CHALLENGE RESPONSE -- Lunulet's Remus Lupin and tea
Title: Earl Grey, Hot
Pairing: Sirius/Remus
Rating: R, for doofy 15-year-old boys in love
Remus was doing it on purpose. Sirius was sure of it. The first two or three times might've been a coincidence. But it had been a week now, and the intent was clear. Nobody could look so fucking hot while drinking a cup of tea without actually meaning it.
Remus was sitting directly across Sirius at the breakfast table. His hair, sun-streaked and shaggy from the summer, was in a ponytail, but it was too uneven in length to tie back neatly, and lots of shorter bits at the front escaped to frame his face and to stick out in little flyaway strands that just begged to be twined around somebody's fingers. Sirius' fingers. He was holding a steaming mug of Earl Grey, with his left hand loosely cradling the bottom of the mug and his thumb tracing lazy circles against the side. Remus had solid-looking hands -- not large, but obviously strong and competent. When he did something with them -- sharpened a quill, chopped a ginseng root, cast a charm -- there was never any doubt that the task was being done just so, perfect in every detail, not a single movement wasted. So what was the point of that relentlessly circling thumb? What purpose did it serve, except to make Sirius imagine what it would feel like brushing across his lips, massaging a nipple, circling the tip of his prick while Remus' fingers wrapped around the shaft and--
Sirius fished an ice cube from his water glass, popped it into his mouth and chewed. It didn't help. He considered dumping the contents of the glass over his own head. Or Remus' head. Or maybe Professor McGonagall's head. Then she could just kill him and put him out of his misery.
"Oi, Sirius!" Peter poked him in the shoulder with one pudgy finger. "Are you awake?"
"Huh?" Sirius blinked. He'd completely forgotten that Peter was there. "What?"
"James asked you to pass the toast four times!"
"Five," James corrected placidly. "But who's counting?"
"Sorry." Sirius shoved the toast rack in the general direction of James and Peter, nearly toppling the milk jug in the process. Peter caught it with a yelp, while James gave Sirius a curious look.
"All right there, Sirius? You've been acting odd all week."
"I'm fine," Sirius ground out. Remus was watching him through the cloud of steam that rose from the mug. His eyes were the same deep brown color as the tea. Not an exciting color, objectively speaking, but there was a spark of silent mischief in them that made Sirius' chest tighten and his prick twitch. When Remus dipped his head to drink, his eyelids lowered just a little to show off indecently long lashes. The way his upper lip caressed the rim of the mug was positively indecent. The bastard must've practiced it in front of a mirror. Yes, that was it. He'd probably been practicing in the prefects' bathroom. That would explain why he'd spent so much time there since the night Sirius came out.
Sirius hadn't meant to come out. Not on the first night of the school year, anyway. He'd intended to wait for the right moment, whatever that might be. But there they'd all been, sitting around the dorm talking about their holidays, and James had raved about Quidditch camp, and Peter had shown pictures of Tuscany, and Remus talked about hiking in the Lake District with his father, and when James turned to him and asked, "So what did you do over the summer, Sirius?" Sirius had opened his mouth to say something boring and neutral, and out popped, "I snogged a bloke and really liked it."
It seemed to go over well enough at the time. There was some initial sputtering, but it didn't take all that long for the group to come to the consensus that if a werewolf was all right, then so was a poofter. A certain amount of good-natured abuse was inevitable, of course. James made crude jokes and Peter laughed at them. Sirius didn't mind; he'd have done the same in James' place. That's what mates were for. No, James and Peter were all right. Remus, on other hand -- Remus was Evil Incarnate.
Evil Incarnate took another sip of his tea. A single drop clung to his bottom lip, right there in the center where it had that little dimple. Evil Incarnate licked it off with a leisurely swipe of his pink tongue. Sirius could feel the sweat beading on the back of his neck, the muscles in his thighs and stomach clenching with tension. If his prick got any harder, he was going to scream.
"We should get going." James drained his orange juice in one gulp and snatched his book bag from the floor. "Transfiguration in ten minutes."
"Go on without me," Sirius said. "I'm not done eating."
James stared at him. "Sirius, you haven't touched your food in the last fifteen minutes!"
"Well, I'm going to touch it now," Sirius growled. There was no way he was getting up from the table before everyone else was gone. His robes weren't loose enough to hide his erection. Madam Malkin's didn't make robes loose enough to hide his erection. He heaped more scrambled eggs on his plate and glared. "Get lost, will you? I'll catch up."
James left, with Peter trailing after. Remus took one last sip of tea and put his mug down. He looked at Sirius with that thoughtful half-smile he always wore when composing an essay in his head or contemplating an elegant new Arithmancy equation.
"I'll see you in class," he said, and got up from the bench. "Oh, you've got a smudge of butter right... there." And he reached across the table to cup his hand under Sirius' jaw and to brush his thumb, very lightly, across Sirius' chin.
Sirius knocked the water glass right into his own lap.
* * * * *
In Transfiguration, Remus sucked at the end of his quill while Professor McGonagall demonstrated the transformation of hedgehogs into rosebushes. In Potions, he slid his thumb up and down the glass stirring rod as he stirred the Skele-Gro base in his cauldron. In Herbology, he stuck his tongue out the corner of his mouth as he concentrated on preserving his fingers while pruning a Fanged Geranium under Professor Sprout's watchful eye. Sirius spent all day walking with his book bag clutched awkwardly in front of his crotch.
This couldn't go on. It had to stop. Enough was enough, and he'd passed the limits of enough about two days before. Sirius claimed a seat behind Remus in History of Magic, and waited until most of the class was peacefully asleep before passing him a note.
We need to talk. Alone. Tell me when.
Remus gave him a puzzled glance over his shoulder, scribbled on the reverse side of the note and passed it back.
I have an hour free after Arithmancy.
Sirius had Ancient Runes then, but he could afford to miss a day of Ancient Runes.
All right. I'll meet you in the dorm.
Sirius ended up arriving ten minutes late after taking the long way around to avoid his cousin Narcissa who, as Head Girl, was forever inventing new and exciting ways to make his life miserable. Remus was waiting for him, sprawled in the big red armchair by the fireplace, dressed only in jeans and an oversized cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up, his bare feet propped up on the nearest trunk, which happened to be Peter's.
He was holding a goddamned fucking mug of goddamned fucking tea in his hands.
Sirius sat down on Peter's bed, a little more abruptly than he'd meant to, and put his book bag in his lap.
"Remus," he said in a hoarse voice, "please stop it."
Remus' imitation of an innocently puzzled expression was absolutely letter-perfect. "Stop what?" he asked.
Sirius barely suppressed the urge to growl. "This whole bloody routine of yours. Look, I don't mind Peter hexing all my robes pink. I don't mind James telling the house-elves to leave the laundry on the floor so I can lift the shirts. I can take a joke as well as the next bloke. And this thing you're doing -- it was funny the first day, all right? But not for a whole bloody week."
"Sirius..." Remus sighed and ran one hand through his hair, pulling a few more strands free from the ponytail. "I don't mean to be rude, but you're acting very, very insane."
"I'm acting insane? You're the one who--"
"What's more, you've been acting insane all week. We've all noticed. James and Peter pulled me aside the other day to ask if I thought being a poof could make a bloke go funny in the head."
"They did WHAT?"
"You've been really distracted. You're not eating. You keep making these weird noises in your throat. And you stare at me. All. The. Time. I wish you'd stop."
"Excuse me?" Sirius jumped to his feet, only vaguely aware of his book bag hitting the floor with a thud. "How did this conversation get to be about me, anyway? This is supposed to be about you, and all the shit you've been doing!"
Remus was looking at him with that bland, over-patient expression he usually put on when explaining Arithmancy to Peter. "What have I been doing?" he asked.
Sirius pointed. "This!"
Remus looked down at the mug in his hands, then back up at Sirius. "This?"
"This."
"Sirius... I'm sitting in a chair drinking tea."
Sirius gritted his teeth. "That's not the point," he choked out. "The point is the way you're doing it."
"I'm supposed to drink my tea some other way?"
"Yes!"
"Backwards? Upside down? Hopping on one foot?"
"No! I just want you to go back to the way you've always been."
"This is the way I've always been, Sirius. I'm not doing anything different."
"Yes, you are!"
"What, then?" For the first time since they started talking, Remus' calm seemed to crack. He swung his feet off the trunk onto the floor and leaned forward. "Explain it to me, please, because I really don't understand. What am I doing differently?"
Sirius opened his mouth, ready to spew out a lengthy list, but the words stuck in his throat. He stood there, and looked at Remus, and felt his heart sink. Sirius Black had a very good memory. His visual recall wasn't one hundred percent perfect, but it was pretty close. Faced with a direct question, it presented him with four years' worth of images of Remus studying, Remus relaxing, Remus reading, Remus drinking tea. Remus doing a thousand everyday things, exactly the way he'd always done them.
Remus hadn't changed at all. Sirius was just seeing him differently.
"Sirius?" Remus' expression shifted from exasperation to concern. The little furrow between his eyebrows was the most adorable thing Sirius had ever seen. "You're making those weird noises again."
"I'm sorry," Sirius said. His earlier indignation was changing to a sort of numb horror as realization sank in. Remus wasn't teasing him on purpose. Remus was just being Remus. And he, Sirius, was hopelessly, uncontrollably turned on by Remus just being Remus.
He was doomed.
"What's the matter?" Remus put his mug down on the floor and got to his feet. "You're not going to be ill, are you?"
"I'm sorry," Sirius repeated. "I was just-- I mean-- It's not you, it's me."
"That sounds as if you're jilting me." Remus' mouth quirked into a half-smile. His left cheek dimpled. Sirius' knees went all wobbly.
"No," he said. And then, because his ability to shut up had vanished the week before, he added, "Just the opposite, actually."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Remus took a step forward. Sirius took a step back, tripped over his forgotten book bag, and came down on his bum with a painful thud. He scrambled to his feet immediately, but not fast enough to avoid Remus' steadying grip on his arm. Remus' hand felt just the same as it looked -- strong and solid and warm. Sirius' elbow abruptly turned into an erogenous zone.
Everything seemed to slow down then. Sirius felt as if he was moving underwater as he took hold of Remus' hand, raised it to his mouth, pressed a kiss into the open palm. Remus' skin tasted faintly salty, but it smelled like tea.
Sirius let go and started to pull away, but Remus caught him by the shoulder. The world snapped back to normal speed with a dizzying shift.
"Sirius," Remus said softly, "when you told us you were gay, practically the first thing James said was, and I quote, 'You don't fancy one of us, do you?'"
"I know."
"And you responded, and I quote, 'Fuck, no, James, that would be like fancying Regulus, if Regulus wasn't a shithead.'"
"I know."
"Were you lying then?"
"No." Sirius shivered. Remus' hand was still on his shoulder, and they were standing much too close, and Sirius had never wanted anything the way he wanted to pull Remus' hair from its ponytail and clench his fingers in it while he snogged Remus silly. "I was just... It was our first day back, I hadn't seen you all summer, I had all these other things on my mind, I wasn't..." He shook his head helplessly. "I didn't expect everything to be so different."
"Maybe it's not different," Remus said. "Maybe you're just seeing more clearly."
"Maybe--" Sirius began, and then forgot what he was going to say because Remus was kissing him. And Remus' mouth tasted of Earl Grey, no milk, two sugars, and Remus' hands were on Sirius' hips, and Remus' hair was as soft and thick as Sirius had been imagining all week.
They didn't make it to class for the rest of the day.
James and Peter were very confused when Sirius, who had never drunk anything other than water or orange juice at breakfast, suddenly took to savoring a hot mug of Earl Grey every morning.
Pairing: Sirius/Remus
Rating: R, for doofy 15-year-old boys in love
Remus was doing it on purpose. Sirius was sure of it. The first two or three times might've been a coincidence. But it had been a week now, and the intent was clear. Nobody could look so fucking hot while drinking a cup of tea without actually meaning it.
Remus was sitting directly across Sirius at the breakfast table. His hair, sun-streaked and shaggy from the summer, was in a ponytail, but it was too uneven in length to tie back neatly, and lots of shorter bits at the front escaped to frame his face and to stick out in little flyaway strands that just begged to be twined around somebody's fingers. Sirius' fingers. He was holding a steaming mug of Earl Grey, with his left hand loosely cradling the bottom of the mug and his thumb tracing lazy circles against the side. Remus had solid-looking hands -- not large, but obviously strong and competent. When he did something with them -- sharpened a quill, chopped a ginseng root, cast a charm -- there was never any doubt that the task was being done just so, perfect in every detail, not a single movement wasted. So what was the point of that relentlessly circling thumb? What purpose did it serve, except to make Sirius imagine what it would feel like brushing across his lips, massaging a nipple, circling the tip of his prick while Remus' fingers wrapped around the shaft and--
Sirius fished an ice cube from his water glass, popped it into his mouth and chewed. It didn't help. He considered dumping the contents of the glass over his own head. Or Remus' head. Or maybe Professor McGonagall's head. Then she could just kill him and put him out of his misery.
"Oi, Sirius!" Peter poked him in the shoulder with one pudgy finger. "Are you awake?"
"Huh?" Sirius blinked. He'd completely forgotten that Peter was there. "What?"
"James asked you to pass the toast four times!"
"Five," James corrected placidly. "But who's counting?"
"Sorry." Sirius shoved the toast rack in the general direction of James and Peter, nearly toppling the milk jug in the process. Peter caught it with a yelp, while James gave Sirius a curious look.
"All right there, Sirius? You've been acting odd all week."
"I'm fine," Sirius ground out. Remus was watching him through the cloud of steam that rose from the mug. His eyes were the same deep brown color as the tea. Not an exciting color, objectively speaking, but there was a spark of silent mischief in them that made Sirius' chest tighten and his prick twitch. When Remus dipped his head to drink, his eyelids lowered just a little to show off indecently long lashes. The way his upper lip caressed the rim of the mug was positively indecent. The bastard must've practiced it in front of a mirror. Yes, that was it. He'd probably been practicing in the prefects' bathroom. That would explain why he'd spent so much time there since the night Sirius came out.
Sirius hadn't meant to come out. Not on the first night of the school year, anyway. He'd intended to wait for the right moment, whatever that might be. But there they'd all been, sitting around the dorm talking about their holidays, and James had raved about Quidditch camp, and Peter had shown pictures of Tuscany, and Remus talked about hiking in the Lake District with his father, and when James turned to him and asked, "So what did you do over the summer, Sirius?" Sirius had opened his mouth to say something boring and neutral, and out popped, "I snogged a bloke and really liked it."
It seemed to go over well enough at the time. There was some initial sputtering, but it didn't take all that long for the group to come to the consensus that if a werewolf was all right, then so was a poofter. A certain amount of good-natured abuse was inevitable, of course. James made crude jokes and Peter laughed at them. Sirius didn't mind; he'd have done the same in James' place. That's what mates were for. No, James and Peter were all right. Remus, on other hand -- Remus was Evil Incarnate.
Evil Incarnate took another sip of his tea. A single drop clung to his bottom lip, right there in the center where it had that little dimple. Evil Incarnate licked it off with a leisurely swipe of his pink tongue. Sirius could feel the sweat beading on the back of his neck, the muscles in his thighs and stomach clenching with tension. If his prick got any harder, he was going to scream.
"We should get going." James drained his orange juice in one gulp and snatched his book bag from the floor. "Transfiguration in ten minutes."
"Go on without me," Sirius said. "I'm not done eating."
James stared at him. "Sirius, you haven't touched your food in the last fifteen minutes!"
"Well, I'm going to touch it now," Sirius growled. There was no way he was getting up from the table before everyone else was gone. His robes weren't loose enough to hide his erection. Madam Malkin's didn't make robes loose enough to hide his erection. He heaped more scrambled eggs on his plate and glared. "Get lost, will you? I'll catch up."
James left, with Peter trailing after. Remus took one last sip of tea and put his mug down. He looked at Sirius with that thoughtful half-smile he always wore when composing an essay in his head or contemplating an elegant new Arithmancy equation.
"I'll see you in class," he said, and got up from the bench. "Oh, you've got a smudge of butter right... there." And he reached across the table to cup his hand under Sirius' jaw and to brush his thumb, very lightly, across Sirius' chin.
Sirius knocked the water glass right into his own lap.
* * * * *
In Transfiguration, Remus sucked at the end of his quill while Professor McGonagall demonstrated the transformation of hedgehogs into rosebushes. In Potions, he slid his thumb up and down the glass stirring rod as he stirred the Skele-Gro base in his cauldron. In Herbology, he stuck his tongue out the corner of his mouth as he concentrated on preserving his fingers while pruning a Fanged Geranium under Professor Sprout's watchful eye. Sirius spent all day walking with his book bag clutched awkwardly in front of his crotch.
This couldn't go on. It had to stop. Enough was enough, and he'd passed the limits of enough about two days before. Sirius claimed a seat behind Remus in History of Magic, and waited until most of the class was peacefully asleep before passing him a note.
We need to talk. Alone. Tell me when.
Remus gave him a puzzled glance over his shoulder, scribbled on the reverse side of the note and passed it back.
I have an hour free after Arithmancy.
Sirius had Ancient Runes then, but he could afford to miss a day of Ancient Runes.
All right. I'll meet you in the dorm.
Sirius ended up arriving ten minutes late after taking the long way around to avoid his cousin Narcissa who, as Head Girl, was forever inventing new and exciting ways to make his life miserable. Remus was waiting for him, sprawled in the big red armchair by the fireplace, dressed only in jeans and an oversized cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up, his bare feet propped up on the nearest trunk, which happened to be Peter's.
He was holding a goddamned fucking mug of goddamned fucking tea in his hands.
Sirius sat down on Peter's bed, a little more abruptly than he'd meant to, and put his book bag in his lap.
"Remus," he said in a hoarse voice, "please stop it."
Remus' imitation of an innocently puzzled expression was absolutely letter-perfect. "Stop what?" he asked.
Sirius barely suppressed the urge to growl. "This whole bloody routine of yours. Look, I don't mind Peter hexing all my robes pink. I don't mind James telling the house-elves to leave the laundry on the floor so I can lift the shirts. I can take a joke as well as the next bloke. And this thing you're doing -- it was funny the first day, all right? But not for a whole bloody week."
"Sirius..." Remus sighed and ran one hand through his hair, pulling a few more strands free from the ponytail. "I don't mean to be rude, but you're acting very, very insane."
"I'm acting insane? You're the one who--"
"What's more, you've been acting insane all week. We've all noticed. James and Peter pulled me aside the other day to ask if I thought being a poof could make a bloke go funny in the head."
"They did WHAT?"
"You've been really distracted. You're not eating. You keep making these weird noises in your throat. And you stare at me. All. The. Time. I wish you'd stop."
"Excuse me?" Sirius jumped to his feet, only vaguely aware of his book bag hitting the floor with a thud. "How did this conversation get to be about me, anyway? This is supposed to be about you, and all the shit you've been doing!"
Remus was looking at him with that bland, over-patient expression he usually put on when explaining Arithmancy to Peter. "What have I been doing?" he asked.
Sirius pointed. "This!"
Remus looked down at the mug in his hands, then back up at Sirius. "This?"
"This."
"Sirius... I'm sitting in a chair drinking tea."
Sirius gritted his teeth. "That's not the point," he choked out. "The point is the way you're doing it."
"I'm supposed to drink my tea some other way?"
"Yes!"
"Backwards? Upside down? Hopping on one foot?"
"No! I just want you to go back to the way you've always been."
"This is the way I've always been, Sirius. I'm not doing anything different."
"Yes, you are!"
"What, then?" For the first time since they started talking, Remus' calm seemed to crack. He swung his feet off the trunk onto the floor and leaned forward. "Explain it to me, please, because I really don't understand. What am I doing differently?"
Sirius opened his mouth, ready to spew out a lengthy list, but the words stuck in his throat. He stood there, and looked at Remus, and felt his heart sink. Sirius Black had a very good memory. His visual recall wasn't one hundred percent perfect, but it was pretty close. Faced with a direct question, it presented him with four years' worth of images of Remus studying, Remus relaxing, Remus reading, Remus drinking tea. Remus doing a thousand everyday things, exactly the way he'd always done them.
Remus hadn't changed at all. Sirius was just seeing him differently.
"Sirius?" Remus' expression shifted from exasperation to concern. The little furrow between his eyebrows was the most adorable thing Sirius had ever seen. "You're making those weird noises again."
"I'm sorry," Sirius said. His earlier indignation was changing to a sort of numb horror as realization sank in. Remus wasn't teasing him on purpose. Remus was just being Remus. And he, Sirius, was hopelessly, uncontrollably turned on by Remus just being Remus.
He was doomed.
"What's the matter?" Remus put his mug down on the floor and got to his feet. "You're not going to be ill, are you?"
"I'm sorry," Sirius repeated. "I was just-- I mean-- It's not you, it's me."
"That sounds as if you're jilting me." Remus' mouth quirked into a half-smile. His left cheek dimpled. Sirius' knees went all wobbly.
"No," he said. And then, because his ability to shut up had vanished the week before, he added, "Just the opposite, actually."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Remus took a step forward. Sirius took a step back, tripped over his forgotten book bag, and came down on his bum with a painful thud. He scrambled to his feet immediately, but not fast enough to avoid Remus' steadying grip on his arm. Remus' hand felt just the same as it looked -- strong and solid and warm. Sirius' elbow abruptly turned into an erogenous zone.
Everything seemed to slow down then. Sirius felt as if he was moving underwater as he took hold of Remus' hand, raised it to his mouth, pressed a kiss into the open palm. Remus' skin tasted faintly salty, but it smelled like tea.
Sirius let go and started to pull away, but Remus caught him by the shoulder. The world snapped back to normal speed with a dizzying shift.
"Sirius," Remus said softly, "when you told us you were gay, practically the first thing James said was, and I quote, 'You don't fancy one of us, do you?'"
"I know."
"And you responded, and I quote, 'Fuck, no, James, that would be like fancying Regulus, if Regulus wasn't a shithead.'"
"I know."
"Were you lying then?"
"No." Sirius shivered. Remus' hand was still on his shoulder, and they were standing much too close, and Sirius had never wanted anything the way he wanted to pull Remus' hair from its ponytail and clench his fingers in it while he snogged Remus silly. "I was just... It was our first day back, I hadn't seen you all summer, I had all these other things on my mind, I wasn't..." He shook his head helplessly. "I didn't expect everything to be so different."
"Maybe it's not different," Remus said. "Maybe you're just seeing more clearly."
"Maybe--" Sirius began, and then forgot what he was going to say because Remus was kissing him. And Remus' mouth tasted of Earl Grey, no milk, two sugars, and Remus' hands were on Sirius' hips, and Remus' hair was as soft and thick as Sirius had been imagining all week.
They didn't make it to class for the rest of the day.
James and Peter were very confused when Sirius, who had never drunk anything other than water or orange juice at breakfast, suddenly took to savoring a hot mug of Earl Grey every morning.