aced
— a gift fic for The Kawaii Neko
beta-checked by: the wonderful rockyroad69
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Remus is staring at breasts. They're nice, he supposes. A pale, creamy color with a freckle on the right one, like a star in the sky. They look soft. They probably are soft.
He imagines touching them, fondling them. In his mind, they're definitely soft.
He squints a little. Yes, they're impressive breasts.
"Remus?" comes a sly voice. "Are you checking out a girl's knockers?"
He turns to face Sirius. "What? No," he says. He feels heat rush into his face.
"You were," Sirius says, grinning madly. "I saw you."
"I wasn't," Remus insists. To admit that he was would be to let Sirius win. He stabs a piece of bacon and shoves it into his mouth with a bit more force than he meant to.
"Yes, you were," Sirius continues, because he's a child, and just like a child, he can't let things go.
"I wasn't," Remus grinds out from a mouth filled with bacon.
Sirius leans in close. "Don't worry, mate. With knockers like that on display, I can't fault you for looking. Merlin knows even Alice can't stop staring." Sirius shrugs a little, somehow graceful and yet utterly careless. "I saw you looking, Remus. It's alright."
He takes a moment too long to answer and delight spreads across Sirius' face.
"Hah!" Sirius crows. "I knew it! James," he shouts, pawing at his friend from across the table, sleeve just missing a pile of blueberry pancakes.
James tears his eyes away from down the Gryffindor table. He's been staring at Lily again, but that's unsurprising. "Yeah?" he says bluntly, eyes flicking down the length of the breakfast table again.
"Remus — get this — Remus was staring at a girl's knockers," Sirius says with far too much energy.
That gets James' attention. "No," he says. "Not our Remus. Not Saint Remus. Say it ain't so!"
Sirius nods seriously. "Good sir," he says grandly, "it is but the truth. Saint Remus shall henceforth be known as the Knocker Cocker."
"What?" Peter breaks in, swiping golden syrup from his mouth. "That makes no sense."
"It does," Sirius says, clearly offended. "Remus sees knockers, and his — "
"Sirius. James. Peter," he says, with just a little too much force – like when he was shoving bacon into his mouth. "I promise you, I wasn't looking at her knockers."
Sirius patronizingly pats his shoulder. "I want to believe you, Remus," he says, and his eyes are oddly solemn for all that he's still grinning madly, "but unfortunately I saw you, clear as day, ogling her ample chest."
Frustration leads him to standing up and grabbing his book-bag. "I'm sorry, I have to get to class early. I need to ask the Professor a question," he explains, and rushes off.
His face is still burning. He hadn't been ogling her.
"See now," Remus hears Peter say, "you've upset the Knocker Cocker."
James chokes on his laughter.
All Remus can think as he leaves the Great Hall is yes — fine — he was looking at her chest. And yes, her knockers were pretty and they looked soft.
But no. He was not the Knocker Cocker.
He didn't really want to touch them.
A Knocker Cocker would.
Right?
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He's reading The Transmogrification of Turtle Transfigurations in a World of Rabbits when Sirius rudely bounces onto his bed.
He holds back a sigh. Really, he should be used to his friend, who is clearly part-child, part-demon.
"Remus?" Sirius asks quietly.
"Hmm?"
"Are you cross with me?"
Remus looks up, making a mental note of his page. "Why would I be?"
"You know," Sirius says, settling himself onto Remus' bed and making himself right at home, "for the Knocker Cocker thing."
"No," Remus says. He scrubs at his face a little. It's late.
"Oh. Good." Sirius drags a hand through his thick black hair. He looks a bit ruffled.
"Sirius?"
"Yeah?"
"Can I ask you something?"
"I dunno — can you?" he says devilishly.
Remus glares.
"What?" Sirius defends. "You're the one always correcting me."
"Be serious," he says, and regrets it immediately.
"I am Sirius. Are you feeling okay, Remy?" The grin has widened. Ah. The demon blood shines through.
Remus looks down and picks up his book again. "Never-mind."
The grin slips away. "Aw, don't be like that. I'm sorry, really. I'm on my best behavior," he says, and mimes zipping his mouth shut.
"When you look at a girl … what do you feel?" Remus asks haltingly.
Sirius' eyes are wide. Clearly, he hadn't expected that.
Remus still hasn't looked up. He takes peeks through his lashes as he toys with the book's spine.
"Well … Not much. But I guess that's because women weren't good enough for me, so I had to turn to men. I'm gay," he says brazenly.
Remus jerks his head up. "You're gay?"
Black eyes glare at him. The determination and stubbornness almost takes Remus' breath away. Sirius looks angry, he realizes absently, like a wolf waiting to be hit but also waiting to bite back. He expects Sirius sported a similar look when he was sorted into Gryffindor and not Slytherin.
"Oh. Okay," Remus says.
Sirius is still glaring at him with that dangerous look. "That okay?"
"Yes. I said okay, didn't I?"
Something relaxes in the set of Sirius' shoulders. "You did."
They're quiet for a moment. It's a bit of an awkward moment, in all honesty.
"So … " Remus begins.
Sirius looks at him and looks away again.
He clears his throat. "So what do you feel — erm — when you look at a boy?"
A thoughtful look comes across Sirius' face. It draws focus to dark eyebrows and aristocratic cheekbones. "Well, it depends on the boy. I have standards, you know," he preens, and Remus rolls his eyes. "But generally, I feel a zing of excitement." He touches his stomach briefly. "I feel more focused, and aware of the person. Yeah," he finishes lamely.
It feels like he wants to say more, but he doesn't. He looks up. "And you?" he asks.
"Me?" Remus says blankly.
"What do you feel when you look at a girl … or a boy?"
Heat rushes into his face so quickly that for a moment he's dizzy. "Well — I — excuse me — I need the loo," he says in a rush and scrambles off the bed, dropping the book in the process as he struggles towards the safety of the toilet.
Sirius watches him all the way. His eyes are still glaring, but they look a little softer now.
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Breakfast the next morning is normal, and calmer as it's a Saturday. (Normal meaning James is ogling Lily, Peter is stuffing his mouth, Sirius is making jokes, and Remus is back to staring.)
Today, he's staring at a boy. Last night, he couldn't sleep. He kept thinking about the softness of breasts and the softness in Sirius' eyes. Maybe he's gay.
He stares.
The boy is of average height — the Keeper for Ravenclaw — with dirty-blonde hair and brown eyes. He's fit, he supposes. He has a nice smile. Well-groomed. And he has muscles. They're well-defined (this is unsurprising, considering his position on the Ravenclaw team).
He looks from the Keeper to the ample-bosomed girl. Well now, he thinks. He's heard the expression, "I wanted to jump their bones."
He has absolutely no inclination to do so to the man or the woman.
Fuck.
There's a huff of air over his ear. "Staring again, Remus? My, my, how the mighty have fallen," Sirius teases. He turns bodily on the bench, twisting round without an ounce of shame until he's looking exactly where Remus was covertly staring.
"Who is it today? Luscious Lizzy? Gorgeous Gina?" His eyes scan and then settle.
Sirius always was sharp.
"Don't tell me I wasted all that mental energy on Knocker Cocker, Remus, when I should've called you Cock Knocker?" He's speaking quietly, and still a bit too close for comfort.
"Don't be ridiculous," he says dismissively. "I was just wondering if he was better than our Keeper."
Sirius stills a little. That joking smirk on his lips is slightly more ragged. "Ridiculous, is it?"
Remus pauses. "No, not like that, Sirius — don't be sensitive." Merlin, he keeps putting his foot in his mouth today. He should just stop talking. "Sensitive?" Sirius says slowly, as if he's tasting the word like he tasted alcohol that time in fourth year when they smuggled Firewhiskey into the dorms and drank until 4 a.m. and told each other secrets, like Sometimes I wish I had gone to Slytherin so that my family would look at me without that shocked glint in their eyes because they keep wondering how I came to be like this and I'm afraid that I'll always be seen as last – last choice, last friend, last Gryffindor – last in everything because that's all I'm worth and sometimes things like Once my father hit me and I wanted him to hit me again so I'd have an excuse to hate him and even Once I held a Muggle gun in my hands and contemplated a Muggle burial because at least the Muggles would pity my passing.
And then Sirius is up and walking away and Remus looks for him — he really does — and eventually he finds him hours later and he's kissing the Keeper, long and slow and deep and it's like the Keeper has all the oxygen in the world and Sirius is asphyxiating and it's messier than Remus thought it would be and a joke about Keepers being worth keeping pops into his head and he feels nauseous and then he's running.
It's what he's good at.
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"I like you," Sirius says bluntly.
He's sitting on Remus' bed again. It's three in the morning and Remus is sleeping (he's not sleeping).
He doesn't bother to pretend he's unconscious. "Yeah?" he says dully.
"Yes. I have for two years now."
"You were kissing the Keeper."
"I was kissing you through the Keeper."
"Don't fucking lie, Sirius. You were kissing him because you wanted to, because you were angry and thought it would hurt me and because you're a childish little shit." The words come out more vicious than he intends them to, but he's angry.
Sirius is silent. "You're angry."
Remus doesn't even bother to dignify that with an answer.
There's a sigh. "If you're angry, does that mean it's because you feel something for me, too?"
Feel something, Remus thinks dully. What does he feel? He'd stared at breasts and muscles; he'd studied the curve of lips and hips; he'd measured the broadness of shoulders; he'd imagined sex; he'd seen Sirius kissing someone.
He'd seen Sirius kissing someone. "When I saw you snogging him — " he begins.
Sirius turns his head to listen better.
" — all I could think about was how off-putting it was. You looked like you were trying to eat his face off," he finishes, embarrassed.
"I can't say that doesn't hurt my ego," Sirius says mildly. He pauses. "And if I went slower?"
Remus feels his face heat. Sirius doesn't understand. So he says, "You don't understand."
Sirius is relentless. "So explain it to me."
Frustrated, Remus sits up and faces Sirius. "I just — I thought I would grow up and then I'd start to notice people more. I'd start to look at knockers and the length of a girl's leg and I'd like it. But I didn't."
Sirius listens. Remus continues.
"And then I thought maybe I was gay. But I looked — I did — and I felt them up, sometimes, and I watched — well — you know and it just … felt wrong. Like when you get sand under your fingernails and you keep trying to clean it out but you can't quite get that last grain of sand and now you're not sure if the sand is even there or if it's just in your mind." He sucks in a breath. "And then I asked James about Lily and he started talking about the way she smelled and how she was so fucking sexy and so clever and how she made his stomach feel like it was being stroked with long red fingernails and how — yes — he did want to jump a hot woman's bones sometimes … I don't, Sirius."
"James isn't exactly the fountain of all knowledge." His eyes are soft again. The side of his mouth is curling up just so.
Remus nearly growls with frustration. "You don't get it. I don't want kisses, and I don't want to have sex, and I don't want to grope anyone. I just want to keep my fingernails clean from that phantom sand," he says, and the last words are said to himself, really. "What I want is to hold hands, and talk about things, and draw stupid pictures. I want to — " He looks down, embarrassed.
Sirius isn't smiling. He looks like he's focusing. "Yes?" he prompts.
"I want to cuddle, and have my hair stroked. I think that'd be nice. But I don't want — "
"I understand," Sirius says, running a hand through his hair and then giving it a final tug.
"Do you?" Remus asks.
"Yeah," he says. He looks down at his hands.
Remus hesitates. "Sirius?"
"Yeah?"
"Do you think I'm broken?"
Sirius looks up sharply. "Don't be ridiculous, Remus," he says, and then smiles wickedly. "And don't be sensitive, either."
Remus' cheeks burn a bit. He looks at Sirius' hands, at how the fingers are tangled together. He reaches out and untangles a hand. It's awkward, for a moment, but to be honest … they're often a bit awkward, so he soldiers on, and tightens his grip on Sirius.
"Am I acing this yet?" Remus jokes.
There's that softness again — right there, in Sirius' eyes.
"For Merlin's sagging balls, would you just go to sleep already?" James yells, and throws a pillow from across the room. "Existential crisis solved! Go ice-skating or something and enjoy cuddling — fucking cold enough — just let me sleep!"
Sirius grins devilishly and he lobs the pillow back.
Yeah, Remus thinks. Sirius is good-looking.
And what's better … his hands are warm.
It's nice.