They are not stars.
Sirius is obsessed with them. Muggle celebrities, that is. He likes Mick Jagger and David Bowie, the way they dance, the way that if Bowie does it, if Madonna does it – well, that's okay. That's alright. He likes muggle music more than magical because he feels it's more honest. Because wizard celebrities never fall out of taxis stoned out of their minds, or turn up on the front page of a magazine hung over and off their tits on heroin. Wizard celebrities have hangover potions and spells that make them look not a day over thirty when they're pushing sixty-five.
At fifteen he's not stupid, but he wants track-marks. Tattoos. He wants scars and bruises, his long hair in a low ponytail that people are always threatening to part him from. He's so-so on Molly Ringwald; he likes the way Judd Nelson pumps his fist in The Breakfast Club because at first he didn't get it, and now he does. (Even though Americans kind of make him uncomfortable) He could take or leave Micheal Jackson, (apart from the epaulets) but The Smiths, Morrissey; The Clash, stick in his head to the point of madness.
Remus was almost pitying in his misunderstanding; he would smile wryly when Sirius lay on his bed humming the tune to This Charming Man with his knees bent up, staring at the canopy above him, curtains pulled over. He tutted when Sirius dragged the record player into the dormitory, grinning.
"It won't work, Pads. Haven't you read Hogwarts: A History?" Sirius snorts in response, dragging a cardboard box behind him, stuffed to the brim with vinyl, the record player hefted in his grip – a large, smooth, brown box with a black arm and a little black, plastic, dusty turntable.
"Got it off Weasley, didn't I?" He smiled down at it proudly, almost tripping over himself as he dragged the box, pushing it with his toes. "Why wouldn't it work?"
"Well, first of all, we've no power sockets."
"Power what?" Sirius said blankly, stopping in the middle of the room, foot lifted out of the box so he didn't stand on the records. "You're talking rubbish. I'll get it working."
Remus laughed, but shrugged. "If anyone will, you will, I suppose." He walked over. "Why so interested in muggle music anyway? I thought you were a Banshees fan?"
Sirius shrugs, and drops the record player (with reverence) onto his bed. It bounces. He crouches next to the box with the records in; slides it to him, and paws through it. Remus stands behind him, leaning over the box, hands in pockets. He makes a pleased noise. "The Smiths." Sirius can hear the smile in his voice. "Cool." He laughs. "I won't catch you swinging gladioli around, will I?"
"What?" Sirius looks at him "You're making fun of me. No, Moons. No flowers." Remus moves back, pats him awkwardly on the shoulder.
"Well. Good." He coughs. "Good luck. I've got to get to arithmancy."
Sirius nods. He waves him off, hears Remus go, but watches the door shut behind him. Shaking his head, he kneads his eye sockets with the heels of his palms. He sits on the floor for a bit. Shaken, pulling himself back together, he pulls the record player off his bed, power cord hanging like a dead tail, and sets about trying to find out how it works.
xxx
Some weeks later, Remus finds him sitting in the middle of the dormitory, surrounded by wires and plastic shrapnel, idly gnawing on the Bankrobber single by The Clash.
"Any luck?" he crouches behind Sirius, who jumps.
"Christ, Moons. Give a bloke some warning."
"Sorry. I wasn't aware that you were deaf – I've been here at least twenty minutes or so."
Sirius looks up, puzzled. "You have?" He shakes his head. "I'm getting somewhere. It works by tracing these grooves in the record, see?" he offers Remus the vaguely damp record, pointing at the tiny lines on its surface. Remus declines to hold it, but nods. "and the vibrations are what makes the sound." Remus nods again, following. "So, really, I don't need any of this –" he gestures at the inside of the record player. "I just need a needle, and the arm, and some way to make it turn. And some speakers."
"So what're you going to do?" Remus asks, interested. Sirius is clearly frazzled and half-mad (he's not sure he's seen the other boy sleep in the dormitory for a while), but nonetheless Remus is impressed by his progress.
Sirius, though, throws his hands in the air. "I don't know." He slumps where he's sitting. Remus shifts to sit beside him, and picks up the record-player's arm, divested of its seat on top of the player.
"Well, I suppose if you put this back on the turntable, you could make it spin with magic. And then you could just use an amplification spell to make sure you could hear it."
"But how could I get the speed right?"
Remus leans over him, takes the half-chewed record and muses at it. "I suppose you could ask someone from muggle studies. No doubt they're always tinkering with things like this."
Sirius nods. He looks at Remus. "Okay. Yeah. I can do that." He nods to himself. "Yeah. Okay." He puts his hands over Remus' to take the record away, and nearly drops it. "Whoops." He laughs. "Okay. I'll go ask – who's the head professor for muggle studies?"
Remus raises an eyebrow. "Don't you take muggle studies?"
"Well. Yes, but I've never actually been."
"Of course you haven't." Remus puts a hand over his face, laughing. "I don't know who it is. You'll have to find out for yourself."
Sirius pushes himself up from the floor with one hand, the Clash record in his mouth and its sleeve under his arm. He makes a harried, frantic picture, clothes rumpled and probably not cleaned for a good week. His hair is everywhere. Remus, watching him, smiles. Sirius looks down at him.
"What?"
"Nothing."
Sirius' lip curls, disgruntled, but he shrugs. "Okay." And he runs out of the dormitory. Remus watches him go, laughing to himself.
xxx
"Have you seen Padfoot?" Remus leans over James to ask Peter in the middle of Herbology. Sirius hasn't been in classes for almost two weeks, and Remus always goes to bed before he appears, and wakes up after he has gone. James waves a hand between them, loath to be left out.
"He's probably with Michelle Trenchon, I saw them getting pretty cosy over breakfast yesterday morning."
Remus looks at him, for a moment almost confident that this is a lie, because things had been different lately, and he thought – but it doesn't matter what he thought. James quirks him a grin.
"What've you got your knickers in a twist for? I'm sure he's fine."
"Of course he is." Remus sputters, embarrassed, trying not to look like a worrywart (again). "He can look after himself."
xxx
Sirius throws himself into the common room from upstairs fifteen days and twelve hours after Remus last saw him, his face red, grey eyes wide and frantic with delight. He grabs Remus by the scruff of the neck and pulls him upstairs after him. Remus trips upstairs, falling over his long, gangly legs and awkwardly large feet. "What are you-" Sirius makes a 'ssshh!' noise.
"I've finished it. It works!"
Remus is silent for a moment, as he runs with Sirius to the door of the dormitory, twisting himself out of Sirius' grip. "Really?"
Sirius nods up at him, height difference all too evident in this tiny space. He coughs. "Come on, then."
Remus nods and opens the door, and there, in the centre of the floor, still surrounded by bits of plastic but now spellbooks and pieces of rubber and more records, is the record player – but now it's a small, blue, rectangular box, the table and arm attached to the top, neat as anything. Sirius spreads his arms wide. "Well?"
"It's – does it work?"
"Of course it works!" Sirius picks it up, carefully, and sets it on the bedside table, shoving off piles of parchment to make way for it. He picks The Boy with the Thorn in His Side and puts on its b-side, Asleep. Morrissey whispers under the needle, long and loud, when Sirius turns the arm and sets it going, tapping it with his wand and muttering. Remus, despite himself, is seriously impressed.
"I like it."
"You like it? I fucking love it."
"So this is what you've been doing? James said you were messing around with Michelle."
Sirius grins, turning away from the player. "Only a bit."
Remus tries a smile but can't quite get past queasy. Sirius laughs. "I'm joking. She's a mate. She was the one who prettied it up, you know? She helped me get it to play at different speeds. Never did work out who my professor was." The werewolf joins him by the record player, in front of the window.
"You might be the only Hogwarts student with a record player."
"I definitely am." Sirius grins. "Isn't this exciting?"
Remus hums. "You know, it really is."
Xxx
But the music haunts his dreams, dogs his senses. He hears What Difference Does it Make? And London Calling in his dreams, soft and low, at night. He hears Sirius singing, scratchy, and it burns his sleep alive. He can't concentrate.
One night, Sirius is gone. And Remus tries not to poke around but he has to work out how the record player works – just wants to listen to one album, The Man Who Sold the World, an older one, something quiet and mystical, something he likes; or The White Album, so he can listen to Julia. He just wants to sit on the window, in the silence, and smoke, with the image of Bowie in his dress on the record sleeve, and just - not think anymore.
He takes the record and fits it to the player, putting Rotting Vegetables by The Dead Kennedys in its sleeve, replacing it with The White Album, the one he could find. He doesn't know how to set it going, exactly, but he moves the arm over like he saw Sirius do, and he taps it with his wand experimentally. The record spins, but too slow, and Lennon's voice over the recording comes out slow, like it is wading through water. It's funny – Remus has no heart to change it, doesn't want to change it, and he lights the cigarette anyway and sits in the cold air from the window, eyeing Sirius' empty bed, feet on the bedside table, bare next to the record player. Lennon warbles; oooocean child… calllss …me. Remus laughs at his easy drawl, the way it has ruined the song in the best way. He sings along, softly. When Sirius comes in he hardly notices – his shaggy head stumbles through the door; he checks behind him before he looks up and sees the werewolf at the window, blowing smoke over a crescent moon. He stares, then remembers himself, and walks over.
"You got it working?" He touches the blue box with the flat of his hand, eyes fixed on Remus'.
"Not quite." Remus smiles around the cigarette. Sirius looks down at the record player, at where the vinyl spins, at where his hand is. He grins, head still down. Remus, moving his feet, conscious of them near to Sirius' hands, blows smoke out the window. "Where've you been?"
Sirius shrugs. "You'll know tomorrow. Want to give you plausible deniability." He's looking at Remus' feet. Remus curls them up, tries to make them smaller, less outstandingly pale in the dark dormitory. Sirius, not really knowing why, places a hand on the wiry bulge of his ankle, his thumb resting against Remus' instep. Remus coughs. He looks up, like he's not sure what's happening. Remus is surprised, most of all, by the fear on his face. Between them, Lennon says slowly, Juuuulia, and Remus, unable to contain himself, snorts out loud. James, two beds away, grunts in his sleep. Sirius takes his hand away suddenly, drops it at his side. "Sorry."
"It's alright." Remus offers him the cigarette and Sirius shrugs and takes a drag, looking down at it. When he gives it back, his hand is shaking. Remus takes it from him but stubs it out, content to look out the window.
Sirius is having an inner conflict which is difficult to describe. He lays his hand, again, on the place where Remus' leg meets his foot; where there is a hollow that, according to Remus' mother when they came to stay, Jesus had a nail hammered in. Sirius always thinks it was a bit unnecessary, all that crucifixion.
He thinks, now or never, but he's still not sure anything will happen. He still doesn't know if he can move at all.
He moves his hand up, lifts it to Remus' knee, and still the werewolf does nothing. He braces himself against the knee, puts one hand on the window frame, and lifts himself so that he is almost in the air, one leg kneeling on a thin slice of the bedside table, pushing the record player; the other knee scraping the windowsill, beside where Remus is sitting. "I don't know what I'm doing." He admits, and Remus laughs, harder than he did at the song.
"Do it." He says, quietly. Sirius looks at him.
"What?"
Remus kisses him, as Lennon says juuulia again, breath like smoke. He coughs gently, tries to stifle it, into Sirius' mouth. They break. "Sorry."
"No. No, I-" they meet again, and Sirius isn't sure who moved first. They collide. Lennon hums, out of tune, wavering. Mm-mm-mm. Sirius can feel all the stars; the stars in the sky, the ones in his box, the one mumbling and groaning at him from the record player. Helplessly, he laughs. Remus pulls away.
"I just-"
"Me too."
Remus barks, laughing, pale. "Alright then. That's – that's that, then." He says, almost to himself, and kisses Sirius with his hand under Sirius' arm, so he doesn't fall.
Their noses brush and Remus is laughing, still, breathing in when they kiss, like he's surprised, even though really, he isn't, and Sirius can feel the stars. All of them.