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Remus cursed under his breath as he dropped his keys on the carpet below him. With shaking hands, he bent down to pick them up and placed them in his left pocket, patting the pocket a few times as if to assure himself that the keys were really there.
As he stood up, he dusted his knees slightly, bracing himself against the wall, careful not to drop the bottle of wine he was holding. His building’s management had recently replaced all the carpets in the hallways and while Remus loved that the management was finally responding to the multiple requests of its tenants, he was finding stray carpet hairs all over his trousers every time he stepped out into the small hallway.
Straightening up, he caught a look at himself in the mirror and nervously flattened his hair. No matter what he did, his hair always looked mussed, and though he had tried to use the products that his best friend, Lily, had left on his small bathroom counter over the weekend when he had finally agreed to go on a blind date with one of her friends from work, his hair refused to do what he wanted it to.
He didn’t know why he was so nervous. It had been a while since he had been on a date, much less had a proper relationship. He had worked himself into a small frenzy that evening while getting dressed.
He had tried on six different shirts. He had put a belt on, taken it off, only to run back to his wardrobe just as he was about to leave to put it back on. He had brushed his teeth as soon as he had gotten home from work, and again when he had forgotten he had done it the first time while he was waiting for the iron to heat up. He had then carefully ironed his pyjamas he had worn the night before without realising, before hurriedly ironing the seventh shirt he had tried on, only to find that the shirt’s care instructions were to iron it inside-out. Completely flustered, he had run out of his flat and almost dropped the wine bottle twice in the short walk to the lift doors at the end of the small hallway on the fourth floor of his building.
He was being an idiot.
Wrinkling his nose at himself and dejectedly accepting that the reflection he saw was as good as it was going to get, he continued walking and stopped in front of the lift. Mercifully, the lift arrived quickly and, turning to face the door once he was inside, Remus closed his eyes and let out a long, slow breath, steadying himself.
He opened his eyes when a voice rang into the empty hallway as the lift doors were closing. “Sorry, could you please hold the...” Remus heard, as he hit the first button on the panel he could see. To his dismay, he had pressed the “close doors” button rather than “open doors”, but he saw a hand grab the door of the lift as it was closing.
The lift door opened and a Remus smiled at the man who lived down the hallway from his small flat. Sirius had moved in the year prior and he and Remus had struck up a small and easy friendship. Remus quite liked his neighbour and, if he was honest with himself, had caught himself transfixed by Sirius’s wide smile a few times while they had spoken over the last few months.
“Remus!” said Sirius, beaming at him.
Remus smiled back as the lift doors closed.
Sirius looked at him for a moment, running his eyes over the bottle of wine in Remus’s hands and grinned. “Hot date?” he asked.
Remus laughed. “If you could call it that,” he said. “My friend set me up with a... oooomph.” His voice was cut off as he was thrown off balance as the lift shuddered and came to a stop. “What the...” he muttered, pressing a few buttons on the panel, but none of them lit up.
He closed his eyes. “Oh, this is not happening,” he said.
+++++
Some time later, both Remus and Sirius were sitting on the small floor of the lift. Remus was in a corner, trying to make himself comfortable against the hard wall of the lift, shifting every few minutes.
Sirius was quite the opposite. He had taken his leather jacket off, revealing a wrinkled white t-shirt underneath. One leg stretched in front of him, the other bent, his head leaning against the wall, eyes closed as he hummed something quietly, he looked the picture of calm.
“Been a while, hasn’t it?” asked Remus, anxiously.
Sirius opened his eyes and raised an eyebrow. “Probably five minutes more than when you asked me last time.” He paused. “Five minutes ago,” he said, grinning.
Remus sighed and laughed a little, a small amount of tension easing from his body. “I know, I know,” he said, rubbing his hand across his eyes. “I’m just late,” he said.
“Ah, yes, Mr Hot Date,” Sirius said. “Is that what the wine is for?” he said, nodding to the bottle.
Remus fingered the label of the wine bottle absentmindedly. “Yes, he was going to cook me dinner,” he said.
“Does Mr Hot Date have a name?” asked Sirius.
“Dav... sorry, no, Daniel. Daniel. Yes. His name is Daniel,” Remus said, slightly flustered.
Sirius raised an eyebrow before an amused smile crept over his mouth. “You mean you don’t know the guy’s name?” he asked, laughing.
Remus rolled his eyes. “I do! It’s just... it was a blind date and...” He narrowed his eyes as Sirius laughed harder. “Yes, yes, I’m pathetic, I know,” he said, smiling a little.
The two sat in silence for a while before Sirius spoke again. “You know, Lupin, I didn’t take you to be so daring,” he said.
Remus looked at him in confusion. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“Well,” said Sirius, grabbing his leather jacket and rolling into a ball that he placed behind his back as he adjusted his position on the floor. Remus tried not to watch the muscles in his forearms flex as he did this. “It’s a first date, you don’t know the guy’s name and you were just going to let the guy cook you dinner? What if he turned out to be a serial killer?”
Remus laughed. “Lily wouldn’t set me up with a serial killer,” he said.
“I don’t trust Lily’s judgement in anyone after she said yes to James”, said Sirius. James Potter was Sirius’s best friend and the two of them had run into both Remus and Lily in the building’s foyer one night. Sirius had later told Remus that James had proclaimed Lily to be the love of his life while James dragged Sirius to the shared laundry of the building that James lived in. In between dramatic (and scarily accurate - Sirius really had his best friend's voice memorised) reenactments of James telling Sirius about why the early hours of Saturday morning were the best time to do laundry, Remus had learnt that James had a foolproof plan to make Lily fall for him. Neither Sirius nor Remus believed that James’s plan would work and Remus had watched, in completely disbelief, when Lily had agreed to go on a date with James two months ago. She had later told Remus that she had done it to simply get James to stop calling and messaging her at all hours of the day and night, but Remus, who had known her for far too long, knew that she liked James more than she cared to admit.
A few months later, Lily was smiling from ear to ear every time Remus saw her, and her happiness had only strengthened her resolve to set Remus up with someone so that he could also be as happy as he was.
Remus opened his mouth to tell Sirius that he thought Lily’s judgement in men was just fine, when the lift shuddered for the second time that night and Remus let out a sigh of relief when he felt the lift hum.
“Thank God,” he muttered, standing up and grimacing as he stretched his long legs out.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Sirius said, still seated on the floor. “I was quiet enjoying our time here. We could have made this lift our new home,” he said grinning. “Maybe we could hire your new serial killer friend as our personal chef.”
Remus laughed, rolled his eyes a little and shook his head.
+++++
The lift doors opened on the ground floor of the building and the two of them stepped out, Sirius leaping to his feet in a graceful gesture that Remus watched in envy. Here he was, in his mid twenties, bones cracking with alarming frequency every time he moved, and someone like Sirius could step out of the lift looking like he had just stepped out of a spa after sitting in a cramped lift for the better part of two hours.
Sirius grinned at Remus. “Well then, are you going to meet Dave-Dan?” he asked, his eyes twinkling.
Remus smiled. “I don’t know, I...” He paused for a moment, looking at the wine bottle and then back at Sirius. Making a split second decision, he opened his mouth. “What are you doing tonight?” he asked, surprising himself with his boldness.
He was never like this. Never. He once had spent eleven minutes in front of a vending machine before making the complex decision to purchase a bottle of water. Most decisions in his life took careful planning and his love life, or lack thereof, was certainly no different.
Who was this person he had become?
“Nothing, I was just going to go back up,” said Sirius, gesturing to the lift, his gaze curious as he watched Remus carefully.
“Well, I do have this bottle of wine,” said Remus. “I don’t want to let it go to waste. Want some company?” he asked.
Again with this boldness. Who was he?
“What if I’m a serial killer?” asked Sirius.
Remus smiled. “I’ll take my chances,” he said.
And, after a moment, the two of them stepped back into the open lift, the doors closing behind them.