⏤LOVE EYES
Sirius watches lovingly as you balance your laptop on your thighs and work through an essay you had to complete by the following week. When you had time away from final year lectures, seminars and practicals, you would usually occupy the private office and lounge room of the studio’s top floor in order to work through your uni assignments. The university libraries were quite suffocating in that they pressured you into unhealthy productivity mindsets, which often lead to unhealthy eating habits and a shortcut to burn out. However, you had found solace in the calm of the tattoo studio’s office that usually remained empty throughout the day when the boys were attending to clients. The calm silence was welcome and helped with your personal productivity and pacing of assigned workload.
Usually, Remus would accompany you, doing mundane admin tasks that helped manage the parlour and its clients but he had to leave as he had several appointments today. You’ve made some decent headway with the essay in Remus’s absence and you were using some of the momentum to get even more ahead when you felt a familiar presence take a seat beside you before throwing their arm over your shoulders.
“Hello, dollface,” Sirius whispers and presses a gentle kiss against your temple.
“Hey Siri,” you acknowledge him with a sweet smile and tilt your head against him briefly before continuing with your essay. Focused with your brows furrowed and gently gnawing at your lip, Sirius silently admires your concentration; it looks good on you, a meritorious contrast to your usually soft features and expressions.
However, as much as he loves this side of you, he loves your attention more, “...are you really gonna just ignore me?” he whines in his usual playful manner, prompting you to roll your eyes.
“Sirius, I have to finish this essay—”
“Not until the following week, so you have time right?” you don’t answer him. He was right but you still needed to work on the essay. Grumbling under his breath, Sirius leans his weight against you and sighs and huffs and whines in between minutes of silence. Even though this type of selfish distraction would typically irritate you, you know that you could afford stepping away from the essay so it was more than entertaining to hear his fussing. You also thoroughly enjoyed Sirius’s floundering and adorable attempts to guilt you into paying him some attention; it was almost adorable, like a puppy wanting attention.
It wasn’t until Sirius gave a significantly frustrated whine that you exaggerated a sigh and saved your progress to close your laptop screen, “...I’m all yours, Sirius,” you finally conceded, reaching a hand up to lift his hair out of his face.
With a wide grin, Sirius leans his forehead against yours, his eyes sparkling with content and satisfaction at having finally won you over, “Snack run?” at his suggestion, you almost jump out of your chair in excitement.
“Yes please!”
With perked ears, Remus and James smile to themselves at the sound of you and Sirius giggling down the hallway and outside to the leather-wearing tattoo artist’s motorbike. They knew you both made a ritual of going on snack runs for them and, although they appreciated the snacks, they adored your happy laughter echoing in the halls much more.
As Sirius helped gear the two of you up with a helmet for the ride, he whispered his usual promise of taking a longer route than needed to get to the store all while you spotted a group of girls eyeing him up from behind. They looked to be in high school and weren’t subtle about their puppy love for Sirius at all, ogling him with lovestruck doe eyes, whispering amongst themselves and playfully hitting each other’s shoulders over their musings. You couldn’t blame them for their admiration, simply because Sirius was very physically attractive, with his inked skin, sharp features, steel grey eyes, sultry hair, seductive smile, toned physique and nefarious leather fashion—the man embodied an elegant but evil beauty. And, when you got to know him, he became all the more attractive; he was just the perfect amount of chaos and sensual audacity to pair with the softest heart —a dream come true for girls, especially those in their high school years.
Nevertheless, their giggling and kittenish gossiping were like nails on a chalkboard to you, although, that may just be the excuse you came up with for what you were about to do next.
“Woah!” Sirius chuckles, his arms going up as you suddenly wrap your arms around his waist and hold him close, smiling smuggling into his white vest when the group of girls immediately silence their gossiping and giggling at the sight, “what’s wrong, dollface?” Sirius asks dotingly as he lifts your gaze up with a finger under your chin and presses a soft kiss to your forehead, “feeling needy are we?” you pout at his teasing, which he laughs at and finally wraps his arms around your shoulders. One hand holds the back of your head and gently presses your face further into his chest, “anything you need, dollface… anything at all, I’ve got you,” he whispers and pulls away to stare fondly into your pretty eyes. You realise that, not once has he noticed the group of high school girls behind him, in spite of all their gossip and ogling.
“Siri-”
“Such a pretty face,” he coos, lifting a hand to tenderly cup your jaw, “pretty eyes, pretty nose, pretty lips, pretty heart, pretty everything,” just so pretty… sirius completes in his head, resisting the urge to give into his desires and take from you something he knows isn’t meant for him but desperately wishes was his…
His stare lingers on your lips long enough for you to notice but not enough for you to verbalise as the leather-clad tattooist quickly places the spare helmet over your head.
Remus groans gratefully as he tilts his head back with closed eyes, smiling at the giggle you emit, “That’s just what I need, dove,”
The tall brunette feels your gentle lips against his forehead for a brief moment and sighs pleasantly once more, “you need to better your posture when sitting Remmy,” you softly scold, continuing to massage his tense shoulders and the back of his neck as he slowly opens his eyes to admire you.
Ignoring your reproach, Remus loses himself in the feeling of relief easing into his tense shoulders and stiff neck through your pressing fingers and palms, “heavenly…” he utters in bliss.
“Don’t ignore me, Remus,” your tone is a little more stern but rather than make him nervous, Remus continues to smile at you.
“I assure you…” Remus turns his head and presses a kiss against the skin of your wrist, “that I never and will never ignore you, sweetheart,” his words and the look he gives you makes a heat crawl up your neck and spread across your cheeks.
“Then tell me you’ll aim for better posture when sitting for too long,” at your request, Remus spins in his chain and pulls you close by the hips. His head is at level with your xiphoid process as he looks up at you with a relaxed smile.
“You have my word,” he brings your hands from his shoulders, holds them together and kisses the knuckles that touch. Almost instinctively, you move your soft hand to hold his face and smile down at him from where you stood.
It’s a promise he keeps as you often find him squaring his shoulders and straightening his back when sitting in the office too long. It makes your heart flutter to know that he was proactive with your advice but his shoulder massages didn’t stop, which he appreciated greatly. He never said thank you but he always kissed your hands, wrists and knuckles during or after you ease some of the tension off his shoulders and neck.
“You truly are an angel,” Remus said one day as he buries his face into your stomach, arms wrapped around your hips as you softly squeeze at his shoulders, “James was right,” he chuckles under his breath which you join him with in a brief but twinkling giggle, “are you truly not hiding a pair of wings, dove?”
“Nope~” you chirp with another giggle as he leisurely stands, pushing his chair away with the backs of his knees. Remus keeps you close, holds you closer even, and sighs into the crown of your head.
“Lies…” you feel his big hands move up your back slowly, pressing his fingers into your taut muscles and arched spine as if to return the favour you’ve done for his rigid shoulders. Unable to help yourself, a soft sigh escapes you and you fall further into his embrace, “that…or you’re really good at hiding your wings —i feel nothing there,” with one final knead of his strong fingertips, he winks at you with a mischievous glint in his eyes, similar to the kind you often find in Sirius’s grey pools and James’s hazel jewels. Though different, they were all the same in other ways.
“I guess you’ll never know,” was your impish reply not registering how Remus’s expression subtly softens into adoring fondness when continuing to stare down at you.
It’s like she belongs there… Remus thinks to himself, playing with the ends of your hair while you turn your head to rest your cheek on his chest for comfort, perfectly suited to be in my arms.
“There you are!” James cheers with a laugh as you squeal in surprise. Not only did he sneak up on you but he had effortlessly lifted you into the air by your waist, a merit to his muscular physique.
“James!” you laugh, hands on his broad shoulders as he spins you around, “Put me down!” grinning widely still, he carefully lowers you, grinning wider when your face gets closer and he can press a kiss to your cheek upon finally setting you down.
“I have everything already, angel, ready to go?”
“As I’ll ever be,” he links your arms together and leads the way to his and the boys' flat as you try to hold in your eagerness and nerves.
The flat the boys share is more spacious than you expected, cleaner too, which you suspect is primarily because of Remus. You were shocked to find, however, that Sirius tended to be the clean freak out of the three.
“I just grew up with clean habits, I guess,” Sirius quickly shrugs off your questioning eyes before ushering you into the kitchen where James was helpfully laying out all the ingredients the two of you needed in order to bake some fruit tarts together.
“We’ll be in the living room if you need us,” Remus offers with a cordial smile. In his hand is a rather small book, though you’d guess it’s because his hands were so big that the book just looked petite. The pages appeared relatively worn, as if he had flitted through their pages multiple times already despite his pointer finger marking the page he was at being quite early on in the book.
“With James in the kitchen you may be needing our help sooner rather than later—“ Sirius begins to chuckle but is forced out of the kitchen when James throws a rolled up kitchen towel at him. This makes you giggle as Sirius gives a shout of mock pain and makes his way into the living room with a journal full of sketches in one hand and a pen in the other.
“Right! Let’s get baking Jamie!” You chirp, missing the adoring eyes James looks onto you with, loving the nickname you call him by. Before the two of you get started, James helps tie up the back of your apron as well as your hair. Upon doing so, you do the same thing for him and he makes a show of asking you to tie up his hair for him despite its relatively short length. Even so, James got to work with a scrunchie holding up a small, short tuffet of hair —it made you giggle multiple times but James would just flutter his lashes at you comically and make you laugh even more.
Regardless of the occasional shenanigans James pulled, the activity was very domestic and made your heart flutter in your chest, not realising that James was experiencing the same sensations ten-fold.
Everything begins well enough with James obediently following your instructions, helpfully preparing the dough before moving onto the pastry cream. It was when you had to prepare the summer fruits while blind baking the pie crust and chilling the pastry cream that things became a little more chaotic. James had innocently offered you a slice of a strawberry and enjoyed your elated reaction so much that he started feeding you an entire array of fruits. Fearful that there won’t be anymore fruit for the tart, you begin to pull away from James’s kind offerings.
“Come on, princess,” James pleads with you, offering up a small slice of mango, “one more, you look so cute when you chew your food,” he coos adoringly as you bring your hands up to cover your cheeks and pout at him.
“James you better not—“
“You’re like a baby chipmunk!” He offers the mango once more but you quickly run away, which initiates a playful chase around the kitchen island. A mischievous look is sparked in James’s eyes as he laughs at your feeble attempt at running away from him. He plays easy with you, however; he doesn’t want the game to end too soon.
“James is at it again…” Remus chuckles and sets his book aside to sink back into the sofa, smiling at your squeals of fun from the kitchen.
“Trying to read was a lost cause, Moony,” Sirius laughs to himself, a warmth blossoming in his chest at the sound of your joyful activities. Nevertheless, he continues to sketch in his journal of potential tattoo compositions for a client, “we both knew this would happen,”
“Which is why,” Remus stresses, “I chose a book I’ve read multiple times already,”
Sirius looks up with a smirk, “always such a smartass,"
“You love this smartass,” Remus shoots and leans over to kiss the tattoo artist sweetly with light fingers lifting his chin up.
“I’m not denying that…” Sirius answers with a smirk before realising that the noise had significantly died down in the kitchen. They didn’t have to wait long until it began once again, however.
“James stop!” You squeal in delight and laugh airily.
James swings you around and places you on the kitchen island, not too far away from where the pie crust was cooling off on a drying rack. Standing between your thighs, he holds you in an embrace and laughs into your shoulder, “I caught you, love,”
“You have an unfair advantage,” you huff with a pout that doesn’t linger for very long when you lean back to adjust James’s glasses with a soft smile. Loving the gesture, James squeezes his arms around you and a dopey grin stretches across his face. He’s the image of bliss and summer fun.
“Not true…deep down, it’s you who has an unfair advantage over me,” and on Sirius and Remus too James was tempted to add but neglects to when he is overcome with the urge to kiss your cheek at the sight of your loveliness, head slightly tilted, lips adorning the sweetest smile and eyes alight with boundless mirth.
As the three admire you from their seats on the sofas, they share a similar look. All smiling with a hidden secret as their eyes twinkle with agreement. Many times they’ve discussed their relationship with you, knowing full well that they wanted the same thing and that there wasn’t a chance on earth they’d let you go without a fight.
It’s too cruel to have met a sweetheart like you only to have you drift away so easily. You bring about a softness in them that is typically hidden away, masked by their inked skin and piercings. You are a missing piece and an essential cog in their system that they can no longer live without.
“Tea’s ready!” you call and turn to them with a tray loaded with mugs of the steaming beverage accompanied by biscuits and cookies. Their gaze isn’t on the tea, however, it’s on you. And their eyes are flooded by a feeling that can only be love.