Chapter Text
The coffee shop was quiet as Remus entered, the earliest of morning commuters either silent or muttering sleepily to the people who shared their table.
Remus stifled a yawn and made his way to the back of the café, pushing open the swinging doors gently to let himself into the small room for employees. He walked over to his locker, unlocking it, grabbing the beige apron inside and quickly shoving it over his head, fastening it with a loop.
He sighed again and returned to the main area, slipping behind the counter and mumbling a sluggish, “Morning,” to the ginger haired girl stood a few metres away, occupied with making a latte.
“Hi Rem, tired?”
“Mmhmm,” he managed to respond, eyes still half-closed, “How’re you Lil?”
Lily smiled, drizzling milk into the mug, “You need to start going to bed earlier Remus Lupin, you’ll be sleeping on the job at this rate.”
Remus shrugged and moved to take the new costumer’s order, “Got homework.”
Remus’ shift passed in a dull blur, the routine of order, prepare, “have a nice day” ingrained into his skull as he moved monotonously through the actions. He worked his way through the twenty seventh nutmeg cappuccino in three hours (he kept track to try not to lose his mind) and looked up at the clock - it was fast approaching 9, meaning; 2 minutes till he could leave.
Lily had left half an hour ago - replaced by Sev, the shift supervisor. Remus wasn’t keen on him, greasy haired and in desperate need of a shower in his opinion. He very much disliked that unpleasant voice bossing him around (even though Remus was only 2 months younger than him), but he wasn’t horrific. It could have been worse, Remus reminded himself.
He served the cappuccino with a smile that was a near-grimace and started counting down the seconds in his head. 10, 9, 8, 7-
The door swung open and fast footsteps approached him, accompanied by heavy breathing and, “Hi, can I have a pumpkin spice latte please?” Remus nearly snapped. It took a considerable effort not to spin around from staring determinedly at the clock to wring the neck of whoever the voice belonged to on the other side of the counter. He inhaled deeply and turned, putting on a smile and a fake and very unconvincing positive voice.
“Of course.”
Holy shit.
The man in front of him was, to put it lightly, really fucking attractive. Shoulder length black hair in a half up half down, storm like grey-blue eyes and- Remus was staring.
“Anything else?” he replied in as calm a tone as he could manage, though, thankfully, he hadn’t seemed to notice and Remus could’ve sworn that his cheeks had become just the tiniest bit more flushed than they had been from the man’s ‘jog’.
“No thanks, that’ll do,” long-hair-guy (as Remus had internally coined him) smiled slightly, still trying to control his breathing and Remus nodded.
“What’s the name on it?”
“Sirius,” Sirius flashed him a smile, adding, “Like the star.”
Remus barely registered the statement over the pounding in his ears but managed to reply, “Do you want it to go?”
“Yes, please.”
“It’ll be ready for you in a few minutes.”
Remus steamed the milk, pumped a bit of the sickly sweet pumpkin spice syrup into the bottom of a takeaway cup, poured the espresso shot in, following it with the milk, and finally piped a (generous) amount of whipped cream on top, dusting it off with some ground cinnamon.
He cursed quietly, earning him an unimpressed look from Sev, upon realising that he hadn’t written the name on. Grabbing a pen, he hesitated, “Wait, Sev, how do you spell, um, Sirius?”
“Serious?”
“Sirius? Like the star?”
Snape seemed done with the conversation, “Don’t know, don’t care Lupin. Figure it out.”
“Great,” Remus muttered.
“Pumpkin spice latte for Sirius!” Remus called, scanning the room as he wiped his hands on his apron. He reached into the pot stood by the cleared area of the counter where drinks were served, plucking a marron paper straw from the tin, and then, after anticipating the struggle Sirius would have to endure with a soggy straw, picked up another one.
He looked up and met those atlantic eyes which had approached extremely quickly, sucking in an inhale quickly and handing the clear plastic cup complete with insanely high sugar levels and a promise of future heart problems to the man in front of him in silence. Sirius didn’t break the silence or eye contact for a long moment, taking the drink from him with a nod and finally spinning on the heel of his doc martens and basically running off.
The ding of the bell on the doors dragged Remus from his daze and Sev’s grating voice behind him slunk into his eardrums, “Your shift’s over Lupin, see you tomorrow.”
Sirius ran through the campus, mind still very much focused on that gorgeous barista and also on not spilling the iced latte he was passing from hand to hand in an attempt to avoid what felt like frostbite.
He mentally prepared himself and then plunged one hand into the small side pocket in his jacket - surrendering his left hand to the freezing cup - and grabbed his map. Sirius (for the third time that day) thanked his lucky stars that he had James - little red scribbles, which had been his saviours all month, pointed out various things on the map and guided him to the art block, up two flights of stairs and to the lecture hall.
He still didn’t know where the room was, even a whole month into his second year - he’d been in that same hall for a whole year and then suddenly, second year had started, and everything had changed. Sirius huffed as he approached the entrance, already imagining the professor's morning speech, droning on about how art fills the world with magic, which had inspired him the first two times he had heard it, but by the third and now the three hundred and something-th time, the magic had worn off - he wasn't quite late enough to have missed it - and slipped inside.
Sirius tried as best he could not to draw attention to himself as he slumped into a chair, getting his notebook out. After 2 hours (far too long in Sirius’ opinion), Sirius had learned nothing, had listened to nothing and had drawn about 100 sketches of that unnamed barista from ‘The Place to Bean’ - the unapologetically cringey coffee shop conveniently placed on campus that made amazing pumpkin spice lattes with, Sirius assumed, an ungodly amount of sugar.
His new notebook was adorned with small smiles which curved upwards into pretty moon-like dimples, constellations of freckles which fell over graphite cheeks, a slightly stained apron which covered a cosy knitted jumper, the crooked name tag which - if Sirius had only properly inspected it - would reveal a new part of the gorgeous stranger and those eyes.
Sirius took the final sip of the drink as he finished another, what should have been hazel, but was instead carefully shaded with grey tones, beautiful eye. He looked into the plastic cup, checking no corners were left with any remnants of coffee, and saw through it, noticing something drawn on the other side where a name would usually be.
In scrawled black ink, messily drawn was a slightly smudged star with ‘Like the…’ written in front of it.