"
"He's horrible," Remus mutters.
They stay out in the barn for a while after that, Remus pushing the gate of the pen open and carefully ushering Sirius inside. He shows him how to hold the ewe so as not to panic her, and how to cup the bony underside of her jaw should she start to agitate. He tells him about her diet, and how quickly her fleece is growing back since shearing after the winter, and how important it is to not overfeed the ewes in the last stages of their pregnancies, and then he beckons Sirius closer and takes his hand again in his warm, steady hold, and shows him how to feel along the swollen flesh of her belly to see how along she is.
"Wow," Sirius whispers, feeling her slow inhales and exhales against his palm, warm and full and regular. It's sort of disgusting and wondrous at the same time; there's talk of milk and teats, and it makes Sirius's stomach turn but there's something about the way Remus is explaining it to him - something about his low, even voice, and the competency and surety of his every movement - that also makes the whole thing rather spectacular, somehow.
"I'll stop in here with her tonight, just in case."
"You sleep in here too?" Sirius asks, startled; he's sure there were only two bunks up the ladder.
"I'll not be getting much sleep if she has it tonight," Remus says, then quirks his eyebrows at Sirius in a way that does something funny to Sirius's chest. "Neither will you."
***
The ewe keeps pacing in her pen, but Remus assures Sirius there won't be any lambs for a few hours at least, and so they head back out into the yard and Sirius follows Remus's instruction to shoulder and carry a heap of filled hessian sacks from over by the kitchen back across the cobbles to the barn, and stack them against the furthest wall. It's back-breaking; Sirius's button-down - already filthy from the walk, and the fields, and the barn - is soaked through to his skin by the third sack, and he gives up on the fourth and goes to fish a band out of the depths of his weekend bag on the mezzanine up the ladder. He scrapes his hair back into a loose knot on the back of his head, and goes back out to heave the fifth bag onto his aching shoulder, and tries to ignore the way Remus - already almost finished with his own pile - is keeping an eye on him, slow as he is.
"Right," Remus says eventually, when all the sacks - the contents of which remain a mystery to Sirius - have been moved. He stretches out his left arm and rubs absently at his shoulder, then whistles for Cecil and nods in the direction of the house. "Job’s a good‘un. Cup of tea, I reckon."
"Sounds perfect," Sirius nods breathlessly.
"Do you not get much exercise in Kensington?" Remus mutters drily as they wander inside, Sirius sinking gratefully back into a chair at the table. It feels like days since their crumpets this morning.
"Not that sort of exercise."
"Let me guess," Remus says, filling the kettle and pulling two clean mugs from the draining rack. "Croquet on the lawns?"
"Something like that."
Remus tuts, and brings their tea over when it's brewed, and Cecil launches himself into Remus's lap when he lowers himself into the chair opposite Sirius. Sirius can see his horrible little eyes glaring at him over the edge of the table.
"He hates me," he says flatly, sipping his tea.
"He hates everyone."
"Not you."
"Hmm," Remus hums. "Lucky me."
They lapse into silence then, both quietly drinking their tea and watching the alpacas in the garden outside the kitchen window. Remus chuckles quietly when Hope pops up over the fence and appears to scold one of the animals for something or other, and Sirius watches out of the corner of his eye as Remus takes a biscuit from the tin between them and breaks off a chunk of it to feed to Cecil in his lap. He sips his tea, and listens to the ticking of the clock on the wall and the bleating of the alpacas outside and Cecil's low, intermittent grunting, and wonders vaguely if maybe he doesn't hate everything here quite as much as he thought he did.
He's shaken from his reveries by the front door being thrown open down the hall.
"Stephen's eaten my tulips again," cries Hope, bustling into the house with her apron from this morning still tied around her waist, hands at her hips as she shakes her head in despair at the animals outside the kitchen window. "I leave the window open, I turn my back for a minute, Remus, and he just takes them."
"I don't think alpacas are meant to eat tulips, really," Remus drawls, and Sirius has to hide his smile in his mug of tea.
"Well, tell that to Stephen," Hope nods, still watching the pair of them in the garden. She sighs dolefully. "Anyway," she says, shaking herself and motioning out to the yard. "Your dad's back. He's brought another in from the paddock for you."
They head outside just in time for Sirius to see a white-faced James clambering off the back of a mud-splattered quad bike, and Remus’s father disappearing into the barn with another fat, round sheep.
“How was that?” Sirius murmurs when he reaches James, watching Remus follow his dad inside.
“I have seen things,” James starts in an unsteady voice, “that no man should ever have to see.”
Sirius wrinkles his nose in distaste, and looks down to see James’s shirt and chinos stained with many varied substances he’d rather not think about. He’s got a smear of greenish-black mud across one of the lenses in his glasses.
“Please tell me your day was as horrible as mine,” James says weakly.
Sirius looks over at the barn where Remus is now stooped by the door, scratching Cecil on his wiry little head as he snoozes on his patch of hay.
“It wasn’t so bad.”
***
There’s a wonderful dinner of stew and dumplings that Hope corrals them all into the kitchen for around six - after, mercifully, they're both permitted use of the house bathroom for a hot shower and a change of clothes - and James spends the entire time studiously avoiding looking at Mr Lupin and flinching every time he’s asked a question. Sirius wonders if he’s not suffering from some sort of sudden-onset post-traumatic stress after his afternoon up on the fell, but reasons he probably deserves it, and feels fantastically smug when Remus tells him across the table that the two of them’ll spend most of the following day down here on the farm, repainting the far side of the house where the winter’s taken some of the whitewash off.
“Are you sure you need to be in the barn tonight?” Hope asks of Remus as she’s clearing plates. Sirius notices Remus’s father glancing sideways at his son.
“I'd rather be,” Remus says, sipping his tea. “She’s a nervy one so I want to be there in case she has it.”
Hope frowns, and twists her fingers together over by the sink as if debating whether or not to push the matter.
“I just think you’d be better in your bed,” she says at length, and Sirius doesn’t miss the way Remus’s ruddy cheeks seem to flush at that.
“I’m fine, mum,” he mutters quietly. He’s standing then, and Mr Lupin is throwing a placating, covert shrug to his wife, and Remus is motioning to James and Sirius with a jerk of his head to follow him outside. They thank Hope for dinner, and Mr Lupin says something to James about an early start - to which James nods wordlessly, still looking like a man condemned - and follow Remus out into the yard, sun just beginning to slip over the tops of the fell.
"I'd get to bed if I were you,” Remus says flatly to Sirius over his shoulder, ambling into the cool shade of the barn. “If she has it in the night I might need your help.”
“Right.”
He clambers dutifully up the ladder, James in tow, and they change for bed there on the dusty, straw-littered floor, and neither one of them says a word until they're both laid out in their respective cots, blinking up at the rafters above.
"I am a fucking idiot," James whispers eventually.
"Yep."
"I can't do three months of this."
"But it'll go so quickly, James," Sirius murmurs tiredly, turning over in his sleeping bag, his back to the other bed. "Apparently."
It's quiet then; just the distant hum of some sort of generator somewhere, and the low huffing of the ewes down below and - occasionally, when Sirius strains his ears to hear - some soft, murmured words from Remus, and as Sirius lays there in his cot and listens he realises he's talking to the sheep. Just soft things - quiet words and whispers, and the occasional shift as if he's got up to check on one of them. It's the most strangely, comfortingly soporific sound Sirius can remember, and as the sky outside the narrow stone windows turns to an inky, lightless black, he feels himself drift off into a warm and welcome sleep.