language barrier wolfstar where remus only speaks english/welsh and sirius only speaks french.
they meet by complete accident on the streets of london while sirius is there on a school trip. sirius spots remus smoking outside a corner shop and, without knowing a single word of english, decides he’s going to bum a cigarette off him anyway. it takes an embarrassing amount of pointing, miming, fake smoking motions and increasingly dramatic hand gestures before remus finally figures out what this very animated french boy wants. he starts off trying not to laugh, but sirius looks so painfully determined to get his point across that remus caves and hands him a cigarette.
they end up standing there together for the next twenty minutes.
sirius talks the entire time in rapid-fire french, complaining about his teacher who only gave them thirty minutes of free time around carnaby street, about how impossible it is to keep up with his class, about london, about anything that comes to mind. he knows remus doesn’t understand a single sentence, but remus keeps nodding anyway, smiling whenever sirius gets especially dramatic with his hands, replying with the occasional “yeah?” like he’s somehow following along
neither of them understands the other, but somehow they’re still having a conversation.
eventually sirius’s classmates start calling for him from down the street. remus pats his pockets, finds a pen, gently takes sirius’s hand and writes his address across the back of it. then he taps the ink with his finger, mimes writing on paper, and points in the vague direction of france.
sirius doesn’t understand the words but he understands everything else.
he spends the entire train ride back to france staring at the ink on his hand, terrified it’ll wash off before he gets home.
