A month later
‘Bloody Hell!’
‘Happy Birthday, Moony!’
The chorus of voices made Remus look up from his soaked bed to see his room mates grinning down at him, each with now empty buckets in their hands.
‘You call this a happy birthday?' he spluttered, pushing his soaking wet brown hair out of his face. 'Woken up by buckets of cold fucking water being tossed on me?’
James was holding weakly onto the bedpost, crying with laughter, Sirius was sniggering behind his hand, and only a chortling Peter bothered to try and offer an explanation.
‘Well, we couldn’t find a hooker to celebrate your coming of age and Prongs refused to get down and dirty to help initiate you into adulthood. We ran out of ideas then so we fell back on an old stand by.’
Remus snarled as he wrung out his shirt. ‘You lot claim to be the greatest fucking pranksters of the modern age yet none of you could think of a more original way to wake me up...and who’s gonna clean up this mess?’
‘Give us a break, Moony,' Peter said with a snort of laughter as water streamed out of Remus' pyjama top. 'Zonko himself would have trouble thinking up something original at six in the morning.’
Remus groaned at the reminder of the early hour then climbed over a mound of wet bedclothes to stand up. He shook his head vigorously in a very canine-like way and sent a spray of water droplets over the still-chortling trio, who screeched and tried futilely to leap out of the way. Sirius and Peter slammed into each other in their haste and crashed to the ground in a tangled heap. Remus laughed at them then quickly moved to grab his soaked pyjama pants, which had started to slip over his hips. A pale butt cheek was exposed before he managed to catch them and drag them back up into place.
James burst into fresh waves of laughter as he watched Remus struggle with his pyjama bottoms and joined the others on the floor, his shaking knees unable to hold him up any longer. Peter bent over double giggling as Remus glared at them and held onto his sagging pants.
Sirius, however, sat up fast, his amusement fading at the sight of that rounded flesh he had been clutching at so desperately just last night. His face flushed as his groin twitched in reaction to the memory and he blinked a couple of times before he made himself look away, catching a grinning Peter staring at him all-knowingly. Sirius was surprised by the blonde boy’s obvious smugness, but recovered enough to stand up and throw a towel at Remus with a smile that hopefully didn‘t look too forced.
‘Get dry, Moony. You’ve got presents to open.’
The thought of the copious amounts of sweets the Marauders usually heaped on him cheered Remus up some, and, grumbling under his breath, he squelched his way to the bathroom to change. He had stripped and was drying off his damp skin when he heard the bathroom door open. Glancing up at the mirror, he saw Sirius behind him before he felt a pinch on his arse. He squeaked in surprise and leapt out of the way of Sirius' wandering hands, even as his body responded to the touch.
Sirius chuckled at his reaction. ‘I was busting to do that in there,' he teased. 'You have a nice butt, Moony.’
‘Shit, Padfoot!’ Remus growled, grabbing a towel and holding it to his groin.
Sirius watched in amusement as he hastily tried to wrap the terrycloth around himself without revealing his privates.
‘You seem to have forgotten that I’ve actually seen that thing in a much more impressive state, Moony,' he said, his voice laced with laughter.
‘You…I…shut up, Pads!'
Remus could feel himself flushing and Sirius’ throaty chuckle only served to redirect some of the blood that had been rushing to his face in a more southerly direction. He frowned and grabbed his underwear.
