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His uncle doesn’t talk much, unless he’s drinking.
“Happy to have you, as long as you want to stay!”
“You’re like our own son, of course we want you here!”
“Don’t you dare go back, mate, I’m right proud of you for finally stepping out. You’ll stay with me.”
Sirius can imagine what the Potters would say, if he showed up on their doorstep. That sounds nice. Sounds like a home. Just not his home.
Alphard doesn’t know how to cook. The bright side is that there are never dishes in the sink. There are never dishes anywhere. Sometimes they order takeaways, and Alphard Vanishes the evidence, like there’s an inspection coming. It puts Sirius in mind of a teenager who’s afraid about his mum finding magazines he’s not supposed to have, and it’s easy to see his uncle that way, like he must have been forty years ago, a sulky, quiet boy without a lot of friends. It reminds Sirius of Snape, a little, though his uncle would be handsome if he ever bothered to shave and dress properly.
The Potters are on vacation in Bangladesh. When they get back, maybe Sirius will head on over, and tell them what’s gone on. They’ll welcome him with open arms. They’ll squeeze him until he protests about his ribs, even though his heart will feel fuller than ever.
Alphard doesn’t hug him. He looks up when Sirius comes back in at night from a long walk. There’s a brandy in his hand, a cigarette in his other, and he’s staring at the fire. He’s got loads of books, but Sirius never sees him reading any of them. There’s dust on the shelves, and Alphard never empties the ashtrays.
It’s like it takes effort, for Alphard to be the laughing, jovial man he’s been at Christmases and birthdays back at the house. Like he saves up his energy all year for that. At first, Sirius thinks he’s ill, or that something’s gone wrong. “You’re sure you’re all right with me being here?” he’d asked, when Alphard hadn’t stirred for the better part of a day. “You’re sure I’m not putting you out?”
Alphard had waved a hand, holding a brandy snifter. Sirius had never really noticed how much he drank at parties. Then again, you expected it of adults at parties. You don’t expect them to drink the same way on any Tuesday. Or Friday. Or any of the days in between. “You’re family,” he’d said, in a way that seems to mean something very different to him than it does to his sister, Sirius’s mum. At least it doesn’t sound like a curse.
Three days in, and the quiet starts to get to him. He writes to Remus. Hello, I hate summer hols, bet you’re looking gorgeous, wish I could be with you next Thursday. Signs with Messieur Padfoot. He writes James. You’re a wanker. I hope you fall in the Ganges. Love you, Pads. He writes Peter. I’m bored. You in London? -P.
Remus writes back, seven or eight pages. Most of it’s nonsense about homework. Sirius hasn’t even looked at it yet. He usually does it on the train back with James. Sirius scans the letter, hungry for anything that tells him Remus misses him as much as he misses Remus. Anything that makes him feel like he can almost smell mothball-scented sweaters and nutmeg and the smell of a book so big it looks like he can barely lift it.
“Letter from your girlfriend?” Alphard asks, when Sirius pulls out the pages for the fourth time, sneaking a look at them while the two of them are making their way through a Thai curry from a place down the street. Alphard likes Muggle food; that’s a surprise, though Sirius doesn’t know why it’s a surprise. Sure, his mother would never, but his mother would never leave the House and live in a flat above a chippy in Piccadilly, either. Maybe it’s a surprise because he only remembers Alphard eating traditional meals served by house-elves, but what else would he eat, at holiday feasts at the Black house?
Sirius flushes hot, shoving the papers into the pocket of his dressing gown. Alphard never dresses during the day, and Sirius has started doing the same, wandering around in pants and a dressing gown half the time. It rather feels like he’s been fired from something instead of being on summer holidays, he feels so useless. “From one of my mates, from school,” he says, shaking his head.
“Someone you fancy?”
“A bloke.” That should be the end of it.
Alphard pops a snow pea curiously into his mouth, makes a face, and spits it out, with absolutely no manners. It joins the growing pile of green bits on the side of his plate, as the rice and meat vanish inside of him. “Is he fit?”
“You’re having a laugh,” Sirius mutters, as his heart starts thundering, guts churning in a way that doesn’t have anything to do with the curry. “Dunno what Mum said, but—“
“You know full well what she said,” Alphard says, cutting him off, waving his spoon. He’s rubbish at using chopsticks, and doesn’t try. The spoon has a silver crest of the family on the handle, and probably costs more than Sirius’s favorite leather jacket. Or something. He’s got no idea what spoons cost. “She said it loud enough, that bloody Howler.”
Oh, Sirius knows what she’d said, but they haven’t been talking about it. Alphard has been decent enough to pretend his mother hadn’t sent the Howler that first night, and it hadn’t shrieked, “FILTHY ABOMINATION, TWISTED RUIN OF MY LINE, YOU TWO ARE MEANT FOR EACH OTHER, YOU ARE NEVER WELCOME HERE AGAIN, YOU ARE NO SON OF MINE, YOUR DISGUSTING PREFERENCES TAINT MY PURE BLOODLINE, YOU HAVE BEEN BLASTED OFF THE TAPESTRY.” Alphard hadn’t asked what any of it meant, and Sirius hadn’t volunteered.
Maybe he should. As a reward for not asking, maybe he should talk.
But there are a lot of things people are all right with, and a lot of things they aren’t. Sirius can’t take the chance. Not when he’s got nowhere else to go. He’d thought about telling him, once. At the last Christmas, Alphard had given him two presents, as he usually did, one for his birthday the month before. There was a full pouch of powdered cinnabar, and a pair of dragon’s hide boots. “Can never find the stuff when I need it,” his uncle had said of the pouch. “And I heard you’re top of your year. It’s the only ingredient I ever needed at school that they didn’t have in the storerooms, and it’s a beast to order on short notice.”
It was worth at least a hundred Galleons. Sirius didn’t care about that, knew Alphard didn’t either. The thing that struck him was that Alphard had taken the time to actually think about him, and what he might want, and what he might need. He’d never had a present like that, except from James. And even then, it would’ve been spelled to fart at him or something hilarious like that.
Sirius still has the pouch, in his school trunk. Powdered cinnabar is mostly an alchemical ingredient, but there are loads of N.E.W.T.S. potions that need the stuff, and he’s hardly going to be drawing from the family vault any time soon. He can’t imagine himself going to Dumbledore and asking for scholarship materials, either. What had he expected to do? Grift off of James, probably. Fortunately, Transfiguration is his favorite subject, not least because it only requires a wizard, his wand, and his wits.
Alphard had looked quite handsome at Christmas, with his hair sleek and glossy in a queue, black robes set with emeralds at the fasteners, an ever-present glass of brandy in his hand. He wasn’t smoking except when the men retreated to the den with pipes, not like he does in his flat. Sirius is his favorite nephew, knows it, the way everyone knows Regulus is Walburga’s favorite son. Alphard doesn’t do like Walburga does, doesn’t talk about all the things he likes about Sirius, or how Sirius reminds him of himself, his friends at that age. He never talks about his friends at all. Sirius isn’t sure if he has any.
He’d fiddled with the pouch for a moment before saying his thanks. It had felt like he should answer that kindness, that obvious affection, with something more than a rote little speech. It would be nice to tell someone that he’s been shagging Remus Lupin, that he’s itching under his skin every time he’s at home, that he’s not what everyone thinks he is, not even James.
“What is it?” Alphard had asked, looking concerned, brows furrowing. Sirius looks just like him, he knows, though Alphard had made a few comments about how lucky Sirius is that he doesn’t have to get fancy mediwizards to fix his face, like they’d had done for Regulus’s teeth, for Bellatrix’s lips, for Narcissa’s brows. Purebloods are supposed to be beautiful; no one is supposed to know about the painful, expensive spellwork and potions to make a bunch of pasty inbreds look that way. Sirius has no idea what Alphard had done, but it’s not the kind of thing you ask.
I’m in love with my best friend, he wants to say, because Alphard almost seems like the kind of family you tell things to.
In his memory, Sirius likes to think that something interrupted them. Bad timing. The truth is, he’d just been a coward who didn’t want to lose the one safe haven he’d had at home, and he’d grinned and given his uncle a one-armed hug, then gone to try on the boots, telling himself it didn’t matter if anyone at home really knew the real him, really.
And now he’s been kicked out of his house for being a pouf, and doesn’t know if his uncle might do the same. Not very Gryffindor of you, James scoffs into his mind.
Damn. He’s right.
He’s been at Alphard’s for five days. It’s Friday afternoon. For the first time since he’s been here, Alphard is wearing proper clothing, or at least getting close to it. He’s shaving in the mirror over the kitchen sink at half past five in the afternoon, wearing black silk drawers and his emerald green robes, still open and hanging from his shoulders.
“Got a date?” Sirius asks, laying on the leather sofa, thumbing through the latest Quidditch Times, pausing to check out the arse on Lewis Fernsby. Worth cheering for the Falcons, almost.
“Oh, by the end of the night, sure,” Alphard says, cheerful as he shaves. The brandy glass is still full; he hasn’t drained it too many times yet today.
“Should I make myself scarce?” Sirius is amused, taking a bite of some leftover papadams he’d left on the table, thinking of his uncle, his usually-deflated, resentful-at-life uncle, trying to pull with a nephew in the house.
Alphard waves a hand at him vaguely, the straight razor scraping delicately over one pale cheek. “Don’t be ridiculous, I won’t put you out. Perfectly capable of getting a hotel for the night, if we’re too classy to shag in the toilets.”
Sirius inhales a chunk of papadam so quickly he starts to choke. His eyes go wide, face gone red, and his arms don’t work properly, can’t even say anything. After a moment of silence, Alphard turns to look at him, and sees him flailing desperately. “Accio papadam,” he says almost lazily, and the chunk flies free, leaving Sirius gasping and coughing on the sofa. “You shouldn’t eat lying down.”
“Your fault,” Sirius chokes out, wheezing.
“Yours,” Alphard counters, wiping off his razor, tucking it back in the leather carry-case. “For assuming I’ve never got my kit off at the back of a pub. You think your generation invented snogging?”
“I...” Yes, sort of, is the answer, because most of his teachers and his mates’ parents have the decency to pretend they’ve never so much as kissed, and he’s fairly certain his own parents have never even done that.
Alphard does up his robes, and they’re not the ones he wears to holiday parties, showing rather a bit more of his figure than Sirius is used to. His hair is loose, not tied back in a queue, and he ruffles Sirius’s hair as he walks past. “Don’t worry. I’ll try not to scandalize you too much. I’m just going round a pub for some drinks with friends.”
“So you have got friends.”
Something flickers in Alphard’s gray-green eyes. “Not as many as I used to,” he says, with affected carelessness. Sirius knows that act.
He’s not sure who he’s expecting at the door when there’s a knock, fifteen minutes later. He’s definitely not expecting to see Sturgis Podmore, last year’s Head Boy, and either Gideon or Fabian Prewett who was only a decade or so older than himself, standing with a pair of men in their thirties, in a casual mix of robes and denim and leather. Sirius counts three earrings as the men file into Alphard’s flat, for all the world looking at home there, one of them flopping down on the chair Alphard is usually in, one about to sit on Sirius, obviously not expecting there to be someone there.
It’s Sturgis that recognizes him, eyes wide. “Sirius?”
“Sturgis?”
“What are you doing here?”
“I think I’m the one who gets to ask that, he’s my family,” Sirius says, somewhat indignant. It’s weird, that the little flat is suddenly full of life and noise. He’d thought Alphard didn’t want company. Thought he was fine sitting in the dark and brooding. Now, he’s laughing with one of the strangers twenty years younger than him, reaching up to pinch the man’s cheek, getting a cuff on the shoulder in return over some remark. It’s like he’s not even alive when other people aren’t around. This isn’t how he is at holidays, this is something else. This isn’t fake.
“Are you bringing your nephew, then?” Gideon-or-Fabian asks, one red brow arched, looking down at him. Sirius feels sort of too-young, and tries to look older. At Hogwarts, he’s tall and strong and mature for his age. Next to these men, he feels rather scrawny. Gideon-or-Fabian regards him for a moment, then declares, “He’s fit, he’d certainly be popular. You one of us, then?”
Sirius opens his mouth to say that of course he’s a wizard, then shuts it, because that’s as stupid as anything he’s ever thought. His mind is quick, when he’s not being very, very thick, but this seems like they’re talking in code. Alphard and the man in the kitchen sound like they are talking in code, something about Dilly boys and omi-palones and lally-tappers.
“I thought so,” Sturgis puts in, the traitor, like he belongs, like he’s part of some secret, interesting, fun group that Sirius doesn’t know anything about, like he’s being judged without knowing it. “But I had to write him up a couple years ago for snogging Marlene McKinnon, so maybe not.”
The Prewett scoffs, grabbing one of the papadams and chucking it at Sturgis, making a wanking motion with one hand. “Stop, every time I remember you were Head Boy I can’t get it up for a week.”
“Fuck off, Fabian,” Sturgis says, so it’s Fabian Prewett that’s slunk in one of Alphard’s fancy chairs, boots dangling over the arm. He’s one of the ones in robes, though they’re open to the middle of his chest, and that’s a bit distracting from the fact that he’s never heard Sturgis say so much as hell, except when Gaius Selwyn was around. But Sirius has always avoided Gaius Selwyn, and his far-too-pretty face, and his constant half-pout, and the way Sirius’s trousers got far too tight whenever he was near, so he’d never had much opportunity to see them interacting.
Another knock on the door, and Fabian jumps up, a smile splitting his face as a slight blond man enters, somewhere around thirty, and promptly shoves his tongue down Fabian’s throat.
Sirius stops wondering whether or not he’s supposed to get the wrong idea. That seems a bit far to go for a lark.
Sturgis is trying not to laugh at him. “Shut up,” he informs Sturgis, who does finally laugh at him, though not unkindly. “You might’ve said.”
“You might’ve said,” Sturgis counters, and that’s fair enough, Sirius expects. He looks around, then leans in, Sturgis being “safe” by virtue of being the one Sirius knows best.
“All of you?” he whispers, heart fluttering. “My uncle?”
Sturgis reaches over and squeezes his shoulder. From behind him, Sirius can hear Fabian shout, “Alfie, what in hell have you been keeping the poor sod in the dark for?”
Alphard breaks off his rapid-fire lilting code-talk to shrug, calling back, “He’s been dithering about telling me about some bloke he fancies at school, didn’t seem right to interrupt him.”
Sturgis starts to grin, and Sirius punches him in the chest. It has about as much effect as punching a brick wall, and hurts his hand about as much.
It’s not every Friday that they go to the Hare’s Head. Sometimes they go to the Hound & Hart, which Sirius likes, or the Muleteer, which everyone hates but is open when everything else closes. Sometimes it’s Saturday, if Fabian and Sturgis are called in by the Aurors, or Lysander Macmillan (the blond bloke that’s wearing Fabian’s ring around his neck) has to go off on a dig. They never reschedule because of Alphard. He’s always available. He never turns down the invitation.
Sirius gets bolder, those next heady weeks. He writes Remus, asks him to come down to London (he’s busy, he’s got homework, it’s too close to the full). He Fire-Calls, tries to ask Remus to go steady with him properly (he doesn’t get a real response, has to admit he hadn’t asked properly). He tries to get Remus to host him for a day so they can at least make a quick rub-and-tug of it, and Remus hisses that his parents are home, does Sirius want to get them both thrown out? He fishes, desperate, for some hint that Remus wants him as badly as Sirius wants Remus, that Remus would care if he got it somewhere else, that Remus spends every night frigging himself desperately and wishing they were together the way Sirius does, and doesn’t find it.
He doesn’t feel as handsome as usual, next to confident Fabian Prewett, next to Alphard in his element, next to slyly pretty Lysander, next to a group of men who (from their gossip) all fuck well and often. They’re friends with each other, and sometimes it means teasing, but sometimes it means they get bored with the company at the pub and pair off, and more than once, Sirius has caught his uncle with a fey teen boy in his lap, shamelessly groping him, tossing Sirius a wink that makes him feel like he’s part of some secret club, makes him hot under the collar in a strange way. He’d pretended not to see when those boys waited with palms up, and more than once had found one in the flat’s kitchen the morning after a night out, until Alphard woke up to pay for services rendered.
He sees Sturgis--plodding, boring, bluff, hearty Head Boy Sturgis--sucking cock in the toilets, half a dozen times, with as many men. He doesn’t seem to have a preference, and half the time has some bloke bent over and squealing in there instead. Sirius takes too long in the toilet, every time there’s a couple of blokes shagging in there, and tosses himself off, eyes closed, listening to the wet rhythmic grunts, wishing he was in the stall next door.
Three weeks before end of summer holidays, he gets a very sweet letter from Remus that pointedly ignores all the rather explicit things he’d sent in his own letter, and that’s as much as Sirius can stand. I want you, I need you, send me one of your shirts so I can smell it when I wank, I Transfigured a wooden spatula until it was the same size and shape as your cock and fucked myself three times yesterday, he’d written, and Remus had written back, It’s more fun when we’re all at school, isn’t it? I have a lot of good ideas for some adventures we can have this year, without all the rubbish classes we aren’t going to use. Further response to follow once we’re back at Hogwarts.
That’s all well and good, but Sirius is so horny he’s going to die now. He hadn’t known there was such a thing as a community of blokes that are all bent the wrong way round. Now that he’s in it, he can see very well why Alphard seems like he’s only alive when he’s out with his friends.
Remus had snogged Ludmilla Cartwright, though. Sirius remembers that. And that was after they’d started shagging. Remus hadn’t asked, and he hadn’t apologized, and Sirius hadn’t asked him to.
That’s what he remembers, like ammunition in case he’s called a liar and a cheat and a scoundrel, when he meets Sturgis’s eyes that night and jerks his head towards the toilets. That’s what he remembers, when he’s bent double with Sturgis’s tongue in his hole, gripping the porcelain tank for dear life, little whining sounds coming from his lips. Remus had snogged Ludmilla Cartwright, he remembers like a mantra, when Sturgis’s thick cock shoves into him and his vision whites out, when his mouth goes slack and his mind goes quiet, twitching and shivering as Sturgis gives it to him as good as he’s ever gotten it.
Sturgis has a weird gift. Sirius forgets that until after they’re done, when he’s deliciously sore and Sturgis is stroking his hair, and he’s so buzzed from the good fuck and casual attention he’d happily lick Sturgis’s boots clean for him. He’s heard people talking about that weird gift, he remembers as Sturgis gives him a gentle kiss on the cheek. “He’s lucky to have you, mate,” Sturgis says softly, and gives him a hug that Sirius hadn’t known he needed.
Over the next few weeks, he doesn’t write Remus. He does let Altair Flint suck his cock in the toilets, and he does think there’s going to be a moment with Fabian Prewett, before the man sheepishly rakes his hair back, fingers the ring around his neck, and chucks him under the chin instead. He does learn to flirt, and sort of likes showing off in front of his uncle.
He asks one night, “Why d’you pay for it?”
Alphard raises an eyebrow. There’s a cigarette dangling from his lips, and for once, he’s reading a book, some mouldering old handwritten thing he pages through like each word is precious. “Hm?”
“Round the pubs. I was talking to Sander and Fabian, they said you almost never go on a date, just pick up one of the working boys.” Fabian had hinted very strongly that if Alphard had been the type to form real attachments, he might have tried quite seriously in that direction--before he’d starting going with Sander, of course.
Alphard snorts. “Not like I can’t afford it.”
“Sure, but...why?”
Alphard turns a page of the book, reverent fingers running lightly down the page. “Don’t want to get attached.”
“How come?”
Alphard shakes his head, not looking up. “You’re very young, Sirius.”
Sirius hates that answer, so he stands up, peering over his uncle’s shoulder. He’s not sure what he’s expecting to see, but it isn’t a political treatise from ages and ages ago, in passionate, flowing handwriting. “What’s that?”
Alphard finally looks up, and there are weary lines in his face. “Someone asked me a question about one of these pamphlets, I promised I’d check, since I have a copy of the originals.”
“That said Grindelwald.” Sirius frowns. “Did you fight in the GWW?”
“Yes.” Something shifts in Alphard’s expression, and he carefully binds up the leather pamphlet, tucking it away on the shelf again. “And if you don’t want a lecture, don’t ask me which side.”
Sirius does not want a lecture, and he is altogether too aware that he’d slept through History of Magic too many times to have an opinion of Grindelwald besides isn’t that the bloke that was right proper Dark and Dumbledore killed him or something? Besides, he likes his uncle, feels at home here, and Alphard isn’t going to smack him around or carve slurs into his chest if he gets caught with a bloke’s mag, the way his mum had.
(They’re gone now. Alphard had known a good Healer who didn’t ask any questions, and as soon as Sirius had admitted the reason he’d been booted out, they’d seen to it immediately.)
A week before the end of summer holds, James comes back from Bangladesh, and basically abducts Sirius back to his house. The Potters exclaim that he’d been kicked out, insist he move in, and treat him like their own son. His summer with Alphard feels like an odd, distant memory, like his memory of having a community of men who understood him, who didn’t make him feel strange or wrong-footed for being who he is. The Potter house is always noisy, always alive, with bright colorful smells and laughter, and before the end of the first night he has his own bed in James’s room, now James And Sirius’s Room. It feels like a home, even feels like his home, for all his protests.
Three months later, he gets an owl from Sturgis at school, with a clipping of an obituary from the Prophet. Alphard Black, Found Dead at 51, the tidy little paragraph says. Robbed and killed by a local transient after his gold, it says. No signs of a struggle, it says. Survived by his sister and her children, it says. At the request of Walburga Black, all flowers and condolences will be refused, it says.
He gets an owl at evening post from Fabian Prewett, and ignores the way Remus looks at him. He’d mentioned Fabian once too many times, once they were back at school, and they’d had a brief row about it. The scrap of paper just says, The Hound & Hart, this Friday, 6, if you can.
He doesn’t tell Remus or James, but he does tell Dumbledore. Dumbledore sighs, looking sadder than Sirius would have expected. “Poor Alphard,” the old man says, with quite a bit of feeling. Sirius hadn’t known they’d known each other as anything other than a vaguely distant teacher and student. “He never would listen to me. Of course, you should go.”
Dumbledore even has him pulled out of class, and makes up a detention for him, so he doesn’t have to explain himself to the others. How Dumbledore knows he’d rather almost anything in the world than explain all this, he’s got no idea. He flies as fast as his Shooting Star can take him, and makes it to the Hound & Hart just past sundown.
He’s expecting a funeral. Instead, there’s a strange group of men standing with the friends he knows, and they’re laughing. They’re drinking, a lot, and some of them are strange, and some are quite old. Sturgis and Fabian both give him a hug, but have to leave early for work. So they aren’t there when a bloke with one arm stands up and gives a heartfelt, passionate toast in German, and gives a salute Sirius doesn’t know, which is echoed fervently by half of the blokes in the room. They aren’t there when a white-haired man in his seventies or eighties starts weeping like his heart is broken, clutching what looks like a copy of that book Alphard had been reading. For the first time, in this pub, Sirius feels like an outsider when someone raises a glass and calls, “Herz der Schlange!” only to be echoed by every solemn voice in the place.
“You look like him,” one man says in Sirius’s ear, when the crowd starts to break up. His face is lined and weathered, sort of like Sirius imagines Remus will look in fifty years. His voice is accented, something Eastern European, and his shoulders are slumped. “You’re family?”
Sirius nods. “But I...didn’t know him like you all did, I think.”
Should have asked. Should have pushed. Shouldn’t have been afraid of the answers he was going to get.
Something of that regret must show in his face, because the older man squeezes his shoulder, hard. “Don’t feel alone. We’ve lost many. When you’re kind and true to the ones with you, that’s how you show it.”
Sirius isn’t entirely sure if the man knows that Sirius has no idea who his uncle was, really. He’s not sure if the man thinks Sirius is part of this movement, whatever it is, or if he’s talking about some absurd international brotherhood of bent blokes. He does know that he feels a little less alone, and that sometimes, surrounded by light and life and loud talking, with parents who call him “son” and in a bed with his name on it, he’s never felt quite as fiercely “himself” as he had in a quiet flat with most of the life gone out of it.
It’s as if he’d willed it into being, really. The next day, back at Hogwarts, he gets an owl from a very official-looking legal firm. All worldly possessions, it says, and substantial sum of gold, and residence at Hardwick Place, above Hamill’s Fish & Chips. He’s not sure if he’s ever going to read that book on the shelf, carefully tucked into its leather cover, but it’s his now, and so are the ashtrays that need to be emptied, and the brandy snifter, and the emerald cufflinks, and the trunk of valuable potions ingredients and rare items he finds worth thousands of Galleons, all marked For Sirius.
After seventh year, when the N.E.W.T.S. scores are all in, and Remus has informed him that he won’t be moving in, and Peter has gone off with a girl who’d looked at him twice, and James has shacked up with Lily, Sirius finds himself alone, wearing a dead man’s dressing gown, a cigarette dangling from his lips. He’s toying with the book, with Herz der Schlange engraved into the corner of the leather binding, still unsure if he should open it, when there’s a knock.
He flings it open, grinning, as his friends come in, and the little flat is full of life, and so is he.