Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Note: This is a muggle AU. Just sayin'.

A Glass Of Water And A Cup Of Tea

Prologue

At the age of twenty, Sirius Black can say he has a pretty good life.

Sure, as he thinks this is he slightly bent over a table and cleaning the tea spilled over its glassy surface, politely accepting the excuses and pardons from the two clients that sit on it, and earlier that day he had an unpleasant meeting with his brother, but, stepping back and holding the napkin so it won't drip on him, Sirius is content.

He may be as if with no parents, or brother, or most of his family, in fact, but he still has his cousin Andromeda, and his uncle Alphard, who took him after he left home, gave him a bedroom and a job.

Sirius moves to another table and notes down the order, returning then to the kitchen and dropping the soaked napkin on an already dirty spot.

Sirius has known it since he was eleven and saw the world for the first time for his own eyes, instead of his parents, that he was meant for something different that they are. It took a bit of thinking, a bit of seeing, and a major dose of silliness, laughter and fun from James Potter for him to understand it.

And Sirius is so thankful for it.

Yes, he'd have a glamorous, rich, high class life, filled with fake pleasantries and the exotic sent of gourmet food, with high pinched laughers and the clattering sounds of the silverware over the porcelain plates, and at this point, almost in charge of the always fashionable restaurant to be in, where people entered with pockets full money, and left with almost nothing in their stomachs.

But Sirius doesn't want that, he doesn't want the high class restaurant his family owns, the Toujours Pur, he doesn't want to own or wok in a place where only a selected minority can go, where fake people try to fill their stomachs with small samples of exotic food for which they pay more than it's worth of. No, Sirius doesn't want that, if anything, he'd like the down to Earth, family restaurant James' parents own, where he worked in for a summer and saw the warmth, the joy of such place, the noise, in such contrast to the cold, echoing and emptiness of Tojours Pur.

And so Sirius is content. He no longer has his family, but he has Andromeda and his uncle Alphard, he has James and Peter, the latter who works on his parent's small but somewhat known coffee shop, he has a nice place to live, on a alley paralleled to a main street, above the gourmet coffee shop his uncle owns, and in which he works as a waiter.

And then there's him.

Sirius doesn't know who this person was, what does he do, where does he go, but everyday there's this young man around his age that passes by the coffee shop, twice a day, usually full of hurry in the morning, and looking tired and panting as he passes by in the opposite direction late into the afternoon.

Sirius pauses for a moment, his cell phone vibrating and warning him it was five o'clock into the afternoon, and so he takes a moment to look out through the vitrine and, punctual as ever, the other walks by, not even glancing to the coffee shop.

Sirius doesn't know what singles out this person in particular, among the number of people who pass by the shop every day. But Sirius can't help but to take in the brown hair that looks so soft, the pale face and the scar across it, the light brown eyes that are always fixed on the floor ahead of him as he walks, carrying two bags, the patches and stitches on the warn out beige jacket he wears, the tired but decided steps, how just slightly his shoulders crouch forward with the weight he's carrying, and Sirius wonders.

Sirius only sees him briefly, less than a minute each time he walks by, those brief moments have accumulated over the weeks, months, almost an entire year, and Sirius as lost the count of times he has seen him, and he tried, several times.

And Sirius wonders what he does, where he goes with such hurry, who is that person, who passes by the purples and greens that is uncle Alphard's cafe in several shades of brown, that when looking at him Sirius realizes that is a colour that is missing in his life. He had blacks and dark shades of grey with his family, bright and warm red and golden with James, orange with Peter, green and yellow with Andromeda and her husband Ted and pink with their daughter, Dora.

If his life was a canvas, that started blank and was coloured through his life, he would have all those colours, some overlapping the others, and he would have a bright colourful painting – but brown was the missing colour.

The unknown man is now out of sight again, and Sirius returns to his work.

Because Sirius wonders, but never asks. He just watches.

000

AN: alright, boys and girls, first of all sorry for not posting anything in ages, but ... I participated on NaNoWriMo this year (and I won! Yeaah~~~) so there's that. Also, college man. I'm so full of work xD

BUT basically, because I think I couldn't explain it here, this is a muggle AU where instead of blood purity we have high class restaurants. Oh yeah.

...well, that is it xD Chapters will be short, but so they will be posted often.

What do you think is this? :3