"Fluffball," Sirius announced as he walked into the kitchen and stole the toast Remus had made as his own breakfast.
Remus didn't comment on the thievery but raised an eyebrow at the announcement, wondering if he was actually supposed to respond to that.
"Fluffball," Sirius repeated. Remus's nose wrinkled.
"Am I supposed to know what that means or...?" Remus trailed off, eyeing Sirius warily. Sirius rolled his eyes, as though Remus was the one being ridiculous.
"Our bunny," Sirius said slowly, like he was speaking to a child. Remus felt vaguely offended and a bit more than slightly indignant. "Our bunny is called Fluffball."
Remus frowned. "Um, Sirius?"
"Yes, sweetheart?"
"We don't have a bunny."
Sirius blinked, looking as though he was having a silent mental crisis. Remus waited patiently for him to reach a conclusion, buttering a new toast and privately promising to punch Sirius if he tried to steal this one. But he promised himself that last time and look how well he'd punched him i.e not at all.
"We're going to buy a bunny then," Sirius decided, nodding matter-of-factly and taking the toast in Remus's hand. Remus watched it go mournfully, but his hands didn't move.
"You know this toast isn't for you?" Remus said as Sirius took a large bite. How he hated his complete inability to hurt his friends!
Sirius looked confused. "Then who's it for?"
"Oh, no one important," Remus reassured him in a sarcastic tone that, hopefully, even Sirius would understand. "Just, you know, maybe, me?"
"Oh." Sirius paused then frowned. "I think you're important."
Remus sighed. So apparently, Sirius wasn't capable of diffusing sarcasm, even after years of exposure, thanks to yours truly. Yay.
"That's not really the point," Remus sighed but dropped the matter and focusing on the slightly more worrying topic at hand: Sirius being convinced they were going to buy a rabbit and name it Fluffball, of all things. "Also, we're not buying a rabbit."
"Of course we're not buying a rabbit!" Sirius exclaimed, looking offended. "Who said we're going to buy a rabbit?"
"Um, y-"
"We're buying a bunny! There's a major difference!"
"Is there?" Remus grumbled, buttering yet another piece of toast. "Please don't take my toast."
"Why on Earth would I do that?" Sirius dismissed airily, before eyeing the third piece of toast.
"Indeed," Remus said dryly. God, he'd really fallen tits-over-arse with this one if he was letting him steal his breakfast multiple times in a row.
"Anyway, bunnies and rabbits are different. Bunnies are adorable creatures that are 78% of the time completely innocent and sweet-"
"So they spend 21% of the time psychotic?" Remus said with a skeptical look, biting into the first toast he had made without having it stolen from him.
Sirius grinned. "Duh. That's why they're infinitely cooler than rabbits. Rabbits are lame and domestic."
"And bunnies are more likely to take over the world than Slytherin, got it."
Sirius looked proud. "Well done, Moony," he said, ruffling his sandy hair as though Remus had reached some sort of achievement. "It's not often you understand something so quickly." And with that said, left the kitchen.
Remus vaguely wondered if he was supposed to analyse the fact that he like Sirius ruffling his hair so much he hadn't even bothered to argue with the last statement.
"Moony! I got us a bunny!"
Remus groaned, putting the book in his hands down.
"I didn't agree to this," he called back before pausing and realizing something. "Sirius, you don't even live here, why are you forcing me to share custody over a stupid rabbit I don't even want?"
Sirius' head peeked through the door. "Bunnies. Not rabbits. We went over this, remember? Rabbits are lame and domestic, bunnies are-"
"Twenty-one percent evil, yes, I know," Remus said impatiently. "Thing is, why are you bringing them here? You have your own apartment, take them there. I don't even want a rabbit."
"Bunny," Sirius corrected, and he brought in a massive cage. Remus gaped.
"Why is the cage so big?"
"Well, it's animal cruelty to leave a let all on it's own-"
"Pretty sure it isn't..."
"-So I thought, you know, get it some friends!" Sirius beamed, brightly enough for Remus to feel dazzled.
'Sirius uses beam,' Remus thought to himself wryly. 'It's super-effective!'
"Well, let see then," Remus mumbled, looking at the cage rather than Sirius' stupidly handsome face.
Sirius bent down, fiddling with something at the back of the cage. Remus sighed; with a cage that big, there was sure to be a ridiculous number of rabbits, no wait, bunnies, as Sirius seemed so adamant on calling them.
"Sirius?"
"Yeah?"
"That's the back."
Sirius paused before smiling sheepishly. "Right you are, mate."
And boy was Remus glad he told him because Sirius turned to fiddle with the front instead, bending over and giving a very nice show to Remus.
"I can't open the damn thing," Sirius grunted before turning to Remus, who snapped out of his daze with a blush. "Help me out, mate, it takes two blokes for this sort of thing."
Remus dutifully stood up from his comfortable position curled up on the bed to see if he could open the big-enough-to-hold-Narnia cage, hoping Sirius wouldn't comment in his blush as he crouched next to him.
"You're pink," Sirius frowned. Remus huffed out a light laugh at the wording. "Why are you going pink for, mate?"
"I'm not pink," he denied, wishing he'd drop the matter. Of course, this was Sirius frigging Black, notorious for refusing to drop the matter.
"Staring at my arse while I've been trying to open this thing, eh?" Sirius said, waggling his eyebrows crudely. Remus knew he was joking, but he couldn't stop his ears flushing deep red and his blush travelling down to his neck.
"Oh my god," Sirius said with dawning realisation. "You were, weren't you?"
"I wasn't," Remus tried to insist, but he was blushing deeper and deeper. "Not everything is about you and your stupid bloody arse."
Sirius cackled and Remus hid his face in his hands. Sirius was never going to forget this, knowing him.
"Did you like it?" Sirius asked smugly and yep, this was definitely not going to be dropped soon. "It was a nice view, right? Do you want a better one?"
And he stood up, hands holding his waistband as he started shimmying out of those sinfully tight jeans. Remus grabbed Sirius' arm and pulled him back down, feeling like his face was on fire.
"Take those jeans off and I'll punch you in the face," Remus promised, scowling. Sirius grinned.
"I love it when you get rough with me, baby," Sirius mock-swooned, followed by a way-too-sexual moan that had Remus' dick getting a little more interested than it should.
Remus stared at the latch, opting to fiddle with it rather than look Sirius in the face. Sirius paused, before ruffling Remus' hair.
"You're cute when you blush," he said fondly and wow, Remus' earlier blush was nothing compared to his current one.
"How about we focus on getting this stupid thing open instead?" Remus grumbled, just as the door swung open.
A single bunny scampered out, small and white and fluffy. It was, Remus admitted unwillingly, kind of cute.
It blinked and look at its surrounded, nose twitching ever so slightly, before scrambling under the bed.
"Should I get it out? What if it dies from impure air? Oh my god, Sirius, did you research this at all?"
"Um, no?" Sirius admitted sheepishly, wincing when Remus let out a frustrated 'urgh!'
"It's okay," he tried to reassure, but Remus just glared at him and lay on his stomach to try and get the wayward bunny out from beneath the bed.
It was sitting completely still, frozen as it stared at Remus as though if it didn't move, Remus wouldn't notice or would get bored.
Remus wriggled further and caught it, being extra careful so as to not hurt it, and wriggled back out again, coughing from the dust.
"Do you never think things through?" Remus grumbled, stroking the bunny's head softly in an attempt to calm it down. Its heartbeat was too fast, and it looked terrified in Remus' hands. Remus knew guinea pigs pooped when scared and he was not going through that particular experience again.
"It's okay, I've bought loads of books and stuff on the way," Sirius dismissed. "Can I bring the others out now?"
Remus looked up and realized Sirius was covering the door of the cage to prevent the others running out. Remus nodded.
"It's pretty cute though," he admitted, half watching the bunny's small eyes blink and half watching Sirius reach into the cage and bring out another.
"Pretty cute? They're fucking adorable," Sirius said, stroking the one in his hand. "Read the letter on the collar and note them down."
Remus blinked, confused, before shrugging it off and grabbing a piece of paper and a pen with his free hand. He held the little bunny slightly higher, looking at the crimson collar and reading the letter 'b' out loud.
"Don't bother tell me, write it down," Sirius muttered, cooing at the white bunny in his hand. Pulling a face, Remus wrote an awkward-looking capital 'b' with his left hand.
"This one's a small 'n'," Sirius added. Remus switched the bunny to his other hand, holding it to his chest so he could write properly. He added a neat little 'n'.
And on they went. Remus had expected three or four bunnies, maximum five, but Sirius kept reaching into the cage and Remus kept writing down letters until there were a total of thirteen bunnies.
"Thirteen," Remus seethed. "How do you plan on looking after thirteen bunnies when you can't even look after yourself?"
"It'll be fine," Sirius said, waving his hand airily. There was a glint in his eye that had Remus wary as to what he was planning. Because he was planning something. This was Sirius Black, for God's sake, he was always planning something. "Anyway, did you get all the letters down?"
"I think so," Remus said bemusedly, looking down at the piece of paper. Sirius gave him a smug smile that looked a little too pleased with himself than acceptable.
"Good. Now you can unscramble them," he said, as though he was doing Remus a favour by allowing him, oh so generously, to unscramble it. Remus rolled his eyes and, deciding not to question the dark-haired male for fear of losing his sanity, began to organise the letters.
"Am I correct in assuming it's three words?" Remus asked, holding the lid of the pen in his mouth. Three of the letters were capitals, which could mark the beginning of a new word. Also, there were thirteen letters in total and Remus doubted Sirius vocabulary was wide enough to accommodate anything more than two to three syllables.
"Yep," Sirius said cheerfully, sitting back and leaning against the wall. "Also, are you trying to seduce me by putting that pen lid in your mouth? Because I can think of something much better to put in there."
Remus choked. "Sirius."
Sirius shrugged unashamedly and pointed at the letters on the sheet. "Keep working, pretty boy. Don't let me distract you."
Remus pointedly put the pen lid on the floor and continued re-arranging the letters. BneenVealMtiy. Three capitals in total. Three words. How many words did he know beginning with 'V'? Vector? But Sirius probably didn't even know what that meant. Vase? A little random, but this was Sirius. But there was no 's' in the list.
Ten minutes later, and Remus was still frowning at the paper, but for a different reason. So far, the only solution he had come up with was 'Be My Valentine' but he felt sure that it was fluke. Why would Sirius ask him to be his valentine? Maybe Sirius wanted to confess to someone using his new bunny method, and wanted to check to see if it was too difficult to unscramble before using it.
Remus looked at Sirius, propped up against the wall and snoring softly, his eyes closed and his face relaxed. Remus' expression softened. Well, if Sirius liked someone else, then he would have to let him go. It would do no good trying to keep him for himself, especially since Sirius was clearly not interested.
With a sigh and a heavy heart, he shook Sirius awake.
"Eh? Did you figure it out?" Sirius slurred, rubbing his eyes. Remus smiled sadly at the paper before looking up at his best friend with the brightest smile he could muster.
"Yep. I think I got it," he said casually, handing the paper back.
"And?" Sirius asked, looking at Remus with such an intense look that the sandy-haired male almost felt intimidated.
"And what?" Remus frowned, slightly bewildered.
"Will you be my valentine?" Sirius asked impatiently.
Remus blinked. "You want me to be your valentine?"
"No, I wrote it for no reason," Sirius grumbled, sitting up straight and crossing his legs before looking at Remus expectantly. "It's okay if you don't want to. I won't hold it against you, I swear."
Remus' brow furrowed. "You want me to be your valentine?" he repeated, bemused. Sirius nodded and suddenly, Remus noticed that he was tapping his thigh, a sign that he was nervous.
He couldn't help it. He laughed. "Oh my god," he said , practically choking on his own chuckles. "Oh my god, all this time I was pining over you, and now you ask me to be your valentine?"
"You were pining over me?" Sirius asked, eyes glinting. He looked way too interested and Remus immediately took the last sentence back.
"Only a little," he defended. Sirius moved closer until they were only inches apart.
"How long?" Sirius breathed, tickling Remus' chin and collarbone. Remus willed himself not to blush from the close proximity but according the heat in his face, he wasn't doing a very good job.
"First year," he admitted, feeling slightly ashamed. He felt a bit like a loser, pining after someone for so many years. He was twenty-three, for god's sake!
"When I found out you were a werewolf," Sirius told him, tracing his jawline with a finger and looking so fascinated that Remus had to look away. "Fifth year. I felt something for you for as long as I can remember but I only really realized when I found out that you were a frigging werewolf and I still fucking loved you."
Remus bit his lip, heart swelling at the confession. He noticed Sirius follow the movement and decided, fuck it.
He leaned it, catching Sirius' lips with his own and suddenly, he was being pushed onto his back and oh my god, Sirius was straddling him, for fuck's sake and Remus was kissing, licking, biting, sucking and Sirius was giving as good as he got until-
CRASH!
One of the bunnies managed to get out of the cage, which Sirius clearly hadn't closed properly, and had been roaming the desktop when he or she or it or whatever nudged one of the ornaments one, making it shatter.
Sirius at least had the decency to look sheepish.
Ten minutes later, when they had ensured that not a single piece of glass was left and moved all the bunnies downstairs to the living room, they sat down and let the bunnies roam free. Only after Remus had put the shields up though - they were twenty-one percent evil, after all. They fed them, petted them, stroked them until the little bunnies got used to their new owners.
"Aw, look! They're all surrounding me! They love me!" Sirius said excitedly when three bunnies began eating from his hand.
"Were they caught in the gravitational pull of your arrogance? Because the larger the object, the stronger the gravitational pull, and your ego is massive."
Sirius pouted. "Too many long words, Remy. You're just jealous because they like me better than you."
Remus laughed and didn't point out that there were currently seven bunnies sitting around him. "Whatever you say, sweetheart. What are we gonna call them?"
"Fluffball," Sirius announced proudly. "This one's Fluffball the First, this one's Fluffball the Second, that's Fluffball the Third, that's Fluffball the Dork, that's The Cutest Fluffball, and that's the Youngest Fluffball and this one is Almost-A-Rabbit Fluffball..."