"Bugger."
Remus sucked on his bleeding finger. This was the third time he'd cut himself in Potions today, and he was beginning to get frustrated trying to cut his roots with his left hand.
The night before had been the full moon, and while it'd been as fun as always (maybe even a little more, now, he admitted to himself), he'd scratched up his right arm on some tree bark and had required Madam Pomfrey to bandage it up in the hospital wing.
Even though the nurse hadn't pried, as usual, into why exactly he'd shown up with a bloody arm on a Monday morning, and Snap hadn't given him any trouble besides the usual suspicious glare, the injury was becoming a real bother. Between having his right hand incapacitated, and realizing certain things about himself, and the periodic moments of blushing and distraction caused by the gaze of a particular - don't kid yourself, he thought, he's one of your best mate and he's got McKinnon and in any case he's a million kilometers out of your league - between various things, he'd been embarrassing himself in unwarranted amounts recently.
With this he came crashing abruptly back to Earth. His eyes followed his knife as it rolled away, under the table, and -
"Need a hand?"
Sirius smirked at him, glancing at his incapacitated arm. He picked up the knife, and, ignoring Remus' hand reaching out to take it from him, began to chop up Remus' roots.
"I don't need any help -"
He smirked again, this time at Remus' pathetic roots. "Sure." He then scraped the shreddings into the bin, ignoring Remus' protests, then returning to chopping his roots.
"You really don't need to do that, you know-"
"I know. But I want to."
Remus blushed again, turning a shade of deep plum. He felt heat rising from the pit of his stomach, and laughed feebly at himself for fearing to speak. He stopped protesting out of worry his voice would shake.