Chapter Text
Remus has always liked collecting things. His mother had once likened it to the behavior of a crow—quick and restless, acting on some innate, knowledge-driven curiosity. She’d also gently suggested that it may have been a way to interact with people without actually having to interact with them. He’s never been so sure about that. If anything, he thinks it’s more about the archival—the comfort of cataloguing things no one else wants to remember. Providing the space for something wholly irrelevant to shine.
It started some time ago with a lost ID—someone whose name he can’t remember—that he’d found on campus. After that, it had simply become a habit: collecting any card left behind. Sun-bleached transit passes, expired university library cards, half-filled coffee shop punch cards, and even one business AMEX card that someone had certainly cried over losing.
That habit had continued for some time, but eventually stopped doing anything for him. It quickly became cold and uninteresting. Even more reason to stop is that he’d dropped out of college, feeling rather discouraged in continuing his education. Despite his interest in archival studies, his hopelessness in life had taken over like he’d been swept under a tidal wave. He found that it wasn’t as common to find lost cards off campus, so the collection had reached a decided end.
And, like any good archivist, he filed each card away, their numerically labeled, embossed accents curling beneath them, in a journal. Each one still remains protected with a plastic sleeve.
But despite the shift, it couldn’t end there; it had moved, then, to something most might akin to garbage—sauce packets.
The first specimen was recovered from the pavement outside a Chinese takeout restaurant. It was notable for its custom label—rare among the mass-produced designs Remus usually encountered. The packet itself was still tacky with residue, stamped Tai Tung Restaurant, and marked with a crude illustration of Bruce Lee holding what could be chicken, or perhaps broccoli. That’s what bloomed the strange feeling to keep, hoard—being a slight anomaly was enough to warrant preservation.
From there, the collection expanded with ease. In Seattle, packets appeared predictably across neighborhoods: left at curbs, abandoned on benches beside Styrofoam containers, sometimes trampled, sometimes unopened. Each one was logged in his mind by type—ketchup, salsa, tartar sauce—their printed designs always distinct. Some were drained, others still full. Their colors, improbably vivid, seemed engineered to resist fading.
And yet, beyond the observation, there was always a tug of sentiment. He pitied them a little, these discarded things. Bright, overlooked, left to weather into permanence. Trash to anyone else. But to Remus, they endured.
He’s had a few iterations of his evolving archive. There’s a cyclical nature to his interest: a discovery, a heightened interest, and a usual decided end. Then, the cycle repeats itself. Sure, there are always anomalies, always collections that get picked back up, always archives that go unnamed, or have only one or two pieces within them. But it has always continued, never fully ceased. And it was the finding of a name for these items that had really changed things. It’s what brought back a fire in his poor archivist heart. Finding a name for something he had begun dedicating his passions to.
Something called ‘ephemera’.
In the Oxford dictionary, ephemera refers to “things that exist or are used or enjoyed for only a short time, items of collectible memorabilia typically written or printed that were originally expected to have only short-term usefulness or popularity. Recorded in English from the late 16th century as the plural of ephemeron, meaning ‘lasting only a day’”.
It has morphed since then, of course. Ephemera now fills this aching thing within him. He’s in his current fixation, which is slowly becoming his favorite to archive. And, oh, how it lifts his spirits when he picks one up, swaddled between aisles 3 and 4 of the Safeway grocery store he so loathes to work at.
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His father visits on a Thursday, a day in which he knows Remus will have to escape off to his midshift at some point. It leaves them with a finite amount of time, just how the both of them like it. He’s flitting around his apartment, scrubbing down counters. He’s sure his cat, BB, has been yowling somewhere all morning, demanding tuna-flavored breakfast.
Lyall and Remus aren’t enemies, and they don’t hold hatred for each other. There was actually a point where they got along quite swimmingly, but it was Hope Lupin that had been the glue. Hope, who had loved them both fiercely. Hope, who had smoothed over their bickering. Hope, who had shown them that their differences brought them closer. Hope, who had translated the language.
It was Hope that held them together, even at her end. Laid down in a rolling hospital bed in the middle of the Lupin townhouse, hooked to an IV, reading Pride and Prejudice to her boys until her breathing grew heavy and labored, then grew to be nothing at all.
There is love there, that's what he’s getting at. There’s always been love there, between Lyall and Remus.
Despite that love, Remus sometimes finds himself unbelievably frustrated with his father. Today’s visit is no exception.
He does not hear the knocking on the door, nor the twist of the spare key in the lock. He doesn’t even notice the door opening and shutting. He is alerted to his father’s presence with a flicker of a light switch.
Remus turns on his heel, half-dressed, and scowls. That same scowl is mirrored in Lyall’s face, who must say something like, “Where are your hearing aids?”
Remus wouldn’t know if those are his exact words, because his hearing aids are in a small orange dish at his bedside.
'Give me a minute,' Remus signs. His father acts clueless, but the context should make the signs understandable even to the stupidest of people. He holds up one finger, then gestures to his room. Lyall nods.
The hearing aids hook around his ears, and all the ambient noise in the apartment comes through half-static as he makes his way back. His cat is meowing, and he goes for the cabinet containing tiny cans of wet food, taking on the task of feeding the poor, apparently starving creature.
Much like he assumed, his father repeats, “Why weren’t you wearing your hearing aids?”
Remus sighs. “I was just doing chores around the house. Not totally necessary for at home. I wear them when I go out.”
It’s not true (or rather, it’s only partially true), but his father nods like he believes him. Then, he hesitates, as if weighing his options, before adding “You’re sounding a bit…uh.”
Deaf, Remus's mind supplies.
“Just…haven’t been socializing much,” Remus says, turning. It’s only in front of Lyall that Remus falls into a pattern of worry over his speech. He doesn’t think he’s slurring. His voice is the easiest thing to pick up with his hearing aids, but it’s got a muffled, static quality. Maybe it’s the cadence, he thinks. It’s not like he’s listening to people talk that often these days.
If he were honest, the hearing aids aren’t all that useful for much, at least not anymore. At this moment, Remus can hear his father. Part of it is that Lyall knows to raise his voice, and the other is that the ambient noise in his apartment is minimal. At work, it’s nearly useless—all he hears is the faraway metal jumble of grocery carts and the sound of muffled, unintelligible speech and the crinkling of packaging. Someone either needs to be extraordinarily loud or very close for him to pick up their speech perfectly.
So, fine, he’d taken to not wearing them at all, lately. Part of it is the hopelessness of the situation. He’s nearly deaf, after all, and it’s not like his hearing is getting any better.
“I just don’t get why you wouldn’t want to wear them,” Lyall sighs, and heaves himself into a barstool at the counter. “It’s hard to talk with you when you don’t.”
In this moment, Remus misses his mother, who would have shaken her head disapprovingly.
‘You could learn Sign,' she’d have replied with capable hands, and spoken the words right with them.
“But why then,” his father would say, “did we get him hearing aids?”
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It is a Tuesday, and Remus has decided, with not an ounce of uncertainty, that his life has grown far too dull.
It really isn’t a new thought, either. Since he’d dropped out of school a year shy of graduation three years ago, he’d moved back to Seattle and dedicated himself to this dead-end, terrible grocery store job. It keeps him busy (too busy), pays his bills (barely; usually not fully), and gives him a daily dose of social interaction (that’s just a straight-up lie—Remus stocks in silence all by himself, refusing to meet anyone’s gaze).
Part of him wonders, with a pang, what his mother might think if she saw him now. Nearly a social recluse, smoking away his breaks and burying himself in trashy TV when he’s home. Nary a girlfriend, nor barely a friend. A father who still hadn’t learned to sign, and an archive of other people’s things that has gotten exponentially larger since her death.
When she’d still been here, still been Remus's world, he’d still had others. He’d had a girlfriend, and he’d had friends. Hope had been soft and sweet in her final moments, with his friends, and even more so with Tonks. “Make sure my boy takes care of you,” she’d said. She hadn’t signed along with it.
It was the first time he’d ever seen his mother not sign her words for his benefit. Her hands were too tired. The cancer was doing its job, taking everything from her. Even her way of communicating with her son.
And now his life is dull in the wake of losing her. His life is dull in the wake of losing everything. His mother, his prospects, his friends, his girlfriend, his hearing, and any semblance of a relationship with his father.
Maybe that’s why the next collected piece for the archive shakes him so deeply. Maybe that’s why it is causing this unbearably soft, curious thing to rear its ugly head. His life is dull, and he’s mentally outstretched his hand in the dark, hoping to touch the light switch.
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Usually, Remus isn’t much for delving into the lives of the people whose items he collects. Most of the time, it feels impersonal. It’s much more about the archivist's need within him, really.
But there’s something about this last grocery list he’s found that has been making him curious. Call it an archivist’s instinct, but there’s some story here. Something unrecoverable and light and real.
It’s star-shaped and blue, written in a hurry, but not crumpled like the others usually are. It’s pristine aside from one of its points being folded in on itself.
It’s definitely written by a parent (hence the kid’s hair detangler and Barbie Band-Aids). They drink coffee—typical of a parent, or any adult, he supposes. They’ve got depression, or some other mental health condition (Prozac is an antidepressant, after all).
The writer of the list is a painter—hence the tape, and the gamsol (apparently it’s odorless turpentine for oil painting). He assumes ‘Cad. Red’ is a shade of paint.
Whoever has written this list—this depressed, artistic, caffeine-driven parent of a messy-haired child—also urgently needs to pick up 312 batteries.
The same kind Remus uses for his hearing aids.
The same kind that nearly every deaf person uses for their hearing aids.
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It happens on a Wednesday.
Remus hadn’t slept well the night before—hadn’t really slept at all, if he was honest. He’d spent most of his evening staring at the ceiling, listening to the way the wind hit the windows, sharp and high-pitched, crawling down into his hearing aids until all he could think about was white noise and static and that constant, shrill hum. He doesn’t usually wear his hearing aids at home (or at all, really), but his father had put a bug in his ear. A bug that was telling him it was better to hear an annoying hum and the loudest of noises at a mild buzz all day than nearly nothing at all.
But sometime around six in the evening, he’d pulled them off, laid them in the orange dish beside his bed, and let the silence take him.
He told himself he wouldn’t forget to put them back on in the morning. For his father’s sake. He told himself it was only temporary. But then the morning came, and it was cold, and his shoulders hurt, and he was bordering on a migraine, and BB was yowling for food again beside his head (just where she knew he’d hear her), and the dish was just slightly out of reach when he’d walked away from his bed. He told himself it was fine. He wasn’t going far. Just a walk to the pharmacy for cat food and ibuprofen. No one talked to him on the way there, and no one would talk to him on the way back. That’s usually how things went.
The streets are still half-asleep at seven in the morning. Just a few cars, the hum of a delivery truck, a pair of old women sitting at the bus stop, hunched like crows in wool coats.
He isn’t thinking when he crosses the street. The city is quiet, especially his neighborhood. His hands are in his pockets, and he’s thumbing the star-shaped sticky note that’s crumpled within one of them. He’s looking down, sleep-deprived, mesmerized by the swishing of the mist-soaked CVS bag. Remus can’t hear the sharp, plastic noise of it like he used to be able to.
He can’t hear the plastic bag, and he can’t hear the car.
Can’t hear the way the engine whines too fast around the corner. Doesn’t hear the horn until it’s right in front of him, or the slam of brakes for that matter, and definitely not the sharp exhale of a driver who hadn’t seen him. What he feels is the jolt of it—first in his bones, and then in his chest. The pressure of wind and heat, and the blur of a red car bumping his hip. It’s soft. It doesn’t hurt, but the shock of it burns his body. The shriek of tires skidding on wet pavement was brief. Too brief.
He stumbles backward. The bag in his hand drops. Cat food spills across the concrete. The man in the car is yelling. He can see it, but he can’t hear it. There’s a horn honking—he can hear that. Why can’t he hear anything else?
You’re very nearly profoundly deaf, his mind supplies. Did you forget?
Remus scrambles to gather his things. The shopping bag is broken, so he’s holding a soggy box of cat food, the cans spilling from his arms. There are still a few rolling around, and he’s about to grab them, but the car honks again. Remus's head is swimming.
He turns, breath caught in his throat, trying to get to the sidewalk again, and—
His father is there.
Remus blinks, dumbly. For a second, he thinks he is imagining it, thinks the adrenaline has done something awful to his brain. But no, Lyall Lupin is standing on the pavement, halfway out of his work truck, mouth slack and horrified.
“Remus!” he shouts, voice muffled, far away. Remus isn’t sure if he can actually hear it, or if it's in his mind.
Remus takes a shaky breath, as if trying to catch up to what had just happened. His legs still aren’t working properly. His knees buzz like tuning forks.
Lyall crosses the street faster than Remus had ever seen him move. His windbreaker flares behind him, hair mussed, shoes slapping against the asphalt. Remus tries to wave him off, but it’s too late—he’s already being grabbed by the shoulders, fingers gripping tight around his damp raincoat.
“What the hell — — —?” Lyall snaps, breathless. “Are you okay? You didn’t — that car. You didn’t — —. Remus—”
“I’m fine,” Remus mutters, voice weak. He isn’t following his father’s mouth well at all. He’s much too busy getting his heart under control.
“You’re not.” His father’s eyes are wide. “You didn’t flinch. You — —. You were just—” He breaks off and looks down, as if trying to process it. “You — — —. You’re not wearing them.”
Remus doesn’t respond. He doesn’t have to. It’s the same conversation they’d had last week. It’s the same conversation they’ve been having for years. He doesn’t even need to be able to read his lips to know what he’s appalled over.
The orange dish is still on the nightstand, right where he left it. The hearing aids aren’t in his ears. The air thickens with the silence between them.
“I was only going out for five minutes,” he says quietly. He doesn’t want to tell his father that he wouldn’t have worn them anyway. That he doesn’t wear them at all. That the only thing that’s been keeping them on his person is his father, not some innate need for them.
Lyall’s mouth tightens. Now that he knows Remus can’t hear him, he speaks slowly, and his mouth moves in this wide, stupid way to exaggerate his movements. “I already lost your mother.”
That lands like a blow. Remus flinches—not visibly, but somewhere inside, where the words stick and scrape. Lyall almost never says things like that aloud. Not like that. Not with that kind of weight. Lyall is stoic, emotionally unavailable, and allergic to sharing. It’s one of the few things he and his son have in common.
“I already lost her,” he says again. “I’m not doing this with you. I am not — at a curb one day and watching you die because you — — stubborn, or too proud, or too fucking — — —hearing aids.”
“It’s not pride,” Remus says. He’s barely getting the gist of what’s happening.
“Then what is it?” Lyall snaps, voice rising again. Remus can just barely make a lot of it out, which means he is yelling, probably bordering on screaming. “You don’t like how they feel? You don’t like how they sound? They’re — — — uncomfortable, Remus. They’re — — — better than nothing.”
Remus looks away. “Sometimes they’re not better than nothing.”
There’s a beat of silence. A few cans of BB’s food lies scattered at their feet. A receipt flutters down the sidewalk like a ghost.
“You scared the hell — — —,” Lyall says. He pounds on his sternum, coughing. “I thought—I thought I was — — — — son die. And I couldn’t—I couldn’t do it again. I can’t.”
He stops. Presses a hand to his mouth. Turns away, just slightly, like he needs to shield something of himself.
The guilt rises in Remus like a tide.
He hates the hearing aids. Hates how they sit on his ears like little claws, hates the static, the constant hum, the whine of wind that gets trapped inside and makes him dizzy. Hates the way they remind him of everything he can’t do, can’t hear, can’t alter. Hates that the world isn’t built for people like him. Hates that his father won’t meet him halfway. Hates that they barely help. Hates not knowing if they would’ve prevented this almost-incident at all.
But he also hates this. The look on his father’s face. The grief that never really left either of them, not since Hope died, and especially not today. It rots like a dead animal between them.
“I’m sorry. I’ll wear them. I promise,” he says, swatting metaphorical flies.
It doesn’t feel like enough. But it’s what he has.
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A week later, and the almost-accident is no longer fresh, but it clings to his worry when he walks to and from work. Part of him wonders if he should finally bite the bullet and get a car. The other part of him puts on his hearing aids and looks both ways before crossing. He still has the inkling that the hearing aids aren’t going to prevent something like what had almost happened, but the look on his father’s face is plaguing him.
That, and almost getting run over by a car gave him a real scare.
Remus had continued to ponder the star-shaped list and its maker throughout that week as a welcome distraction. He doesn’t even archive the list right away—he continues running his fingers over the crease in the corner of the sticky note, thumbing the indentations of the scratchy capital letters.
It’s during his Saturday closing shift that he dreams up a pretty girl, dark-haired and wickedly beautiful, an equally dark-haired, adorable daughter at her side, rough-and-tumble and covered in hot pink Barbie Band-Aids. Dream girl's got a paint smear on one cheek, beautifully bright red, and a paintbrush holding up her tumble of hair. Behind each ear is a hearing aid, and maybe they’re customized or decorated. She’s artistic, after all.
Or maybe she’s much like him, and she isn’t wearing them at all. Maybe she has tiny piercings glittering her ears. Maybe she’s signing with capable, scuffed hands. Maybe she has a tan line where a wedding ring once was.
She’s got a twinkle in her eye, despite something she might have gone through. Remus is a sucker for blue eyes, so she has those, too. And when she looks at him, in his mind’s eye, she’s smiling. She’s holding out a hand.
He’s inventing a future he will not have for the remainder of the day. And it’s something within that which spurs Remus to text Peter.
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Peter Pettigrew is Remus's only friend. Well, unless you count Peter’s boyfriend. Then, he has two friends.
He had met Peter and, subsequently, Gilderoy, during one of the last Deaf events he’d ever been to. He’d met others, of course, but all of them had fallen away during his stint as a hermit.
He can no longer remember exactly what the event had been for, but it was some sort of jumble of art show meets craft fair meets poetry reading, meets coffee social. Remus's mother had encouraged his appearance, of course. Hope had to drop him off herself so she could ensure he actually went at all. Now that she was gone, he couldn’t help but be grateful. How lonely would he be without the very inconsistent friendship of the couple?
There’s a theatrical, perfectly-timed series of knocks on the door, followed by the sound of the lock clicking open. It’s far off and hard to make out, but Remus hears it nonetheless. It’s funny to knock when you can’t hear it, but it makes Remus grin.
Peter gives the courtesy of flipping the light switch to alert him, but Gilderoy has already led through the threshold, giving a flamboyant little flapping of his hand before slinking into the kitchen, surely in search of a bottle of wine. Remus rolls his eyes because it is mere seconds before he’s located one and brought it back out, looking very pleased with himself.
Gilderoy Lockhart is one of the loudest, most outgoing people Remus knows, despite being quite profoundly deaf. He communicates like a firework: vibrant, unignorable, always just on the edge of too much. He’s insufferable and lovable in equal measure, the kind of person you can’t help but talk about afterward, whether fondly or with your teeth gritted. His self-esteem is as tall as a mountain, and his ego could flood a continent.
He signs with drama. He moves with purpose. His expressions are exaggerated to the point of theatricality, and everything he does feels like a performance—even his silences. He preens, he poses, he flips his hair like it’s written into a script.
He is full of himself to an extent that Remus finds to be unrealistic (he has his own inklings that perhaps it is, to some extent, a bit of an act).
Peter Pettigrew, on the other hand, is one of the easiest, most unassuming people Remus has ever met—and, somehow, one of the most surprising. He doesn’t demand attention the way Gilderoy does; he slips into a room like a thought you’re just starting to have. Where Gilderoy gleams, Peter watches. He speaks gently, when he speaks at all, but his words land with precision—wry, clever, just sharp enough. He’s funny, he knows what lines to toe.
He keeps things to himself—not out of secrecy, but intention. There’s something careful about him, something practiced. He doesn’t hide, but he doesn't offer, either. Which makes the things he does share feel like gifts. Thoughtful, rare, a little startling.
Remus always found it bizarre—hilarious, even—that Peter is dating Gilderoy Lockhart. Gilderoy, with his drama and dazzle and unapologetic flair. Gilderoy, who flirts like it’s a sport, and gossips like it’s his personal gospel.
It is in stark contrast to Peter, who blushes easily and jokes dryly and listens more than he speaks.
And the wildest part isn’t even that he’s dating Gilderoy—it’s that Peter had learned an entire language for him. Peter hadn’t grown up signing. He was completely hearing, wasn’t CODA, wasn’t raised in the community, wasn’t an interpreter. He’d picked up the whole damn thing for Gilderoy.
Finding that out had nearly made Remus sigh with the dreamy, sweet weight of it.
Remus himself had dated a hearing girl once, for years, even. But Tonks was a wildcard, loud and proud of herself, and not much like Peter at all. And Remus had loved her anyway, hadn’t he? And she loved him too. But sometimes, circumstance outweighs love. The circumstance in question? Having a hard-of-hearing boyfriend who was steadily becoming more and more hard-of-hearing, and an essential tremor that put you off from learning to sign.
After their breakup, Remus hadn’t looked for anything else. And this—the being single, the not looking, when surrounded by the ridiculous coupling of Gilderoy and Peter—was a bit difficult.
Not because he wanted what they had. God, no. They were obnoxious, half of the time. PDA-fuelled, grossly in love, with every love language known to man swathing their interactions. Gilderoy had once sign-serenaded Peter in full costume during a night out, and Peter had taken it with a sort of horrified patience that could only come from being genuinely in love. It was mortifying.
But it wasn’t the theatrics that made Remus ache. It was the fact that Peter understood Gilderoy, and, equal and opposite, Gilderoy understood Peter. Peter, who didn’t grow up signing, who didn’t even have to learn. Who wasn’t part of the community and didn’t pretend to be. Who could’ve gotten away with relying on lip-reading, text, spoken English—but didn’t.
Remus just wanted ease. Someone who wouldn’t make him perform bilingual acrobatics just to be heard. Someone who wouldn’t sigh when he didn’t catch the joke the first time, or treat accessibility like a chore.
So he didn’t look. Because what was the point? Communication was everything. And until someone came along who made it feel as easy as Peter did with Gilderoy—even when Gilderoy was being insufferable—Remus didn’t see the use.
Despite the needling thing that has arrived when he spots the two men, he grins, murmuring, “Come on in.”
“Remus!” Peter cries enthusiastically, a too-bright grin squishing his round cheeks. 'I'll sign with you,’ he signs immediately, but Remus waves him off.
“Usually, I’d be all for it, but…” He points to his ears. “Back on the hearing aids for now. Trying to get used to talking again.”
Peter purses his lips in annoyance, looking suspiciously toward Remus. He continues to sign as he speaks for Gilderoy’s sake, despite his boyfriend not paying any attention, using his teeth to pull off the metal foil of the bottle of wine he’d procured. “Your boss being an asshole again?”
Remus waves his hand in a so-so motion. He doesn’t want to tell Peter about the car, because Peter will pity him. He doesn’t want Gilderoy to know, because he doesn’t want that back-of-the-mind paranoia to plague him, too. Although Gilderoy is usually so unbothered, Remus doubts he’d be shaken by it.
Peter narrows his eyes further, and Remus forces a laugh. “It’s fine. I’ve just been having to, ah, do more lip reading than I’d like. Anyways,” Remus signs along for Gilderoy’s sake. “I’ve got the new Glee episode on for Gilderoy on the DVR. I’m not sure if he likes it, but…”
Gilderoy gives a triumphant ‘hmph’, and signs ‘Oh, thank god! I need to know what happens with Kurt and Blaine!'
‘Gilderoy,’ Remus signs, using the familiar sign name—the sign for gold with an extra flourish at its start, ‘You don't think it's a little ironic that Glee is your favorite show?'
Gilderoy scoffs a haughty breath, raising his nose, ‘Why?’
‘Because the show is all about singing?’ Remus raises both eyebrows high to show his disbelief.
‘They dance, too!’ Peter responds sheepishly to his boyfriend’s defense. “To be fair,” he adds. Gilderoy beams, throwing himself up at Peter. Peter pats his curls, trying not to look smitten and failing miserably.
When Gilderoy pulls away, he is already gesturing to the unwrapped bottle on the counter. ‘Grab us a few glasses, will you?'
Remus scoffs, signing as he speaks, “You were just in there, you couldn’t have grabbed them yourself?”
Gilderoy shrugs, raising his nose, and adds with bright eyes, ‘Oh! Go make some popcorn, too.’
“You heard the man,” Peter nods sagely.
“Yes, you hear me,” Gilderoy says aloud, scrunching his face. Gilderoy’s speech has this rolling, deliberate cadence to it, rather unpracticed. Peter sighs happily at it, and Remus can’t help but think that his friend is absolutely gone for this cartoon character of a man.
Once they’re settled with a big bowl of popcorn and three mismatched mugs for the wine (which Gilderoy predictably rolls his eyes at), they play the episode. Remus and Peter spend it talking intermittently, catching up, while Gilderoy swoons over the story unfolding in front of him.
As the episode continues to play out, Remus sighs, debating what turn to take in the conversation to formulate the question he’s got in the back of his throat. Something between a confession and a plea for some sense. It’s probably what his subconscious wanted when contacting Peter, anyway.
Peter glances sideways at him, reading the shift. “What.”
“I’m about to sound insane,” Remus warns.
Peter gestures, “Go on.”
Remus swirls his wine. “Like, really insane.”
Peter gestures again, encouraging.
“I’ve developed... a fixation.”
Peter grins. “On?”
“A woman,” Remus says, deadpan. Then, quickly, “Sort of. I don’t know. Not really.”
Peter just waits.
“She’s not real. I mean, she probably is. But I don’t know her.” Remus shakes his head, realizing he sounds absolutely crazy. “I found her grocery list.”
That gets a real pause.
“...What?”
“At work. In the cart return. I keep them, you know. I collect them, grocery lists.”
“Sure. As one does.”
“It’s my latest archival project—” Remus pulls the sticky note from his wallet—creased and handled, like it’s been taken out a dozen times (because it has been). “I found it last week.”
Peter takes it and reads aloud. “Prozac at pharmacy, kid hair detangler, 312 batteries—highlighted, interesting—Barbie band-aids, coffee filters….”
He looks up, eyebrow raised. “And…?”
“Right?” Remus snatches it back, defensive. “I can’t stop thinking about her.”
“So you have met her?” Peter asks incredulously.
“Well, no,” Remus says sheepishly. “But I, just. I’ve been thinking about—well, I don’t know. Her? Who she might be? She’s clearly got a kid. Maybe a little girl who insists on Barbie band-aids or won’t let her hair be brushed without detangler. She paints—paints, not just sketches or doodles, she uses gamsol—it’s like, turpentine kind of—”
“Did you have to Google that?” Peter interjects, blinking rapidly. Remus pays it no mind.
“And she—Peter, she needs to pick up 312’s.”
Peter just stares blankly.
“Hearing aid batteries?” Remus supplies. “The same kind I use?” Peter doesn’t instantly respond, so he keeps going, too far in to stop. “I made up this whole version of her in my head. I don’t know why—I just feel like she’s…that we’re…I don’t know! Oh, and see? Her handwriting’s tidy but kind of forceful, you know?”
Peter looks at him quietly for a second. Then: “You okay? You are talking like a crazy person.”
“I’m fine.” Remus sinks back into the couch. “Just obsessed with a stranger based on her list of errands. Perfectly normal behaviour.”
“You could at least try to meet people who are actually real.”
“I did!” he gestures wildly. “You’re here.”
“I meant romantically. I’m not your type,” Peter points out, then nudges Gilderoy, signing with speech again. “And you’re not mine. I’m dating someone who thinks Blaine Anderson is a religious experience.”
‘He is!’ Gilderoy signs from the other end of the couch, barely sparing to look away from the TV. Remus looks at him, then gapes. He’s got silent tears streaming down his cheeks.
‘Are you crying?’ Remus signs, facial expression simply incredulous. He can’t hear the TV well, but the lyrics on screen show that Kurt is singing Blackbird by the Beatles. He looks back at Gilderoy, shaking his head in disbelief. 'Why are you crying?’
'Look at Blaine!’ he scrubs at his eyes.
Blaine is on screen, looking at Kurt just as smitten as Peter is looking at Gilderoy here on Remus's couch.
˚☽˚｡⋆𓃦 ˚☽˚｡⋆
“Harry, no! Nonono!” A man gasps. It’s loud enough and close enough that it makes Remus jolt. A shuffle ensues, and Remus, who is front-facing cans of Campbell's soup, turns minutely to see what the fuss is about.
The man yelling has long, wavy hair as dark as the night sky, and he’s gesticulating in frustration at a young boy who's got a cord of some sort sticking from one hand, preparing to chuck whatever it is across aisle 6.
The boy is small, wearing cargo shorts and a Spiderman shirt with a blue stain on the front. He has deep, olive-toned skin, and his hair is curly—half-flattened (from a nap, most likely), but still fluffy and glossy. And he is completely covered in pink and purple Band-Aids on his face, fingers, and knees.
His father doesn’t share his likeness in the slightest, but with the exasperated tone, it’s only obvious. He’s pale, almost translucent, with the only similar feature being his long tangle of black wavy hair. He’s wrapped up in a swarm of gaudy, silver jewelry. Tattoos cover nearly every available piece of skin, including his throat, even his hands. He’s got something floral peeking out from behind the hair at his temple, too.
And, oh.
He has a brush of red paint on his jeans.
It takes Remus some time of gawking—God, he’s very scary looking, isn’t he?—before he realizes he’s…
Oh.
‘—give me that,’ the man signs sloppily. The young boy stomps a foot petulantly, and drops—oh—two hearing aids in the man’s waiting hand and signs in response. He’s scowling as he does it. ‘Why don't you want to wear them?’ he tilts his head in question, brows drawn in.
‘Overwhelmed.’
‘What sign is that? I don't know it,’ the man signs back after shoving the hearing aids loose in his pocket of all places.
‘Too much is happening around me, the noise—’ The boy mimes a stabbing motion into his ears, wincing.
‘Now what's that sign?’ He asks again, and mimics the same thing the boy had—the stabbing motion. He seems unaware that it's a constructed action, not an actual sign. ‘A-N-N-O-Y-I-N-G?’ He fingerspells in question, eyebrows raised. His hand spelling isn’t slow, but Remus can tell that he wasn’t raised on ASL, nor is he fluent. The messy-haired boy narrows his eyes. His lower lip wobbles.
‘Overwhelmed,’ he signs again, and his cheeks are puffed out.
The man looks absolutely stressed as he tries again. ‘Worried? Angry?'
‘Overwhelmed,’ the boy signs again, and the man throws his hands up, exasperated. Oh, and now his son is wailing, quite upset with his father not understanding him. It makes perfect sense to Remus. He’d grown up quite frustrated with the language barrier between him and his own father.
That mere thought is what spurs Remus, for once, to take a risk.
He approaches where the man is trying to console the boy, rubbing his back and murmuring to him, swaying them back and forth on the dirty floor of the supermarket.
“He’s overwhelmed,” Remus says, trying to get rid of the scratchy quality from his voice. Tries to make sure he enunciates properly. The dark-haired man jumps about a foot in the air, swiveling on his knee. When he sees Remus, he hesitates, but this little scowl comes upon his face, too. Nearly identical to his son’s from earlier.
“Just needs a little quiet time,” He continues, and the man lets out a huff. It’s half-scoff, half-snort.
“Look. I don’t need you — — how to parent my kid. He’s — — a hard day, and—”
Remus shakes his hands and head, trying to stop the man in his tracks. That’s absolutely not what he’s meant to do. But despite his surely stricken expression, the other man continues, becoming louder.
“—this is our last errand — — —. He just gets like this. And, you know what? Fuck off! You’re probably — — — — — anyway, and—”
“No, I—”
“Look, dude, I get it. I don’t look like a normal parent. I mean, I’m not even really one. It’s my first time—”
“Please, I was just trying to—” Remus starts again.
“—and I just got custody of him not that long ago, and we are fucking trying, alright? Also, he’s deaf, for Christ’s sake. That’s why he’s—”
The sound of the world drops away, and Remus is extending both of his hands. On the top of each palm is a hearing aid. The other man’s mouth moves for a few more words, but Remus isn’t sure what he’s saying—he’s always been rather bad at lipreading. When his pale-colored eyes stumble over his outstretched hands, his face grows flushed. Finally, mercifully, he shuts up.
He seems to be sputtering out apologies as Remus slips the hearing aids back on. He doesn’t pick up the conversation with speech. Instead, Remus lifts his hands and signs.
‘You're asking what he's signing? He's saying he's overwhelmed.’ Remus uses the same sign the boy had, then spells it out for his father, ‘O-V-E-R-W-H-E-L-M-E-D. The store is loud, and his hearing aids are making it hard to manage.'
“I, uh, I’m…what…?” He says quickly, adjusting the boy in his lap.
“He was signing that he is overwhelmed,” Remus says, then signs the word again. ‘Overwhelmed.’
He continues signing as he speaks. ‘The grocery store is loud, and his hearing aids probably make it worse.’
“Well they’re…No, yeah. Thank you. Again, I’m sorry for yelling,” the man continues, even more unbelievably flushed with his embarrassment. “I—It’s just been tough learning — — and...”
Remus furrows a brow, losing some of the man’s words to a loud noise nearby, and looks to the boy in his lap, who is staring up at him, no longer crying. He’s got to be elementary school-aged, possibly 7 or 8 years old. Had it taken his father this long to learn sign? Does his mother know, at least? His dad had said he just got custody. Whatever could that mean? Perhaps his mom had raised him until now, and something had happened to her? Remus's heart clenches at the thought. Losing your mother and being stuck with some…uninvolved hearing parent sounds like his own personal nightmare.
While the boy’s father is busy groveling and continually apologizing, the boy himself signs to him, brows raised, ‘Are you Deaf?’
He smiles unsurely. ‘I'm hard of hearing, but yes, Deaf. I'm like you—I use hearing aids. My name is R-E-M-U-S. What's your name?'
The boy is wide-eyed. His eyes are flecked green and brown behind massive, round glasses. He signs back hurriedly, seeming impossibly excited, ‘My name is H-A-R-R-Y. I don't get to sign with Deaf people a lot. My sign name is—’ Harry moves his fingers into the H-handshape, and gestures a lightning bolt in front of his forehead, mimicking the scar that lies there. ‘Do you have a sign name? How did you become deaf? I was born deaf, were you? You're really tall! You have a scar like me!'
“I’m sorry, you don’t have to—” His father starts, but now, Harry is standing tall, and Remus is happily signing back to him. They studiously ignore his dad entirely. Well, Remus studiously ignores him. He isn’t sure how much Harry can hear without his hearing aids on, and his back is to him.
‘Yeah, my sign name is—’ Remus forms his hand into the R-handshape, then mimes the sign for the moon. ‘I wasn't born deaf, not really.’
Remus shifts to look at Harry’s father again, who is shifting awkwardly from foot to foot, obviously not easily following most of their conversation.
“I didn’t mean to bother you,” Remus says. And it’s a little bit fun, he realizes. Because he knows the other man feels terrible, and he knows he didn’t actually do anything wrong. He’s had a social interaction and came out unscathed, hasn’t he?
“No, you…You didn’t, I—”
“I should get back to work,” Remus interrupts politely, smiling.
As he turns, the man calls out, “Wait!”
Remus swivels back around, blinking, and the man takes a few long strides. Now that they’re standing this close to one another, Remus realizes how short he is. Despite looking very tough from afar, he’s a bit bumbling and little up close.
“What is this sign?” He asks and mimics Harry’s stabbing motion near his ears. Remus sighs.
“It’s not a sign for anything.”
“Wh…Not a sign for anything?” He looks perplexed, and Remus's sigh is even louder, now. More annoyed.
“It’s constructed action. He was showing you that the noise is really hurting his ears. I guess you could say it’s like, piercing or painfully loud noise. But it’s not an actual recognized sign.”
“Right,” he nods eagerly. “Thank you. I…really appreciate it.”
He nods, averting his gaze. The other man looks so earnest, but it is truly embarrassing to Remus how little he knows for his own son. It’s putting a bad taste in his mouth.
“I should be getting going,” Remus says, and steps aside to sign to Harry. ‘Bye Harry! Nice chatting with you.’ He turns back around and tries to ignore the lump in his throat as he walks stiffly away.
The rest of his shift, although much like any other shift before the interaction, is exceptionally cold and sad.
He thinks of that now-shattered image of the pretty girl and her soft, capable signing. In her place is that tattooed man, hardly competent with communicating with his own son.