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small_giftsTitle: Transfigured and Refigured
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
peskywhistpaw
Recipient:themessrs
Rating: PG-13
Contents or warnings (highlight to view): *some language and sexuality *
Word count: 1,900
Summary: “Our love’s – a – a transient waggling cock monster!” Remus faces insecurities their first proper Christmas together. Knitting helps. Sort of.
Notes: Happy Holidays! Sorry this got so weird so fast.
Transfigured and Refigured
i.
“It’ll be like the Twelve Days of Christmas,” Sirius says, “only we’ll do it the twelve days before, instead of after. Like a Christmassy Hanukkah thingum.”
Remus huffs from their shabby armchair, picking at a loose thread in the cushion while he reads. “I’m not buying you twelve presents, if that’s what you’re after.” He doesn’t look up from his book, but he can imagine Sirius’s face: it’s either falling, or shaping itself into something mischievous.
“I’m not asking you to!” Sirius says, indignant. “We can barely afford the flat. Doesn’t mean we can’t, y’know, make things, or do things like two fully-functioning adults celebrating their first proper Christmas together. Alone. Y’know.”
Remus huffs again. Best stop this while he can. “Padfoot, if I shag you for twelve days straight, there won’t be any time left to buy the turkey, and then no amount of sex will save me from your whinging.”
“That’s a fair point,” Sirius concedes, “but not what I –”
“But one day,” Remus interrupts, raising his voice and setting his book aside in the rarest and most irresistible of two-pronged attacks, and Sirius snaps his mouth shut. “Maybe even two,” Remus adds.
ii.
The matter, he considers, is put to rest, but the next day, he wakes up to find a small, horribly shiny parcel on his night stand, nestled beside one of the holsters Sirius had fashioned for each of their wands, because he hadn’t figured they’d need lamps. Remus blinks a sleepy eye, and brushes his fingers against the parcel until he catches a loop of the gaudy red bow around his pinky, and can pull the tiny monstrosity to him.
“Sirius?” he asks, feeling on the other side of the bed, but it’s empty, the sheets still mussed. Remus sits up, rubs his eyes. The clock reads six. His feet automatically seek out his slippers, and his dressing gown aggressively forces its way onto him. Clutching the parcel to his chest, he pads into the hall. “Sirius,” he says again, but this time, it’s less questioning, and more suspicious.
On cue, Sirius’s head pops out of the nearest doorway, his dark hair sticking on end almost as badly as James’s always did each morning in the Gryffindor dorms. His eyes flick from Remus’s face to the parcel, and back again.
“Yeeeees?”
“What,” Remus says. “Padfoot, what. What is this.”
Sirius grins, shifting a few steps until his full body is in view. He’s only in his pants, of course. Remus shivers, and clutches his dressing gown with his free hand.
“It’s the first day of Christmas.”
“The first... But we... But I haven’t...”
“Surprise,” Sirius says, and the grin has turned almost demonic. He sidles next to Remus, and knocks one snitch-patterned hip against his.
“Prat,” Remus growls.
Sirius nudges him more gently this time, snuffling into Remus’s ear in a way that’s far less pleasant in dog form. “Open it, hey.”
“And if I refuse?”
He feels Sirius shrug against him. “I’ll hex you for being ungrateful. But it’s your choice.”
Remus tugs at the horrid ribbon. “As long as this is the last day.”
iii.
It isn’t, and Remus quickly begins to panic. He’d kept up on the second day by baking complicated batches of biscotti and meringue cookies, which Sirius had delightedly interrupted. The whole thing had turned into rather a mess when Remus’s elbow caught the bowl of cookie dough, sending it smashing to the ground while Sirius chuckled and tugged down Remus’s trousers, but it had been a satisfying experience all the same.
Of course, cookies are hardly comparable with a gilt quill enchanted to check one’s spelling (“Not that you’ll need that part,” Sirius had said, and when Remus stared at him in horror, added, “Nicked it from my mum years ago. Didn’t spend a knut.”), and a rare copy of a comprehensive bestiary from the Middle Ages (“D’you reckon anyone else managed to nick something from the Hogwarts library?”), and that morning, an enormous package he pretends not to notice and doesn’t dare open because the guilt is gnawing at him. So he snuffles softly when Sirius bends down to kiss him that morning, feigning sleep, and listens for the padding away of Sirius’s feet, the falter in them when Sirius trips over the leftover mess in the kitchen whilst trying to corral up something for breakfast, the complicated whisperings of the warding spells as he leaves for work.
As soon as the last incantation is in place, Remus flings off the blankets and sets to work. The one good thing about being an unemployable werewolf, he thinks, and having the day off Order duties, is having the flat to himself for hours – which he normally doesn’t like, excepting when Padfoot accidentally chews up his shoes.
He’s been thinking about this all night, so long it’s lucky he didn’t really fall asleep when he was pretending to. Sirius has reassured him each day, without looking the least bit hurt, that Remus doesn’t need to reciprocate the gifts. “You’re enough,” he says, “and I know it’s difficult for...”, and it’s an entirely different Sirius from the one who had avoided him for a week their second year because Remus had forgotten his birthday, and even the Sirius of their sixth year, to whom Remus had needed to give a late Christmas present, because he had needed time to gather his courage. Sirius had enthusiastically accepted the snog then, but only after many days of pouting and brooding beforehand, and James had nearly been ready to punch them both by the end for being such idiots about it.
But in spite of what this odd, mature, more-or-less-reasonable Sirius says now, a snog, a shag, and two trays of cookies aren’t enough. Sirius gives so much, always, and Remus, ever guarded, ever bloody poor, can’t go on giving tiny, empty gestures.
Or not empty, exactly, but that’s how they feel when you’ve hardly had two galleons to rub together your whole life. When your gifts fade, temporary distractions. He may not be able to give Sirius something expensive, and nice, but he can give something meaningful, or at least something that can’t be eaten in two-and-a-half seconds.
Remus searches the flat. In the kitchen he finds a bit of kitchen string, coated in a melted meringue, and transforms it into a skein of scarlet yarn. Another skein he gets from the dried out bouquet of wildflowers that have been sitting, forgotten, on an end table for three months. He transforms their life together into something tangible and malleable, beauty out of chaos, dirty socks and all, and thank Merlin his mother taught him how to knit.
iv.
“You haven’t opened it,” Sirius says when he comes home, frowning slightly, until Remus shoves a neatly wrapped box at him. Sirius takes it in delight, his grin warming Remus from the toes up.
“You first,” he says. “It’s been Transfigured out of our things. Well.” He bites his lip, traces his tongue over an old scar. “Transfigured and then refigured, I suppose. You’ll understand. It’s. You know. Us. Because that’s all that I can give you.”
“Moony – ” Sirius starts, but Remus shakes his head, interrupting.
“Just open it. Please.”
Sirius does, and he’s silent for a long moment. A very long moment. One dark eyebrow arches up gradually, as if of its own accord, as if filling up with helium, about to float off of his face altogether any second now.
“It’s...” Sirius says at last. “It’s... us?”
“Yes?” Remus says, feeling small.
“It’s... Right then. Right. On it goes.”
Sirius unfolds the jumper and neatly slides it over his head, pulling it snugly around his hips. Remus nods at the fit – not lumpy at all, perfectly sized, not too tight or too lose. He hadn’t even needed magic to make the measurements correct. Then his eyes move down to Sirius’s chest, where he’d knit a paw print and crescent moon sort of design, which had looked a little wonky as he went along, but... He stops.
“It’s...” Sirius says again. “If this is us...” He’s struggling not to laugh now, probably because of Remus’s stricken face.
“Bleeding Christ,” Remus swears. “It’s a monster. We’re monsters. I’m a monster. Oh, Merlin.”
Because the the paw print and the moon have merged somehow, into some sort of design that would be phallic if it didn’t have toes. And where the design had been smooth before, about a hundred little bobbles have converged out of the yarn, blinking like fairy lights. The not-phallus wiggles suggestively, and then promptly turns into a singing Christmas tree.
“Oh, Merlin,” Remus moans again, but loudly, so as to be heard over the shrill screams of “God Rest Ye Merry Hippogriffs.” “It’s not... I swear it wasn’t...”
Sirius is laughing so hard that his face is turning purple. “M-Moon-y,” he gasps. “This is – the b-best – Christmas gift – I’ve ever – ”
“Take it off!” Remus groans into his hands. He can feel the heat of his burning cheeks against his palms. After a moment, because Sirius is doubled over now (“Our love’s – a – a transient waggling cock monster!”), Remus tugs at the hem of the jumper. It doesn’t budge.
Sirius pauses his laughter – eyes streaming – to regard Remus’s struggle. “W-what?” he asks, bewildered, as Remus pulls more and more frantically at the jumper.
“It’s stuck!” Remus cries, and the jumper roars in response, the design once more transforming into an angry not-phallus.
Sirius pulls at it himself, to the same end.
“I just wanted to give you something nice!” Remus wails. “For our first proper Christmas, for what might be our only Christmas. But I can’t ever give you nice things, because – ”
And there’s Sirius, pulling Remus to his chest, so that the laughter echoes between them, somehow rattling in both of their rib cages. He feels Sirius’s lips graze the top of his head.
“Oh, Moony,” Sirius shouts, because the jumper has taken up another carol. “I’ve already told you, you sod. You’re enough. You’re always enough. I meant it. This is you – us – transient waggling cock monster and all.” He gives Remus another squeeze, and then pulls aways, looking at Remus fondly. “No one else in the world could’ve given me this.”
Remus flushes again. Mumbles, “I knew I shouldn’t have Transfigured that odd bit from your rubbish bin, it must’ve had an adverse reaction...” But smiles, finally. Sirius’s words don’t reassure him entirely. There have always been, and always will be, inequalities between them. But somehow, while they’ve been niggling at the back of Remus’s mind, Sirius has learned to ignore them. Or perhaps he never even noticed in the first place.
Perhaps Remus always has been good enough after all. This life they’ve made together is certainly one of a kind, and in that instant, he realizes that neither of them wants it any other way.
“Although, ah,” Sirius adds after a moment, “I reckon you might’ve been right about the Twelve Days of Christmas being a bit much.”
Remus laughs. “Oh, but Padfoot,” he says, his smile quirking to one side, “I have so very many knitting patterns, and so very many ways to keep you warm.”
Author:
peskywhistpawRecipient:
themessrsRating: PG-13
Contents or warnings (highlight to view): *some language and sexuality *
Word count: 1,900
Summary: “Our love’s – a – a transient waggling cock monster!” Remus faces insecurities their first proper Christmas together. Knitting helps. Sort of.
Notes: Happy Holidays! Sorry this got so weird so fast.
“It’ll be like the Twelve Days of Christmas,” Sirius says, “only we’ll do it the twelve days before, instead of after. Like a Christmassy Hanukkah thingum.”
Remus huffs from their shabby armchair, picking at a loose thread in the cushion while he reads. “I’m not buying you twelve presents, if that’s what you’re after.” He doesn’t look up from his book, but he can imagine Sirius’s face: it’s either falling, or shaping itself into something mischievous.
“I’m not asking you to!” Sirius says, indignant. “We can barely afford the flat. Doesn’t mean we can’t, y’know, make things, or do things like two fully-functioning adults celebrating their first proper Christmas together. Alone. Y’know.”
Remus huffs again. Best stop this while he can. “Padfoot, if I shag you for twelve days straight, there won’t be any time left to buy the turkey, and then no amount of sex will save me from your whinging.”
“That’s a fair point,” Sirius concedes, “but not what I –”
“But one day,” Remus interrupts, raising his voice and setting his book aside in the rarest and most irresistible of two-pronged attacks, and Sirius snaps his mouth shut. “Maybe even two,” Remus adds.
The matter, he considers, is put to rest, but the next day, he wakes up to find a small, horribly shiny parcel on his night stand, nestled beside one of the holsters Sirius had fashioned for each of their wands, because he hadn’t figured they’d need lamps. Remus blinks a sleepy eye, and brushes his fingers against the parcel until he catches a loop of the gaudy red bow around his pinky, and can pull the tiny monstrosity to him.
“Sirius?” he asks, feeling on the other side of the bed, but it’s empty, the sheets still mussed. Remus sits up, rubs his eyes. The clock reads six. His feet automatically seek out his slippers, and his dressing gown aggressively forces its way onto him. Clutching the parcel to his chest, he pads into the hall. “Sirius,” he says again, but this time, it’s less questioning, and more suspicious.
On cue, Sirius’s head pops out of the nearest doorway, his dark hair sticking on end almost as badly as James’s always did each morning in the Gryffindor dorms. His eyes flick from Remus’s face to the parcel, and back again.
“Yeeeees?”
“What,” Remus says. “Padfoot, what. What is this.”
Sirius grins, shifting a few steps until his full body is in view. He’s only in his pants, of course. Remus shivers, and clutches his dressing gown with his free hand.
“It’s the first day of Christmas.”
“The first... But we... But I haven’t...”
“Surprise,” Sirius says, and the grin has turned almost demonic. He sidles next to Remus, and knocks one snitch-patterned hip against his.
“Prat,” Remus growls.
Sirius nudges him more gently this time, snuffling into Remus’s ear in a way that’s far less pleasant in dog form. “Open it, hey.”
“And if I refuse?”
He feels Sirius shrug against him. “I’ll hex you for being ungrateful. But it’s your choice.”
Remus tugs at the horrid ribbon. “As long as this is the last day.”
It isn’t, and Remus quickly begins to panic. He’d kept up on the second day by baking complicated batches of biscotti and meringue cookies, which Sirius had delightedly interrupted. The whole thing had turned into rather a mess when Remus’s elbow caught the bowl of cookie dough, sending it smashing to the ground while Sirius chuckled and tugged down Remus’s trousers, but it had been a satisfying experience all the same.
Of course, cookies are hardly comparable with a gilt quill enchanted to check one’s spelling (“Not that you’ll need that part,” Sirius had said, and when Remus stared at him in horror, added, “Nicked it from my mum years ago. Didn’t spend a knut.”), and a rare copy of a comprehensive bestiary from the Middle Ages (“D’you reckon anyone else managed to nick something from the Hogwarts library?”), and that morning, an enormous package he pretends not to notice and doesn’t dare open because the guilt is gnawing at him. So he snuffles softly when Sirius bends down to kiss him that morning, feigning sleep, and listens for the padding away of Sirius’s feet, the falter in them when Sirius trips over the leftover mess in the kitchen whilst trying to corral up something for breakfast, the complicated whisperings of the warding spells as he leaves for work.
As soon as the last incantation is in place, Remus flings off the blankets and sets to work. The one good thing about being an unemployable werewolf, he thinks, and having the day off Order duties, is having the flat to himself for hours – which he normally doesn’t like, excepting when Padfoot accidentally chews up his shoes.
He’s been thinking about this all night, so long it’s lucky he didn’t really fall asleep when he was pretending to. Sirius has reassured him each day, without looking the least bit hurt, that Remus doesn’t need to reciprocate the gifts. “You’re enough,” he says, “and I know it’s difficult for...”, and it’s an entirely different Sirius from the one who had avoided him for a week their second year because Remus had forgotten his birthday, and even the Sirius of their sixth year, to whom Remus had needed to give a late Christmas present, because he had needed time to gather his courage. Sirius had enthusiastically accepted the snog then, but only after many days of pouting and brooding beforehand, and James had nearly been ready to punch them both by the end for being such idiots about it.
But in spite of what this odd, mature, more-or-less-reasonable Sirius says now, a snog, a shag, and two trays of cookies aren’t enough. Sirius gives so much, always, and Remus, ever guarded, ever bloody poor, can’t go on giving tiny, empty gestures.
Or not empty, exactly, but that’s how they feel when you’ve hardly had two galleons to rub together your whole life. When your gifts fade, temporary distractions. He may not be able to give Sirius something expensive, and nice, but he can give something meaningful, or at least something that can’t be eaten in two-and-a-half seconds.
Remus searches the flat. In the kitchen he finds a bit of kitchen string, coated in a melted meringue, and transforms it into a skein of scarlet yarn. Another skein he gets from the dried out bouquet of wildflowers that have been sitting, forgotten, on an end table for three months. He transforms their life together into something tangible and malleable, beauty out of chaos, dirty socks and all, and thank Merlin his mother taught him how to knit.
“You haven’t opened it,” Sirius says when he comes home, frowning slightly, until Remus shoves a neatly wrapped box at him. Sirius takes it in delight, his grin warming Remus from the toes up.
“You first,” he says. “It’s been Transfigured out of our things. Well.” He bites his lip, traces his tongue over an old scar. “Transfigured and then refigured, I suppose. You’ll understand. It’s. You know. Us. Because that’s all that I can give you.”
“Moony – ” Sirius starts, but Remus shakes his head, interrupting.
“Just open it. Please.”
Sirius does, and he’s silent for a long moment. A very long moment. One dark eyebrow arches up gradually, as if of its own accord, as if filling up with helium, about to float off of his face altogether any second now.
“It’s...” Sirius says at last. “It’s... us?”
“Yes?” Remus says, feeling small.
“It’s... Right then. Right. On it goes.”
Sirius unfolds the jumper and neatly slides it over his head, pulling it snugly around his hips. Remus nods at the fit – not lumpy at all, perfectly sized, not too tight or too lose. He hadn’t even needed magic to make the measurements correct. Then his eyes move down to Sirius’s chest, where he’d knit a paw print and crescent moon sort of design, which had looked a little wonky as he went along, but... He stops.
“It’s...” Sirius says again. “If this is us...” He’s struggling not to laugh now, probably because of Remus’s stricken face.
“Bleeding Christ,” Remus swears. “It’s a monster. We’re monsters. I’m a monster. Oh, Merlin.”
Because the the paw print and the moon have merged somehow, into some sort of design that would be phallic if it didn’t have toes. And where the design had been smooth before, about a hundred little bobbles have converged out of the yarn, blinking like fairy lights. The not-phallus wiggles suggestively, and then promptly turns into a singing Christmas tree.
“Oh, Merlin,” Remus moans again, but loudly, so as to be heard over the shrill screams of “God Rest Ye Merry Hippogriffs.” “It’s not... I swear it wasn’t...”
Sirius is laughing so hard that his face is turning purple. “M-Moon-y,” he gasps. “This is – the b-best – Christmas gift – I’ve ever – ”
“Take it off!” Remus groans into his hands. He can feel the heat of his burning cheeks against his palms. After a moment, because Sirius is doubled over now (“Our love’s – a – a transient waggling cock monster!”), Remus tugs at the hem of the jumper. It doesn’t budge.
Sirius pauses his laughter – eyes streaming – to regard Remus’s struggle. “W-what?” he asks, bewildered, as Remus pulls more and more frantically at the jumper.
“It’s stuck!” Remus cries, and the jumper roars in response, the design once more transforming into an angry not-phallus.
Sirius pulls at it himself, to the same end.
“I just wanted to give you something nice!” Remus wails. “For our first proper Christmas, for what might be our only Christmas. But I can’t ever give you nice things, because – ”
And there’s Sirius, pulling Remus to his chest, so that the laughter echoes between them, somehow rattling in both of their rib cages. He feels Sirius’s lips graze the top of his head.
“Oh, Moony,” Sirius shouts, because the jumper has taken up another carol. “I’ve already told you, you sod. You’re enough. You’re always enough. I meant it. This is you – us – transient waggling cock monster and all.” He gives Remus another squeeze, and then pulls aways, looking at Remus fondly. “No one else in the world could’ve given me this.”
Remus flushes again. Mumbles, “I knew I shouldn’t have Transfigured that odd bit from your rubbish bin, it must’ve had an adverse reaction...” But smiles, finally. Sirius’s words don’t reassure him entirely. There have always been, and always will be, inequalities between them. But somehow, while they’ve been niggling at the back of Remus’s mind, Sirius has learned to ignore them. Or perhaps he never even noticed in the first place.
Perhaps Remus always has been good enough after all. This life they’ve made together is certainly one of a kind, and in that instant, he realizes that neither of them wants it any other way.
“Although, ah,” Sirius adds after a moment, “I reckon you might’ve been right about the Twelve Days of Christmas being a bit much.”
Remus laughs. “Oh, but Padfoot,” he says, his smile quirking to one side, “I have so very many knitting patterns, and so very many ways to keep you warm.”
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no subject
Date: 2013-12-18 05:29 pm (UTC)Sadly, this situation was probably relateable, too, for most of us. Well, not magic knitting patterns gone awry per se, but celebrating Christmas with lots of love and not much money is something most of us have gone through (or are going through) at one time or another. I love the boy's creativity, though.
And, that sweater is an awesome character in and of itself. Because the the paw print and the moon have merged somehow, into some sort of design that would be phallic if it didn’t have toes. And where the design had been smooth before, about a hundred little bobbles have converged out of the yarn, blinking like fairy lights. The not-phallus wiggles suggestively, and then promptly turns into a singing Christmas tree. LOL. so fabulous! My in-laws have an "ugly sweater party" every Christmas and I totally wish that sweater were real and Sirius would loan it to me for the occasion.
Great story! What a happy start to the day.
no subject
Date: 2013-12-18 11:04 pm (UTC)LOL! Happy holidays to you, too. :D
no subject
Date: 2013-12-19 01:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-19 02:24 pm (UTC)Adorable, light, hilarious fic that put a big grin on my face. Great job! (:
no subject
Date: 2013-12-19 06:01 pm (UTC)I really like the set-up explaining Remus' feelings of helplessness in the face of Sirius' generosity. I think we've all been there--just not able to reciprocate with a friend or family member. It's a hard situation, and one I imagine these two found themselves in often. Enjoyed! M.
no subject
Date: 2013-12-20 03:01 am (UTC)Ah, Sirius. Only you would think stolen goods make good Christmas presents. You stole a library book? Remus and I are scandalized.
I do so love a Remus who knits (and bakes!).
Such a sweet story, thank you.
no subject
Date: 2013-12-21 10:19 pm (UTC)I really love the dialogue, and the whole image of a knitting Remus is really lovely.
You’re always enough. I meant it. This is you – us – transient waggling cock monster and all
Ah Sirius, you always know what to say :D Quite adorable.
Enjoyed this a lot!
no subject
Date: 2013-12-22 06:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-24 02:39 pm (UTC)Poor Remus, not wanting to disappointment Sirius.
Love that Sirius has nicked most of the presents for Remus.
Adore that Remus's present goes a little wrong and that Sirius still adores it.
no subject
Date: 2013-12-24 08:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-30 04:14 pm (UTC)