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When Remus walked into the common room after his Ancient Runes class the day before Valentine’s Day, he didn’t expect to see James lying on one of the couches, moaning, while Sirius sucked on his neck. A crowd of people sat around them, apparently watching them go at it.
They moved sinuously together, writhing, while their hands roamed over each other’s bodies. Sirius eventually detached himself from the bright purple spot that he had made on James’ dark skin and ran his fingers through his hair. “I want to marry you,” he breathed as he gazed adoringly into the other’s hazel eyes, “There’s no one in the world I want more than you.” James gazed just as adoringly at Sirius before capturing his lips in a heated kiss. The crowd around them broke out into applause and laughter while Remus stood, feet still stuck just inside the doorway, with a sinking heart.
Someone stumbling through the portrait and into Remus broke him out of the daze that he was in. He turned on his heel and stormed out of the room.
---
It felt to Remus that he couldn’t go anywhere without seeing James and Sirius. When he wandered out of the library, there they were, trading kisses and giggling in an alcove. When he sat down for lunch, there they were, feeding each other bites of sandwiches. When he went to sit by the lake, there they were, rolling against each other in the grass, constantly attached at the lips.
And really, he should have seen this coming. Sirius and James had always been incredibly close. It was just his luck that the boy that he’d been pining over for years was both into boys and not averse to dating friends, and still chose someone other than him.
He had thought that he had been making progress with Sirius. The other teen had even been hinting around that there was something that he wanted to ask Remus, but it must not have been more important than James sodding Potter.
…It’s going to take a while for him to get to a point where he can be happy for his friends.
---
That night, he returned to the dormitory to see Peter trying to hoist Sirius out of James’ bed. His arms were around his waist, tugging, while Sirius squirmed and fought against him, his tongue stuck out and apparently trying to reach for James’ bare nipple, even as he was pulled farther away from it.
James, in tears, kept begging, “Don’t take my love away from me, Wormy.”
“A little help, Remus?” Wormtail looked at him plaintively.
“Why bother?”
“Snogging all over the castle is fine, but letting them sleep together unsupervised in their condition is poking the erumpent on its horn, don’t you think?
“In their condition?”
“Yeah…” Peter looked at him as if he had lost the plot. “Because of the Amortentia.”
“Amortentia?”
Peter dropped Sirius—who immediately latched onto James’ nipple—and burst out laughing.
“Christ, Moony. You thought that they were actually in love with each other—and that this is how they would go about it?”
Remus shrugged and looked away from where James was apparently trying to rip Sirius’ hair from the root in a fit of passion.
“You’re all idiots.”
“How did they both get dosed?”
“They destroyed all the stock of antidote by accident, then dared each other to drink the love potion. I tried to stop them, but…” Wormtail rolled his eyes, trying to trap Sirius. “This would be so much easier if you would help me.”
Sirius slipped from Peter’s grip again, but Remus stepped in and lifted up the smaller teen by the waist, throwing him over his shoulder.
“No!” Sirius screamed, beating his fists against Remus’ lower back. “I need him, Moony. His skin is like ambrosia, his eyes like fresh dirt set ablaze!”
“Wow, I didn’t know you were a poet,” Remus quipped, failing to notice that James had gotten past Wormy. As soon as Remus put Sirius down, James was tackling him from the side. He immediately started licking the first part of Sirius that his tongue could touch, which happened to be his ankle.
For twenty minutes, Remus and Peter tried to wrestle James and Sirius away from each other, but neither would stay in his own bed.
“Maybe we should lock them in our beds with us? You can lock James in with me. Then put Sirius in with you,” Wormtail spoke quietly so that their friends wouldn’t hear him, but he probably could have shouted it without being heard for all that the other two boys were paying them attention.
---
Peter’s plan actually ended up working. Mostly. They had to use a Full Body-Bind on James, because he kept kicking and scratching the curtains after they were locked. But it was a good plan. He scratched a chunk out of poor Pete’s arm too before Remus could get the curtains opened again. Other than that, the plan was perfect. Remus was also really uncomfortable about the whole thing, but yeah, the plan was great.
Sirius didn’t need a Body-Bind. He calmed down a lot after Remus promised that he could see James first thing in the morning.
“His glasses are just so dreamy, Moony.” Sirius sighed. He was sprawled out across most of the bed with his hands behind his head. “They’re just so round, you know?” He drew a circle in the air, even though he probably couldn’t see it in the dark of the closed bed curtains.
“Yeah, very round,” Remus grumbled. Unfortunately, he could see in the dark, thanks to his furry little problem. Curling into a ball as far away from Sirius as he could get on the edge of the bed was all he could do. In the dark, he still was able to see Sirius’ long, dark hair fanned out across Remus’ pillows. He still saw Sirius’ goofy, yet charming grin as he daydreamed about their best friend. And he definitely still saw Sirius’ bare chest rising and falling with every besotted sigh.
“And that hair! It’s just so handsomely disheveled. How does he do it?”
“I don’t think it takes any conscious effort, honestly.”
“I’m going to ask him to be my Valentine tomorrow.” Sirius sighed again and turned on his side towards Remus. “I really love him, Moony.”
“I know you do, Pads. The sooner you get to sleep, the sooner you can see him again, okay?”
The other teen’s eyes widened, before he squeezed them tightly shut. “You’re right!”
---
Remus woke up to the body beside him tossing and turning. “My head is killing me. Ugh… I’m dying.” He watched as Sirius wiggled some more and shoved his face into the pillow before his body completely froze.
He slowly looked up to where Remus was still lying on the other side of the bed.
“Good morning, Pads.”
“Morning, Moony,” Sirius blushed. “What happened last night.”
“You don’t remember anything?”
“I remember… some things.” He frowned, then scooted over on the bed until he was tucked up under Remus’ arm. “Like… I remember a lot of kissing. Did anything else happen?”
“No, don’t worry. I wouldn’t have let you do anything else in your condition.”
Sirius let out a huff. “I wanted to do this differently. I’m sorry, Moons.”
“Do what differently?”
“You know.” He hid his face in Remus’ t-shirt.
“No, I really don’t,” Remus insisted, confused.
“I wanted to tell you sober. How drunk were we?”
“Drunk?”
“I don’t even remember drinking, so it must have been bad.” He reached up and kissed Remus softly. “I’m glad you know how I feel now though.”
Remus didn’t even have time to process the kiss before they heard a wordless scream. They both jumped out of the bed to see Prongs, absolutely covered in bright purple love bites and still in a Full Body-Bind, trying to roll himself off of Peter’s bed. He wasn’t making much progress.
Peter was sitting beside him, wiping the sleep out of his eyes. The boy was pretty much useless first thing in the morning.
“What is happening?” Sirius asked the room.
Remus released James from his bind.
“That’s what I’d like to know!” James jumped up as soon as he was free, “Why the fuck did you have me nearly naked and bound in your bed, Wormy?”
Peter just blinked sleepily at him.
“Did Peter give you all of those marks too, Prongs?” Sirius asked.
James looked down at himself and shrieked, poking at the giant one that was dark and swollen across most of his right peck. “What the-” James paused and looked up to Sirius, who had been staring confusedly at him. As soon as their eyes met, it was obvious that they were remembering.
“No,” James said at the same time as Sirius exclaimed, “Oh my fuck.”
They both looked away at once. Everyone seemed to be frozen for a moment in that vignette: Peter still staring a bit stupidly from his bed; James, only in his pants and covered in marks from Sirius’ mouth, looking up to the ceiling; Sirius, also half-naked with a dark red blush covering his pale white skin, eyes fixed on the floorboards; and Remus, sat on the edge of his bed taking it all in.
Predictably, it was James who broke the tension. “Well, I’m going to go-” he pointed at the bathroom. The door slammed behind him.
---
“You can go back to sleep, Wormy,” Remus said.
Peter nodded and promptly fell back into his pillows. Remus waved his wand to close his curtains.
“I kissed Prongs.”
Remus winced. “Yeah, mate. You kissed him a lot.”
Sirius covered his face with both of his hands.
“Umm, Pads?” He didn’t get a response. “What did you mean?” Still no response. “You know, before, when you, um, kissed me?”
Sirius blew a long breath into his hands, creating a very unpleasant sound, before looking up at Remus. “I messed up, Moony.”
“Oh. Right. Okay. Let’s forget it happened then.”
“No!” Sirius grabbed his wrist. “I don’t want to forget kissing you. I wish I could forget kissing Prongs… but I would quite like to kiss you again actually.”
Remus’ heart soared, but Sirius continued before he could reply.
“It’s so stupid. Prongs and I had the brilliant idea to douse ourselves in Amortentia before asking our crushes to be our Valentine’s, so we would smell really good to them and they would be more likely to agree. Prongs was going to ask Evans, obviously. And I was going to finally ask you. But then we knocked over the shelf with the antidote in the Potions cupboard and I was saying something about how horrible it would be to get dosed after that. James dared me to take some and I refused, but you know how difficult it is for me to refuse a dare, and he was egging me on, so I dared him instead—I thought he would turn it down too—but he didn’t. He went to drink some, and I couldn’t be outdone by him, so I had to drink it too…” Sirius took a huge breath from speaking so much. “And then you saw the rest of it... I don’t know if I’ve ever been this embarrassed, now that I’m remembering some of the things that I did… some of the things I said… Merlin.”
Remus couldn’t help it, he started laughing.
“Hey!” Sirius yelled, “Don’t laugh at me, I’m traumatized!”
“Sorry, sorry!” Remus said between giggles. Sirius laughed with him, falling together into Remus’ bed.
They laid side by side, looking at one another. “So now you know,” Sirius said.
“I feel the same,” Remus admitted, bringing their faces together to share a second kiss. This time, he was able to revel in it.
“So you’ll be my Valentine then?” Sirius asked, nosing at Remus’ neck.
“Of course, just don’t mark me all over with love bites like you did to Prongs.”
“Moony!”