rs_small_gifts was pretty great this year. We had lots of returning authors and artists and lots of new ones. Many wonderful gems over there, and mostly small commitments because they are short. I ended up writing three--here's one of them.

Title: Three Times Remus Kicked Sirius Out of Bed
Author/Artist:

mindabbles
Recipient:

woldy
Rating: PG-13
Contents or warnings (highlight to view): *none, unless fluff is a warning*
Word count: 2,000
Summary: The first time, he couldn't believe his luck. The second time, everything was very sticky. The third time, well, would you share the bed with something that eats socks?
Notes:

woldy, thank you so very much for doing a pinch hit. I did a mismash of your prompts and I hope you enjoy this bit of silliness. Someone else really should expand on the Custard Explosion of 1979 and encounters with the Eater of Socks--those prompts have greater potential than I was able to do justice! :) I apologize for any mistakes and stupidity. That's all me.

The first time, but not the last.

“If you don’t shut up, I won’t do it,” Sirius says. His hand is on Remus’ stomach and Remus knows Sirius can feel his heart pounding.

Remus laughs and falls back on the bed. Sirius leans over him and grins.

“They can’t hear us,” Remus whispers, trying to be quiet for the sake of keeping Sirius here and continuing what he’s started. “They were too pissed. They won't wake before noon.”

His hands wander, smoothing down Sirius' strong back. He wants to touch him everywhere and wonders sometimes how he got so lucky. He’s thought that many times since he was eleven, but never more than since Sirius grabbed him and kissed him on the landing outside their dormitory as they were leaving for winter holidays. He'd thought he’d have to leave school to find someone, and he never thought the person he’d wanted since he knew to fancy anyone would fancy him back. He’ll not voice this feeling of undeserved luck to Sirius, who will only scold him and tell him he doesn’t know what he’s worth.

“Thanks to Lily and her distilling skills,” Sirius says. “That gives us two hours and I haven’t been able to think about anything else for two weeks.” Sirius moves to lie on top of him and kisses him on the lips. “So, be quiet.”

Remus bites his lips and lets himself sink into this new feeling, the delicious pressure of Sirius’ warm body on his, the way his bones melt as his tongue touches Sirius’.

They’ve not done more than kiss yet and he’s both anxious to get on with it and terrified about how it might change things between the four of them. On second thought, it’s probably too late for that worry, Remus thinks as Sirius slips his hand under the waistband of Remus’ pyjamas.

Sirius freezes. Curtains rustle and feet land on the floor. There’s a cough that’s distinctly Peter. Footsteps sound in the room as Peter walks to the loo. The door closes and Remus realises he’s been holding his breath.

“Bugger,” he says. “You’d better go.”

Sirius leans into him again and presses his lips to Remus’ jaw. “No. Don’t want to. Just got here.”

“The moment’s passed, Padfoot,” Remus whispers. His lips are pressed against Sirius’ ear and he feels Sirius shiver.

“No, no it hasn’t. It’s delayed.” Sirius frowns and Remus can almost see a plan hatching. “I’ll think of something.”

Remus kisses him and stops himself yet again from saying he can’t believe this is happening to him. “Go before he comes back.”

If anyone had told him a year ago—hell, a day ago—that he’d be kicking Sirius out of his bed, he might have hexed them. It’s a good start to the New Year, Remus thinks, watching Sirius slither out from between his bed hangings.

It might be known as The Custard Explosion of 1979, but it had as much to do with brandy.

“Moony,” Sirius says. “Happy Christmas.”

“I’m asleep,” Remus says. “And it’s not Christmas. It’s Boxing Day.”

He pulls the duvet up to his ear and turns over. Sirius has a goal and that goal is to cheer Remus up and be in bed doing more interesting things than listening to him snore within the next ten minutes.

He holds out the Christmas pudding and touches it with his wand. It warms and the scents of fruit and spices fill the room. Remus stirs. Sirius wafts the scent toward Remus with one hand, carefully balancing the dish with the other. Remus stirs again.

“Wassat?” Remus mumbles.

“Look,” Sirius says, sitting on the bed next to Remus. He’s one step closer to his goal.

Remus turns over and props himself up on his elbows. “Is that proper Christmas pudding?”

“I owled your mother.”

“It has to rot for at least three months to be proper,” Remus says, scowling.

Nothing went quite right yesterday with anything they had planned, thanks in part to an emergency call from Moody. To top it off, they’d tramped through the snow for nothing—turning out, as it had, to be a bad tip from Mundungus. They'd missed dinner at Lily's and James’ all together.

“You’re mum gave me her charm,” Sirius says. “She doesn’t make it three months ahead. That's what she tells your dad and you.”

Remus’ mother had been more than happy to help. She already felt rotten about being away for Christmas and could sympathize with Sirius more than most about how Remus could be, leading up to the full moon, particularly if he didn’t get the pudding he wanted. She’d left Sirius with one cautionary tale about the Christmas when Remus was twelve. She’d overdone the brandy and, well, she said she’d been scraping custard and pudding out of corners for months.

Remus sits and he pulls back a corner of the covers. Sirius slips onto the bed beside him.

“And first,” Sirius says. He pours custard into the bottom of the pudding bowl, making a lovely golden moat around the pudding. He won’t tell Remus he made it with a packet.

“You’ve to light it,” Remus says. His expression has softened and it looks as if the morning, and Christmas itself, might be salvageable.

“You like fire a bit too much for good,” Sirius says, but he pours a healthy measure of brandy into the top of the pudding.

Remus smiles and Sirius holds back a crow of victory as he flourishes his wand to light the brandy. He couldn't say later what exactly happened next. There was a flash and a shout, he remembers that, and then he sat stunned as dollops of custard and bits of massacred pudding rained down on his head.

“A bit overzealous there, Padfoot,” says Remus, wiping custard out of his left eye. "Thanks for that."

"Moony—" Sirius begins, racking his brain for the words that will save the day.

"I'm going to go and sleep on the sofa," Remus says. "On second thought, you can go and sleep on the sofa. I think there might be custard out there as well. Wake me when there's non-exploding pudding."

The Eater of Socks, or Sirius' New Friend

Remus takes a deep breath, steeling himself for the next task. Each nook and every cranny of this house is worse than the next. The kitchen is the most welcoming room, and where they started when they first began to rehabilitate the place for Order headquarters.

There's a door behind the pantry, one that Remus has avoided every time he's down here. It's slightly ajar. He draws his wand and eases the door open with his foot.

Behind the door is a small room. There's a huge washing basin on legs, a wringer, and a cupboard with racks hung with clothes hangers. It looks like a perfectly normal laundry. Remus smiles at the memory of his mother setting the charms to make the basin churn, muttering about muddy little boys.

"Sirius," he shouts. "You've a regular washing room back here. Did you know?"

He hears Sirius coming down the stairs from where he was working on a cupboard that had an infestation of doxies. Remus touches the drying cupboard tentatively. It seems quiet, but you never know. Here he'd always thought House Elves had magic to do things like laundry.

Remus nearly jumps out of his skin, shouting, as he feels something tug at his sock. He leaps back and looks down in time to see a small creature scuttle behind the washing basin.

"What's up?" Sirius asks, stepping into the tiny room.

"Easy," Remus says. "There's something behind there." Remus gestures with his wand.

"What? It's only—Moony, you've frightened him," Sirius says. He leans over, reaching down behind the basin.

Remus comes close behind him and peers round the back of the tub. He can see something down there. It's smallish and greyish and is making a little snuffling sound. He steps closer to see and what looks like a trunk reaches toward his ankle.

"What is it?" asks Remus, a bit nonplussed as he rather considers this to be in his area of expertise.

"It's not a dark creature, so stop wrinkling your nose like that," Sirius says. He pats the thing and steps back. "Mind your socks are on. I met him last week, while you were off gallivanting."

"I don't even know where to start."

"What do you mean?"

"You met him?" Remus says. "And I wasn't gallivanting."

"Pft, stop splitting hairs," Sirius says. He kicks off his slipper and pulls off one of his socks, tossing it into the drying cupboard. Remus notices for the first time that Sirius was wearing one plain black sock and one argyle. Now he's wearing one argyle, full stop. "Point is, I thought Kreacher had made him up when he lost my favourite socks."

"I hear words I recognize, but I have no idea what you're saying."

"I don't know his name, if that's what you're after," says Sirius.

"How would that be what I'm after?"

"At any rate, he lives in here and once you get past the odd sock thing, he's rather pleasant. Give him a scratch under the trunk and he'll snuffle."

Remus sighs. "I think I have something I need to do in the library." He won't admit it to Sirius, but he's a little disturbed by rodents and ones with trunks that take your socks are something he'll see in his sleep.

*

Sirius is buried under a thick blanket, his long hear spread on the pillow. He looks sleepy and warm and comfortable.

"You're a sight for sore eyes," Remus says. He'd tackled more than he intended in the library and he's cold, tired, and ready to feel Sirius' warm hands on his skin. "Something's off with the warming charms downstairs. It's freezing. You look nice and toasty."

Sirius smiles and there's something a little shifty in it, but Remus puts it off to desire. Remus sheds everything except his socks—his feet are blocks of ice—and slides under the blanket, wrapping his arm around Sirius' waist.

"Thought you'd got lost down there," murmurs Sirius.

"Mmm," sighs Remus, leaning to kiss Sirius' neck. Sirius' sighs back as Remus finds that sweet, sensitive spot on his throat. Sirius turns to him and presses their bodies together. Remus begins to tumble Sirius onto his back when something tugs at his sock.

"What the bloody hell?" Remus shouts, pulling his knees up to his chest.

"He's cold," Sirius says.

"What?"

"It's cold downstairs. You just said," Sirius whinges. He reaches under the blankets to the foot of the bed and pulls out the little grey creature. It looks like a cross between a bedroom slipper and a pygmy Erumpent. "Have a heart, Moony."

"How do you know it's a he?" Remus asks, realising that that's probably not the first question he should ask.

"I can just tell by the way he looks at me," Sirius says, stroking the thing's trunk.

"I'm back to not knowing where to start," Remus says. Sirius snuggles the beast. It's too much like a rodent. Remus cannot sleep with it in the room and he may never get a hard on again with the image of Sirius looking fondly at it in his head.

"He only eats socks. Not people," Sirius says.

"If you want to sleep with that, you're sleeping somewhere else," Remus says. That's not really what he wants to say. He's been looking forward to getting in bed with Sirius all day.

"If you say so," Sirius says. "But you're being ridiculous." Sirius is standing by the bed now, half naked and cradling the little creature in his arms. It winds it's trunk around his elbow.

"I'm being ridiculous?"

"As you're obviously overwrought, I am going to forgive you pre-emptively," Sirius says. He slips his feet into Remus' slippers. He's no longer wearing either sock. "I'll find the little fellow a warm place to sleep—elsewhere."

Remus immediately regrets his words. He doesn't want Sirius to go—just the thing. "You'll come back?"

Sirius smiles at Remus just as fondly as he smiled at the little sock-eater a moment ago. “Don’t be silly, Moony. Haven't you learned yet? I’ll always come back to you.”

The End

Follow us:

Applications

COMPANY

PRODUCTS

COMMUNITY

CHOOSE LANGUAGE