Fic: Midnight Tea for midnight_birth
Nov. 30th, 2008 01:00 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
blackliquorice.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
small_giftsTitle: Midnight Tea
Author: B
Written for:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
midnight_birth
Rating: R? Let's say it this way: if this community were a cinema you would need to show identification to purchase your ticket for this post. (No pocket watch, no fic, right?)
Prompt: Passion fueled by anger.
Summary: Beings boys, Remus and Sirius don't want to talk about what's going on. So they have a spot of tea instead.
Any other notes, Beta'd by the lovely and attentivecarmine_ink. If you spot any errors, they happened between the time she looked it over and the time I posted it, definitely.
warnings, Sexual content, some language, and slash. (Dur.)
etc.: * indicates footnote
The Gryffindor common room glimmered faintly with leftover fairy lights that hadn’t yet been taken down, though the students had all returned from their winter holidays that morning. It was late, but Remus Lupin felt far too awake to pay the hour any mind.
Outside in the sky an enormous globe of waxing gibbous moon hung, seemingly unaware of its affect on the young man inside the castle. Remus was soaking his already-aching bones in the warm, sweet heat of the fireplace, though his first transformation of the year wouldn’t be for three more days.
In the far corner, a bit of feral mistletoe that someone had put a locking charm on snapped and snarled in a futile effort to escape its invisible holding cell. Remus barely glanced at it as he sipped a soothing cup of peppermint tea and tried to decide whether or not to open his potions text. He knew he should use the quiet of the night to study since he didn’t feel like sleeping, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to do it. He was hopeless at potions anyway.
A shadow fell across the floor, and Remus didn’t need to turn around to know who was just coming in so far past curfew. He restrained the urge to say as much, asking instead, “do you want to talk about it?”
Sirius, who had been out doing Merlin-knows-what in the snow, callous as ever in regards to his own safety, dripped silently in the doorway. He dropped his wet cloak and boots just inside the portrait hole before he wandered over and took a seat in front of the hearth. “Is there tea?”
“There could be,” Remus replied, the statement falling off of his tongue with unintended weight behind it.
Sirius cleared his throat perhaps a bit more loudly than strictly necessary and got up to put the kettle on. Wet strings of hair hung in the young wizard’s eyes, nearly obscuring the dark blue shadows that had been beneath them since that morning on the platform, when he’d bid goodbye to James’ parents and carefully avoided looking for his own. He needn’t have worried, however, as they weren’t there. Regulus had come alone, and spared only a short glance at Sirius before hurrying onto the train.
Something in Remus’ neck popped loudly as he rose from the antique chesterfield. He moved to hover comfortingly in Sirius’ general direction, which was as bold a ‘move’ as he dared make while Sirius was still acting skittish. Sirius stiffened further, and then reluctantly let his eyes come up to meet his friend’s. They were both liquid and steeled, brimming with some resentment that Remus knew had been there all along, carefully tucked under the façade of brash indifference.
Quite unexpectedly, Sirius lunged for Remus.
He was caught so off guard by the kiss that the mug slipped right out of his fingers and clattered to the floor. Sirius backed him over to a velvet-cushioned chaise lounge that had seen the same sort of behaviour from generations of previous students. They tripped and landed on it, which knocked the breath out of Remus slightly, but Sirius didn’t pause in his administrations.
“She has these stupid parties, at Christmas.” Sirius pressed Remus firmly down into the cushion and nibbled at his collarbone less kindly than a girl would have done. “They’re meant to-“
“Ah!” Remus interrupted, on a particularly sharp graze of teeth.
“-Show us off, to their rotten ‘friends.’”
Before this, there had been a few nuzzles and squeezes that could hardly be considered manly behaviour, endless accidental brushes of fingertips during their lessons, and even a few “dare you” party snogs that had mostly ended with them laughing nervously into each other’ mouths. Remus had often felt bloody stupid in the morning, as his wistful gazes across the room were never reciprocated. There had certainly never been anything close to him being straddled by Sirius—Merlin, he was being straddled by Sirius—in the common room in the middle of the night.
Oh, what the hell.
Teeth scraped against teeth when Remus started kissing back as enthusiastically as Sirius was, which only seemed to bring things further along. “She took me off the tapestry,” Sirius panted; his Christmas-clove-sweet-scented breath felt hot against Remus’ face and smelled pleasantly spicy. “Set fire to the damned thing so she could pretend like I never existed.”
Suddenly Sirius’ fingers were fluttering over Remus’ flies*, and it was the way they were shaking that finally snapped Remus back to reality. He reached out and grabbed Sirius’ hands, gently moving them away.
Panic flashed across Sirius’ face and he started to get up, no doubt already thinking of a way to laugh it all off, but Remus didn’t let him. Instead, he rolled them both over, reversing their positions, and took in the sight before him.
Sirius was a vision, with his hair all mussed up, his lips all puffy and red from their earlier assault on Remus, defiantly atremble from whatever had happened to finally drive him from his family home for good. The dark look in Sirius’ eyes clearly said that he didn’t give a whit if Remus was about to make fun of him, it said there would be a tussle if that’s what it came to, and it said ‘set fire to my name if you like, I don’t give a damn.’ Remus had seen that bravado before, and knew enough to realize that it meant Sirius was feeling his absolute worst.
Remus leaned down slowly and pressed a gentle kiss to Sirius’ lips. It was the sort of thing he wouldn’t have ever tried if they weren’t already so far past the usual boundaries. It was probably outright girly, and he might have felt stupid afterward if it hadn’t been so well received. Sirius seemed to melt, boneless beneath him, eyes hazy and confused as he passively let Remus kiss him for a moment.
Remus coaxed Sirius’ lips apart with a nudge and Sirius sighed blissfully as they explored the tips of each other’s tongues. He sat up after a moment, still shaking a bit, but far less frantic than at the beginning of things. “She didn’t toss me out.” His eyes were defiant again. “I left. And I don’t care. Who needs them? I don’t.”
Something welled up in Remus’ throat, and it took him a moment to recognize that it wasn’t only Sirius that was struggling with resentment. He found himself in no short supply, either. He had been collecting it for years. He resented the way his knee hurt when the snow came, and the way his shoulders were always just a bit tight. He resented Sirius’ bloody awful family, and the way they were so readily able to give him up. Remus couldn’t have given Sirius up if he tried to, and he knew that, because in certain ways he had been trying to.
He resented the fact that they couldn’t just kiss one another when they wanted to, but had to wait until the entire castle was asleep first. He resented this sudden development of Sirius just grabbing him and snogging him, mostly because it hadn’t happened sooner, when it was rather obvious they both had wanted to. All of that resentment Remus pressed into Sirius’ lips, and the spaces between his ribs, and the small of his back, and the curve of his arse.
Sirius exchanged his own pokes and grasps and bites, so that several minutes later when they pulled apart they were both a bit bruised up in spots. Remus’ lower lip was bleeding, and Sirius looked as though he’d been slapped right in his ever-smart mouth, which maybe he had, in a way.
On the second try, Sirius’ hands were steady as they reached for Remus’ flies, so Remus let him undo them, and slid out of his trousers. “Moony? Remus?” Sirius’ breath against his ear felt so intimate that his hips gave a quick jerk before he could gather his wits. Sirius sniggered and nibbled at his earlobe. “Are we going to-?”
“Yes.”
When Sirius shifted against him to open the buttons on his own shirt, Remus realized with a vague sense of wonder that he wasn’t the only one who’d been physically affected by the boys’ proximity. He licked his lips and looked up at Sirius, oddly pleased to find Sirius looking back down at him.
“What are we doing?” Sirius licked his lips as well, unconsciously mimicking Remus in his anxiety, for once seeming at a complete loss. He discarded his trousers and slid a leg over Remus’ waist.
“We’re sharing affections,” murmured Remus, surprised at how easily he could say such a thing. He wriggled out of his socks and discarded them. “Don’t worry,” he chuckled at the flabbergasted expression on Sirius’ face. “You don’t have to commit to anything, all right? Just.” Remus moved under Sirius once and felt the response it evoked.
Sirius sniggered nervously again as he effortlessly undid Remus’ tie. He snapped it teasingly beside Remus’ head before discarding it with a thoughtful look. “Is that what we lads are calling it these days?”
Remus refrained from asking Sirius where he’d learned the tie trick and instead busied himself with trying to reciprocate. Who had invented ties, anyhow? They were terribly inconvenient to have knotted about the necks of people that one was trying to, well, undress. Circe at the circus. He was undressing Sirius.
“Hmm,” Sirius hummed, taking off his own tie impatiently with one hand and unbuttoning Remus’ shirt with the other, “You do know you talk like a pamphlet, don’t you?” He mimicked the hip roll Remus had done a moment before. “How do I-” he looked about, uncertainly, “Don’t we need…?”
Remus’ eyebrows shot up. “Yes, we really do need.” He didn’t like the idea of Not Having, after all. Both of their eyes landed on the tea table and wandered over to the clotted cream at the same time. Remus gave a nod. “Bring over the Cornish, it’s more-“
Sirius’ cheeks went a mortified shade of violet red that Remus found endearing, despite the fact that his own face was glowing hot as well. “Right,” Sirius agreed, chuckling nervously. “Mother hates that about it.” That seemed to make him feel better, though he couldn’t quite Accio it with a straight face.
Although the idea of using the clotted cream sounded ridiculous, it felt luxurious and decadent as they slicked it onto the proper body parts and licked it off of each other’s fingers and lips. Remus guided Sirius’ fingers low and let him explore things for a moment, a bit wide eyed, before pressing insistently against him.
They tossed aside their pants perhaps a bit too easily, and then hastily brought over the blanket to situate themselves underneath. It was thick, brown, woolen and a bit scratchy, but coupled with the glowing firelight it gave them the illusion of privacy even in such an ordinarily very public place. “This is mad,” Remus murmured as he moved into a better position. “We’re both mad.”
Sirius followed Remus’ lead, and grinned to rival the shimmering fairy lights. In a surprisingly gentle way he tugged Remus’ leg up onto his shoulder, careful not to overextend it, and then searched for a final permission in his friend’s face. When Remus nodded, Sirius moved forward, slowly, and moaned. “Oh. Ooh.” Remus groaned in agreement, and moved in response.
They bucked and arched in awkward, staccato thrusts while they tried to learn one another’s rhythms; Sirius kept laughing and Remus was, embarrassingly, mewling. When Sirius made a graceful shift and gave Remus a perfectly opposed thrust, the baffled expression on his face changed to a pleased expression, and he reached down to give Remus a stroke at the same time. “Is that right?” Sirius seemed briefly worried, “with birds you have to, uh-“
“It’s fine, I know about that,” Remus replied, working to keep the teasing out of his tone, as he knew it was difficult enough for Sirius to get past the question of pride. “And I’m certainly not going to complain if you continue like that.”
The touch of Sirius’ long, graceful, slightly chilly fingers coupled with the now rhythmic thrusts brought Remus over quickly, in spite of himself. Sirius lifted his hand from under the blanket, surprised, and then a lusty haze fell over his eyes. Sirius quickened his pace and bit the inside of Remus’ knee as he came.
Remus laughed, then brought his sore thigh back down and allowed Sirius to snog him silly. “That was. You were. Was I?” Sirius babbled in half sentences and dotted kisses along Remus’ bruised collarbone. “My hands are sticky.”
“You were.” Remus snogged Sirius back for a moment, then picked up his wand from beside him. “And if you think your hands are sticky-“
Sirius gave a short bark of a laugh and reached for his own wand. Several cleaning charms and a few rumpled items of clothing later, they discovered that they had lost Remus’ trousers somewhere.
Just then the long forgotten teakettle gave a shrill whistle and they both started, banging their foreheads together soundly. Yellow sparks shot off in front of Remus’ eyes, and judging by Sirius’ pained moan, he wasn’t alone in that. Remus laughed. “Tea?”
“Mmm.”
Being fairly used to concussion himself, Remus recovered quickly and poured the tea. They brought the freshly scoured blanket over to the chesterfield and took their tea in front of the fire, carefully avoiding even the slightest glance at the Devonshire** and the scones.
When they’d had their tea, they curled up alongside one another and gazed at the fire, thinking their own separate thoughts. It had been a long, eventful year for them, but somehow they had made it through.
“Sometimes it’s so hard to get inside of you,” Sirius sleepily confessed to the back of Remus’ head, which was leaning precariously close to his own shoulder. Then he sank down in the cushions and pulled the blanket up to his chin. “I said that wrong,” he hurried to correct the statement, “what I meant, is that sometimes you take things so well-too well- and it’s difficult to know what you’re really thinking about.”
Remus sighed. “Is this about Snape and the Willow, again?”
Sirius snorted. “It’s about you. And never say that name post-coitus again. Nor post-tea, unless you want to make me ill.” He frowned. “You don’t want to make me ill, do you?”
“Not often,” Remus retorted; the full exhaustion of the early morning was beginning to set in.
“Berk.”
Remus didn’t reply to that, but the squeeze he gave Sirius’ hand under the blanket said what he needed to anyhow. Let’s talk about it some other time, all right? He yawned and changed the subject.
“Happy New Year, Padfoot.”
“Hmm,” Sirius agreed, spent.
As the third day of 1977 dawned on Hogwarts, Sirius’ eyes finally fluttered closed and Remus tried to think of what he would say if someone got up early enough to catch him sans trousers, napping with Sirius Black in the middle of the common room. A pleased, naughty grin crossed his face as he snuggled more deeply into the cushions and decided that he’d cross that bridge when he came to it.
* Flies is slang, and as such it's not easy to find a good definition to explain why it pains me to say fly instead. The link goes to a comic, however, to prove that I'm not making it up! ;)
** Devonshire is above all a place, but in this instance it refers to a different sort of clotted cream. It's thicker and less oily than the Cornish, so it is not as useful to Remus and Sirius. If they had wanted cream tea, they would have used the Devonshire!
Author: B
Written for:
midnight_birthRating: R? Let's say it this way: if this community were a cinema you would need to show identification to purchase your ticket for this post. (No pocket watch, no fic, right?)
Prompt: Passion fueled by anger.
Summary: Beings boys, Remus and Sirius don't want to talk about what's going on. So they have a spot of tea instead.
Any other notes, Beta'd by the lovely and attentive
carmine_ink. If you spot any errors, they happened between the time she looked it over and the time I posted it, definitely.warnings, Sexual content, some language, and slash. (Dur.)
etc.: * indicates footnote
The Gryffindor common room glimmered faintly with leftover fairy lights that hadn’t yet been taken down, though the students had all returned from their winter holidays that morning. It was late, but Remus Lupin felt far too awake to pay the hour any mind.
Outside in the sky an enormous globe of waxing gibbous moon hung, seemingly unaware of its affect on the young man inside the castle. Remus was soaking his already-aching bones in the warm, sweet heat of the fireplace, though his first transformation of the year wouldn’t be for three more days.
In the far corner, a bit of feral mistletoe that someone had put a locking charm on snapped and snarled in a futile effort to escape its invisible holding cell. Remus barely glanced at it as he sipped a soothing cup of peppermint tea and tried to decide whether or not to open his potions text. He knew he should use the quiet of the night to study since he didn’t feel like sleeping, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to do it. He was hopeless at potions anyway.
A shadow fell across the floor, and Remus didn’t need to turn around to know who was just coming in so far past curfew. He restrained the urge to say as much, asking instead, “do you want to talk about it?”
Sirius, who had been out doing Merlin-knows-what in the snow, callous as ever in regards to his own safety, dripped silently in the doorway. He dropped his wet cloak and boots just inside the portrait hole before he wandered over and took a seat in front of the hearth. “Is there tea?”
“There could be,” Remus replied, the statement falling off of his tongue with unintended weight behind it.
Sirius cleared his throat perhaps a bit more loudly than strictly necessary and got up to put the kettle on. Wet strings of hair hung in the young wizard’s eyes, nearly obscuring the dark blue shadows that had been beneath them since that morning on the platform, when he’d bid goodbye to James’ parents and carefully avoided looking for his own. He needn’t have worried, however, as they weren’t there. Regulus had come alone, and spared only a short glance at Sirius before hurrying onto the train.
Something in Remus’ neck popped loudly as he rose from the antique chesterfield. He moved to hover comfortingly in Sirius’ general direction, which was as bold a ‘move’ as he dared make while Sirius was still acting skittish. Sirius stiffened further, and then reluctantly let his eyes come up to meet his friend’s. They were both liquid and steeled, brimming with some resentment that Remus knew had been there all along, carefully tucked under the façade of brash indifference.
Quite unexpectedly, Sirius lunged for Remus.
He was caught so off guard by the kiss that the mug slipped right out of his fingers and clattered to the floor. Sirius backed him over to a velvet-cushioned chaise lounge that had seen the same sort of behaviour from generations of previous students. They tripped and landed on it, which knocked the breath out of Remus slightly, but Sirius didn’t pause in his administrations.
“She has these stupid parties, at Christmas.” Sirius pressed Remus firmly down into the cushion and nibbled at his collarbone less kindly than a girl would have done. “They’re meant to-“
“Ah!” Remus interrupted, on a particularly sharp graze of teeth.
“-Show us off, to their rotten ‘friends.’”
Before this, there had been a few nuzzles and squeezes that could hardly be considered manly behaviour, endless accidental brushes of fingertips during their lessons, and even a few “dare you” party snogs that had mostly ended with them laughing nervously into each other’ mouths. Remus had often felt bloody stupid in the morning, as his wistful gazes across the room were never reciprocated. There had certainly never been anything close to him being straddled by Sirius—Merlin, he was being straddled by Sirius—in the common room in the middle of the night.
Oh, what the hell.
Teeth scraped against teeth when Remus started kissing back as enthusiastically as Sirius was, which only seemed to bring things further along. “She took me off the tapestry,” Sirius panted; his Christmas-clove-sweet-scented breath felt hot against Remus’ face and smelled pleasantly spicy. “Set fire to the damned thing so she could pretend like I never existed.”
Suddenly Sirius’ fingers were fluttering over Remus’ flies*, and it was the way they were shaking that finally snapped Remus back to reality. He reached out and grabbed Sirius’ hands, gently moving them away.
Panic flashed across Sirius’ face and he started to get up, no doubt already thinking of a way to laugh it all off, but Remus didn’t let him. Instead, he rolled them both over, reversing their positions, and took in the sight before him.
Sirius was a vision, with his hair all mussed up, his lips all puffy and red from their earlier assault on Remus, defiantly atremble from whatever had happened to finally drive him from his family home for good. The dark look in Sirius’ eyes clearly said that he didn’t give a whit if Remus was about to make fun of him, it said there would be a tussle if that’s what it came to, and it said ‘set fire to my name if you like, I don’t give a damn.’ Remus had seen that bravado before, and knew enough to realize that it meant Sirius was feeling his absolute worst.
Remus leaned down slowly and pressed a gentle kiss to Sirius’ lips. It was the sort of thing he wouldn’t have ever tried if they weren’t already so far past the usual boundaries. It was probably outright girly, and he might have felt stupid afterward if it hadn’t been so well received. Sirius seemed to melt, boneless beneath him, eyes hazy and confused as he passively let Remus kiss him for a moment.
Remus coaxed Sirius’ lips apart with a nudge and Sirius sighed blissfully as they explored the tips of each other’s tongues. He sat up after a moment, still shaking a bit, but far less frantic than at the beginning of things. “She didn’t toss me out.” His eyes were defiant again. “I left. And I don’t care. Who needs them? I don’t.”
Something welled up in Remus’ throat, and it took him a moment to recognize that it wasn’t only Sirius that was struggling with resentment. He found himself in no short supply, either. He had been collecting it for years. He resented the way his knee hurt when the snow came, and the way his shoulders were always just a bit tight. He resented Sirius’ bloody awful family, and the way they were so readily able to give him up. Remus couldn’t have given Sirius up if he tried to, and he knew that, because in certain ways he had been trying to.
He resented the fact that they couldn’t just kiss one another when they wanted to, but had to wait until the entire castle was asleep first. He resented this sudden development of Sirius just grabbing him and snogging him, mostly because it hadn’t happened sooner, when it was rather obvious they both had wanted to. All of that resentment Remus pressed into Sirius’ lips, and the spaces between his ribs, and the small of his back, and the curve of his arse.
Sirius exchanged his own pokes and grasps and bites, so that several minutes later when they pulled apart they were both a bit bruised up in spots. Remus’ lower lip was bleeding, and Sirius looked as though he’d been slapped right in his ever-smart mouth, which maybe he had, in a way.
On the second try, Sirius’ hands were steady as they reached for Remus’ flies, so Remus let him undo them, and slid out of his trousers. “Moony? Remus?” Sirius’ breath against his ear felt so intimate that his hips gave a quick jerk before he could gather his wits. Sirius sniggered and nibbled at his earlobe. “Are we going to-?”
“Yes.”
When Sirius shifted against him to open the buttons on his own shirt, Remus realized with a vague sense of wonder that he wasn’t the only one who’d been physically affected by the boys’ proximity. He licked his lips and looked up at Sirius, oddly pleased to find Sirius looking back down at him.
“What are we doing?” Sirius licked his lips as well, unconsciously mimicking Remus in his anxiety, for once seeming at a complete loss. He discarded his trousers and slid a leg over Remus’ waist.
“We’re sharing affections,” murmured Remus, surprised at how easily he could say such a thing. He wriggled out of his socks and discarded them. “Don’t worry,” he chuckled at the flabbergasted expression on Sirius’ face. “You don’t have to commit to anything, all right? Just.” Remus moved under Sirius once and felt the response it evoked.
Sirius sniggered nervously again as he effortlessly undid Remus’ tie. He snapped it teasingly beside Remus’ head before discarding it with a thoughtful look. “Is that what we lads are calling it these days?”
Remus refrained from asking Sirius where he’d learned the tie trick and instead busied himself with trying to reciprocate. Who had invented ties, anyhow? They were terribly inconvenient to have knotted about the necks of people that one was trying to, well, undress. Circe at the circus. He was undressing Sirius.
“Hmm,” Sirius hummed, taking off his own tie impatiently with one hand and unbuttoning Remus’ shirt with the other, “You do know you talk like a pamphlet, don’t you?” He mimicked the hip roll Remus had done a moment before. “How do I-” he looked about, uncertainly, “Don’t we need…?”
Remus’ eyebrows shot up. “Yes, we really do need.” He didn’t like the idea of Not Having, after all. Both of their eyes landed on the tea table and wandered over to the clotted cream at the same time. Remus gave a nod. “Bring over the Cornish, it’s more-“
Sirius’ cheeks went a mortified shade of violet red that Remus found endearing, despite the fact that his own face was glowing hot as well. “Right,” Sirius agreed, chuckling nervously. “Mother hates that about it.” That seemed to make him feel better, though he couldn’t quite Accio it with a straight face.
Although the idea of using the clotted cream sounded ridiculous, it felt luxurious and decadent as they slicked it onto the proper body parts and licked it off of each other’s fingers and lips. Remus guided Sirius’ fingers low and let him explore things for a moment, a bit wide eyed, before pressing insistently against him.
They tossed aside their pants perhaps a bit too easily, and then hastily brought over the blanket to situate themselves underneath. It was thick, brown, woolen and a bit scratchy, but coupled with the glowing firelight it gave them the illusion of privacy even in such an ordinarily very public place. “This is mad,” Remus murmured as he moved into a better position. “We’re both mad.”
Sirius followed Remus’ lead, and grinned to rival the shimmering fairy lights. In a surprisingly gentle way he tugged Remus’ leg up onto his shoulder, careful not to overextend it, and then searched for a final permission in his friend’s face. When Remus nodded, Sirius moved forward, slowly, and moaned. “Oh. Ooh.” Remus groaned in agreement, and moved in response.
They bucked and arched in awkward, staccato thrusts while they tried to learn one another’s rhythms; Sirius kept laughing and Remus was, embarrassingly, mewling. When Sirius made a graceful shift and gave Remus a perfectly opposed thrust, the baffled expression on his face changed to a pleased expression, and he reached down to give Remus a stroke at the same time. “Is that right?” Sirius seemed briefly worried, “with birds you have to, uh-“
“It’s fine, I know about that,” Remus replied, working to keep the teasing out of his tone, as he knew it was difficult enough for Sirius to get past the question of pride. “And I’m certainly not going to complain if you continue like that.”
The touch of Sirius’ long, graceful, slightly chilly fingers coupled with the now rhythmic thrusts brought Remus over quickly, in spite of himself. Sirius lifted his hand from under the blanket, surprised, and then a lusty haze fell over his eyes. Sirius quickened his pace and bit the inside of Remus’ knee as he came.
Remus laughed, then brought his sore thigh back down and allowed Sirius to snog him silly. “That was. You were. Was I?” Sirius babbled in half sentences and dotted kisses along Remus’ bruised collarbone. “My hands are sticky.”
“You were.” Remus snogged Sirius back for a moment, then picked up his wand from beside him. “And if you think your hands are sticky-“
Sirius gave a short bark of a laugh and reached for his own wand. Several cleaning charms and a few rumpled items of clothing later, they discovered that they had lost Remus’ trousers somewhere.
Just then the long forgotten teakettle gave a shrill whistle and they both started, banging their foreheads together soundly. Yellow sparks shot off in front of Remus’ eyes, and judging by Sirius’ pained moan, he wasn’t alone in that. Remus laughed. “Tea?”
“Mmm.”
Being fairly used to concussion himself, Remus recovered quickly and poured the tea. They brought the freshly scoured blanket over to the chesterfield and took their tea in front of the fire, carefully avoiding even the slightest glance at the Devonshire** and the scones.
When they’d had their tea, they curled up alongside one another and gazed at the fire, thinking their own separate thoughts. It had been a long, eventful year for them, but somehow they had made it through.
“Sometimes it’s so hard to get inside of you,” Sirius sleepily confessed to the back of Remus’ head, which was leaning precariously close to his own shoulder. Then he sank down in the cushions and pulled the blanket up to his chin. “I said that wrong,” he hurried to correct the statement, “what I meant, is that sometimes you take things so well-too well- and it’s difficult to know what you’re really thinking about.”
Remus sighed. “Is this about Snape and the Willow, again?”
Sirius snorted. “It’s about you. And never say that name post-coitus again. Nor post-tea, unless you want to make me ill.” He frowned. “You don’t want to make me ill, do you?”
“Not often,” Remus retorted; the full exhaustion of the early morning was beginning to set in.
“Berk.”
Remus didn’t reply to that, but the squeeze he gave Sirius’ hand under the blanket said what he needed to anyhow. Let’s talk about it some other time, all right? He yawned and changed the subject.
“Happy New Year, Padfoot.”
“Hmm,” Sirius agreed, spent.
As the third day of 1977 dawned on Hogwarts, Sirius’ eyes finally fluttered closed and Remus tried to think of what he would say if someone got up early enough to catch him sans trousers, napping with Sirius Black in the middle of the common room. A pleased, naughty grin crossed his face as he snuggled more deeply into the cushions and decided that he’d cross that bridge when he came to it.
* Flies is slang, and as such it's not easy to find a good definition to explain why it pains me to say fly instead. The link goes to a comic, however, to prove that I'm not making it up! ;)
** Devonshire is above all a place, but in this instance it refers to a different sort of clotted cream. It's thicker and less oily than the Cornish, so it is not as useful to Remus and Sirius. If they had wanted cream tea, they would have used the Devonshire!
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Date: 2008-12-09 07:16 pm (UTC)Really fabulously done.
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Date: 2008-12-09 08:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-09 09:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-09 11:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-10 12:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-10 12:30 am (UTC)I loved the beautiful, masculine awkwardness of this, so loving and yet boyish at the same time. It felt so very real and so very like them. And the whole feeling of love and lust and resentment and need was fantastic.
Great fic!
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Date: 2008-12-10 02:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-10 02:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-10 02:09 am (UTC)Hehe, the footnotes were fun to write. I'm a Good Omens fan, so I'm always overjoyed with silly footnotes.
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Date: 2008-12-10 02:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-10 02:13 am (UTC)Remus is so much fun to write. :)
Thanks!
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Date: 2008-12-10 02:16 am (UTC)I think that Sirius and Remus are sort of made to fit together, in spite of the differences. There's just chemistry in their characterization, even in cannon, right?
Thank you. :)
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Date: 2008-12-10 02:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-10 02:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-10 02:20 am (UTC)Oh, the laughing. I'm afraid that's based on the truth. I can't even count the times I've been mid-kiss and found myself giggling into some poor boy's mouth. They always get this anxious look like "oh, what've I done wrong?"
Thank you! :)
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Date: 2008-12-10 02:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-10 02:23 am (UTC)Thank you! I don't mind the ditto, it just reinforces the verdict. Awkward=yummy, I'll file that info away for later use. ;)
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Date: 2008-12-10 02:26 am (UTC)So much happened to them that year, and to find themselves attracted to each other on top of it all? It practically writes itself.
Thank you!
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Date: 2008-12-10 02:31 am (UTC)And that must be the slowest boiling water, ever. Thank goodness.
Loved the footnotes. Loved the story. First fic, you say? I hope you write more.
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Date: 2008-12-10 03:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-10 03:51 am (UTC)I have an enormous squick for either of them, but especially Remus, being girly. They are SUCH boys here! Young, awkward, unsure and messy. In other words perfect! And the details. The tension, Sirius lunging, all the resentments, THE Cornish cream, hiding under the blanket; you slayed me! My favorite lines are these:
“That was. You were. Was I?” Sirius babbled in half sentences and dotted kisses along Remus’ bruised collarbone.
Remus tried to think of what he would say if someone got up early enough to catch him sans trousers, napping with Sirius Black in the middle of the common room. A pleased, naughty grin crossed his face as he snuggled more deeply into the cushions and decided that he’d cross that bridge when he came to it.
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Date: 2008-12-10 03:59 am (UTC)Oh, no. It was more like 8 minutes of unrivaled bliss. You know how it is. ;)
Thank you, and thank you! Oh, I'm signing up to pinch hit, so you'll see at least one more from me. Must spread the holiday cheer and all!
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Date: 2008-12-10 04:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-10 04:08 am (UTC)I share that squick, no worries. Aw, thank you! I crack myself up, so it's good that some other people enjoy my absurd sense of humour as well. I'd hate to be the only one who found it amusing, as it's meant for someone else!
Mmm, Sirius babbling and Remus being smug and naughty are always good things, right?
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Date: 2008-12-10 04:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-10 04:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-10 12:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-11 12:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-11 12:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-11 12:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-11 08:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-12 02:17 am (UTC)Thanks! I'm hoping my recipient agrees.
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Date: 2008-12-12 07:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-16 01:40 pm (UTC)I love, first of all, how wonderfully realistic this is! I very often ask for first times (I don't remember if I did this time, but that is in fact one of my most beloved kinks), and you pulled the reality, awkwardness and difficulties of first times just perfectly. It was delightfully bumpy, unsure, short and wrong and right in so many ways! I pretty much melted. I love it when first times aren't described as magical and perfect and the best ever. Because, let's face it, usually, they aren't. It's both parties wondering if they're doing it right and if they're putting everything in the right place and in the right way, and stuff like this. And my, these two are just adorable in their fumbling.
I love how anger played into this. Sirius's frustration is understandable, and I love how it mirrors in Remus's. And what better way is there to get rid of frustration, right? ;)
There is something cute but also very poignant about this. Your language is great, and I love the imagery. It all fits together so perfectly! I love the footnotes and the links - I'm a big sucker for those - and they were just the cutest thing.
I loved my gift! Thank you so much!! :D It just made my day with it's awesome puppy goodness! ♥
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Date: 2008-12-17 02:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-17 02:24 pm (UTC)(You mentioned that you liked them, yes.) I also may have stalked your interests a bit.
That was your prompt, so I can't take credit for that. ;) There's a companion piece in the works for the other prompt, because I couldn't fit it in here but said I would try, and because I like it.
Thank you! Haha. I am pretty sure that Good Omens is at least partly to blame for those.
You're very welcome! I'm so pleased that you're pleased with it!
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Date: 2008-12-17 02:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-17 02:28 pm (UTC)I am writing the companion piece, though, I'm just not sure where it'll be posted yet!
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Date: 2008-12-29 06:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-29 07:13 am (UTC)I adore awkwardness, and this has it in spades. And I love the use of clotted cream – I've never been one for lubricating spells in fic, so this was great.
xxx
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Date: 2009-01-05 07:40 pm (UTC)Such a wonderful story all around though, quite apart from the cute awkward lovely sex-y part: how well they knew each other, how I couldn't decide which boy I loved more, how...boyish they were. I'm sorry I'm not more coherent.
My favorite parts: the paragraphs where Remus talks about what he resents, because oh, poor Remus, sometimes I kind of know what he means; and the description of their previous tentative unmanly nuzzling and awkward party snogging. I just...I wanted to read about the two of them all day, just like this.
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Date: 2009-11-30 12:07 am (UTC)And enjoying the boys all over again! The bits about the resentments, bruises and the split lip! The Cornish creme and how Walburga hates it! Hehe! Great stuff!