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Sirius is sure that he can make soup; anybody can make soup. James and Remus and Peter all talk blithely of making tinned soup when their parents are away. It does not apparently require house-elves or special equipment. Besides, Sirius likes soup. It's warm on a cold winter day.
The problem, he thinks, staring into the refrigerator, is that he has no idea what to make soup with. There is leftover curry in a drooping cardboard box. There is a jar of James's mother's jam. There is a pint of milk and a tin of tuna and half a wedge of cheese, the remains of the generous lunch the Potters' packed him when he set off for the flat.
Curry soup, Sirius thinks. Curry and tuna soup. Milk and jam soup.
None of these sound particularly promising. Anyway, Sirius is beginning to suspect that what you make soup with is soup. He is going to have to go out into the snow to buy groceries for himself. It's like camping, he tells himself. In a wilderness.
There is a knock on the door. "Yes?" Sirius asks cautiously. If it is anyone in his family, he is going to slam the door in their faces, although in a way that shows how mature and self-sufficient he is and how little thought he has been giving to parents or idiot little brothers. He thinks it's probably a matter of having an appropriate expression of scorn.
"Are you in there, Padfoot?"
"No," Sirius says, and opens the door. Remus is snow-covered and flushed with having clearly walked some ways. Sirius supposes Apparating into a block of Muggle flats would cause some comment. He tries not to look desperately grateful to see Remus. Surely Remus will save him from his lack of soup.
"Your flat smells like curry," Remus says, coming inside and shutting the door against the cold. "Is it meant to?"
"I had curry for breakfast," Sirius says.
Remus gives him a fishy look. "Why did you have curry for breakfast?"
"It was that or jam," Sirius says. "We'll be back in school in three days, anyway."
Remus looks like he's considering that statement and trying to decide if it's a non sequitur. "Have you actually been out of the flat at all?"
"I was at James's the first part of the holidays," Sirius says defensively. "I didn't have to make soup."
"Curry soup?"
"Any kind of soup," Sirius says. He scowls. They seem to be at an impasse.
"Can I have a cup of tea?" Remus asks finally.
"Yes," Sirius says, because he can make tea. He does so, while Remus pokes around the kitchen, opening the refrigerator and closing it again. Sirius feels that Remus is judging his kitchen-organizing skills. He stabs angrily at the teakettle, which wails.
"Where are the cups?" Remus asks.
"There's one in the cupboard in front of you."
"Is there another cup?"
"In the other cupboard." Sirius does not feel he can defend why there is one cup in each cupboard, except that it looked less lonely. Remus opens a cupboard and gives the single fork in it a thoughtful look. He closes it, and opens the one that holds the second cup.
"Never mind," Sirius says. "I don't really want tea."
"You could make soup out of it," Remus says, his lips twitching. "Tea soup."
"Thank you for mocking me," Sirius says wearily. "My first week actually living in this flat would not be complete without someone to mock."
"I thought I'd come round and mock," Remus says. "And see if you were still here, or if you'd gone back to the Potters the way you did this summer."
"James insisted," Sirius mutters.
"I think he thought you'd starve. Or die of food poisoning."
Sirius looks at the refrigerator indignantly. "It's not poisoned."
"We could go round the shops and you could buy a few things," Remus says. "And I could show you how to make soup. And you could try to pretend you don't hate living here."
"I don't hate it," Sirius says. "I hated living with my parents. I just want there to be --" Someone to talk to, he thinks but doesn't say. It's so quiet, Moony. He doesn't want to look that pathetic. "Soup," he says finally instead.
"Soup would be a start," Remus says. The snow has melted, and his damp hair is stuck to his forehead in several places. He looks smug, possibly because he knows all about soup.
Sirius drinks his tea in preparation for braving the Muggle shops, which even in Remus's company fills him with a sense of anticipatory alarm. It's quiet, but with Remus there it's a different kind of quiet. It occurs to Sirius with a different kind of alarm that this may be the first time they've ever been alone together, in the sense of "alone with no one likely to burst in unexpectedly shouting about Quidditch."
"Soup," he says, feeling that some sort of quick and distracting action is called for to prevent his brain from going further along that line of thought. "We will buy soup, and you will teach me how to make it, and then we will eat it."
"I could stay the night," Remus says, shrugging his coat back on. "My parents said I could."
"We could have soup for breakfast," Sirius offers.
"We could have curry for breakfast."
"We could!" Sirius throws an arm around Remus's shoulders and steers him toward the door. There is something slightly different about having his arm around Remus in his own flat, he thinks, but before he can quite identify the feeling, Remus leans back against the door and tugs him around and kisses him, his mouth warm against Sirius's.
When they break apart, Remus looks up at him; Sirius can see the pulse beating in his throat. "I ... just ..."
Sirius presses up against Remus and Remus kisses him again. He tangles his hand in Remus's hair and holds on. This is more important than soup, he thinks. Anyway, soup won't do a thing for the fact that his entire body now feels like it wants Remus's hands all over it. He rubs against Remus's hip, and Remus makes a strangled noise and puts his hand down Sirius's trouser front.
Later, sprawled on the bed with half their clothes strewn over the foot of the bed and the floor, Remus leans his head back against a corner of the pillow and lazily opens his eyes. "We could get the soup now." He looks perfectly content, and it occurs to Sirius that a place where Remus feels at home is probably not as bad a thing as all that.
"We could," Sirius agrees, although neither one of them is actually moving. He doesn't particularly want to move, even though he is leaning on his elbow uncomfortably, his leg wrapped around Remus's to avoid falling off the too-small bed. It's warm on a cold day.