Lipstick Kissed

"Ah, bugger..."

Remus Lupin looked up as his dorm-mate Sirius Black threw the kohl pencil across the room. He put down the book and studied him with sudden intensity. Sirius, for his part, paid no mind to the glare the werewolf was delivering him, as he was glaring at the pencil as though it was personally responsible for his inability to apply the make-up.

"Re, the bloody thing is..."

Then he turned and saw the intense gaze leveled upon him, and stopped in his tracks. Sirius parted his lips, and dampened their sudden dryness with a nervous tongue. The silence held for a long moment, while in the background the faint sound of a song playing in the Common Room below them.

/"Sometimes I wonder if I'm still alive; six feet down at age twenty-five..."/

Remus cleared his throat then, smiling at Sirius mischievously. "You'll poke your eye out with that thing, if you're not careful."

"Do you think they could turn it up any louder?" Sirius asked.

Remus smiled then, "Would you like for me to ask them? I know how loud you do tend to like things, and it *is* supposed to be played at maximum volume, after all."

"Not now. Not when I'm trying to concentrate," Sirius growled softly.

"Don't hurt yourself," Remus teased on a smirk. "Besides, it's just kohl. You put it on every day, and have since you were fourteen. How hard could it be?"

~When it's you,~ Sirius thought to himself, almost loudly enough to be heard, ~it's almost *too* hard...~

Remus looked on him more intently, with an eyebrow cocked in such a way that Sirius suspected that his friend had managed to hear him after all. But no, it was a further inquisition related to the question. Sirius smirked at him, and bent over to retrieve the pencil before replacing his arse in the chair situated in front of the mirror. Remus, for his part, tucked a scrap of parchment into the book to mark his place and rose to stand behind him.

Sirius rose his eyes to meet his friend's in the mirror. Behind the spectacles were a pair of golden glitter-bedecked eyes rimmed in black. The same black he was trying to apply to his own eyes. Normally, Remus was right; he didn't tend to have this sort of problem when applying it.

However, as of late, he'd been having more of these sort of problems whenever Remus was in the room. Ever since that Christmas holiday where they had started a flirtation that was nearly driving him over the edge straight into sheer madness. Just from the teasing.

Then there were other times when it was as though nothing had happened. He pursed his lips, taking back his previous statement. It was the acting as though nothing had happened that was driving him mad.

And there was no way in Hades he could do this while Remus was watching him. It was too unnerving, too distracting, too tempting to drag the shorter wizard across his lap and kiss him until they both couldn't breathe before taking a breath and starting all over again. He closed his eyes against the images of just that filling his mind, and leaned in to the mirror.

"You really are going to poke your eye out, Padfoot," Remus murmured low enough to send a shiver of sensation up Sirius' spine.

"Would you care to do it for me, then?" Sirius asked him dryly.

He raised his eyes to peer at Remus' reflection as the other boy took on a contemplative expression, as though he was contemplating doing just that. Then he smiled, and with a smooth move, slipped his glasses off with one hand and sent them flying onto the bed wrapped in emerald silk.

"Do you have no respect for those things?"

"If they break, I can always repair them," Remus said, hovering over one shoulder, smiling. "It's one of the benefits of wizardry, you know."

"I know. I'm not that daft," Sirius said in irritation.

However he may be trying to make it appear, Sirius' irritation was more directly at the effect those pair of golden flecked green eyes were having on him. When combined with that scent that was like cinnamon and vanilla and all things good and earthy, it was nearly unbearable. He thought he managed to cover it with the annoyed look he shot mirror-Remus, but judging from the mischievous glint that danced in his friend's eyes, he was failing.

Miserably, at that.

"Give me that, Sirius," he replied, taking the pencil from his unresisting fingers. "If you're going to put this on, then you're going to do it properly."

"And will you show me the proper way?"

"Even better," Remus told him in a low tone, and with a wolfish grin. "I'm going to do it for you."

Sirius nearly held his breath as Remus moved to straddle him. Leaning his back against the mirror for a moment, he studied his friend through a reddish-gold fringe hanging in his face and eyelashes that so many of the witches thought were to die for. Then he moved in, delivering a soft kiss to those lips before pulling away and whispering against them, "Close your eyes, Sirius. Close your eyes and let me do this for you."

Sirius made a mental note: ~Never disagree with the sexy werewolf straddling you, preparing to apply eye makeup with something that could blind you for life.~

Then he closed his eyes, and waited.

He didn't have to wait long before he could feel the sharp strokes being applied with meticulous care. Sirius found himself wondering why he had never asked Remus to do this before, but it didn't seem to matter. Then the bottom lid was done, and he was moving onward. It took no time at all for him to accomplish it, or so it seemed. Then again, it could have lasted forever, and he wouldn't have noticed.

Then the weight of his friend balancing on his lap was gone, but there was a press of fingers against his lips, and a murmur, "Don't go anywhere. I'll be right back. And don't open your eyes. I want to surprise you."

Although Sirius was never one to really listen or obey when he didn't want to, he stayed perfectly still. He was surprised by how much he *wanted* to be surprised. Not that Remus wasn't always a surprise; it was quite the contrary, actually, as he had always thought him to be something of a mystery, an enigma, and it only drew him closer and more interesting. James might be his best friend, but he was predictable, and far too open to be a mystery.

While Remus... Remus was something else entirely, and had been for nearly as long as he had known him.

For these reasons, and more, Sirius barely moved while waiting.

Then the weight returned to his lap, and the comfortable, known scent returned. That's all he was aware of, with his sight temporarily removed. There was pressure against his eyelids, just enough for the spread of glitter across them. Remus murmured to him, then, "Open your eyes, Sirius. Open your eyes and look at me."

He did, and Remus had shifted just enough so that he could see himself in the mirror in front of him. Blue eyes were pale and seemed to stand out in his face. It was almost startling, when looked at like that. He had never seen himself quite like that before. Then there was another shift, and he was looking on a pair of hazel eyes equally as intense as his own, and a smile that, like its owner, was full of mystery waiting to be unravelled.

"There's no denying you wear this so well," Remus smiled, "but there's still something missing."

"Oh?"

"Mmmhmm," Remus tilted his head to one side, as though examining him in order to find out what exactly was missing. Then the smile grew wider, "Oh, I see what it is."

"What is it?"

"This."

Then Remus's lips were on his own, for just a moment. It was a brief, hard kiss that took his breath and he discovered that he wanted it to go on, when those lips pulled away, and a smirk curved them upwards.

"Lipstick. There's only one way to *really* apply it."

"Oh, really?" Sirius smirked back, and peered around Remus to study his reflection. "Only one problem, though."

"Hm?"

"It's not enough," Sirius said, then pressed his lips to Remus's for another kiss.

There was a rumble that was either a moan or a growl, but he didn't care which. He was too busy tasting those lips, and once they parted beneath the assault, that mouth. He had told himself that he wouldn't think about this, back when the flirtations had just begun, but he had proven himself wrong time and again. He didn't even try anymore, really, but this, this was better than any thought he'd had then, and there was really no comparison to the reality.

The taste was something different, something he couldn't quite describe, which just added to the mystery all the more. He'd gladly spend a lifetime trying to figure this out. That's when he felt fingers tangle in his hair, and in turn, he pulled Remus more firmly against him as the kiss went on. Whether it was mere moments or a lifetime didn't matter then, but the touch, and the feel did. They were the only things that did matter to Sirius's mind, which was finally quieted from its frantic racing.

/"...a slap on my ass by a lipstick-kisssed elbow glove..."/

The sound of the lyric slicing sharply through the general background noise of the song on an endless repetition pulled their attention away from the exploration of each other's mouths, and so they slowly pulled away from each other. Sirius leaned his forehead against Remus' and sighed, chuckling low in his throat.

It seemed the oddest thing to remember now that James had bespelled the music player to repeat a single song of his choice endlessly for the sole purpose of driving Lily mad from having to put up with listening to it. When finally she tired of it, she would tackle him and make him take the charm off it before they proceeded to snog until neither of them could think any more.

Come to think of it, that sounded a great deal like what they were doing here.

A smile curved his lips as a sudden question came to mind. In a low tone, he asked it: "Would you?"

"What's that?"

"Slap me on the ass with that elbow glove I know you have. White and coated in that faint shimmer of glitter you use on your eyes. I've seen you with it," Sirius commented lightly.

"Only if you do me the honour of kissing it first," Remus replied in a similiar vein, then smirked. "While wearing your lipstick."

"Only if you put it on for me," he grinned.

Remus smiled, "That could be arranged."

Then his lips were on Sirius's again, and nothing else seemed to matter for a good long time.