Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It starts in a daze.

Sirius is in his apartment and it’s nearly three in the morning, and he might be a little bit drunk – he can’t remember now, and doesn’t want to. His knuckles are split, bleeding from the blind punches he’s been throwing at walls. The bedroom he’s in is half-shrouded in darkness; the other half dimly bathed in yellow lamplight. It’s raining outside, and it feels like he’s been lying here for hours, nursing some imaginary wound in his chest where a knife has torn through the skin.

It’s pathetic. He knows that. He knows that better than anyone because it’s been too long and time is supposed to fucking heal, isn’t it? But it hasn’t. Not now, not yet.

And all the bloody nightmares considered, Sirius wants to think he had been doing fine. Or as fine as he could be, as fine as he has managed to be over the past eighteen months. Occasionally smiling, occasionally getting it right. Being okay hasn’t been easy for him recently but he tries, he really does.

So when Remus’ head pops into his fireplace for the first time in a year without warning, Sirius is more than a little shocked.

It starts with a violent, crackling hiss, the dying red embers that were in the fireplace suddenly flourishing into bright fluorescent flames. By the time he's recovered from this unexpected occurrence, Remus’ grave, solemn face has appeared in his hearth.

He starts talking immediately, not wasting time to say things like hello or how are you or I’m sorry for not calling in for a whole year. 

What he does deliver, though, are heavy words doused in a kind of swollen, barely contained panic, words that sting and settle poisonously in Sirius’ lungs. He listens, still too stunned to respond, to the first three words at least. And then his mind empties itself out, all the open-ended questions he’d been meaning to ask flattening back against his throat.

“He’s been hurt.” 

Remus’ voice is like the squeal of shattered glass – high-pitched and embedding deep into his brain. Three words with barely any context, but Sirius feels himself starting to bleed the moment he hears them.

He’s been hurt.

He’s been hurt.

James has been hurt.

He wants to keep listening, wants to find out more, but the first three words are enough; something loud has started ringing in his ears and Remus’ voice sounds too far away. Sirius can't speak, just swallows thickly and tries to ignore the bitter aftertaste it leaves in his mouth.

What happened? Where is he? How bad is it?

The questions are all there, neon-red warning signs in his head, but they crumple and die down before he can ask them out loud. Part of him doesn’t even want to know. Part of him already understands that this is bad, very bad, if Remus is calling, because – Merlin, how long has it been? A whole fucking year since they’ve spoken, though it feels like much more now.

Somewhere behind his ribs, his heart has begun crying like a wounded animal. Remus is still talking, but Sirius doesn’t hear him and all his stupid brain can think is, he’s been hurt, he’s been hurt, he’s been hurt; one muffled, continuous litany blaring over and over again.

The words pile into the room like snowfall, settling over everything – the dusty furniture, the smouldering ashtray, the empty bottle of Muggle pills he’d swallowed when he first found himself alone. All of a sudden Remus’ voice disappears completely and Sirius is remembering a single pair of eyes, bright and brown as soft earth; eyes that burned for him in the middle of the night, when they’d both been high and so fucking in love that they couldn't sleep.

And now –

Hurt, hurt, hurt. James has been hurt.

Remus’ voice finally comes back into focus, jumping out of the fireplace in a tumble of unfinished phrases that weld to Sirius' memory like scars: St Mungos’, he says, fourth floor, but come quick – he’s been hurt. 

Rain screams against the closed windowpane, making his whole body thrum with the sound of it. Sirius watches numbly as the emerald flames die away and Remus’ head disappears, wonders if he’s dreamed the whole thing. He stares down at both hands and tries briefly to remember everything he'd been doing to keep himself together this year, running in circles and getting tangled into this stupid routine, going nowhere. It takes several long minutes to come to terms with what has just happened. 

James.                                                          

The name feels like a punch to the throat, an unforgiving fist closed tight with black regret and untold apologies.

Comets filled with memories whirl across his mind – he thinks of being seventeen and loving so hard it made him sick, and the number of emergency rooms it had taken to dull the pain, and how it still, still hurts, after all this fucking time, like an open wound that’s been left to fester in his chest. 

Everything in the room feels too bright and blurry, and as hard as Sirius is trying to think past it – there’s only one thing left for him to do. There’s no question of it, no arguing with himself that it isn’t necessary. The hospital is fifteen minutes away (twenty because the tequila is still burning through his veins, no longer soothing or pleasant), and Remus said to come quick, because –

James has been hurt.

It only takes a minute to make up his mind. In a series of sudden, harsh movements he finds himself at the door, pulling on his cloak and stepping out into the frost-eaten night.

--

The sharp, sickening scent of disinfectants assaults his nose almost immediately as he enters St Mungo's. Sirius has been in here far more often than he'd like to admit, but when his half-faded memories of this place try to resurface, he holds them down firmly. This isn’t about the time he found himself waking up in the hospital, again and again and again for a year. This is about James.

(Well, it’s always been about James, he thinks, but not like this.)

When he steps through the corridor, he sees – he sees Remus there, Remus Lupin, whom he hasn’t seen in more than a year. Remus, in his brown jumper that he’d worn two Christmases ago, except that now it’s frayed at the edges and he isn’t smiling like Sirius remembers he did.

The stark shock of seeing him makes Sirius too slow to do anything except stand there for a few minutes, but then Remus comes forward, closing his arms around him, and all the words he’d planned to say go out like an extinguished candle flame.

“Oh my god, look at you,” Remus is murmuring, the words warm against the edge of Sirius’ ear. “Merlin, look at you, Padfoot. You’re so different now; you got so much taller, and your hair – ” 

Suddenly Sirius is trying not to cry again, trying to breathe through his nose without throwing up from the wild upsurge of grief that seeing Remus has brought forth; the reminder of how, during the best years of his life, he’d had everything he wanted, and the next second it had all gone to shit.

Remus tightens his arms just a little, and for a quiet moment Sirius feels like they’re underwater, the chaos and havoc of everything else going still until he lets go again. “It's so good to see you again.”

“How is he?”

Remus’ eyes are soft, rimmed with red. “He’s inside. Woke up a while before you came. He’s had – all sorts of procedures done to him, but the Healers think he’ll live now.”

“How bad was it?”

“Punctured lung and all his ribs broken. They gave him potions for the pain,” Remus' voice seems too mild for the heavy words it’s carrying. “He’s – it was an attack, Pads, they came for him and Lily and –“

“An attack? What happened?”

“We don’t know,” Remus looks down, and that’s when it hits Sirius that there’s something he isn’t telling him. “It was bad, the Muggle witnesses made it sound like they were being tortured on the streets, and –“ 

“Death Eaters?” he whispers, and Remus nods with a pained expression on his face. “But they’ll – they’ll be alright, won't they? The Healers –“

“They’re doing everything they can,” Remus says. “But you didn’t see him when they’d brought him in – I don’t even know how long he’d been under the Cruciatus for. They were at it for hours, running up and down the hospital to get antidotes for him.”

“Remus,” Sirius hears the words crawling slowly out of his mouth, like they’re afraid to be heard, as the full weight of his realization dawns on him. “Remus, why did you call me? He said – you know what he –“ 

“He said he never wanted to see you again,” Remus nods, low and quiet, but in his brain Sirius hears echoes of James shouting again from that night; angry words, electric red, hurled at him in an eruption of rage. “I know.” 

“So why?”

Remus lets out a breath. Sirius doesn't remember ever seeing him look so sad, so tired. “You loved him, Sirius. You loved him and everyone in the world knew it.” 

Sirius’ fingernails are digging into his own palm, making it ache just enough to stifle the nauseous feeling that’s swept up his throat. 

“And I – I know a lot of things have changed since then. I know this is a stupid, ridiculously long shot, but I need you to tell me, for James' sake – do you love him? Still?”

The question seems to slam into him like a train, flattening out his bones and leaving crushed rubble in their place. Broken, he thinks for a short second, everything’s broken. “I don’t know,” he says placidly. “Why does it matter?”

“Because,” Remus pauses to knead the creases on his forehead, “because he needs you right now. He needs someone to love him the way you did.”

“He said he never wanted to see me again.”

“But –“

“A year and a half,” Sirius interrupts, the words jumping out before he can stop them. “I tried everything, I’ve been ripping myself apart all these months and he’s never even fucking called – he needs me? Where was he when I needed him? Not one letter, not one visit! But no, of course none of that even mattered to him, because he had Lily, and –" 

“Sirius,” Remus’ face is pale under the garish light. “Lily’s gone.”

The rest of the boiling sentences that Sirius is on the verge of shouting stop suddenly in his throat, confused. “What? Gone where?”

Remus is looking at him with a strange, broken expression on his face. “The Death Eaters, they – they've killed her. She’s dead.”

The words take a few seconds to properly sink in, entering his brain like a cauldron leak.

“Dead?” he repeats, unnerved by how incomprehensible the word sounds as it leaves his mouth. And then, as though he's been plunged into a lake of icy water, everything around him seems to have slowed down, blurred out into a distant, faded haze.

But Lily can’t be dead, he thinks, Lily was so loyal and kind and –

Sirius has never allowed himself to like her, because she'd always been the shadow keeping James hidden from him – she'd been the reason he lost his best friend, but – dead? She can’t be dead, she’d sent Sirius owls with long letters behind James’ back, she'd looked past all her anger to ask if he was okay, even visited him in the dead of night to apologize for James. It’s with a hollow pang that Sirius wishes he hadn’t yelled at her when she did, hadn’t told her to leave him the fuck alone, to go back to her precious James and - 

“Do you see now, why I called?” Remus asks, his gentle voice dissolving Sirius' thoughts away. “James needs you. He has nobody else left anymore.”

“He won’t want to see me,” Sirius closes his eyes and swallows. There’s a dense knot in his throat as memories of his last terrible encounter with James flare up again. “He hasn’t wanted to for a long time now.”

“No, that's not true,” Remus’ gaze is soft and sad as starlight. “You know it isn't.” 

“No?” Sirius' breath is quickening now, furious heaves punctuating every few words. “He’s done a spectacular job convincing me otherwise, hasn’t he? So what if he has no one else left? I had nothing when he left me, and he didn’t care that I was alone!”

Remus tugs on the sleeves of his jumper. He’s flickering like candlelight, like he’s in a sketch, indistinct and shadowy around the edges. After a long, deadened silence he says, “You were only alone because you kept shutting everyone else out, Padfoot.” 

“Shut everyone out?” Sirius shouts, his whole body catching fire at the accusation. “I was trying to kill myself every chance I got –“ 

“And you were in so much pain you made it impossible for any of us to reach out to you,” Remus looks away, blinking. “Look, nobody blames you, we all knew about – we knew the way you felt about him, how devastated you were when he left. But you can’t say for a moment that we didn’t try to be there for you. You just wouldn’t let us in.”

A prick of guilt fills Sirius’ stomach, spreading dark and grey like cigarette smoke. Remus isn’t wrong. He vaguely remembers throwing blind curses on anyone who tried to show up at his apartment after that night, remembers smashing every gift they brought him at the hospital, remembers even punching Remus on his stupid concerned face one evening when he refused to leave. 

“You don’t know how long it took for me to move past that. Who's to say he isn’t going to look at me the second I go into that ward and tell me to get out? Who’s to say how fucking long that will take to get over –“

“He won’t,” Remus says, and there’s something miserable and empty in the way he says it. “I know he won’t.”

“And how would you know that?”

“I know because after the Death Eaters – after they killed Lily,” Remus is grimacing, like it hurts to speak, “they tried to erase their faces from his memory so he wouldn’t go hunting them down – but something went wrong, they didn’t do it properly, maybe they were in a hurry to leave so they wouldn’t get caught, and –“

“And what?” Sirius is staring at him, ignoring the fact that he feels like he can’t breathe, like all the air in the room has vanished and there’s nothing but an empty, dull ache in his chest.

Remus hesitates, then says, “He can’t remember anything, Sirius. Nothing about Hogwarts, nothing about Lily, nothing about us.”

The entire room crumbles away, until it’s just the two of them standing in the middle of a black abyss, looking at each other under a single tile of fluorescent light. Sirius’ heart is beating hard against his throat, threatening to scramble out on all fours and run as far away as it possibly can from here.

“What,” he’s saying, not knowing exactly how his own lips are moving, “what – is he – how can he not –“

“He’s still James,” Remus’ lids flicker shut like curtains for a brief moment. “Still talks and acts like himself, but I went into that ward and he didn’t even know who I was.”

Sirius feels oddly faint, feels like his whole body has turned into vapour and he could just be blown away into nothingness at any moment. Nothing about this has felt real, not when Remus’ head popped into his fireplace after a year and not now that he’s telling him that James, his James, won’t remember who he is. 

“This is why he needs us,” Remus is speaking so quietly Sirius almost doesn't hear him. “We can’t leave him like that. You wouldn’t, not after everything.” 

“Remus, I –“

“You loved him, didn’t you?” he asks, barely above a whisper. “You still do?”

Sirius makes himself fight the urge to break something, because even if it takes every last morsel of strength in his body to admit it, even if he’s spent the last eighteen months choking down on the lies everyday until he could look into the mirror and repeat them to himself without crying – he knows, inside the deepest gallows of his heart, that he loves James in a way that no amount of time spent trying to scrub it out will change. 

“Okay,” he says at last, his voice trembling like shutter blinds caught in a storm. “Okay. I want to see him.” 

Remus gives him a grateful nod, then starts hurrying towards one of the wards, gesturing for Sirius to follow. It only takes a few short steps to get there, but Sirius is so anxious that the walk seems to last forever. A million thoughts are being catapulted around his head at once, things like what will he say when he sees me and I wonder what he looks like now and this is not real this is not real this can’t be real.

It’s too soon when Remus is pushing the door open and Sirius hears the click of the handle, and he almost wants to stop and turn around because he’s not fucking ready for this but Remus goes in and Sirius follows him and then they’re inside the ward –

And the person sitting on the bed is the most beautiful thing that Sirius has seen in a year and a half, with his spherical glasses and his impossible hair and the tender, silky mouth Sirius has dreamed about every night.

Without warning, everything from the past eighteen months comes crashing back down onto him, the numbness of shock disintegrating  and giving way for a fresh outbreak of fury to spread in waves around his body. He remembers everything so clearly: every broken bottle, every time he'd screamed himself hoarse for James to listen to him, all the desperate, insane lengths he'd gone to just trying to get him back. Every sleepless night, every bleeding scar, and the venomous sadness infecting everything he'd touched, growing to rot and corrode and smother him. And he’s ready to shout now, ready to grab James and shake him and yell how fucking dare you, how could you do that to me, I was your best friend in the whole world and I loved you more than I could understand –

But then the boy is looking back at him, crinkles around his warm, curious eyes, and Sirius feels all his anger vapourize at once, leaving the air in his lungs brand new.

“Hi,” the boy says with a bright smile, using one hand to move the hair that's falling over his face and holding the other one out towards Sirius happily. “I’m James. Have we met?”

-- 

Chapter Text

There’s a long, drawn-out silence that follows. Sirius feels like his entire body has been vulcanized, feels like he can barely move or talk or breathe while he’s here standing in the same room as James Potter.

The first thing he notices is that James looks older, looks different. There are traces of him in his appearance that Sirius does not recognize; the slight day-old shadows of stubble, the way the underlying bone structure on his face appears a bit more pronounced now, even his hair seems to have grown messier. The second thing he notices is that James is still as fucking gorgeous as he always has been; so much so that it almost hurts to look directly at him.

James raises his eyebrows, then turns to give Remus an uncertain look. “Not very talkative, is he?”

Sirius opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. He still can’t believe it, can’t believe he’s here in front of James, can’t believe James is smiling at him. Sirius has long since stopped hoping that James would ever look at him like that again, without the molten anger afire inside his eyes – much less try to start an actual civil conversation that doesn’t involve them snarling and attacking at each other like a pair of rabid animals.

James’ gaze is back on Sirius again, and it feels white-hot against his skin. “You know, this whole memory-loss thing would be so much easier to deal with if there was only one person at a time looking so fucking confused in this room. And I, being the one who can’t actually remember anything, believe I’m quite deserving of that privilege.”

Remus snorts beside him. Sirius knows he must be coming across as a complete idiot by uselessly standing there and staring, but he really doesn’t feel capable of much else right now. Fuck. He can barely drag his attention away from just the way James looks, a bit disheveled but otherwise faultless, long enough to form any coherent thoughts on his own.

“Come on now, you must have a name,” James says, sounding a bit irritated, and Sirius almost wants to laugh – James, who he was so close to and knew so thoroughly, with whom Sirius had once been so contiguous to the point where he never even knew where he ended and James began, is asking for his name.

It’s this unusual, startling realization that somehow galvanizes him into speech. “I’m Sirius. Hi.”

He wants to say you should know that, you should know me anywhere, but the words remain sitting stubbornly on his tongue and don’t come out.

“Oh,” James appears to think for a second, then he smiles. “Sirius. I like that.”

Sirius’ whole head is brimming with mist. It sounds so strange hearing James say his name again. Somehow, whenever he hears it coated in James’ voice, he forgets how much he hates it, makes him think it isn’t really as stupid as he always claims. “It’s not bad, is it?” he says, feeling the warmth kindle his face. “Better than fucking Remus.”

James laughs. It’s a short laugh, but the sound seems to fill Sirius’ chest and push out against his ribs, glowing like warm light.

“Fuck, Prongs,” the words slip out quietly, without him even thinking, “I've missed you so much.”

The smile on James’ face fades suddenly. And then he’s looking away toward the window, evidently embarrassed. “I’m sorry, I don’t –“

Remus chooses that precise moment to clear his throat, giving Sirius a warning look before walking towards James and putting a gentle hand on the slope of his shoulder. “You don’t need to apologize for anything, James. It isn’t your fault.”

“I know,” James says, but it sounds numb.

Unease prickles sharply on the back of Sirius’ neck. It suddenly just hits him, how unnatural it is that James doesn’t seem to know anything. It doesn’t feel right that the past eight years have just vanished like that, dissolved into oblivion. He admits that the last two in particular may have been a disaster, but – before that, before James changed his mind, it had all been so good between them, so untouchable and raw and good.

James is staring out through the enchanted windows, at the dark, moonless sky punctured open with a few distant stars. For a second he looks much smaller, much younger, and so vulnerable that something behind Sirius’ ribcage aches.

And then he says, quite sullenly, “I’m tired.”

“Of course,” Remus steps back at once. “You need to rest. We should just – we should leave you to it. Would you like us to come back and see you tomorrow?”

James gives him a dismal shrug, still looking out the window.

“Hey,” Remus says, watching him. “We’re here for you, you know, no matter what. I know it must be incredibly frustrating to be in this position, but – you need to know that we would do anything for you, James, anything that you ask at all. Okay?”

“Yeah,” James finally turns away from the window to look at the pair of them. His eyes linger for a moment on Sirius’, a brief lock of brown against grey, earth diffusing into smoke. “I know. Thank you.”

Remus tugs on Sirius’ arm, pulling his attention off James. “Come on, he needs to rest. We’ll see him tomorrow.”

“I want to stay,” Sirius says. The words are out before he can think to stop them. “I need to.”

“Padfoot –“

“No. I want to stay.”

Remus gives him an exasperated look, then lowers his voice so that James can’t hear. “Don’t you see? He wants to be alone. Us staying here is just going to overwhelm him, we need to give him time to come to grips with all of this on his own.”

“But it’s been –“

“I know it’s been a long time since you’ve seen him,” Remus says, the words tight and strained. "You can see him first thing in the morning if you want, just leave him be tonight. He needs time.”

Sirius looks back at James, who’s still observing them quietly. And then he decides that Remus is probably quite right as usual, so he turns back to James and gives him an awkward half-wave that feels a bit too forced, a bit too artificial.

“Uh. Goodnight, then. I’ll – I’ll come and see you tomorrow, alright?”

James nods without replying. And that’s strange, Sirius thinks, the silence casually pouring into the room like some type of flood – like there are no longer any words to be exchanged between then, like there never were.

He becomes aware of Remus tugging on his arm again. With a final look at James (now staring out the window again), the two of them walk out of the ward, closing the door behind them as they leave. He doesn’t miss the way the air feels a lot easier to breathe the second they’re out of the room. Merlin, it feels like they’ve stepped into a different fucking universe altogether.

They begin meandering through the different passages of the hospital, and it’s not until they’re both standing outside in the icy, sharp night and Sirius is lighting himself a smoke that Remus finally speaks again.

“Well, what do you think?”

Sirius shrugs and puffs moodily on the cigarette. “I don’t think I deserve it.”

“Deserve what?”

“Him being nice to me,” Sirius says, his voice coming out more jaded than he'd intended. “Looking at me like he hasn’t hated me for the past year and a half.”

“But he hasn’t,” Remus says, looking at him. “He – he had to make a choice, Sirius. And just because he didn’t choose you doesn’t mean –“

It’s not that, it’s never just been that, Sirius wants to shout, but the words seem too loud and accusatory to throw out against the still nighttime, so he bites them back down and keeps his mouth shut.

“What I said about him needing time,” Remus says. “I mean it. I know – I know how you feel about him, how intense this must be for you. But James doesn’t know any of that, okay? He won’t be able to understand if you just –”

“I know.”

“What I mean to say is – don’t force anything onto him.”

Sirius lets out a harsh, loud laugh that vibrates so shrilly in the cold air that it makes Remus wince. “I’m not going to try to make him love me like he did before, Moony, if that’s what you mean. Don’t you think a year and a half of suffering has taught me my fucking lesson?”

Remus watches him for a second, not replying. Then he says, “no,” softly, and it doesn’t even sound like he’s mocking him. “No, Sirius, I just don’t think it has.”

-

That night in his apartment Sirius makes himself a bitter cup of tea and swallows the scalding liquid in a few burning gulps before crawling into bed. He listens to the rustle of leaves outside his window for a few moments, and then drifts off into a hazy, restless sleep.

In his dreams he’s running. Cold winds whipping like razor-sharp blades in his face, paws soundlessly bounding against the black earth of the Forest. Silent pairs of yellow, moonlike eyes blink at him from behind the leaves as he passes. He runs and runs and runs, a dark four-legged shape hurtling like a shadow against the night, until he finds himself at the edge of the Forest, where the trees have thinned out to reveal a sparse, empty patch of land. An owl hoots mournfully and takes flight when he steps into the clearing.

“Padfoot!” a voice calls out; and it sounds too familiar, too haunting. “I’m over here!”

Sirius looks around, canine ears pricking sharp, looking for the source of the voice.

“I’m here, can’t you see me?” it shouts again.

He lets out a low, guttural growl. When it speaks again he snarls at the empty air around him.

“I’m always going to be here,” the voice is saying, quieter now, “nothing will change that.”

And then the darkness of the Forest falls away, and Sirius is standing, with his teeth still bared, in his black suit at James’ engagement party, holding an elegant glass of champagne in his hand. James stands across him, handsome and anxious.

“Are you even listening to me?” he asks, exasperated voice ringing out against the buzz of chatter from guests in the brightly-lit room. “I said I’m always going to be here. This doesn’t change anything between us, Padfoot.”

Sirius’ eyes land on the smooth, shining stone set in the ring on James’ fourth finger. It catches the light from all directions, glinting.

“Say something,” James sounds like he’s pleading now, and his hand reaches out, fingers closing around Sirius’ wrist.

His touch feels searing hot, branding against Sirius' skin, and he yanks away immediately. The glass of champagne that he’s holding slips from his grip and smashes onto the floor. Golden liquid splatters everywhere, then turns to dark blood as it stains the walls.

And when Sirius looks back up, James is bleeding too; bleeding from his nose and his eyes and his mouth; the hot, sticky redness gushing out like a tsunami as he tries to speak. His hands fly to his own throat, gripping hard, struggling to breathe. Sirius can only stand and watch, horrified, as James crumples to the ground in front of him. The room suddenly fills with piercing, echoing screams as the guests realize what’s happening, and then Lily is dropping too, her skull weeping crimson as she hits the ground.

The silver ring on James' fourth finger catches the light, untouched by the puddle they're laying in. Glowing with heat, the metal beginning to melt around James' skin, soaking into it. The flashing brightness it gives off is nearly blinding, and Sirius can't see anything but James and his motionless body.

Something falls from the ceiling. A moment later the light disappears, and the ring lands silently at his feet, glimmering and perfectly intact. As he bends down to pick it up, the walls of the house erode away and Sirius hears the terrifying sound of James shouting I never want to see you again, and it echoes violently inside every particle of his body; until he’s down onto his knees, crying, begging for it to stop.

--

He awakens, panting, a little before dawn.

There’s white frost crawling up against his window, concentrated in the middle and then thinning out across the glass as it extends. Sirius allows himself a brief moment to gaze at it while he remains in bed, thinking that it feels like there’s frost just like that inside him; thick and cold in the centre of his chest, spreading out into little tendrils through his veins. And then he snorts and swallows a rough laugh, thinking it might be some type of sign, some message from the cosmos, if he were to believe in such things.

But he doesn’t. That’s the problem. Sirius hasn’t believed in anything for a long time now.

He puts together a hasty breakfast of burnt toast and tea for himself, then makes a lazy attempt at some household spells to make the bed and clear his plates. When that’s done he goes back into his room to find his robes. He pulls them on, then crams the pockets full of the Pumpkin Pasties that he’d bought last night. For some reason, his mind doesn’t appear to bother registering half the things he’s doing until he’s actually done them, resulting in mechanical movements that don’t make much sense – like a puppet that’s being jerked along on a very long string, not really sure who’s pulling anymore. Not sure if anyone really is. 

By the time he’s standing outside, ready to leave his flat, the early dawn sky is smudged with long cloudy streams, its barely-there light sloping sideways onto the road, and remnants of last night’s papery snow scattered in small piles everywhere. He hurries onto the street and it’s a bit too late to wish he’d thought of wearing something warmer when there’s a faint pop and he’s Apparating.

The world around him disappears, blurring like rippled water against glass, and Sirius’ chest tightens for a few seconds before he lands smoothly outside of St Mungo’s. The orange flares of sunrise soak into the sky above him, dripping everywhere in fat, blotchy droplets.

For a moment it seems a bit eager to him, showing up here at the crack of dawn. But Remus had said he could come see James first thing in the morning – it seems bizarre, really, to be doing anything else.

He makes his way inside smoothly, careful not to collide into a witch teetering all around the waiting room (a bit off-balance, perhaps, due to her grotesquely enlarged head), and finds James’ ward without much trouble. Once he’s standing outside, Sirius takes a deep breath and wills himself to push the door open when he exhales.

James is already awake inside, lying back against a few pillows and lazily flicking his wand around. The twirling movements cause a few fresh flowers on his bedside table to quiver in their vase. He looks up when Sirius enters, and his face immediately brightens enough to suggest that he’s recovered from his bout of sullenness last night.

“Hello,” he says, sitting up a bit straighter and smiling at him. “You’re here very early.”

“Yeah, I’ve brought you breakfast,” Sirius offers him the Pasties as he takes a seat slowly beside the bed. It’s hard to speak, but somehow he manages to get the words out in what he hopes is a sufficiently natural tone. “These used to be your favourite. Thought you might like to have some.”

“Mmm,” James takes the Pasties and begins stuffing them into his mouth almost at once, talking ungracefully in between chews. “So good – you wouldn’t believe – the hospital food is shit, they gave me a fucking apple for breakfast –“

Sirius feels a small smile tug stubbornly on the corners of his mouth, and watches intently as James wolfs the Pasties down. He’s aware of how much closer to him he is this morning, with barely half a metre between them. He’s no longer protected by space or distance; it must be damn near impossible that James can’t hear the deafening, frantic drumming of his heart. James’ face is illuminated in the morning light, and as it touches his brown eyes it makes them appear incandescent, almost golden. Sirius suddenly realizes that it's become unbearable to look at James all at once; his messy hair, the sleep-addled, bright eyes; because he’s so fucking beautiful that it shouldn’t make any sense, so beautiful he shouldn’t even be real.

“Where’s Remus?” James asks, on his fourth Pasty in five minutes.

Sirius blinks, shakes his head slightly to clear it. “Um. Probably asleep. He’ll show up later.”

“I could barely sleep, so I’ve just been doing anything I can think of to entertain myself in here. I tried some things with the wand – can’t remember any of the impressive spells, of course, but I got some sparks to fly out of it and I can make them come out in different colours too.”

The eager look in his eye just then is so familiar, Sirius realizes, it’s the exact same look James used to give him at Hogwarts when he’d performed a particularly admirable hex or suggested one of his brutally creative pranks. The look that suggests he’s seeking approval from Sirius, the only person that James has ever needed any validation from.

“Oh,” he says. “Uh – that's great. Well done.”

James grins at that, looking very pleased with himself. He takes another bite of the Pasty, then throws a disdainful look around at the ward. “There’s nothing to do here, Sirius. When will they let me out?”

Sirius shrugs. Something sharp has punctured a hole in his chest at the sound of his name in James’ mouth. Now that he’s here, so close, it seems beyond stupid to look away for even a second, to waste any moment of time at all not being completely absorbed in James. “You’re recovering, aren’t you? You need to get better first.”

“I feel fine,” James lets out an impatient huff, giving him an annoyed look. “I’ve told all the Healers, they keep coming in here to ask if I want any more bloody potions, like I’m some type of invalid –“

“You are, though.”

James crosses his arms over his chest and glares at him. “I feel fine,” he repeats. “Tell them I want to be discharged this afternoon, I’m not spending another day in here. There’s nothing to do.”

Sirius smiles, because for a moment it feels like James hasn’t changed at all. “You’ve only been here one night. What’s so terrible about it, anyway? Warm bed, three meals, you probably even get someone to give you your baths as well –“

James tosses the half-eaten Pasty at Sirius’ head, and Sirius ducks away, dodging it with pure, instinctive muscle memory.

“Where do you think I’d go after they release me?” he asks, reaching for another Pasty. “Do I even have a house?”

“I’d assume so.”

“Where is it? Is it nice?”

“I don’t –“ Sirius pauses, blinking, and then he lets out a breath at the difficult direction the conversation is headed towards. “I don’t know, James. I’ve never been there.”

“Why not?”

“You – you moved to your own place after you got engaged. And, well. You never really told me where.”

James frowns. “How come?”

“We… stopped talking for a while,” Sirius says, with considerable difficulty. “A very long while, actually.”

James’ eyes narrow suspiciously at him. “Why’d we stop talking?”

For the first time all morning, Sirius rips his gaze off James, choosing instead to direct it toward the ground so he can pretend to examine his own feet. A heavy, prolonged silence hangs around the air for some time before he replies. “It’s a very long and complicated story.”

“Did you hurt me?” James is still surveying him with that skeptical kind of scrutiny in his eyes. “Tell me what you did.”

“I didn’t hurt you,” Sirius snaps, annoyance flaring at the accusation. Hurting him, that’s what James had shouted the last time as well, as if Sirius wanting and loving him was somehow an act that caused him pain. “You – you made a big decision and it affected me in an unpleasant way and you weren’t happy with the way I chose to handle it. That’s all.”

“What decision?” James asks at once. The last Pasty now lies abandoned in his lap. “How did you handle it? Why did it affect you so badly?”

Sirius takes a long, cleansing breath and unclenches his fingers. “It’s not – I’m not certain I want to talk about that right now, James.”

“Do you realize how dodgy you're acting?” James jabs a sudden, accusatory finger towards Sirius, barely an inch away from his shoulder. Sirius feels the potency of how close his finger is, feels a small shiver erupt down his spine at the inescapable thought that James is nearly touching him for the first time in eighteen months. “It’s bad enough not being able to remember anything without you avoiding all my questions as well.”

Sirius’ eyes travels from James’ finger to his face, washed in golden light from the window. “I know,” he says, taking in the set jaw and furrowed eyebrows. “I'll tell you eventually, at some point but – not now. Maybe after you’ve had time to deal with everything else as well.”

“I’m not a fucking child, don’t talk to me like I don’t understand anything."

"Do you?" Sirius demands. "Do you have any idea who you are, or what you've done, or anything at all that's happened in your life?"

James shuts his mouth and glares at him. The space between them feels thick and viscous.

“Look,” Sirius gets out after a minute, straining to stay composed. “I get it, you're just curious. But you don't even know anything about me – there's no point in telling you things if you aren't going to make sense of them anyway. What difference does it make?”

“I’m supposed to be relearning my entire life, aren’t I?”

“Well, this hasn’t been part of your life for a long time,” Sirius feels a deep flush rising up his neck as he talks, because it’s humiliating. It hasn’t bothered you at all, it hasn’t torn you apart, hasn’t cut you up in all the ways it cut me. I was trapped inside a firestorm for eighteen months, James, and you were just fine.

“I’m going to ask Remus when he gets here,” James decides promptly. “He’ll fill me in on everything.”

“Don’t you believe me when I say I’ll tell you eventually?”

James scowls, arms still crossed. “You’re being a cryptic shit, so no, actually.”

“I would never lie to you, James. You have to know that.”

James purses his lips, surveying him for a few seconds more. And then he uncrosses his arms and finally picks up the last Pumpkin Pasty. “Fine,” he says, taking a bite and swallowing it down. “But only because you brought me these pasties.”

Sirius watches him eat it, still looking grumpy.

“You said I was engaged,” James mentions absently, dusting the crumbs off his fingers.

“You were.”

“To who?”

“Lily Evans,” the name leaves raw, bleeding bite marks around his chest as Sirius says it. “You really liked her. She was – you thought she was incredible. She was everything you wanted.”

“The Healer told me yesterday that the girl I was with – that she was killed,” James is looking intently at him again. “Was it –?”

Sirius exhales slowly. “Yeah.”

James turns his face away. There’s a long, weighty silence in the ward while he takes in the news.

“I wish I could remember her,” he says finally, in a very quiet voice. “If I did maybe I’d feel more – more upset, or something – but I can’t. You know? I can’t feel anything at all.”

“I know.”

“It’s wrong, isn’t it?” James says. “I should be angry, what kind of fucked-up fiancé doesn’t feel upset when –“

“James, stop."

He closes his mouth and leans back, staring up at the ceiling. There’s a lost, hollow look in his eyes.

“It’s not your fault, none of it is,” Sirius tells him. “There’s no point in beating yourself up over it.”

“Did you know her well?”

Sirius inclines his head. “A bit, yeah.”

Thinking about Lily has turned his entire body cold; frost and snow and black, black ice crawling around his insides. Her face pops into his head, blurred around the edges; smiling at him so delicately, as if Sirius hadn’t spent weeks hating her, convinced that she’d done something to James he'd never been able to completely wipe off. Sirius had tried – again and again and again – to fuck the memory of Lily out of James, but it had never achieved anything but create more distance between them.

Dead. She’s dead now. Gone before Sirius got the chance to say sorry for blaming her.

"I'm going to step outside for a moment, okay? I just, I want to smoke. I need some air.”

James shrugs, like he’s only half-listening. Sirius uses the absence of his attention to slip as soundlessly as he can out of the room. There’s an irritating ringing in his ears that makes him want to punch something as he walks out of St Mungo’s and onto the street, but he ignores it.

The people passing by while he lights a cigarette feel strangely faraway, as if there’s all this invisible space that’s just grown between him and the rest of the world. They move past, smears of grey wearing coats and hats and gloves, and Sirius can’t help thinking that this is the first time in his entire life that he’s ever wanted to run away from James. He can’t explain it, can’t understand why because all he's fucking wanted for eighteen months is to see James again – and now he's here, stuck in some sick, terrifying, upside-down reality where James doesn't know him and Lily Evans is dead.

Fuck, how does anyone even deal with that? It feels like a part of him, something once so familiar and comforting, something he’d understood so well, has been ripped out and Transfigured into something grotesquely different. Feels like there’s a ghost sitting there in that hospital room wearing James’ skin – a stranger. Sirius had known James, every tiny piece of him, had known and memorized and loved him to the point where it became unnecessary to know anyone else (save for Remus, and, by some unfortunate default, Peter – but even they were just his best friends, whereas James and him were two inseparable parts of the same whole) – it hardly seems fair that James doesn’t know or understand this at all.

And can it possibly be the same, to know a James who may as well have not been there through everything they experienced together? Every adventure, every moment that had defined their relationship, tested and strengthened it, wrecked and destroyed it? It can’t be, because they had grown together, learned and fought through the entire bloody hurricane of adolescence beside each other.

He tosses the cigarette butt away. For a moment it seems too easy to just go home, to deal with all of this some other time. But – he told Remus he was going to be there for James. Remus is right, Sirius can’t just leave him like that. What’s he supposed to do, though? Tell him everything? Say I know you can’t remember anything so I hope this doesn’t overwhelm you, mate, but we were in love, once? Or – or what? Scrub it off, soak the open wounds burning in his chest with Dittany and pretend that none of it ever happened?

He can’t decide which would be worse; trying to crawl back into the past with James when he can’t remember a thing, or trying to look the other way instead, learning to just live with this new, strange, clueless person that he’s become.

Sirius turns back toward the hospital, and it’s only when he’s standing outside the ward again that it occurs to him that it doesn't really matter what he decides to do - because the truth is, he’s just going to end up very hurt either way, and there's nothing that he can even do about it.

-

Chapter Text

The next week passes by like the disorienting eclipse of a dream, alternating patterns of light spilling onto the shadows underneath. Without any coherent justification, Sirius finds himself constantly returning to the hospital to see James, opiated just by being in his best friend’s presence again.

He goes back every day, like a madman walking right into a hurricane – it’s like he can’t discern between the two polar-opposite emotions he feels about James anymore. He can’t tell if he wants to rip something out of his own chest to stop it from hurting, or just continue to bask in the pure glow of existing in the same space as him, the only thing that he’s ever wanted.

In spite of the violent, turbulent conflict within him, there’s just something about being around James again that’s too hard to resist. Some silvery remnants of their old selves, something so calming and familiar in the way they keep finding themselves alone. The offhanded jokes, the way every debate they have almost always escalates into an argument, James’ proud smile and the heated excitement on his face whenever he gets himself worked up – it feels like the easiest thing in the world. Like nothing has changed.

He’s lying in the soft armchair he conjured next to James’ bed, legs swinging over the wooden arm restlessly. The moon is a thin pearly crescent sliced into the sky outside – it’s past midnight, and James is half-buried under the sheets, drowsy from his sleep potion.

“I really shouldn’t let you guilt me into staying here so late."

“I shouldn’t let you smoke those things inside a hospital,” James’ eyes are heavy-lidded, watching him exhale smoke out the window, but the liquor-like heat of them is still unfairly distracting.

“They’re not that bad,” Sirius frowns, twirling the cigarette around his fingers, then holds it out toward James. “Here, try it.”

James gives him an impudent smile. “My, my, what would Remus say if he finds out you’re trying to corrupt my innocence like this?”

“Who cares? Remus isn’t here.”

James shakes his head. “I don’t want one, anyway. Can’t stand the smell.”

Sirius shrugs and slides the cigarette back between his own lips. 

There’s a moment or two of quiet, and then James is rolling over onto his side to face Sirius again. “Tell me about me,” he says.

“What about you?”

“What was I like?” James’ gaze tracks the ribbons of smoke and then returns expectantly to his face. “I don’t know who I am, or what kind of person I was – anything, really. And you seem to know me better than anyone else. Better than Remus, even.”

"I’ve told you,” Sirius shifts slightly in the armchair. “We were your friends, we have been since the first day of school. Well, theoretically Peter was too, but since he hasn’t even bothered to visit –“

“Yeah, he has,” James interrupts.

“When?”

“Two days ago. Brought me some new clothes and everything, said I’d look good in them. He’s a bit odd, but okay, don’t you think? He seems to adore me.”

“Yeah, he’s a bit like that with everyone,” Sirius waves a hand dismissively, annoyed that Peter has been in town without so much as writing to him. “Anyway, I had a falling out with him too, shortly after you. He was always so eager to take your side.“

“That’s because I’m nice to him.”

“You were nice to anyone if they fell at your feet hard enough.”

James smiles. “Was that something people did often?”

“Unfortunately, yeah. There's something about you that everyone liked – call it charisma, if you want. Can’t say I’ve ever had much of it myself.”

“You don't need charisma,” James tells him. The words come out slowly, mildly slurred, as if he’s waiting for Sirius to swallow each one down before offering him the next. “Remus told me everyone was swooning over you too.”

“Can't imagine why. I didn't even recognise half the names of the people at school who sent me chocolates for Valentine's Day."

“Well, if you were anything like you are now, it’s because you don’t try at all to make people like you. You never do anything except what you want, because you don’t care what anyone thinks of you.”

“That's not entirely true.” Sirius puts the cigarette out and pulls his knees up to his chest on the armchair, looking at James. “I care what you think of me."

“What an honour. Being the only person in the world Sirius Black gives a shit about."

He doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to the way his name sounds leaving James’ mouth. “Don’t flatter yourself. If we were trapped in a burning building, I’d pull Remus out before you.”

“Obviously, because I’m perfectly capable of crawling out myself. It's only Remus who would actually need your help.”

Sirius rolls his eyes. 

“What else? Did I have a girlfriend? Or boyfriend, maybe? I'm not sure I have a preference.”

Sirius tries to laugh, but it sounds oddly hollow. “You don't. Apparently there are too many attractive people in the world for that.”

“Case in point,” James gestures in his direction, grinning. “So what you’re saying is that I slept around.”

Sirius blinks, suddenly aware of the discomfort aggregating in his gut. There’s so much that James doesn’t know about himself, about their relationship – so little that could ever make sense to him. He’s not sure how to answer these questions without getting dangerously close to the territory of lies. 

“Not really,” he says, looking away. “You started going out with Lily in fifth year, and you were mostly faithful to her.”

“What do you mean, mostly?”

When Sirius responds, his voice comes out serrated with irritation. “Look, I don’t know what to tell you. Apparently one person’s undivided attention wasn’t enough for you.” 

Or at least mine wasn’t.

Two lines appear between James’ brows. “Did she know? Lily, I mean?”

“Eventually.”

“Did you?”

“Yeah, obviously.” 

"Oh." James lets out a breath and pushes the blanket off, frowning. “That makes me feel like a shitty person.”

“You could be on occasion. But so can anyone.”

“What about you? Did you ever go out with anyone at school?”

Sirius shakes his head – he has never, for a single moment in his life, wanted anyone but James. The idea of even looking in someone else’s direction is as ridiculous as it is distasteful. 

“Why not? I find it hard to believe you didn't have options, looking the way you do.”

Sirius finds himself staring pointedly at his feet. “Just wasn't interested, I suppose.”

“Did I do well at school?”

“Define well,” Sirius says, eagerly jumping on board with the topic change. “Your grades were alright, but your behaviour not so much.”

“With all the pranks?”

"Yep. You annoyed the shit out of every teacher we had, but they were still quite fond of you, somehow.”

“Remus says you and I were both exactly the same and completely different to each other.”

He snorts. “Yeah, sounds about right.”

James removes his glasses, rubs the bridge of his nose. He looks younger without them, and his eyes are brighter, clearer. It fills Sirius with a pang not to comment on it the way he once could.

“What was your favourite memory with me?”

“All of them. Well, actually – no, not all. But most of them.”

“Choose one,” James tilts his head a little to the right, his cheek getting pressed up against the pillow.

Sirius thinks for a minute. “When you convinced me to run away from home,” he says eventually. “I’d resigned myself to always being treated like shit by my family, but you – you wouldn't. You couldn't stand it. Made me come live at yours the summer after fifth year.”

“Yeah?” James smiles again, looking thoroughly pleased with himself. “Swooped in and rescued you, did I?”

“Something like that.”

“Did you like it? Living at mine?”

“Yeah, it was alright – the first time in my life I had a real home. I was so used to my family’s bullshit I didn’t think it was abnormal for them to do what they did to me. You showed me that not all families are like that. Your parents showed me I could be loved, looked after. And I think –” he pauses, suddenly embarrassed by the intensity of his own emotions. “I think that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me.”

“Good. Fuck the people who raised you – I’m glad I talked you into running away.”

Sirius thinks back to that summer. It had been such an incredible, mesmerising one; a whole new way of life he had never imagined possible. A vignette of memories bursts through his mind – lying against the heat of James’ body, the indigo sky above them studded with stars. James, flushed and breathless, kissing him clumsily, clutching Sirius’ robes with one hand and an empty bottle of wine with the other. James’ dad clapping with enthusiasm as they whizzed around the backyard on the new broomsticks he’d bought for them. Real family dinners every evening, savouring the food that his mum actually cooked – not the grim, sludgy stuff Sirius’ house elf used to make. James’ fingers under the table, sliding over his leg whenever his parents spoke to Sirius, watching gleefully as he grew flustered and fumbled over his words in response. Tossing handfuls of sawdust at each other while his dad tried to teach them woodwork, standing sheepishly a few feet apart while his mum mediated their arguments. James undressing him in his bedroom, moving his mouth slowly down Sirius’ chest and torso, pausing to laugh and shush him every time the moaning got too loud. Falling asleep beside James every night and waking up to him each morning, kissing him for hours until they were both ready to get out of bed.

Sirius had never known so much happiness in his entire life.

“Do you have a least favourite memory with me?”

This one is easy, Sirius decides. “The night we stopped talking.”

James’ eyes seem to be burning a bit warmer now, soft and attentive. “Will you ever tell me what happened that night?”

Something inside Sirius’ chest feels like it’s cracking. How long has it been, how endlessly has he tried to forget what he did? Some nights he awakens from his dreams still tasting the blood in his mouth.

“Sirius?”

“Mm,” Sirius says, “of course I will,” and he’s not sure how much he means it.

-

“He likes you, you know,” Remus informs him, a few days later while they’re sitting on the couch sharing a large bottle of brandy. “He talks about you when you’re not there.”

Sirius sets the glass down. It’s been nearly an hour and it still feels strange to see Remus here in his flat again after so long. The way he throws his coat and scarf onto the table, the way he just lounges on the sofa and then asks for a drink like he’s been here the whole time.

“What does he say about me?”

“What he’s always said, mate. That you’re clever, you’re funny, you’re his favourite. You always bring him Pasties for breakfast and you talk a lot about Quidditch.”

Something warm rises inside Sirius’ chest like an ocean wave. James’ favourite. “Hasn’t he gotten sick of the Pasties yet?”

“Don’t think so,” Remus swallows a mouthful of brandy. “He says you’re very quiet sometimes, though. And he doesn’t know what to think of it. And, well, I might have –”

“Why should he think anything of it?” Sirius interrupts.

“When have you ever been quiet with James?” Remus asks pointedly.

Sirius’ stomach tightens. He never has, to be honest. Even at their worst, their lowest, when their relationship had already begun deteriorating out of control, they'd always preferred arguing to stone cold silences. Throwing words at each other like knives; unable to stop creating new, unnecessary wounds on one another because they lacked the restraint to bear their anger without complaint. There's never been any need for Sirius to not tell James exactly what he thinks of him. To be quiet about it, though doing so would undoubtedly have hurt less. 

Not before all this, anyway. And now, it feels like even under the lighthearted conversations about Quidditch, even when they’re sharing a moment or two of loud, glowing laughter – there’s always something laying dormant and dangerous right below the surface. Something in the way that James looks at him, as though he’s wondering when it’ll be appropriate to ask about their history again. 

Sirius rubs at the back of his neck, uncomfortable. “Well, he’s – he’s not really the same James anymore, is he?”

“Of course he is, why shouldn’t he be?”

Sirius gulps down the rest of the contents in his glass, pretends not to notice the burn as it scorches past his throat. “You know what I mean.”

“No, actually, I don’t.”

“We did everything together. All those years at school, everything that happened – how can he still be my best friend if he doesn’t remember –“

“Is that what you think? That he's only your best friend because of the memories you made with him at school?”

Sirius reaches to refill his glass and doesn’t reply. He doesn’t think that Remus would understand anyway – he isn’t the one who’s suddenly been hurtled into a past he’s been trying to dig his way out of for over a year.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Sirius,” Remus says. “I know what you’re thinking.“

“I’m not thinking anything.”

“You think he’s not the same James anymore.”

“I never said that.”

“You literally just –“

“It doesn’t matter,” Sirius snaps. An old wave of bitterness is threatening to seep into him, and he’s had enough of it, enough of trying to explain his feelings to anyone, even Remus – nobody will ever know what it’s been like. Like every single stitched-up scar from the last eighteen months has been freshly ripped open; like he’s just bleeding red all over the fucking carpet and no one can see a thing. 

“You were his best friend from the moment you first laid eyes on him, before you even knew who he was,” Remus points out. “Don't try to tell me that you weren't. We were in that train carriage together that very first day, weren’t we - all four of us? But it was James you wanted to stay up the whole night with when we arrived at Hogwarts. It was James you paired up with at every occasion, James whose opinion came first, even before Peter or me. Don't you think that means something?"

“But he doesn’t know that,” Sirius closes his eyes for a brief moment. The words taste like defeat, small and pathetic and hollow. "What difference does any of it make, if he doesn't remember everything we did together?"

“So what? It’s not – it’s never been about that, because if it was, you’d be in love with me too, wouldn't you, or you'd be in love with Peter. But you’re not. It’s him, it's only ever been him. Not because of what you did or the experiences you shared.”

Sirius avoids his gaze, sullen and annoyed the way he always is when he doesn't feel like admitting Remus is right.

“Look. I’m not just saying this because I’m your friend. Everybody saw it – there was something special between the two of you from the moment you met. I can’t explain it – it's like you're two different pieces of the exact same thing. Like, to a weird and honestly disturbing level. I don't think Peter and I were in the least bit surprised when you started sleeping with each other."

“Yeah, and that worked out so well for both of us, didn't it?” 

Remus is looking at him with an intent, unfaltering gaze. The lamplight casts an orange tinge over his skin. “You’re frightened.”

A flare of heated irritation makes Sirius slam the glass back down onto the table in front of him. “I’m not fucking –“

“What are you so scared of? I see the way you look at him. What is it you’re trying not to say?”

For a moment, Sirius feels like he can’t breathe, can’t speak. Remus’ questions enter his mouth like a landslide, lodging into the back of his throat. They flood into all the emptied-out spaces inside his body; swelling, scratching, pressing against his organs and threatening to burst out violently through the skin.

What is he so fucking scared of? What is it that he’s trying not to say?

Everything in the room has turned into razor-edged shards, fragments, debris. It feels like the floor has disappeared under his feet.

“You want to tell him, Pads, don’t you? You want him to know – that you loved him, and you still do.”

Sirius stares down into his glass. He wants to say of course I do, it’s fucking killing me but the words don’t rest properly inside his mouth – they taste hoarse, coating bitterly over his tongue.

Before Sirius has the time to protest, Remus’ arms are winding tight around him. His body is warm, the fabric of his jumper rubbing like fur against Sirius’ skin, and Sirius can hear the echoes of his own heartbeat traveling frantically through his bloodstream. He wants to scramble out of the hug by pure instinct alone, because he doesn’t do this kind of thing, doesn’t sit like this and let himself be fucking cradled –

“Tell him,” Remus says, letting go. “Maybe not about – not about everything, but –”

“Weren't you the one who said I shouldn’t?”

Remus exhales, eyes carefully surveying him in that same horrible, sad way he’d looked at him each time he’d come to visit Sirius at the hospital.

“I wasn’t thinking about how you were feeling,” he says finally. “I was thinking of James, and it seemed like the best thing to do would be to give him time to adjust, but – I mean, it had been so long, I didn’t realize how much you were still hurting –“

“I’m not.“

“You are, though,” Remus says, the words too quiet to exist for long in the space between them.

The light from the ceiling is falling down onto them like rain and something inside Sirius’ mouth tastes like broken glass.

“You said it would be too much for him.”

“You know James better than anyone in the whole world. You’re the only one who can decide whether it's too much for him.”

Has there ever been such a thing as too much for him and James, though? Everything between them had just happened, like a forest fire, a fever, an avalanche. And – fuck, it had nearly killed him when James tried to impose limits, hadn’t it? It had driven him to his knees, to whimper and beg for James like a fucking dog – and it was James shouting enough is enough that had finally broken through to him. It was him shouting you always ask too fucking much of me and you never think about anything and you fucked this up, you fucked it all up –

“He was so angry,” he croaks suddenly, and for a moment his fractured voice doesn’t even sound like his own. “He was so angry, and he couldn’t even look at me, Remus, and all I wanted was –“

“I know,” Remus says quietly. 

“I don't know how much longer I can stand to do it,” Sirius says. Hiding from James feels like he’s carrying something raven-black inside himself, something heavy and starved that sinks his bones like anchors. “Sitting there and talking to him as though this is all we are, all we’ve ever been.”

“So tell him.” 

Sirius wishes he could, that it were that simple.

Like it had been in their fourth year, so long ago that it feels like a different lifetime now. They’d been drinking outside near the Quidditch pitch, the wind assaulting them like blades, too caught up in each other to be bothered by the cold. Flushed from the game they'd just played and warmed by the careless, brazen blaze of alcohol. Sirius remembers that they’d been laughing loudly over something stupid one minute, and then James was kissing him the next – and that had been it. No plan or thought or hesitation. No need to explain, no space of time at all between the ecstasy of laughter and the sudden, hurried pressure of James’ mouth on his own.

“Sirius,” Remus says, breaking the swift silence. “He’s going to need a place to stay once he’s discharged from St Mungo’s.”

“What’s happened to his house?”

“Not safe anymore,” Remus reminds him. “He was attacked there, wasn’t he?”

The after-burn of brandy is unpleasant in Sirius’ mouth, everything in the room starting to blur into nebulous shadows of colour and smoke. “Can’t he go to yours?” he asks, but the question sounds stupid and unnecessary as soon as he hears it.

“There’s a full moon next week,” Remus hangs his head, apologetic. “He needs someone to take care of him, and I won’t be able to.”

“You’re not suggesting –“

“Where else should he go? Where else can he?”

“Peter’s,” Sirius says, but he knows at once that he’d rather throw James in front of the Whomping Willow than send him off to live with Pettigrew.

“Peter’s busy, he’s got a job at the Owl Post Office in Hogsmeade – lets him keep an eye on the school, notify the Order if there’s anything out of the ordinary.”

“I’m busy,” he protests, annoyed that even Peter seems to be a more useful member to society than he’s been lately.

“He hasn’t got anybody else, Pads. He needs you.”

James needs him.

“Listen, I – ” Sirius opens and then closes his mouth idiotically, blinking. And, oh. He’s definitely drunk now. “I don’t know if I can –“

“Just for a while,” Remus is leaning forward and placing his hands on Sirius’ wrists, the touch soft and reassuring. “Just until after the full moon, okay, Sirius? He can come stay with me after, if it’s too much for you, but until then – you can do that, can’t you? You can do it for James?”

Sirius is nodding before he’s even registered what Remus is trying to tell him. The information takes a few moments to properly slide into his head.

“Only till the end of the full moon, though, alright?”

“Yeah,” Remus squeezes his wrists gently, and there’s a small smile in his voice as he says it. “Yeah, I promise.”

-

James grins like the fucking sun the next morning when Sirius brings him Pasties for breakfast again and tells him that he’s going to stay with him. “Brilliant! Do you know when I can be discharged?” he asks, shoving the Pasty into his mouth.

“Tomorrow,” Sirius sits across him. It’s strange, he thinks, how it’s nearly impossible to be bitter or angry when he’s here with James. It still aches to look at him – but the pain feels like it’s from a different life or something, distant and subdued because this James has nothing to do with the one that broke his heart eighteen months ago. It seems stupid to resent one for the other, when it’s easier to just not.

James hurries to swallow down the Pasty before reaching for his wand. “I’ve been practicing,” he explains eagerly to Sirius. “That levitation charm you taught me yesterday, remember?”

He’s exuberant and happy and Sirius can’t believe he’s going to be living with him. His mouth twitches slightly at the excitement on James’ face. “Yeah? Show me, then.”

James performs the movement with his wand, murmuring, “wingardium leviosa,” and the Pumpkin Pasty in his lap obediently rises into the air, hovering there for a few moments until he lowers his wand. His face screws up in concentration as he does it, and then he’s looking delightedly back at Sirius.

“You always were a natural,” Sirius says, watching him, and James beams at him in a way that makes something orange and fiery jerk inside Sirius’ chest.

“And you can teach me all the really cool ones as well, once I move in with you,” the words somehow seem to make their way out from behind the massive grin on James’ face, bright and glowing like fireworks. “And you’ve got a broomstick too! We could go flying, and we could even –“

“It’s only for a while, though, James,” Sirius interrupts, because there’s no way he deserves all that excitement and euphoria in James’ voice right now. “Just until – it’s just for two weeks, and then you’ll be going to live with Remus.”

“Oh,” James’ face falls as suddenly as it lit up, and he sinks a little lower down against his pillows. “How come?”

“I’ve, uh –“ Sirius cards his fingers through his hair uncertainly and tries to think up of a legitimate excuse that isn’t I think being around you too much would kill me. “I’m not the best at household spells, my place can get a bit – uh, it’s disorganised, sometimes –“

“Doesn’t matter. I don't care about a mess.”

“Yeah, but, I’ve got – I can’t even cook –”

James laughs. "Just wait till I to introduce you to the wonderfully innovative world of Muggle food delivery services.”

“I can be a really terrible housemate, you know. Even the neighbours have made several complaints.”

“About what?” 

“The volume, I guess. I can make quite the racket when I’m pissed off – and honestly, I’m pissed off a lot.”

“Bullshit,” James snorts. “All your excuses are rubbish. I’d love to stay with you, I don't care about the mess or the food or the noise. I don't even really mind all your weird temper tantrums.”

“I don’t have weird temper tantrums –“

“I’ll show you,” James puffs out his chest, giving him a brilliant smile that’s so blinding Sirius doesn’t know where else to look. “I’ll be the best housemate you could even think of having, Sirius – you are going to love having me around. You’ll never want me gone, ever. You’ll be begging me not to go to Remus’.”

Sirius looks back at James, at the way he’s so proud and sanguine and secure, like nothing in the world could possibly hold him back. Like he’ll discover lost cities, end century-long wars, single handedly save the entire world. You can, Sirius had told him once, drunk on firewhiskey and lying with his head in James’ lap, you can do anything you want. James had laughed, said I think I’ll start with you and – fuck. It's so stupid to be thinking of this now, to be missing James when he’s sitting right here in front of him.

The conversation then glides into a discussion of which spells James should learn next (he’s particularly curious about the more unpleasant hexes), and by mid-afternoon Remus arrives, bringing with him Honeydukes chocolates and tuna sandwiches for them to share. They talk about Hogwarts and the Order and a hundred other things at once and Sirius barely even notices as the afternoon bends aside to give way to a gentle, orange twilight.

But even with Remus there, he finds it near impossible to focus on anything but James. It’s like the spot where James is seated has caused some temporary curvature in space-time; everything, from Sirius’ gaze to his body to his thoughts, seems to gravitate inexplicably towards it.

At multiple points Sirius catches himself slipping into longing, stomach-clenching thoughts – the way James’ lips move when he’s laughing, how his fingers curl against the edge of the mattress when he’s saying something particularly fervent.

He’s trying not to think about it, has trained himself not to think about this for over a year now, because there’s never been any use, has there? No point sinking any lower than he already had. No point digging into the already caustic emotional wound by missing the sex too. And, well, it had seemed manageable after the first few months apart, to forget the taste of James’ mouth or the sounds he’d made when they – 

Stop it, he tells himself. Just stop it right now. 

As the evening progresses, it grows difficult to ignore the flush rising to his face whenever James’ gaze lands on him. All his thoughts are accelerating toward a distracting urge to touch James – even if, at this point, Sirius is certain that so much as the slightest, simplest brush of James’ fingertips against his skin would result in him doing something extremely stupid – like crying, or coming immediately.

He notices a second too late that the room as grown quiet and that both Remus and James are gazing at him. “What?”

Remus smiles, amused. “James was asking you a question.”

“What question?”

“I asked,” James says, “whether you bother anyone like that, the way you’re always staring.”

“I’m not always staring.”

“You are at me, anyway.”

Sirius crosses his arms, annoyed, but his face feels hot. “Why, does it bother you?”

James is grinning. “No, not at all.”

“Well, what’s the problem then?”

“There’s no problem,” James leans back against the pillows, hands behind his head – he must know, Sirius thinks irritably, how he looks doing that. “I’m just acknowledging it.”

“You asked if it bothers anyone.”

“It would most people,” James says, then smiles again. “But I’m not most people, am I?”

Remus rolls his eyes. “Merlin, you’d think losing your memory might make you forget what a bloody egotist you are –“

James lifts his shoulders in a casual shrug, says, “Can’t really blame me for having an ego when he’s always looking at me like that.”

Sirius snorts. “Like what, exactly?”

“Like you want –“

“James,” Remus interrupts, voice a tad bit louder than necessary. “We talked about this.”

“Talked about what?” Sirius demands, turning to look at him. “You talked about me?”

James is still smirking, eyes so afire they look like dark molten amber, glimmering with challenge. That look on his face drives something hot and knife-sharp into Sirius’ stomach, sends the blood rushing straight down where it shouldn't. 

“Yeah, we talked about you.”

The memory loss thing seems to have conveniently left out the part of James that gets off on riling Sirius up. “What did you talk about?”

“James,” Remus groans again. “Enough.”

“No, tell me,” Sirius snaps. “I want to know what you fucking talked about.”

James is still wearing that infuriating expression, and it makes Sirius want to shove him into the ground. “Remus says it’s a secret.”

“What secret?”

“A big secret,” James laughs giddily, pushing his glasses up his nose. “So big, in fact, that you could even say it would crush you –“

“James!”

“Oh, come off it, Remus, he’s not even trying to be subtle –“

“Subtle about what?” Sirius says loudly. His heart feels like it’s going to tear straight out of his chest from the force it’s slamming into his ribcage with.

Remus looks embarrassed and three shades too guilty. “I might have – well, James wanted to know why you’re always acting a bit odd when, you know –“

The effort of speaking is nearly unbearable. “What did you say to him, Remus?”

“He let slip something about you,” James’ face is bright and brilliantly alight now, and he’s clearly enjoying this. “Fancying me.”

“JAMES!”

“He fucking what?”

Chapter Text

Remus is already trying to scramble for cover, but Sirius is faster than him – within a second he’s on top of Remus, pinning the treacherous cunt down against the chair and pelting him with a hailstorm of unforgiving fists. “What the – fuck – fuck you, Remus, how could you –“

“Ow, fuck, stop – that hurts, you prick – get off me, it was an accident, I didn’t mean to!” Remus struggles under him. “He said you’re always acting odd with him, I just mentioned that you might’ve had a little crush – I didn’t say you still do, just that you did, at some point – “

“Why the fuck would you tell him that?” Sirius shouts, ignoring Remus’ yelps of pain as he hits him. “He’s coming to stay with me, you piece of –“

“Hey, I still want to come stay with you,” James interrupts.

“No,” Sirius says at once, as Remus finally manages to shove him off, rubbing his bruised shoulders. “No fucking way.”

“That's not fair!” James sits up suddenly, looking panicked. “Tear off all of Remus’ limbs if you want, but I’m not going anywhere else!”

“No, it’s not funny, you dick, it’s humiliating –“

“Nobody’s humiliating you!” James raises his voice. “I don’t care if you’ve got feelings for me."

“I don't have feelings for you, you arrogant, conceited –"

“Why do you care so much about what Remus said, then?"

“That’s none of your business,” Sirius snaps, his skin so hot it seems to be burning right off his face. “I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

"Whatever it is that you’re not telling me – I can handle it, okay?"

"What makes you so sure you can?" 

"What makes you so sure I can't?"

Sirius glares at him. His chest is too tight for the rapid breaths he’s trying to draw into it. “I’m not going to do this with you,” he says finally, the words coming out taut with irritation. “Fuck it – I need a cigarette."

“I’m coming,” James declares at once, jumping out of the bed.

“No –“

Sirius tries to make a run for it, darting right of the room and past the labyrinth of hospital corridors – James, apparently recovered enough to chase after him, follows close behind, jostling through the minor obstacles of Healers and patients alike until they’re both outside, panting in the thin, wispy air.

With his ribs aching, Sirius leans against a lamppost and scowls as James comes to a halt a few steps in front of him.

“Hey –“ he starts, but Sirius cuts him off with a furious expression as he pulls out the pack of cigarettes and lights one roughly.

Embers drift off the electric red glow like rubies, blinking out of the darkness as soon as they appear. “It's not up for discussion. You need to go somewhere else."

“Where?” James asks, his voice lowered and bordering on the edge of a plea. “Look. It was just a joke, I didn't think you'd take it like this – but I have nowhere else to go, Sirius, I have no one to go to.”

The urgent, needy look on his face makes the smoke taste sour in Sirius’ mouth, but he doesn’t say anything.

“You were right, you don't owe me an explanation. You don't have to tell me anything if you don't want to, but I still – I want to stay with you. Please. I don’t even care about what Remus said, honestly, I don’t –“

“What else did he tell you?”

“What? Nothing!”

“Are you sure?” 

“Yeah, ‘course I am!” James says defensively. “Look, I shouldn’t have said all that stuff in the ward. I don’t even know why I did –”

Sirius watches the smoke overshadow James’ bewildered, panicked features. “You did it because you’re James Potter,” he mutters, realizing that James is telling the truth. “Attention is to you what air is to the rest of us.”

James ignores the comment. “I mean it. I don’t want to have to live with anyone else. And I’m sorry for what I said, I really am.”

Sirius huffs, his annoyance turning insipid – like it’s always done – in the face of James’ genuine vulnerability. 

“I was just being stupid, and I –”

“Okay, okay, I believe you. You can stop crying now.”

James widens his eyes. “Does that mean I can still stay at yours?” 

"You're clearly desperate to, so yeah," Sirius says, gathering his senses and feeling himself cool down considerably. "But it’s like I told you, it’ll only be for two weeks.”

At those words, the anxious crevasses in James’ forehead vanish, and his cheeks lift into a glowing smile. And it’s just like him, Sirius thinks, to allow his mood to be influenced as quick as that. To give Sirius the power to so easily transform his emotions, just the way he used to.

He clears his throat unnecessarily after a long moment, trying not to sound as ludicrous as he feels. “Whatever Remus said about me – don’t let it get to your head, okay. It doesn't mean anything.”

“I know. I never thought it did.”

Sirius nods and exhales, looking away, trying not to let his injured pride show. James waits for him to finish smoking in silence. Afterwards, the two of them turn back toward the hospital, walking back in together with none of the prickled annoyance they’d rushed out with.

“I can't wait to see what your place is like when I move in with you,” James says. His tone is light, casual. "Because no offence, but you don’t come across as someone who owns a normal house to me. I just keep picturing you living alone in some huge, abandoned mansion somewhere."

When I move in with you. The concept still seems so faraway, when nearly two weeks ago if someone had told him James would be coming to stay with him, Sirius would have promptly hexed them and told them to fuck off. He tries to imagine what it will be like, sharing such proximity with his best friend again, after – after such a long time, wonders if he’ll ever get used to the way it feels to have James around.

“The flat is nothing special, just some old property my family used to own,” he says, re-entering the ward. “It used to be much nicer – but I got rid of most of the old furniture and threw out anything that remotely reminded me of them. I certainly haven't been looking after it all that well, either. It’s mostly just a mess now.”

“Well, I just so happen to like messes.” His gaze skims over Sirius briefly. "Maybe that's why I like you."

"Have I ever told you how childish you are?"

"Yeah, probably," James grins at him again. "Lucky for me, I don’t remember.”

Despite himself, Sirius finds his mouth twitching slightly. It occurs to him, for what must be the hundredth time today, just how much he's missed James. 

Remus is still in the room, and he looks up anxiously when they return. “Oh, thank god,” he says, “I thought you’d killed each other out there.”

“You are still not forgiven, you traitor,” Sirius says coldly.

“Luckily, Sirius and I are going to overlook this unfortunate occurrence. Looks like you might not be losing all your limbs after all.”

Remus scoffs. “Oh, Sirius and you?” 

Sirius pretends to ignore it, but there’s a brief flicker of pride along his sternum at that, the way it feels so natural that James and him are a pair; unbeatable, inseparable, even by their best friends. This is how it used to be, how it always should have been.

A large part of him wants to argue that it’s ridiculous, that this stupid inkling of hope being harboured somewhere inside him will never reach the light; that eighteen months should have fucked him up enough to teach him his bloody lesson, that he should know how this ends, but – but there’s a desperate kind of defiance clawing away at the husk of these thoughts, one that’s been growing steadily since the moment James smiled at him.

That’s the worst part; that under all this craving, the feeling that James left behind is still raw, still tender, still hurts to fucking touch. It’s this painful reminder that serves as a final obstacle in the losing battle Sirius has been waging with his reason, and even that sometimes seems so minute, so insignificant compared to what he really wants…

No, Sirius snaps the thought in two before it can fully materialize in his head. No, it’s not going to happen again and you better learn to live with that.

From the other side of the room, James is still talking to Remus, but Sirius can feel the weight of his gaze without even having to look.

--

Sirius barely sleeps all night.

In the morning his apartment feels different, like James has already changed it without being here. Apprehension hovers in the air, mingled with nervous excitement. James has been here before, of course, thousands of times, and the anticipation of things going back to the way they used to be – fuck, it’s almost too much to take.

He spends an additional fifteen minutes performing some household spells around the flat in an attempt to make it more presentable, but part of him already knows James will prefer it in its usual state of disarray. Once that’s done, he hurries out the door so swiftly that he almost laughs at his own uncontrollable enthusiasm. Within moments he’s Apparating smoothly onto the street outside of St Mungo’s, damn near bouncing on the balls of his feet.

Remus is already waiting outside there with James, in a brown cloak that flutters slightly as Sirius arrives in front of them. James is no longer in the plain hospital gown – it takes less than a moment’s glance for Sirius to notice how sharp he looks now, dressed in handsome black robes that Remus must’ve given him. His hair glints in the sun, and even though it shades most of his face, the brilliant smile that he gives Sirius when he sees him is unmistakable.

Sirius feels himself smiling back. “Hello. I’m not late, am I?”

“No, they’ve just released me,” James steps forward, easily closing the short distance between them. “Wow. I can’t tell you how good it feels to be out of that fucking hospital.”

The sky is so clear that it looks translucent, the orange sunrise burning right through it. Sirius does his best to ignore the excitable knot that’s formed in his stomach at the sight of James. “Then stay out of it by not getting attacked again.”

“I won’t. Not that I have any complaints about being the center of attention, though, because  I did enjoy having everyone fawn over me these last few weeks.”

“That part’s only going to get so much worse,” Remus snorts. “I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but Sirius here happens to be a bit obsessed with you.”

James gives Sirius a slow, secretive smile that passes over him like a spring breeze. “The feeling is only mutual, of course. I probably would’ve chewed my own hands off by now if it weren’t for you visiting everyday.”

"I haven't got much of a choice,” Sirius shrugs, but his cheeks are growing feverish. “You’re absolutely in no position to be left unsupervised at the moment.”

“Hey - I’m glad that you’re my best friend, Sirius. I’m glad that it’s you and not anyone else.” 

"Yeah, thanks for that," Remus grumbles, his voice sounding strangely far away from the pair of them. "It’s not like I’ve also been visiting you everyday or anything.”

James barely glances in his direction. The gold light hits his glasses and then bounces right off, turning his eyes a gauzy shade of honey as he continues addressing Sirius. “I mean it. I’m not happy that I lost all my memories, but – well, it’s nice that I know you. You make the whole situation feel a little less shit.”

“You’re not going soft on me, are you?” 

“Never,” James grins, shaking his head. “I was only being sentimental, but that's over with now. I'll save the feelings for when we get exceptionally drunk tonight, which is what I plan to do. You do have something to drink at yours, don’t you?” 

"What kind of question is that?” Sirius asks, offended. “I’ve got more alcohol than actual food in my house. Everyone keeps trying to tell me I've got quite the drinking problem, actually."

"There you have it, then. We're perfectly suited to live together.”

Remus clears his throat loudly. “I'm still standing right here, so if the two of you are nearly done drooling over each other –"

"Don't be jealous, Remus," Sirius says, distracted, his gaze still on James. He can’t help it – the whole world seems to have condensed in on itself, shrunken down until it's just this: just James' outline against the amber sky, his body steeped in sunlight. "You know perfectly well that James loves you too. Don't you, Prongs?"

"Love is kind of a stretch," James isn't looking at Remus as he speaks either; his eyes haven’t left Sirius’ for a moment. "I tolerate him, at best."

“Get a fucking room, both of you. I'd almost forgotten how annoying you are when you're together."

Sirius can barely hear him. It’s as though James is the only thing that exists right now – everything else has faded away into the background, shadows in a chiaroscuro painting. 

"I’ve already told Peter to go collect your things from your old house," Remus is saying. "He’ll be round this evening, is that okay? I’ll swing by for dinner as well.”

James nods, finally turning to face him with a guilty smile. “I’m only joking, you know. I do appreciate everything you do for me.”

“Could you say that again, a little slower this time? I’d like to write it down in my diary along with the rest of my feelings tonight.”

“You’re just as bad as Sirius is,” James laughs, aiming a low kick at Remus’ ankle. “Are either of you capable of not deflecting a single emotion you feel?”

“When the hell did you become such a sod?” Remus demands, looking genuinely perplexed. 

That makes Sirius laugh, and James raises his hands in surrender. “Fine – clearly I’m the only here in possession of a heart. Let’s go, Sirius, I'm tired of being mocked every time I try to express my gratitude like a normal person.”

Sirius catches Remus’ eye for a moment as a rush of fondness spreads through him, soft and sticky as caramel. He realizes that he’s been so preoccupied having James back in his life that he’d almost forgotten how good it feels to have Remus back too. Holding his arm out to James, he says, “Go on, then, grab hold.”

“See you later, Remus.”

James has only just clamped his fingers down on Sirius’ arm when he pop's them away. The short journey is uncomfortable enough that Sirius hardly feels James tightening his hold, alarmed, before they’re both in front of the flat. 

Once they’re on the ground Sirius retracts his arm at once. The feeling of James gripping him has set his heart beating out of rhythm in his chest – a slow and disoriented drumming, interrupted with wild, sudden throbs.

“Fucking hell,” James is straightening his glasses, looking mildly ruffled. “Surely it can’t be that unpleasant to Apparate every time.”

“You get used to it eventually – it's the quickest, easiest way to get around. Doesn’t beat a broomstick, obviously, but the Ministry’s ruined that by putting out some kind of flying rulebook they want everyone to comply with."

James’ nose wrinkles. “Doesn’t that defeat the whole point?”

“They’re just scared, I think," Sirius says. "A lot of people are. The world’s a strange place to live in right now.”

“With the war, you mean?”

”Yeah. It’s just – sometimes I don't know if we're even going to win it. Everything just feels so fucked out there.”

He says the words nonchalantly, almost without any consideration, but they seem to swell and darken immediately once they’re out of his mouth, filling the room with dark, wet poison. 

James is picking at his skin, but his face has tightened. “He’s the reason behind all this, isn’t he? He Who Must Not Be fucking Named. He’s the reason Lily’s dead, the reason I can’t remember anything.“

Sirius glances at him, nodding. There’s no point in softening the truth to placate James. The mention of the dark lord has already caused a surge of anger to blaze, red and furious, inside him. None of this is fair. There’s so much injustice in the war that Voldemort has caused and the only people who seem to be paying the price are the good ones. 

“Yep. He’s the piece of shit responsible for what happened to you. It might’ve been his followers who carried out the attack – but they were still doing it because he wanted them to.”

“Why me? Why Lily?” 

“I don’t know. Maybe it was for a reason, maybe just for sport. It's hard to tell with a megalomaniac.”

“Will we go after them?” James asks quietly. The twang of bitterness in his voice turns Sirius’ bones to liquid. “The ones who did this to me?”

“Of course we will,” Sirius says at once, and he doesn’t even think we don’t know who they are, or how will we find them, or you can barely Stupefy someone, how could you go after Death Eaters – he only thinks that this is something he has to do, that being cruel and vindictive is the only way to respond to anyone who would hurt James. “And I swear to you, James: when we find them, we're going to carve their hearts out and watch them eat it."

--

Later, they drink through the evening with two bottles of nettlewine, and Remus and Peter join them for dinner, and everyone’s laughing together at the table like a real-life snapshot from the old days, and thoughts about the war flit away again.

Sirius is aware that this is beginning to feel too easy, this whole show of everyone acting like the last eighteen months have been waved away, cigarette smoke into the night air. It’s like they’re saying this is how it could have been, this is how good it could have been, and he doesn’t know if he wants to keep up the act or just rip it to shreds before it hurts again.

James is the only one who seems to share some sense of unease with him, and he says so when he's standing in the balcony with him while Sirius smokes. “It’s all we can do, though, isn’t it?” he’s watching the grey clouds dissipate slowly between them. “Pretend that everything’s normal until it actually is?”

“Will it ever be, though?”

“It’s kind of them to do it,” James says after a moment, ignoring the question. “They know I’d be miserable otherwise, anyway. This might be a difficult concept for you to grasp, Sirius, but sometimes there are other things to do than wallow in your own sadness all the time.”

“Fuck off, I do other things too,” Sirius tosses the cigarette over the wiry metal railing before lighting a new one. “Sometimes I brood.”

That makes James snort, and just like that, the wariness that had cut a valley open in him is gone. The two of them being alone like this makes Sirius feel the way he did the summer they'd tried taking ecstasy – the skull-shaped  orange pills dissolving on his tongue and coursing vividly through his bloodstream, making everything in the world look more beautiful. He feels his pulse quicken the way it did then, pupils dilated, jewel-like pinpoints of light dancing across his vision. 

James rolls his head backwards on his shoulders so that he’s tipping slightly over the edge of the balcony. “I know that you want people to think of you as being moody and mysterious all the time, but it can't be healthy to always live like that. At some point you need to learn how to be happy, too.”

Sirius feels the corners of his mouth inflect slightly. “Well, what’s wrong with being moody and mysterious all the time?"

“It makes you unstable,” James shrugs, staring up at the stars. “You’re like a storm living as a person.”

The words catch Sirius by surprise.

“It’s not that I mind it,” James lifts his head back up so that his eyes can meet Sirius’ – dark as rum and perfectly nonchalant. “There's something so – haunting, I guess, about you. It makes you a far more interesting person than everyone else.”

Sirius taps the ash over the railing and takes another long drag as he listens. Beneath his robes, his skin seems to be growing tighter with every word, squeezing in over his organs.

“But I can see through it, even if nobody else does.”

"See through what?"

"This," James lets his fingers land on Sirius' wrist for a moment, sweeping lightly over the narrow bones. "This act you’re putting on – like you’ve got it all under control. Like you’re all in one piece under there.”

Sirius takes a step back, feeling the brief touch reverberate through his entire body. “What makes you think I’m not?”

“Everything. It’s like you’re always just moments away from exploding with it.”

“You don't know what you're talking about,” Sirius snaps, annoyed at the sudden stab of vulnerability in his chest. He drops his cigarette and stomps it out with more force than necessary. “I'm not in the mood for this conversation."

He turns to leave, having had more than enough of this bullshit, but James’ hand catches him by the arm and freezes him in place. 

"Don’t do that. Don’t just deflect, the way you always do.”

“I’m not,” Sirius shrugs him off, irritated. “I just don’t want to stand here and put up with you acting like you know the first thing about me.” 

“Why don’t you want me to know you? Why does that bother you so much?”

“It doesn’t bother me – I just said I’m not in the mood, alright? Stop pissing me off.”

James pauses to take his glasses off. “You always say that. I'm guessing it’s personal, whatever it is you’re not telling me, and that’s fine. I don’t care if you’ve got secrets. But you’re not doing yourself any favours by avoiding the subject when it so clearly causes you pain. Because shit doesn’t just go away if you pretend it’s not there.”

“How would you know?” Sirius demands angrily. “You woke up two weeks ago with absolutely no memory of anything that’s ever happened to you. Why would I bother to take your advice?"

James' voice sharpens with impatience. “Losing my memories didn’t make me an idiot, Sirius. I still have a fucking brain.”

“Then use it to mind your own business.”

There are welts of raw, red anger in his brain, wounds that bleed at the slightest touch, causing the memory of his last night with James to resurface. And it makes him want to throw up, because James had broken his fucking heart – had crushed it into wet, bloody pieces with his bare hands. And he’d done it again every single day for eighteen months.

He hadn’t been there, hadn’t bothered to show up when Sirius needed him – he’d just left Sirius alone to tear himself apart, over and over and over, just trying to find a way to make it all stop. 

“You keep telling me that we're best friends, so why won't you –”

“No,” Sirius glares at him, making each word as harsh and abrasive as the feeling that's now crawling all over him. “No, we’re not. My best friend was gone the night he got attacked, and you’re not him – I don’t even fucking know who you are. Just some stranger who looks like him.”

James sucks in a shallow breath when he hears those words. His features are drizzled in glittering star-shine, and he looks so hurt that Sirius almost can’t bear to keep his gaze on him. “Is that how you really feel about me?”

Sirius stares furiously over the railing without speaking, fingers digging so hard into his palms that he can feel the skin starting to split. 

“I'm not stupid. I know it's got something to do with me.”

“Shut up. I mean it.”

“No,” James snaps. “I’m not going to. What’s the matter with you? Can’t you see that I’m just trying to help –”

“I don't need your fucking help.”

“Do you really expect me to believe that? Why, because everyone else does?”

“I don’t expect anything from you!” Sirius shouts, the last of his patience boiling over and leaving the hurt, anger, and bitterness to gush out all at once. “I’m sure it’s so very convenient for you to have forgotten what happened, James – but I haven't. I have to think about it everyday, and for you to imagine that you could possibly help me – when I can’t even fucking look at you without –”

“Do you think telling me about it is going to scare me off, whatever it is? Because if you look at me, you'd know that I don't plan on going anywhere."

“I don’t give a shit what you do. Fuck right off the way you did last time, for all I care."

“Is this about what Remus said, about you having feelings for me –”

Without really knowing how it’s happened, Sirius' wand is out and pointed at James, every molecule in his body white-hot with fury. “Stop talking right now,” he hisses. “Not another fucking word, or I’ll –”

“What the hell is going on out here?”

Remus has stepped into the balcony from behind the curtains, and his face is pale. He looks between them, demanding an explanation. “Are you insane, Sirius, put that wand away! He’s just stepped out of the hospital today, are you trying to send him back already?”

“No,” Sirius hastily lowers his arm. James is still standing frozen in front of him. “But he’ll find himself on the street if he’s not careful.”

“Are you okay, James?” Remus asks, like James is the one he should be concerned about right now.  

“Of course I am,” James says loudly, making it a point to glare at Sirius as he does, “I’m not too sure all of us are, though.”

Sirius opens his mouth to answer, but James is already storming back inside, slamming the balcony door behind him. The noise makes an owl take flight from a nearby tree, hooting indignantly.

Chapter Text

“Can you fucking believe him?” Sirius roars at Remus, once James is gone.

Remus steps back a little. “What happened, exactly?”

Sirius tries to explain but fumbles around the furious, boiling words. It’s difficult to actually speak, now that the full realization of James’ words are slamming into him. “He said – he asked if I – if all of this is about my feelings for him,” he splutters, anger filling him again. Who does James think he is? “How dare he talk to me like that – after –“

“Hey, hey, stop that, don’t work yourself up,” Remus says quickly, waving his hands in front of Sirius to get his attention. “James doesn’t know what he’s saying. He’s careless with words, he always has been.”

“How could he even fucking think that –“

“Because he doesn’t know,” Remus interrupts, and his voice is quiet but firm, like an anchor falling into sea. “He doesn’t know what happened, so how can he know why it makes you so angry? He's just trying to learn about his own life, and he couldn't have had any way of knowing how much that would upset you.”

Sirius takes a deep breath, and the air streaming into his chest still feels heated.

“You can’t be angry at him for something he doesn’t even remember,” Remus is raising his eyebrows. “That’s hardly fair to him at all. I know,” he says, seeing the look on Sirius’ face, “that he’s capable of being a prick about it, but that’s just the way James is. You know that better than anyone.”

Sirius massages his temples and decides after a moment that Remus is probably right.

“I know that you're just trying not to get hurt again,” Remus tells him, dusting at his own robes absently. “But you need to stop confusing James being stupid and annoying now with what he did to you before.”

“He could do it again, you know,” Sirius coughs out the coarse, ugly words, but they dig like bullets back into his own skin. “If he left me once he could always do it again.”

“Oh, Sirius,” Remus’ eyes soften immediately, and Sirius hates that, hates that somehow he warrants pity out of Remus, the fucking werewolf. “You don’t know – you have no idea how hard that was for him.”

“I don’t care how hard it was,” Sirius grits his teeth, “He left. He knew it would’ve killed me, he knew I would’ve died rather than lose him, and he didn’t even –”

He stops talking, swallowing away the rest of the sentence with a heave. The bitterness in his words is all too familiar, swelling thickly inside him.

I would’ve done anything for him. I dug graves in my heart for him to lay his demons to rest. How could he not understand that? How could he not know that he was all I wanted?

But there’s no use in trying to verbalise the way it feels to Remus, or to anyone. No amount of raw, bloodstained words that he chokes up will come close to describing what it’s actually been like without James.

Remus is looking at him, the expression on his face fragmented with sadness. “I’m sorry,” he says. “There isn’t any excuse for the way he treated you, none at all, but – he loved you, Sirius. He was selfish and blind, but he never stopped. Not for a moment.”

“Loved me?” Sirius repeats, hackles rising. “Merlin, if you believe that, then you’re as stupid as –“

“Sometimes people love more than they know what to do with,” Remus interrupts. “And they become desperate to destroy it before it destroys them.”

The memories come pelting down onto Sirius, quick and violent. How the days had been falling into each other like a tumbling house of cards, all splattered with the same heartbroken, miserable loneliness. And all of it for James, who hadn’t even been there. James, who hadn't even cared to be. Who, at that point, was no more than a shadow in Sirius’ life – a ghost that he’d had to learn how to live around, carrying inside of him like the symptoms of a disease.

Remus says, “I won’t say that what he did to you was fair, or that you deserved any of it. But I will tell you that it ate away at him, all those months, even if he didn’t show it. He wasn’t himself for weeks when he’d found out you were in the hospital – but you know how James is, he just kept acting like it didn't bother him. He asked me about you everyday, and kept brushing it off when I told him, but he was terrified. Everyone knew it.”

Sirius’ body feels cold and numb all over, like his veins have been filled with fistfuls of ice. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t anyone?”

“Why shoot curses at a bird when its wings are already broken?”

Sirius can’t speak, can’t breathe or think past the tsunami wave of heartache that’s suddenly surging through him. It’s the only thing that he’d wanted all those months, the one thing he needed – to know that James still cared, to know that there was still an echo of tenderness sitting buried somewhere inside of him – the one tiny, shriveling thing Sirius might have been able to hold on to, and yet – hadn’t James refused him even that? Hadn’t he been cruel and dismissive and cold, even when Sirius had been crying in front of him like a fucking child, his heart pouring blood all over his hands?

“My point is,” Remus clears his throat, after a long silence. “He wouldn’t have cut you off like that if he could’ve helped it – you need to understand that James isn’t inclined toward hurting you; it tortured him, and even though he can’t remember anything now, he's not going to want to do it again.”

A piece of Sirius falls off his body, like an emotional limb, rolling across the ground and tumbling down off the balcony. He feels like he’s running out of ways to get used to the hollowness or feel whole again.

“Just – start over with him, okay?” Remus sighs, lashes lifting as he looks up intently at Sirius. “Barely two weeks since he lost his memory, and it’s already obvious that he likes you best. Give him a chance. It's been so long, and I think you both deserve it.

"Deserve what?"

"Having your best friend back.”

--

Remus ends up staying over, claiming that it’s for James’ safety in case Sirius finds something else to fight about. James has already locked himself inside his assigned bedroom by the time Remus and Sirius step back inside from the balcony, and refuses to re-emerge for the rest of the night.  

The next morning they have breakfast together and James doesn’t join them until both Remus and Sirius are nearly done with their toast. His eyebrows raise at the Pumpkin Pasty that’s been waiting for him on the table.

“Is this meant to be an apology?” he snorts, looking at Sirius, but sits down and starts eating it anyway.

“Of sorts,” Sirius says, shrugging and trying not to notice how James looks, with traces of sleep still caught around his eyes and his morning hair. “There’s a very small chance I might have over-reacted, a little bit, last night. In any case, I shouldn’t have pointed my wand at you, especially since you can’t even defend yourself.”

“Thank you for talking some sense into him,” James nods at Remus, then, at Sirius, “and thanks for the Pasty.”

“Here, I’ve got you something else too,” Sirius waves his wand and a heavy box sitting in the corner of the room zooms toward them, stopping short of the dining table. When Sirius lowers his wand it slams onto the ground with a dull thud next to James.

James abandons the Pasty immediately and reaches for the box, working at tearing it open with unmistakable excitement. He digs around the contents and takes one out, holding up a purple book with dark leather bindings. “Spellbooks?” he grins, looking up at Sirius.

“One of these days you might piss me off again and I’d like for you to be able to at least throw some countercurses back at me,” Sirius says. “Otherwise it’s like punching a baby. There’s no triumph in it.”

Remus rolls his eyes, but James looks delighted as he continues going through the box, discovering a collection of Sirius’ old textbooks on everything from Transfiguration to Herbology, books about Quidditch that he’d borrowed from the library at Hogwarts and managed to never actually give back, clippings from detention notices the two of them had received, even old photographs of James in his Quidditch uniform, manically waving around the trophy Cup he’d won for Gryffindor that year.

James is beaming so much that it seems to fill the whole room with light. “Hey – thanks, Sirius,” he says earnestly. “This is brilliant.”

Sirius doesn’t say anything, but the base of his abdomen is glowing with warmth at the look on James’ face.

Remus leaves after breakfast, and Sirius decides to dedicate the rest of the day to teaching James new spells, ignoring Remus’ advice to start with simple charms and going solely with James’ requests to learn the most hideous hexes he can find in the books. He’s a fast learner, equipped with both talent and boundless enthusiasm, and as the morning climbs into evening, they find themselves running around the apartment, throwing jinxes at each other and ducking behind the furniture to avoid getting hit.

Sirius notices, with considerable satisfaction, that James doesn’t seem at all subdued despite their argument last night. If Sirius had exploded like that in front of anyone else, they would’ve spent the entirety of the next week treading cautiously around him, nervous about setting him off again – but James is equal parts unbothered and audacious, and Sirius might even have been annoyed by the unbridled provocations James is throwing at him if he didn’t find James so bloody entertaining.

And, fuck – he loves it. There’s no other way of putting it. He still can’t believe that James is back here again, his loud laughter echoing off the walls, taking up every spare inch of space that’s available in the flat. James’ presence is so obvious and palpable, and Sirius can’t fucking get enough of it, can’t help thinking that this is all he’s ever needed; he wants to just stay here and bask in James’ company for the rest of his life. He doesn’t know how he managed to forget this, how he ever lasted a second without it when it’s more delicious than anything in the world.

It’s only hours later, once James has had sardines spilling out of his nose for the tenth consecutive time, that he finally declares that he’s had enough. Sirius performs a hex-breaker on him, and the two of them settle down onto the sofa, panting. They’re not touching, Sirius notes, but the proximity is enough to make it feel like they are.

“Why Prongs?” James says after a moment, swinging his legs haphazardly over the edge of the couch.

“It’s your Animagus,” Sirius blinks, slightly distracted by the movement.

“And an Animagus is…?”

Sirius sits up, surprised. “Has Remus not mentioned it to you?”

James shakes his head slowly.

Sirius feels himself grin. “Well, brace yourself,” he says, and even before the intention to do so has fully formed in his mind, he feels his body changing; limbs being retracted in, teeth drawn out into his widening mouth, canine eyes blinking up at the look of bewilderment on James’ face.

James yelps, jumping backwards at once. “What the fuck?”

Padfoot lifts his head, letting out a low whine.

James stares at him, wide-eyed for a moment, and then starts laughing. The noise immediately makes Padfoot’s tail accelerate into an uncontrollable wag. He takes a few steps toward him and jumps up onto the couch, letting James take hold of one of his paws and examine it.

“Padfoot, of course,” James smiles, “you’re bloody adorable as well. And you still look like you!”

Padfoot lets his tongue loll out of his mouth and barks. James’ fingers are buried in the black coat of fur, scratching around his midsection in a way that makes his tail go even faster.

“I think I prefer you like this,” James says, tilting his head to the side and laughing when Padfoot licks at his hand. “Alright, go on then, can you change between dog and human any time you want?”

Padfoot bounds off the couch and onto the carpet. A second later his body is morphing once more, spine straightening out and tufts of fur disappearing until he’s Sirius again – standing in front of James, who immediately jumps up.

“An Animagus,” Sirius says, flushing slightly at James’ genuine amazement, “is someone who can change into an animal whenever they want to.”

“That’s literally the most incredible thing I’ve ever heard,” James gapes at him, clearly impressed. “Can I do it too?”

“You used to, yeah,” Sirius sits back down onto the sofa and James mirrors the movement. “You were a stag, antlers and all – hence the nickname.”

James looks like he doesn’t even know what to do with this exciting new information. “And Peter and Remus? They can do it too?”

“Well – Peter can,” Sirius says.

“How come Remus can’t?”

“I don’t think I’m really the person to tell you that,” Sirius says, a little uncomfortably. “Remus won’t mind you knowing, obviously, but it’s just not my place to say.”

“Do you think I can still do it?” James asks, obviously more interested in his own animal transformation. “

 “It’s an acquired skill, so yeah, but it’s a pain in the fucking arse,” Sirius says, even though he knows this will do nothing to deter James. “You can try to do it again, if you really want, but it’s not easy.”

“Of course I want to,” James dismisses the warning almost instantly. “When can we start? Do you remember how to do it?”

“Not in great detail, but it’s a good thing I’ve saved all my old textbooks. Come on, the method will be in there somewhere.”

James follows him toward the big pile of books Sirius has given him, and together they plop down onto the carpet beside it.

“It’ll be in one of the Transfiguration books, so start here,” Sirius tells him, pushing a few books into James’ arms. “It’s meant to be very dangerous, but we pulled it off in Hogwarts without anyone knowing, so I wouldn’t worry too much as long as we follow the instructions carefully enough. A lot of it relies on chance too, I think, the weather’s got to be perfect, and there was definitely something about collecting dew that hasn’t been touched for seven days.”

“How long does the whole thing take?”

“It took us ages, but only because the weather was never right for it and we kept having to start over. It’s only meant to take like a month or so, I’m pretty sure, if you do everything perfectly the first time.”

They pore through the books for several tedious hours, as night falls soundlessly over the sky outside. Sirius tries not to keep glancing up at James while he’s reading, the way he did when he was fifteen, when they’d stayed up late in the common room trying to cram for their O.W.L.s, but it’s difficult – James is every bit as magnetic now as he was back then, with his forehead slightly creased in concentration and his glasses on a slow, extremely distracting decline down the edge of his nose.

Sirius is starting to wonder how much more of this he can take. It’s getting ridiculous, he thinks, the way his eyes are constantly being drawn, like an overeager moth with a flame, to the slight jump of pulse on James’ neck, the rustle of his lashes when he blinks, even the throb of his Adam’s apple each time he swallows. James is so unbelievably attractive that it shouldn’t make any sense at all, so fucking good-looking that it’s almost infuriating. It makes desire, stupid and desperate, lick like a starving dog at Sirius' stomach. The want fills his entire body like a cauldron, overflowing and volatile.

Sirius tries to keep a level head but the letters on the page in front of him are going blurry, and all he wants is to throw his body like a knife onto James.

It’s almost a relief when James finally shouts, “Aha!” waving his book around, and Sirius blinks out of his daze.

He puts on what he hopes is a face of vague interest as James launches into a long, detailed narration of the method for becoming an Animagus, reading aloud from the book, and Sirius uses the opportunity to collect his hungry thoughts back together and bundle them furiously away into the side of his brain.

“We can go buy the ingredients tomorrow!” James is shouting, having worked himself into a standing-up position in his excitement and bouncing from one foot onto another. “First thing in the morning!”

“You weren’t even as wired up about this last time, you know,” Sirius grumbles, rubbing his shoulder when James accidentally kicks the pile of fat books and sends them tumbling down noisily onto Sirius.

James ignores him and focuses his attention on bookmarking the important chapter, setting the book lovingly onto the dining table. It’s only when he sees the leftover dishes sitting there that Sirius realizes they haven’t eaten since breakfast.

Typical, Remus would've said if he were here, and the thought makes Sirius smile, you’re so caught up in each other that you forget to fucking eat.

“D’you want to go and get something for dinner?” he asks suddenly, then, annoyed by his own eagerness, adds, “I'm terrible at cooking.”

“Yeah, sure,” James replies. “Merlin, now that you mention it, I’m fucking starving.”

“I’m doing a very poor job of looking after you, clearly,” Sirius snorts, reaching for his cloak and pulling it on briskly. “Remus would be appalled.”

“Well, Remus doesn’t need to know everything,” James’ eyes are twinkling. “So where are we going? Someplace romantic, I hope?"

Sirius rolls his eyes. "Anywhere's romantic if you try hard enough.”

“Okay, well, can we walk there? I’m not too fond of Apparating yet.”

“If you'd like,” Sirius shrugs, pushing open the door, and steps outside into the misty night air with his best friend.

--

He’s not sure how, but after dinner they somehow end up in the Leaky Cauldron, challenging each other to down Gamp’s Old Gregarious beer, famous both for its revolting taste and the fact that no one has ever managed to finish an entire pint of it in three hundred years, despite the hundred-Galleon reward.

He’s very clearly drunk if he’s conceding to this, Sirius decides, grimacing at the extraordinary pungency wafting out of the pint glass in front of him.

“It’ll have you sick to your stomach for days, you know,” the old witch at the bar had murmured when she saw what they’d ordered, and rather than serve as a warning it seems to have spurred James on even more.

Now they sit, with the ugly brown liquid sloshing in glasses between them.

“On the count of three?” James says.

“This is a terrible idea.”

“I know,” he grins, glasses slightly askew. “One… two… three!”

Sirius grabs the glass in front of him and starts chugging but it only takes a few swallows to make his eyes water, tongue smarting sharply from the hideous taste. James is struggling too, choking and spluttering, and within a minute both of them give up.

“I surrender!” James shouts, pushing the beer away from him.

Sirius is too busy coughing violently to reply.

They decide to switch to beetle berry whiskey after that, which is sweet and strong enough to wash out the taste of Gamp’s beer. They sit in the same pub, drinking and talking, while the hours burn away with neither of them realizing it.

“Do you think I’ve forgotten more than I’ll ever remember, Padfoot?” James asks, leaning forward on the table with his head in his hands. His eyes are going glassy and a little bit bloodshot with tiredness.

It’s the first time James has called him that nickname since the hospital. Sirius takes a moment to slowly let this register, then says, “Well, not all of it needs remembering.”

“Are there things that you’d forget if you could?”

Sirius exhales. James’ outlines seem to be softening, becoming less distinct, like Sirius is looking at him underwater. There are spots of light dancing in his eyes, and they don’t fade  when he tries to blink them away. “Of course there are,” he says, and it comes out less ashamed than he thinks it should. “Everyone’s got shit they wish never happened.”

“Like that fight we had,” James looks up, and it’s not a question. “When we stopped talking.”

“Mm.”

“Did you never try to come and make it right again?”

Even while decidedly drunk Sirius has to fight the urge to snap at him for that. This is classic James, always expecting it to be everyone else’s responsibility to make amends with him. “No,” he says, irritated. “You wouldn’t have wanted me to, anyway.”

James looks like he’s trying to decide on whether or not he should say what he wants to say.

“No,” Sirius tells him, reading his expression. “We’re not going to talk about it.”

He scowls and pushes his empty glass away. “That's what you always say.”

“Go cry in the corner, if you'd like.”

“Stop treating me like a child,” James stabs the tip of his wand down onto the wooden table, glaring. “I feel like there’s this massive, vitally important piece of information that nobody wants to fill me in on. None of this makes any sense.”

“Why not?"

“We were best friends? The very best of friends, and we stopped talking? And now we’re okay again? Just like that, just because I’ve woken up and not been able to remember whatever happened. It just doesn’t add up.”

Sirius can feel the beginnings of an argument brewing, fiery and tense, but realises he’s far too exhausted to put up a fight. “Leave it,” he says tiredly, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I’m not in the mood.”

James gives him a sour look, but thankfully decides not to push it. He resolutely chooses to change topics after that, and the tension sitting between them diffuses bit by bit as Sirius folds the memories away, pushes them into a corner and looks the other way.

They stay till the pub closes, and James is able to take a grand total of two clumsy, stumbling steps before he’s falling forward with a loud crash that seems echoed across the dark, quiet street. The moon in the sky is nearly full, bright and ghostly. Sirius prods at him with a wand, but it quickly becomes apparent that James is neither conscious nor in any position to be walking home.

“You’re absolutely useless, you know,” he snorts, bending down and lightly pushing James’ hair off his forehead with the wand. “Eighteen months and you still haven’t learned to hold your drink.”

Sirius heaves him up from under both arms, and then, staggering slightly under the weight, throws a quick glance around before Apparating back to his apartment.

It’s not until he’s dragged James into the room and is about to lay him down that he actually becomes aware of what he’s doing. The realization that he's holding James causes him to drop the latter abruptly, who lands on the bed with a grunt and promptly rolls over onto his stomach. Sirius looks at him, annoyed at himself for thinking that somehow, even in this state of disgrace, he finds James endearing.

He sits on the edge of the bed, staring at the sleeping body. “Stop asking me what happened,” he tells James, though he’s not sure why. “I’m trying to start over with you, like Remus said I should.”

But what does starting over even mean? Does it mean no longer feeling any of the wounds James had inflicted on him? Does it mean pretending that none of that ever happened, because as far as James is concerned now, none of it ever has? Does it mean trying again, from scratch, to become what they used to be to each other – or moving on, accepting that being friends should be enough, that just having James around should be enough? Does Sirius deserve to consider himself through any of this, or should he be putting James first again, the way he’s always done?

“Where the hell were you?” he says, the words so quiet that they’re just a rush of air leaving his mouth. Something pricks at the back of his eyes. "You were all I fucking needed."

This is what he’d wanted, to have James reappear in his life again like something out of a dream. And yet – even if, miraculously, James falls in love with him again, won’t he deserve to know what had happened between them? Won’t Sirius be able to still feel the guilt of the past, running like bruises under James’ skin, every time they touch?

How does James keep crawling into his veins like this? Sirius doesn’t even feel safe under his own fucking armour anymore. Is it even still love, if all it does is drive you mad?

James makes a hmmph noise and pulls the pillow closer towards himself.

Sirius sighs, getting up off the bed. It’s difficult to have to draw himself away, but the waves of tiredness are spilling into his bloodstream now and he can’t think of anything worse than James waking up in the morning to find Sirius asleep at the foot of his bed. He moves toward the door and steps outside, but pauses for the briefest moment to look one last time at the snoring boy.

“You're going to be the death of me, James Potter,” he says, shaking his head and shutting the door. "One way or another."

--

Chapter Text

Two weeks of living together become a month, a month becomes several, and by the time December uncloaks itself to reveal a pale and frosty winter, it becomes clear that James is not going anywhere.

The apartment starts looking more and more like a place that’s inhabited by two people instead of just one. James’ possessions, which had begun with several clothes and have now built up into a sizable collection of personal items, books, bottles of liquor, and even a new broomstick, are peppered all over the place with no sense of organization whatsoever, sometimes in shared piles with Sirius’ things and sometimes in whichever empty space he manages to find. They spend nearly every minute with each other, practicing spells or drinking, and when things start becoming too quiet they find themselves getting into harmless fights that fizzle out within a few hours.

Most of the novelty of just seeing James after so long fades eventually, and Sirius is happy for this – as the weeks pass by, they quickly shed their stranger skins and begin to resemble their old, perfectly complemented pair.

All in all, Sirius thinks it’s going really well.

It’s there, of course, somewhere beneath all the brilliance of being with his best friend again; a quiet need, tugging hungrily, wanting more than it gets. Sirius does what he can to dismiss it – he excuses himself whenever he thinks that the longing gets too much, he grabs each and every one of his fantasies by the throat and stuffs them away firmly, and he doesn’t even let himself wank to the thought of James at night.

His theory had been that if he ignores it long enough, it’s bound to disappear – but he’s quickly learning that the frenzied desire is prone to rearing its head whenever he so much as looks at James; so powerful, sometimes, that it leaves him choked-up and paralyzed, floundering like an idiot or letting entire sentences go over his head when James is speaking. It’s both humiliating and (to Sirius) blatantly obvious, and he's certain that James will catch on before long if he doesn’t keep his feelings in check.

Remus’ advice of don’t spend every single minute of the day with him, then, some space will be healthy for you is obviously useless, because James will notice at once if Sirius starts trying to put some distance between them. 

They’re at Remus’ Christmas party when it happens, an hour before midnight.

The sky outside is chilly and moonless, but Remus’ living room is roaring with warmth. Almost everyone they know must be here, Sirius thinks, he’s never seen quite so many people in Remus’ home before. It must be the war – people are anxious, growing fearful that this Christmas might be their last, desperate to enjoy it one final time. Despite the slight sense of panic hanging around in the air, Remus is an excellent host and manages to keep everyone’s spirits reasonably lifted. There’s music, and laughter, and after several drinks, plenty of dancing.

James is busy acquainting himself with old friends, all of whom have heard of what happened and are happy to regale him with tales and fond memories.

“We used to have Potions together! You once added an extra strip of Wiggentree bark in my cauldron so that the whole thing exploded everywhere – I mean, it was a bloody mess, but it was actually really funny afterwards.”

“I was your old Quidditch captain, do you still play, by any chance? The boys and I meet up on weekends to fly sometimes, you know, whenever we have the time...”

“You’d never say no to having your picture taken back then, I’ve still got some old photographs from Hogwarts. Come over someday and take a look, if you’d like.”

Sirius mostly keeps a safe distance from everyone else, deciding to hover around the peripheries of the room. He’s not imagining the heat of people’s glances sliding over him, the way they linger for just a moment longer than necessary – it’s obvious that no one has expected him to grace Remus’ Christmas party, let alone to walk in beside James Potter. The last time most of these people had seen the two of them together, well… Sirius can only hope that they'd been too drunk to remember the absolute fucking spectacle he’d made of himself on the night of James’ engagement.

This is what you deserve, he keeps telling himself, you've got no right to complain.

It’s not even that he cares about these people or their sodding opinions, really. He just doesn’t want James to notice the awkward smiles they’re giving him.

“Are you at least trying to have a good time?” Remus murmurs to him at some point, absently stirring the punch in a big glass bowl. “You’ve been very quiet tonight.”

Sirius shrugs and sips from his glass. “I know what they’re all saying about me, Remus. Sirius Black? Didn’t he ruin James’ engagement party? What’s he doing here?” He doesn’t mean for it to come out sounding so dark and bitter, but only realizes this once he’s already spoken.

“Oh, stop it,” Remus sighs. “No one is even talking about that.”

But there’s a slight edge to his voice when he says it, and Sirius looks the other way.

“Hey,” Remus looks at him pointedly, “it wasn’t that bad, you know, everyone knew you were drunk, anyway, and – well, you were upset, weren’t you? About the engagement thing?”

“Upset,” Sirius says softly, shutting his eyes for a moment, “would’ve been an understatement.”

The truth is, he’d been fucking devastated. James had sniffed trouble the moment Sirius stumbled into the party, already drunk out of his wits, and insisted on pulling Sirius into a corner to tell him to get his shit together. And Sirius, stupid and inebriated and fucking hopeful as he’d had the nerve to be, misread the way that James grabbed onto his blazer, like a hungry, raving wolf – and when James had just shoved him off, in front of everyone – Sirius had taken it upon himself to wreak the biggest havoc possible, shouting and cursing and swearing viciously at him. Every ounce of that foul black fury, festering dirtily inside him since he’d found out about the engagement, unleashing all at once, pouring out in torrents of murderous madness that left Lily white-faced and sobbing – and James; Sirius can still remember James looking at him with an expression that Sirius had never seen on his face before, scathing enough that it physically hurt, so much so that James was almost unrecognisable in his rage…

This, of course, is the incident everyone assumes had flung James over the edge, pushing him to cut Sirius out completely.

The real incident responsible for that, Sirius knows, was much darker, much uglier.

“Well, you can’t just hide for the rest of your life because of something you did almost two years ago,” Remus is saying.

He bites back on the tart, guilty secrets swimming inside his mouth. Secrets that only three people had ever known: one of whom is dead now, and another with no memory. Leaving Sirius alone to hold onto them, to feel the weight of them crushing his bones. 

Remus gives him a gentle push in the direction of some people standing near the fireplace. “It's Christmas, Padfoot. Don't just sulk around the corners all night. Go on, at least go stand with James if you’re nervous.”

“I’m not nervous,” Sirius snaps, “and don’t push me, I’ll take your fucking eye out.”

He listens to Remus anyway, though. James welcomes him heartily into the group, throwing around introductions like Sirius doesn’t already know every one of the people standing in the circle. There’s a twinkle in James’ eyes when he says, “this is Sirius, he’s my best friend,” that makes him feel like he should stand a little taller, a little prouder.

Three, four drinks later, the party is melting into merriness, and even Sirius is in a better mood by the time Remus clinks his glass to get everyone’s attention.

“A toast,” he proclaims, smiling around at everyone gathered in the room. “To us. The warriors, the fighters, the resistance! Every one of us here tonight is brave, and good, and kind – these qualities may sound simple, but they're more important than ever right now.”

Murmurs of agreement run across the room.

“It hasn’t been easy, we all know that. Many of us have lost more battles than we can count, more loved ones than we can keep track of. But every morning we wake up and we fight again, we fight back; even when we’re outnumbered, even when the odds are piled high against us. And I don’t have a doubt in my mind that strength like this – it’s more valuable and precious than whatever He’s got. Strength like this, it’ll carry us through, I’m sure of it, to a victory so bright and goddamn beautiful that it lights up the whole entire world. That – that is the power of being good, the power that all of us here have.”

A round of applause follows, interspersed with jubilant cheers and whistles.

“So, I just want to say: a very merry Christmas to all of you. You are the reason for hope, for courage and triumph. Let’s celebrate tonight, knowing that we have that much, at least, to be cheerful for! Also, a special thanks to McKinnon today, she’s baked us this lovely Christmas cake – come on, bring it out for everyone to see!” Remus waves happily at a slender girl with long auburn hair, who immediately goes scarlet when the attention is directed towards her.

She scuttles off into the kitchen, then re-emerges a moment later, cradling in her arms a gigantic layered cake, laced with dollops of cream and fresh cherries, and finished off with a dancing, sparkling Christmas star made of gold icing at the very top.

“She loved cream cakes,” James murmurs.

“Hm?” Sirius asks distractedly, watching the happy golden star doing its jig in time to the music. “Who?”

“Lily,” James says, and the words fall out casually from his mouth as though they are nothing, “cream cakes were her favourite.”

The glass that Sirius is holding slips from his hand and smashes suddenly onto the ground.

The shards fly everywhere, sliding outwards from the noisy point of impact. Everyone in the room turns at the sound, and in the dragged-out, piercing silence that follows, Sirius is certain he can hear the acceleration of his own heart.

“What did you just say?”

James claps a hand over his mouth, eyes growing wide. A thin sheen of sweat has appeared on his forehead, catching little bits of light from the ceiling.

“Lily?” the name scrabbles out as a rasp, and Sirius can barely get it past the swelling in his throat. “James, nobody has spoken a word about Lily to you, how did you – ”

But James doesn’t look like he’s even listening anymore. His eyes are clouding over with panic, and he gags and retches into his hand. Sirius realises that James’ body is swaying slowly, like a burning building about to topple, moving one way and then the other in a terrible pendulum arc.

The room is still silent, and Sirius can't do anything but stare.

Remus is already pushing through the crowd toward James, managing to catch him a split second before he collapses. As James’ legs give way under him, his eyes roll all the way to the back of his head, until only the whites of them, horrific and empty, are visible.

Someone in the room lets out an ear-splitting scream, and this sets off a sudden commotion.

“No, no – it’s nothing, everyone, just – SIRIUS, take him to my room, now,” Remus is yelling. “Everyone – it’s fine, no need to worry, James is obviously a bit unwell, he's going to be okay!”

Sirius feels Remus pushing James’ body onto him, horrified by the limp weight. No, no, no, is all his stupid brain can think, even though he has no idea what’s going on. He hauls James up, and somehow amidst all the nervous confusion in the room, he manages to half-carry, half-drag him into the corridor, over the carpet, and finally into Remus’ bedroom.

Only when he flops James onto the mattress does he allow himself to panic. James is so pale he looks like he’s dead, and for the shortest moment Sirius’ heart is choking up frantically against his throat. He presses a desperate hand around James’ neck, holding his breath.

The wave of relief that washes into him when his fingers find the faint throb of a pulse fluttering under the skin is so powerful that he feels his knees wilt beneath him, sinking onto the ground beside the bed.

“Thank fuck,” he whispers, and doesn’t realize that his eyes are wet until he’s furiously wiping at them.

He’s so stunned by what’s just happened that his entire mind feels numb, any and all rational thought blotted out, as though his brain has been plunged into a tub of invisible ink. He doesn’t know what to think, what to make of this – how could James possibly have known about Lily’s favourite cake, and what the fuck had happened to him afterwards?

Remus reappears at the door once he’s gotten everyone else to relax, and his face is anxious. “Is he –“

“He’s unconscious, but still breathing.”

“Thank god,” Remus says, rubbing his hands over his face. “Was it Dark Magic? Do you think someone put a curse on him?”

That doesn’t fit. Sirius shakes his head. “How could they? I’ve been with him everyday, and we’ve never run into trouble with the wrong sort.”

Remus stares at James lying on the bed. “Should we take him to St Mungo’s?”

“I don't know. He looks like he's just fainted,” Sirius’ fingers are curling around James’ wrist just to feel his beautiful pulse, serving again and again and again as the sweetest type of reassurance that James is still alive. He uses his free hand to lightly press James’ eyelids closed. “I’m going to stay here with him until he wakes up. Go check on the others.”

Remus’ eyes move from their linked hands to Sirius’ face. “Okay,” he says slowly, “but let me know if you need anything, and when he wakes up.”

When Remus leaves the room, Sirius shuffles closer to the bed on his knees. James’ face is milky, his hair matted slightly with sweat, and his skin feels like paper. The new hollowness in his face sets segments of light bouncing off his cheeks, silver like knives, casting the rest of him in shadows. James looks like a dim, candlelit version of himself.

Sirius drops his chin gently onto the space next to James’ head. He’s so close now that he can feel the gentle chill of breath leaving his mouth, and it suddenly brings a thousand more points of his face into focus – finer details Sirius had once known like the back of his hand, but that have faded; with time, with anger, with distance.

James’ dark eyelashes are heavy and fan outwards, creating a feathery shadow just above the glide of his cheekbone. The eyelids, thin enough that a small cartography of red capillaries is visible right beneath them, running upwards like a spider-web. He finds himself trying to individually admire every pore on James’ skin like the brushstrokes of a priceless painting.

He's so beautiful that it makes Sirius suck in a sharp, stuttering breath through his mouth.

The noise causes James to stir, and before Sirius has any time to respond, James’ eyelids flit open and they're looking directly at each other.

A startled sound escapes from the back of Sirius' throat. Every single vein in his body swells with unexpected shock, and he can’t move a muscle. James’ face is so close to his right now – so fucking close – and it feels like this one moment has been frozen in time; except that it’s really not, not at all, and the seconds are continually passing by, and neither him nor James have moved an inch.

A shift in the shadows. Another moment slips by. Inside James’ eyes, something slots neatly into place – understanding, clear as day – and suddenly, all at once, the spell is shattered.

Fuck.

Sirius recoils immediately. He knows that now is the time to say something; he should ask if James is okay, he should ask what happened, he should do anything but just sit here, petrified because he's been staring into his best friend's eyes. But nothing comes out, because it’s too late.

In those few moments, he knows, he’d been naked – and James had seen everything on his face: the want, the need, the love trying so hard to burst right out of him.

His voice spills forth into the silence before he can help it, scratched and bloody. “It’s not what –“ the rest of the sentence abruptly stumbles and falls back down his throat, and he can’t bring himself to say any of it out loud. 

It’s not what you think, it’s not what it looks like.

James’ confused expression betrays him for only the briefest moment before he pulls it together. “What happened?”

“You said something about Lily earlier, and it was weird, because we haven’t told you anything about her. You've asked us not to mention her to you, and we haven’t, so how –“

“I don't know. I just remember looking at the cake when that girl brought it out, and it just – the thought popped into my head, you know? Out of nowhere. And it felt like, like it was something I knew, not something I'd made up.”

“Popped into your head?” Sirius repeats, certain that some of the colour has splashed off his face. “What else popped into your head?”

“Nothing,” James shakes his head. “It just made me feel ill, and everything else happened so fast. One moment I was there, about to be sick, and the next I was waking up here.”

Sirius ignores the way his voice rises a decibel at the end of that sentence. He’s trying to stay collected, but his entire body feels like a flock of birds nervously about to take flight. Every bone in it feels fragile, feels like it’s laying in between James’ teeth, waiting for him to chomp down and pulverize it.

“What's wrong with me?” James’ voice is low and anxious. “That was awful.”

“I don’t think there's anything wrong with you."

“So what was all that?”

Sirius considers for a moment, then offers the only explanation he can come up with. “I think – if it happened after something about Lily popped into your head, it must have something to do with when you were attacked. Those Death Eaters cast some really powerful spells on you – the kind that leave their mark. Maybe your body was just trying to reset itself.” 

“Do you think so?” James’ lower lip is swelling from being bitten for so long, and Sirius can’t drag his gaze off it. “That’s all it is?”

“Well, you said you feel fine, so maybe we shouldn’t worry unless it happens again. You were only out for a couple of minutes.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right.”

The silence that sits between them now is clumsy and awkward. There’s something different in the way that James is looking at him, and Sirius knows that he sees it, that he’s already connecting the pieces. This day was bound to come, wasn’t it? Sirius hadn’t been able to conceal his feelings well enough – traces of it had been blooming like clues since the very first moment they saw each other again. The way his eyes latch onto James before abruptly pulling away. The way he swiftly excuses himself when James drinks too much and starts getting touchy. The way he confuses his words, loses his train of thought, gets choked-up as the feeling of being around James hits him all over again.

James opens his mouth to speak.

"Don’t,” is the only word that Sirius can get out. His entire chest feels like it’s caved in on itself, all the ribs slicing through his sides.

James' eyes are fixed on Sirius’ face. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Pop.

Before he’s realized what he’s doing, Sirius is stumbling forwards, alone, into the darkness of his own apartment – miles away from James, as if it had been a reflex. His breathing is thick and painful, and he fumbles around for a minute with the lights before collapsing onto his bed.

He knows it was a coward’s move, especially since James doesn’t have the ability to come Apparating after him yet. But what the fuck else is he supposed to have done? The way James had looked at him made Sirius feel like he’d been standing there with all his bones exposed, protected by neither clothes nor skin.  

It had been fucking terrifying.

He's not sure what James is thinking, isn't sure he even wants to know. It occurs to him as incredibly stupid now, to ever have wished that he could tell James how he feels – the whole idea is dangerous and idiotic, a rabbit hole that could go wrong in a thousand devastating ways. Sirius may as well strip naked, get down on his knees, and beg for James; he’ll achieve the exact same outcome of James’ disgusted pity.

“You are such a fucking idiot,” he snarls at himself, suddenly furious.

In his head, he hears a different voice – James, shouting at him from two years ago, the words thundering out and violent with rage: You fucking ruined this, Sirius, don’t you fucking look at me like that, you fucked EVERYTHING up –

Sirius punches his fist so hard into the wall next to the bed that he hears the bones in his fingers cracking sharply, but he can barely even feel the pain flaring out from it.

--

Chapter Text

He awakens, the next day, to the sound of loud, relentless thumps on the door.

Behind the curtains, early grey light is seeping into the bedroom, and in the stillness of morning the pounding from the door seems to be echoing tenfold, cramming itself painfully into his brain. The noise gets louder and faster as he heaves himself up and groggily trudges into the living room, irritated both at having being woken up so prematurely and the fact that he’s hungover despite not having drunk much last night.

He’s still dressed, and his hand is now emanating a dull ache from being crushed into the wall. “Fucking wait, I’m coming,” he snaps at whoever is currently slamming their fists onto the wood, finally reaching the door and turning the key to open it. The sudden wash of bright, blinding light from outside makes him squint for a moment, and then –

“You fucking –“

Not even a moment later, James has barged into the apartment, nostrils flaring, wand pointed straight at Sirius’ chest.

“What –“

“You left me at Remus’ last night, you fucking prick,” James shouts, fuming. “Just fucking Apparate yourself back home, why don’t you, and leave me to fucking walk!”

Despite the blaze of anger on James’ face, something about the fact that he’s had to walk all the way back from Remus’ like a Muggle, and that he’s pointing a wand at Sirius’ chest when he’s about as threatening as a child, is irresistibly funny.

“What are you laughing at, you dickhead?”

“Nothing,” Sirius says, but he can’t help himself. “No – ow, ow, okay, I’m sorry,” he stops when James jabs him repeatedly in the stomach with his wand. “You’re right – that was selfish. I panicked.”

“Clearly,” James is still glaring at him. “You can’t just decide to pop yourself back home and not take me with you. I live here too, you know.”

“Technically, you’re just a houseguest massively overstaying your welcome.”

James pokes his wand hard into Sirius again, this time painfully in between two of his ribs.

“Ow – fuck off, James, stop that,” Sirius snaps, trying to fend James off and rub at his stinging sides at the same time. “You’re a fucking menace, you know that?”

“Hey – what's happened to your hand?” James frowns suddenly, lowering his wand.

Sirius immediately stuffs the injured fist out of sight, in the pocket of his robes. “Nothing.”

“Don’t be an idiot, Sirius,” James huffs, irritated again. “Show it to me.”

“No.”

He’s caught off guard when James’ body slams into him, knocking him to the ground with tremendous force.

“What the fuck –“

Realizing what’s happening a second too late, he furiously starts kicking, trying to wrestle James off of him. They scramble violently for a few minutes, and the only thing he’s aware of are limbs being thrown about, occasionally catching him in the face – until finally James manages to pin him down, arms held out to the sides.

“I’m not in the mood to ask nicely,” James grunts, struggling a bit with the effort of holding Sirius in place. He cranes his neck, trying to get a good view of his hand from the awkward position they’re locked in, and then lets out a quiet sound of alarm. “What did you do, you maniac, all your fucking fingers are broken.”

Involuntarily, Sirius stops trying to shove James off and turns to look at his own hand. He'd taken some sleep potion to knock himself out immediately after punching the wall last night, and hadn’t remembered to check how bad it was until now. The sight makes him groan. His entire hand is swelling, deep yellow and violet bruises smeared over the skin in uneven, sickening patches. All his fingers are bending off at uneven angles from the top knuckles, which have apparently absorbed most of the impact. Looking at it now, he’s vaguely impressed he’s even managed to ignore it this long.

“I – punched a wall,” he admits, by means of explanation, seeing that James is still staring at him.

“What, that hard?” James’ mouth drops open in disbelief when Sirius nods. “Why? ”

Sirius squirms a bit, highly aware that he’s still lying under James. “Get off me, wanker. And I was drunk.”

James doesn’t move. “Was it because of what happened last night?”

“James, I’m serious, get off me,” Sirius’ voice rises, and a fresh wave of humiliation at the scalding memory of last night gives him just enough strength to jam his knee up against James’ stomach.

James yelps in pain and rolls off onto the ground while Sirius pulls himself into a sitting-up position. He spends a minute or so fumbling with his wand, doing whatever he can to fix the damage he’s done to his hand – he’s not great at healing spells, but by the time it’s finished his mangled fingers resemble a normal, albeit slightly sore, hand again. Then he turns to face James.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he says firmly.

“Oh, what a surprise. You never want to talk about fucking anything!” James stands up to throw him a sour look. “I know what I saw, alright, I’m not going to pretend that I didn’t see it."

Sirius ignores him, flexing his hand to relieve the pain.

“I don’t know what your problem is,” James is continuing, evidently on a rant that he’s been having to subdue for a while now, “or why you keep acting like I’m going to punish you the moment you say it out loud. Why didn't you just tell me?"

“Tell you what?" Sirius raises an eyebrow. "What is it that you're so certain you saw last night?"

"You know perfectly well what."

Sirius gathers himself up from the floor and dusts himself off. "You're imagining things. Best not to dwell on it."

"No, don't fucking do that. Don't look at me like I'm stupid – I'm not the one who froze up and Apparated myself back home last night. I'm not the one who broke all my fingers punching a fucking wall."

"That had nothing to do with you."

"Are you really going to make me say it?”

Sirius looks at him coolly, keeping his expression as neutral as he can possibly manage. 

“Alright,” James crosses his arms, staring at him with dark, stubborn eyes. “I guess I will, since you’re too spineless to do it yourself.”

Sirius feels himself stiffening, his skin turning to stone at the sheer insolence of him. “Watch your mouth, James, or I'll knock your fucking teeth out.”

The threat does nothing to faze James. “When were you going to tell me how you feel about me, Sirius? When were you going to just come out and say it?”

Sirius can't make himself stifle the coarse anger starting to froth inside him, pulsating and blind with humiliation. As if he’s suddenly been shrunken down to a fraction of his actual size, being crushed in the palm of James’ hand. “Shut up, or I swear to god –”

“Stop it,” James’ voice is loud and very pissed off. It rings out, high and sharp, bursting through the room. “Just stop shutting me out. Do you think I’ll run away screaming just because you’ve got a stupid little crush on me? Because I’m not you. I don’t start foaming at the mouth and throwing threats around whenever someone accuses me of having feelings for them.”

“I don’t care what you saw or what you think I want. I don’t have to stand here and tolerate your fucking taunts.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” James demands. “I’m not taunting you, you crybaby, I’m trying to tell you that I do like you back, and maybe –”

Sirius knows he must look feral, the fury suddenly jutting out of his body like dislocated bones, his face so tight that the blood under it has been drained away. “Are you trying to be funny?”

“No, I’m not!” James shouts. “Do you realise how fucked up you’d have to be for that to be the very first conclusion you jump to?”

How dare James joke about something like that? How dare he sneer at the one thing that has been spreading like rot inside Sirius’ body over the last two years, turning everything it touches into charred, smouldering decay? 

“If you ever –“ his voice is hostile, venomous, “ – ever, James, and I fucking mean it – try and make a mockery of what I feel again –”

“Are you incapable of not being so paranoid for one second? If you had just told me about your feelings for me, I would’ve showed you that I’m not the monster you keep making me out to be!”

Sirius clenches both his fists by his sides. He can’t get the image of how James had looked at him on the night he left out of his head. "Stop talking. I'm warning you."

“Yeah, well, you don’t get to tell me to what to do. You don’t get to be pissed off at me just because you’re too scared to admit you like me."

“And I suppose you know all about the way I feel now, do you?" Sirius hisses. "You’ve got it all worked out in your head, and you think that you can do whatever you please with me? That I’ll just let you rub my nose in it for the rest of my life, like I'm one of your stupid little playthings?”

“Holy shit,” James’ volume drops suddenly, genuine bewilderment dawning on his face. “You really do believe that, don’t you?”

Sirius glares at him, chest heaving. His heart is scattered all around his gut, and he can feel the tremors of each individual piece continuing to beat inside him. 

James steps back. The movement is rough and abrupt. “I feel sorry for you, you know. You’re so afraid of letting anyone in that your fear is eating away at your brain.”

"I'm not afraid of anything, you impertinent piece of -"

“Is it so difficult for you to accept that I'm into you too? That I have been since the moment we met?”

Sirius is snarling before he knows it. “If you think I won't tear your throat out –”

“Fine,” James interrupts, eyes narrowed into furious, red-rimmed slits. “Be that way, then, if it makes you feel any better. I don’t know how you’re not exhausted of your own cynical bullshit yet, but it's not my responsibility to beg you to be with me. This is ridiculous.” 

Sirius opens his mouth again, fully intending to unleash all his rising, violent rage at James. And then he stops, all the words crumbling in his mouth when James shakes his head and turns to walk away. 

“Wait –”

“No,” James snaps. “It’s not my fucking problem you’re so damaged that you can’t handle someone actually caring about you.”

His words fly out like shattered glass shards, leaving cuts where they graze past Sirius’ skin. He blinks, confused, all the thoughts in his head knotting together incoherently. 

“Oh, is it finally my turn to talk now?” James asks, whipping around to look at him. “Can I finally say something without it getting brutalised inside that mess you call your head? Because whatever it is that you think, Sirius, I don’t have a problem with us getting together – but you clearly do. I don’t know where you got the impression that I want to humiliate you for liking me, or why you refuse to believe a word I actually say, but that’s your issue. Not mine.”

Sirius doesn’t move, convinced that if he tries to do anything at all but remain frozen, he’ll just fall apart and all his bones and organs will go rolling onto the floor. James’ words are echoing with conviction in his ears, tearing to shreds the blaze of anger that had filled him with so much certainty only moments ago.

“You might be too scared to tell me how you feel, but I'm not. That doesn't mean I have to let you vilify me before I’ve even done anything wrong. And I’m not going to stand here and baby you through whatever personal crisis it is that you’re obviously going through, either.”

He stares at James, startled. “That’s not what I –”

“Not everyone in the world is out to destroy you,” James tells him coldly, already striding towards his bedroom, “so get over yourself. I'm not wasting my time on this pointless shit.”

With that, he slams the door shut, and the sound reverberates loudly through the whole flat.

Sirius feels lightheaded, dizzy with the effort of trying to comprehend the words James has just left him with.

It’s one thing that he knows how Sirius feels, but a whole other that he’s now saying he reciprocates it – even now, even while James’ words replay over and over in his head, it sounds insane enough to make Sirius want to maul anyone who’d dare suggest it. The angry clouds of red clotting his veins start to ebb away suddenly. What's left in their place is nothing but the miserable knowledge that what he really wants from James is nothing but a hopeless, broken dream.

And yet –

Is it really all that stupid to hope that James might feel the same way about him? Hadn’t he done it once before, years ago, so easily, and so willingly? There’d been no clear cause for his feelings, no distinct event which set their relationship off. Falling in love had always just seemed like a natural consequence of their friendship, the only possible direction in which either of them could have headed. 

For the year and a half that they’d been apart Sirius remained trapped in his own dark void. The emptiness in his world had obliterated everything that made life worth living, and the attention he’d received from all the earnest, pretty boys at the bars he frequented never stirred anything in him. Their shiny smiles and casual touches neither interested nor gratified him. All he could see in them were different versions of James; sometimes knights, sometimes monsters. Everyone had been either too much like James or not enough of him. Despite the months and months of loneliness, Sirius had never quite let go of his desperate desire to be reunited with James. He'd stubbornly kept harbouring his own petulant, incessant fantasies – failing to override them with logic, with fact, with even the memory of James’ face, crimson with hatred, on the last night that they’d seen each other.

And now, the one and only thing he’s ever wanted is right here in his home, offering itself to him.

He feels his legs moving, so quickly that he’s hardly even aware of his own actions until he finds himself standing by James’ door, knocking urgently.

“What?”

“Are you going to let me in?” 

“Fuck off, Pads.”

Annoying, but understandable. He continues talking through the door. “Okay. Look. I just – I shouldn't have reacted that way. It wasn't fair." 

He hears James let out a derisive snort. “What, do you miss me already?”

“Don’t be a dick, I said I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t actually say it in so many words, but fine.” The door opens with a click and James peers at him from behind it. “Are you saying sorry for overreacting, or for leaving me at Remus’ last night?”

Sirius pauses, frowning. “Both, I think.”

"You're kind of shit at apologies, you know," James looks at him for a moment. “But this is probably the most sense you've made all morning, so I'm going to let it slide. Under two conditions.”

“Which two conditions?”

“I want that golden Quidditch ball set we saw last week in Diagon Alley."

"The one that costs three hundred Galleons?"

"Yes. And also, I want you to feel like you can talk to me. Not now, maybe not for another month, or even a year – just, whenever you’re ready."

"I do talk to you."

"No, not really," James says. "I want to know who hurt you, what happened to have you so convinced you don’t deserve to be loved. Because it's pretty obvious that something did. And whatever it is – you're my best friend, Pads. I'm not going to just tuck my tail and run if you tell me, no matter how bad it is."

The words taste empty as Sirius tries to take them in. James has no way of knowing that it had been him, that he'd been the one to take something out of Sirius that he can never give back. “Okay,” he's staring at the ground, not wanting to look at James and risk crying in front of him.

“You do know how important you are to me, don't you? That you might honestly be my favourite person in the whole world?”

“Yeah," Sirius says numbly to his feet. "I know."

James rolls his eyes. “Don’t overexert yourself by saying it back or anything.”

“Don’t be daft. You already know what I think of you.”

That makes him smile. “Fair enough. Now if you’d be so kind, I really want to take a nap – on account of, you know, not getting any sleep last night because of you.”

Sirius nods and watches him close the door again. Afterwards, he remains standing there for several more minutes, unable to make himself step away. 

Is it so difficult for you to accept that maybe I'm into you too? That I have been since the moment we met?

James had spoken those words so unapologetically, he'd seemed so relaxed about getting them out – acting exactly as he had in fourth year, drunk and kissing Sirius without warning. Getting up to go to class afterwards, only turning around for a brief moment to say by the way, I think we should be together – almost like it had been an afterthought.

Kissing James for the first time that afternoon had instantly altered Sirius' entire world. He'd spent the next few weeks reeling, sleepless, unable to think about anything else. To James, though, their first kiss had been no more remarkable than anything else the two of them used to do together. As if he'd never even been surprised by the way he felt about Sirius, never had a reason to think of it as anything but inevitable. 

And now, James has become so much more like his old self – like who he'd been before he went out with Lily, back when Sirius had loved him best. There are nearly no traces left of the cruel, distant person he'd morphed into afterwards. But how can Sirius ever wipe the memory of that night off? 

All his scars seem to have turned right back into wounds; gushing, gaping, bloody all over again. He'll never forget the way James recoiled from him – his beautiful mouth suddenly teeming with teeth, his gentle hands just fury made flesh. Looking Sirius in the eye as he shouted this is not love, Sirius, look at yourself –

Like the fact that Sirius needed him was something intolerable. Like he’d wanted to wrap Sirius’ sickening, broken heart in a sheet and dump it in the river like a corpse, just to be rid of it. 

Will he ever bring himself to do it, to tell James everything? As terrifying as it is, how can he not? It doesn't seem fair that James might never know the way they used to feel about each other – with a love that was so profoundly violent, yet more tender than anything in the world. Not just because James deserves to know, but because Sirius doesn't think he can hold on to this guilt for much longer. Swimming in secrecy, pretending that he's everything James now believes him to be – instead of the insane, cruel, selfish creature Sirius was to him all those months ago. 

It's not enough, just to start over. Even if James were to kiss him right now, pushing him against the wall and tearing all his clothes off, it wouldn't feel right. 

He wants James to understand all of it, to know exactly what it is that he's eagerly standing on the edge of. Because neither of them really had, back in school – they'd been too young, too careless to foresee how quickly their playful feelings for each other would swallow them whole. Never prepared to handle the true force of what they'd so childishly stumbled onto. 

They hadn't thought that it would make them gut each other with their own knives. That James would break Sirius' heart so carefully, so deliberately, as though it had been an honour for him to be the only person in the world capable of doing so. And that for Sirius it would've been enough, even afterwards, to just lie there in pieces by James' feet.

It isn't just some "stupid little crush", as James has so ridiculously put it. It's an experience of ecstasy and terror, being consumed by something that will now haunt them all their lives. 

Because this is the only way they've ever known how to fall in love – ferociously, and forever. 

Chapter Text

December dissolves soundlessly away, and the new year enters wearing a coat of silver mist and powdery snow. The air feels frozen, holding its breath, and through it all the war rages on like an endless storm. 

The number of Death Eaters has risen, the ratio now ten to each member of the Order. The Death Eaters have begun conducting brutal raids and executions of anyone they deem to be less than pure wizarding blood. On the streets, Muggle-borns and half-bloods alike seem to be shrinking under their cloaks as they hurry nervously along, trying not to attract any attention to themselves. Shops on Diagon Alley shut hours before the sun has the chance to set on them, and only a few dirty old pubs remain open late on Knockturn Alley. As soon as darkness begins pressing down on the sky, Death Eaters begin prowling around, and the list of obituaries printed every morning in the Prophet grows longer every day.

It’s unsurprising, really, when Remus shows up one day to tell him that the Order needs him again.

“It’s a mess out there,” he sighs, his cup of coffee sitting untouched on the table in front of them. “You must’ve seen in the Prophet – last week they got the McKinnons, the whole family. Slaughtered like pigs, even the children.” 

Discomfort clenches Sirius’ stomach, but he surveys Remus suspiciously. “I thought the Order said they didn’t need me anymore?”

“It’s not that we didn’t need you,” Remus insists, huffing impatiently. “But even you’ve got to admit that you became a little – maniacal, after James left you. You were leaving bloodbaths everywhere you went.”

“I never killed anyone who wasn’t one of His supporters,” Sirius says hotly.

“Yes, but you didn’t just kill them, did you? You left all of them ripped open in the middle with their guts spilling out, and they’d only die hours after you were finished,” Remus reaches for the steaming mug in front of him and curls a hand around it. “It was barbaric, Pads, and that’s not even considering the intelligence you lost us or the Muggle witnesses that we had to take care of.”

Sirius sinks a little bit lower down the back of his chair, a vague flicker of shame slapping the insides of his ribs – not because he’d mindlessly sliced those evil fuckers open, but for the fact that it had cost the Order, especially at a time when they’d already lost so much. He’d understood, at least, when an apologetic-looking Vance told him at one of their meetings that Dumbledore had ordered for him to “take a break”. Sirius had managed to agree without putting up much of a fight, though in retrospect he’s not really sure how.

Remus takes a delicate sip from the coffee. “We’re really thinning out right now, Sirius, members of the Order are being targeted - it’s not enough just to be pureblood anymore, look at what happened to James.” 

“Better than what happened to Lily. At least they let him live,” a sickening feeling swells inside Sirius. “She didn’t get even that.”

She hadn’t gotten a funeral either, afterwards. There are too many people dying to be able to honour them all.

“My point is,” Remus’ voice is steady but coloured with a shade of emotion at the mention of Lily, “that we need all hands on deck. And – well, obviously, you’re more stable now, and you’re a really good wizard – we could really use you.” 

“Alright,” Sirius shrugs, agreeing without hesitation. It doesn’t make sense to have to deliberate when this is so obviously the right thing to do. He’s getting tired of sitting around and watching their side lose, anyway. “And James?” 

“He’s got orders to take up office work until he’s strong enough to fight again.”

Sirius’ nose wrinkles slightly at the thought of James, as talented and bold as he is, being confined to a cramped and dull office. “That seems like a waste.” 

“What, compared to the alternative of him sitting here all day and practicing the bat-bogey hex on your sofa?”

"He needs training."

“I agree, and I’m all for James learning new spells, but we need people we can trust right now and he is clever enough for the job.”

Sirius scowls. It’s beyond irritating to him that James is being under-utilised despite being one of the best wizards who’s ever been in the Order. 

“Would you rather he gets killed while out on patrol?”

“No, of course not,” Sirius says, glaring at Remus. “Fine, but you know how James is. He’s not going to be happy about this.”

“Not happy that he’s safe instead of getting hurt out there?”

“He’s going to hate that he’s missing out on all the action.”

“It’s the best way to protect him until he’s got most of his skills back,” Remus rubs at the back of his neck, then looks up at Sirius in mild concern. “How’s it going, by the way, for the two of you?”

“It’s alright,” Sirius waves a hand dismissively, despite the coils in his abdomen tightening slightly. “Well, I don’t know – he’s been different with me recently.”

“Different how?”

Sirius wants to say he’s been acting more like the way he used to but doesn’t want to ruin it by verbalising the tiny sliver of hope that has been nagging at him for two weeks. James has been, to Sirius’ astonishment, behaving in a manner that can’t be explained any other way. The fluttery, slightly nervous glances when he thinks Sirius isn’t looking (idiotic, obviously, because Sirius is always looking); the way he stares at Sirius’ mouth for just a second too long; how he’s growing steadily more determined to impress Sirius with newly-learned spells.

It would be subtle, Sirius thinks, if not for the fact that he’s been insulating this exact same behaviour inside himself for months now. But while Sirius has been trying to be careful about not letting any of his feelings show, it seems that James lacks any amount of this restraint at all.

“Different,” Sirius exhales finally, “as in I think spending too much time around me is messing with his head.”

Remus raises an eyebrow. “How so?”

"He spends every second of every fucking day with me, Moony. It’s like that stocking syndrome, or whatever the Muggles call it.”

“Stockholm syndrome, and I think that only applies if you’ve kidnapped him.”

“I might as well have,” Sirius snaps. “He’s so attached to me right now. He won’t go anywhere or meet anyone unless I agree to go with him. It’s like that whole week in third year when he refused to talk to anyone except me.”

“Yeah, I remember him getting detention for a month for that,” Remus laughs. “Well, you’ll get some space when you start helping out with the Order. Where is he now, anyway?”

Sirius glances at the closed door to James’ room. “We had a disagreement over who finished the bottle of firewhiskey last night and he’s pretending to sulk about it, but I know that – “ he raises his voice “ – he’s just hiding his hangover because it was clearly him who drank it all.”

He can vaguely hear James throwing a pillow at the door in response.

“Well, I should get going anyway,” Remus rolls his eyes, getting up and dusting at his robes. “Need to go deliver a message to Bones. I’ll send you an owl with your instructions, later – it’ll be coded, just unscramble the letters and then use a mirror to read them.”

Sirius nods and sees Remus to the door.

“And tell James to come off it, everyone knows you’d never be able to finish an entire bottle of firewhiskey on your own,” Remus grins, and then pops away before Sirius can hit him.

 —

Predictably, James puts up a furious fight when he finds out that he’s going to be scouring Death Eater files in an office while Sirius gets to go on patrol duty at Gringotts.

“I’ve learned three years’ worth of spells in three months,” he says loudly, kicking at the pile of books marked COMPLETE next to the wall. “If that’s not evidence that I’m the best fucking wizard you’ve got on your side then I don’t know what is.”

“No one is denying that you’re a talented wizard, Prongs,” Sirius says, exasperated. It feels like this is the twentieth time he’s had to explain this. “But you’re just not ready, okay, what else do you want me to say?”

“I want to fight.”

“And you will, as soon as it’s possible,” Sirius’ jaw is hurting from the effort of clenching it for so long. “But for now you can either help out in whatever way Dumbledore sees fit, or you can stay at home and do nothing. The choice is yours.”

James is scowling at him. In his annoyance a gentle red flush has crept into his face, somehow making the hazel in his eyes look even brighter.

“Look, I know it’s unfair,” Sirius breathes out and glances once again at the de-coded letter Remus has sent them. “But this is not up to me. And if you’ve done three years of spells in three months then it’ll only be another four before you’re ready to fight, anyway.”

The thought is depressing, because Sirius wants to think that in four months the war might start drawing to a close, but the urgency in Remus’ writing makes that seem unlikely.

The first day of their new jobs is uneventful. According to Remus’ letter, him and Emmaline Vance are to be stationed outside the bank - concealed, of course - and notify the Order if they catch sight of any unusual or suspicious activity. Many goblins have joined Voldemort’s cause, Remus had explained, and those who haven’t have mysteriously gone missing. Meanwhile, James is in a hidden office in a quieter part of London, sifting through transcripts of Death Eater confessions, trying to find new leads.

James is already home by the time Sirius returns to the flat that evening, and the sight of him, after just one day apart, is still a pleasant surprise to Sirius – a warm, comforting kind of feeling, like relaxing into a bath after a long and difficult day.

But more than that – it’s the look on James’ face, the way he lights up when he sees him, that really wraps itself like a blanket around Sirius, that look that says I’m so happy to see you, without him having to open his mouth.

“I took the liberty of pouring us drinks in celebration of our first day as useful members to society,” James is grinning, gesturing toward the filled glasses on the table.

“I knew there had to be a good reason I was keeping you around,” Sirius reaches for the glass gratefully and takes a seat next to James. It occurs to him, now that they’re sitting next to each other again, that even if it’s only been a few hours, he’s missed James.

“My first day was fucking boring,” James sighs, before Sirius can even ask. “They’ve got me holed up in some shitty little office, all by myself, going through paperwork. They didn’t even have anyone supervising me on my first day – I thought that maybe they had some other way of watching over me and making sure I did my job, but I took a three-hour lunch break and had a wank right there in my office, and nothing happened.”

Sirius snorts. “With professionalism like that, the other side doesn’t even stand a chance.”

“You’re making me blush, Black,” James bows his head, smiling good-naturedly. “But enough about me, your day was probably much more exciting than mine.”

“Mmm, not really,” Sirius refills his glass, which has gone empty surprisingly quickly. “We spent all day just sort of standing around and not really knowing what to look out for. And all Vance does is talk about her new boyfriend, I got so sick of it I ended up putting a charm over my ears to drown her out.”

James laughs at that, and the sound seems to enter Sirius’ body like mist, turning all his insides into weightlessness. It’s incredible how even now, even after so many years, his ability to elicit that laugh from James makes Sirius’ chest glow with pride. It had been one of the more painful wounds he’d been left with – the thought that he would never be able to make James happy again, the fear of having crossed one too many lines to ever be anything more than an object of seething, white-hot regret for James. And yet, here they are now, sitting together with James smiling at him again –

“Fuck,” he says quietly, without meaning to.

He doesn’t think he’ll ever properly get used to this.

“What?”

“Nothing, it’s just – this is nice.” He doesn’t know how else to put it, how else to explain that this simple act of just talking together had seemed to him, just three months ago, like an impossible luxury that was only tangible in his farthest fantasies.

“What, complaining about work? Well, I’m glad you’re enjoying it, because I’ve got a lot to unload about how fucking tedious my job is. The only thing that kept me from driving my wand into my own eye all day was the thought of being able to come home and talk to you about it.”

He says it easily, but the words pin themselves right onto Sirius’ heart and cause a slight stutter. And they stay there, like gleaming badges on his chest, for the next twenty minutes through James’ tirade about how the Order should be ashamed of itself for wasting his godly talent on dull office work – endowing Sirius with the patience to not even mind this long and ultimately pointless rant.

By the time it’s finished, most of the bottle is empty and James’ words start knocking into each other clumsily.

“And that,” he sighs finally, slamming the glass down onto the table, “is why I personally feel that today was the most single most mundane day of my entire life.”

“You’re right, it’s bullshit. They’re idiots for making you do this.”

“Thank you,” James says in disbelief, shaking his head. Then he looks at Sirius, and he smiles, the irritation on his face changing so quickly into a look of contentment that Sirius almost doesn’t catch the whole thing. “At least you don’t think I’m completely useless. That’s what matters, anyway.”

“Good, because you’re not useless.”

The alcohol has made the lights in the apartment go blurry, and they seem to soften James’ outlines, so that he looks more like a stained-glass portrait than anything else. Sirius finds that he’s having to exercise a concerted effort not to move closer to him – despite the short distance between them feeling like it’s humming with energy, willing one of them to close it.

There have been many moments like this recently, he notes. Moments that seem lightning-charged and full of potential – usually in the hours after midnight, when they’ve both been sitting together and drinking for a while – moments where the harder husks around him start giving way to a quiet, scrabbling urgency that makes him want to just touch James, especially when he’s so close like this. To be able to run his palms over James’ body, feeling the blood rising under his skin instantly like it’s being bidden by Sirius’ fingers, the way it did before. 

James is leaning forward on the table, with his head cradled onto his arms, one cheek buried within the crook of his elbow. His eyes are heavy-lidded and tired, and Sirius feels like he has to consciously will invisible ropes of restraint around all of his own limbs just to stop himself from reaching out to him. 

“You know what, Pads,” James says after a minute, yawning sleepily and closing his eyes. “I can’t think of why we would’ve stopped talking, but it’s a good thing that we’re okay now. I really don’t have a fucking clue what I’d do without you.” 

--

By the time the second unremarkable week of work rolls around, Sirius starts showing up to the designated spot near the bank with a flask of James’ Muggle rum under his robes, after putting a charm on it so that it can carry a whole bottle at a time. Emmaline Vance frowns at him disapprovingly when she notices him taking swigs every hour, but gives in to the boredom by sunset, and Sirius thinks that she makes much more pleasant company when she’s drunk.

They’re leaning against the wall of the alley across Gringotts, shielded from view by a protective charm. Sirius has been drinking – slowly, because he thinks he should at least be slightly sober in the unlikely event of anything at all happening – since morning, and so has Emmaline.

She appears to be on the gigglier end of tipsy. “Hey – is it true that you’re living with Potter now?”  she asks, after a couple of daring shots from Sirius’ flask.

“Unfortunately for me, yes.”

“Unfortunately?” The bright afternoon sun makes her squint as she looks at him.

“Yeah, seeing as how he’s somehow managed to turn my apartment into ten times the wreck it was before.” Sirius doesn’t really mind it, though, because the mess is a reminder that James really, actually does live with him – it’s evidence that this isn’t just some kind of raving, lunatic hallucination he’s conjured up like he would have otherwise believed.

“Oh,” she giggles, then – “well, can I ask you something, then? If you won’t think I’m being rude.”

The warmth of the rum has made Sirius more forgiving of her girlishness than he normally would be, and he shrugs. “Sure.”

“You and Potter, are you...?”

“No,” he says flatly. “We’re not.”

Emmaline blinks at him for a moment, like she’s trying to decide if he’s telling the truth, then lets out a mm noise and glances at the bank. “Oh. It’s just – well, I was at his engagement party, and – “

“That was two years ago,” Sirius narrows his eyes at her, and she wilts immediately. “Things are different now.”

“Right.” Emmaline drops her gaze and reaches for the flask, taking another sip. “Well, even if you are – I said if,” she mutters hastily, at the look on Sirius’ face, “I’d be happy for you, you know.”

Sirius opens his mouth to reply but a flash of movement near the entrance of the bank catches his eye.

“I always did think you were unusually close at school – “

“SHHH!” Sirius snaps, elbowing her hard. “Look over there!”

Her head snaps up, and she lets out a short gasp.

A tall, hooded figure is gliding out of the bank, dragging behind him what looks like an absurdly large bag of coins - except that coins inside the bag are alive and moving, creating imprints on the fabric as they do.

“Think that counts as unusual or suspicious activity?”

Emmaline nods slowly. “My money’s on that guy being a Death Eater. What is in that bag?”

The hooded figure suddenly seems to have noticed the bag moving and whips around, flicking his wand at it. Whatever’s been thrashing around inside the bag immediately goes slack, and the man hoists it up again over his shoulder.

“Shit,” Emmaline whispers. “What should we do?” 

Sirius is about to suggest she shut up so that he can think, but it’s too late. Within a split second, the man whirls his cloak and disappears. 

There’s a moment of silence as they absorb what has just happened. Then –

“They’re abducting goblins,” he says quietly, staring at the space where the man had stood with his bag moments ago.

“Why?” 

“They’re infiltrating Gringotts,” Sirius murmurs. “They could do anything once they’ve controlled the bank. They could buy the Prophet and only print pureblood propaganda rubbish, or regulate wages in the Ministry to make anyone do what they want.”

“And they’re getting rid of the goblins that won’t agree,” Emmaline’s face is pale. “But in broad daylight?”

“I don’t think he realised the goblin was still awake when he left the bank – if it had been knocked out it he would’ve just looked like someone taking out a large bag of money – Merlin knows our economy’s going to shit, no one would’ve suspected a thing.”

“I think we need to get Aurors stationed inside the bank.”

“We don’t know how many of those goblins are on His side already, we could be sending our best wizards into a trap.”

“What do you think we should do?” Emmaline bites her lip, looking at him as if she expects him to have all the answers.

“Wait, I suppose,” Sirius exhales, because he doesn’t actually know what else to say. “It shouldn’t be long before they take another one – and now at least we know what to look out for.” 

—

“I can’t believe you saw a goblin abduction,” James says miserably that night, lying on his back on Sirius’ bed and tipping the last few drops of nettlewine from the bottle into his mouth. “I spent all day drawing family trees for Death Eaters.”

“Only the final bits of it, and it wasn’t even that exciting.” Sirius is standing with his back pressed against the windowpane, using the slight discomfort of the edge digging into his back to keep himself distracted from the way that James’ body looks, long and languid, as it’s laid across his bed. “But more importantly, we need more alcohol. You don’t even like nettlewine, you fucker, and you’ve had the whole bottle.”

“Desperate times, desperate measures,” James shrugs, tossing the empty glass bottle aside. It bounces off the carpet without a sound. “You’re the one who’s taking all my rum and drinking it at work, anyway.”

“Only because patrol duty is so fucking riveting.”

“You saw a goblin being kidnapped!” James exclaims. His words are falling out a little faster than usual, melding carelessly into each other under the alcohol. “If anyone should be drinking at work it should be me. At least you have company while standing around all day, and this Emmaline sounds really fit.”

“Oh, she’s a dream,” Sirius says, thinking of how he’d stood a few days ago, awkwardly watching, as she vomited into the pavement after taking one too many gulps from his flask.

James scowls like this isn’t the reaction he’d wanted, then rolls over onto his stomach. “Well, if you’d stop sharing all my rum with her, we’d still have something to drink. Can’t you conjure up some type of alcoholic potion or something?”

“You’ve already had two bottles of wine, you incorrigible drunk.”

“Sorry, is this coming from someone who’s been drinking my rum for breakfast?”

“Fuck off, I never claimed to be a saint of sobriety either,” Sirius rolls his eyes. “And no, I can’t just conjure up something for us to drink.”

James lets out a long, sulky sigh, like some type of overgrown child. “Sometimes I think being able to use magic is completely pointless, you know.”

Sirius is trying to think of something to say back to that, but at the minute finds it extremely difficult. Right now the only thing he’s aware of is James stretching, his limbs extending outwards gracefully – and Sirius isn’t trying to picture the ripple of muscles under James’ robes that allow for this movement, but it’s in his head anyway, and it floods his whole body with heat. Does James not know what he looks like, lying there like a cat on Sirius’ bed? Does he not realize that every molecule in Sirius’ body feels doused in crumpling need just by looking at him?

“Hey, want to hear something really weird?” James says, once his eyelids lift open again, smiling. “It’ll take your mind off not having any more alcohol, I promise.”

Sirius nods, a little slowly because that image of James stretching out is still freshly frozen in his mind. “Go on.”

“Well, today after my lunch break I decided to take a nap in my office, and mind you, I’d done about eight family trees by then so technically I deserved one,” he says. “And get this – during my nap, I had a dream about you.”

“A dream?” Sirius repeats, snorting. “What was I doing, flying off into the sunset with you?”

“No, you dickhead. It was like – I mean, I don’t understand it, but I can remember the whole thing really well. Anyway, I assume we were in Hogwarts, because we were both wearing uniforms, and we were creeping around some type of castle. It was dark, and I don’t think we were meant to be out because I kept laughing about something and you kept hitting me and telling me to shut up before we got caught. For some reason we seemed to be going around to every bathroom, both male and female ones, and dropping this little yellow bar of soap into the each toilet. And every time the soap started bubbling up in the water little tadpoles would jump out of it. Isn’t that just strange?”

He’s looking up at Sirius expectantly, but Sirius suddenly feels like he can’t talk. 

Because he remembers, clear as anything, the time in fifth year when he and James had gone out and purchased boxes full of Frog-Spawn Soap from Hogsmeade. How they’d crept around the castle that same night, dropping one bar of soap into every single toilet, and how they’d collapsed into each other, burning with laughter, at the resulting havoc it caused the next morning – all the students screaming and sprinting out of the bathrooms when the tadpoles clogged the toilets and overflowed onto the ground, flipping around everywhere, and all the teachers irritably trying to calm everyone down and clear up the mess.

James is frowning at his lack of a response. “Hello? Did you not hear what I just said? Tadpoles, in toilets.”

“I heard,” Sirius says, though the words only come out as a whisper. He feels like there’s no longer any floor under his feet, like he’s just hovering there, about to plummet into a bottomless void at any moment.

“Hey, are you okay?”

Sirius’ knees are quickly losing the ability to hold up his body, and his pulse is skittering wildly.

A dream, James had said. How can it have been a dream, when it so closely resembles something that had actually happened, something James could have no way of knowing about? Sirius knows that he, Remus and Peter all have been filling James in with proud stories about their mischiefs at Hogwarts, but that particular story – it had been one Sirius had never told James about, least of all because it had ended with a celebratory fuck in the common room, long after all the other students had gone to bed. The memory is so salient that it digs into Sirius’ body.

“Padfoot,” James looks mildly worried now. “What is it?”

“I don’t think that was just a dream,” Sirius’ voice is quiet, shaking slightly. “That – that’s something that we did actually do at Hogwarts. It was one of our pranks.”

James cocks an eyebrow. “What, we actually walked around the school at night and dropped tadpole soap into the toilets?”

“Is that what you’re concerned about right now?” Sirius snaps at him. “James, you’ve just remembered something from before you lost your memory.”

“So? It wasn’t about anything particularly useful,” James shrugs. He seems nowhere as bothered about this as he should be, and it makes Sirius want to physically shake some sense into him. “Why are you so worked up about it, anyway?” 

Sirius wishes they did actually have something to drink, because he desperately needs one right now. Despite seeming fucking impossible, it looks like somehow, jagged bits of memory are returning to James. Odd bits and pieces that, eventually, will reveal parts of what had happened between the two of them. And if today it’s a memory of one of their pranks – tomorrow it could be one of them lying naked together at the edge of the Forest in the dead of night, or worse – James could have a flashback of what had happened to make him cut Sirius out of his life. Just the thought of that happening makes Sirius’ insides writhe with ugly discomfort.

“Sirius?" 

Sirius blinks, and he’s suddenly aware that James has moved, and is now standing right in front of him.

“You’re shaking,” James says softly, and he’s so close that Sirius can feel their robes touching. “What’s wrong?”

Sirius shakes his head, but nothing comes out. All his words have dissolved away, and now that James is right here in front of him, the prospect of him remembering the truth and ripping himself away from Sirius again is glaring him right in the face.

Sirius needs James so much it feels like he’s folded up parts of himself and stuffed them into James to carry around with him for the rest of his life. And how could he possibly have been so blind to think that this blissful ignorance would last forever, that he could really just have James again without the hideous past rearing its unforgiving, brutally accusatory head and ruining everything? It’s been too good, it’s been too fucking good between them again, and Sirius must’ve known this could never last. He doesn’t even deserve for it to, because what he did two years ago had been reckless, and dangerous, and selfish – and James had hated him for it. James had truly, absolutely fucking despised Sirius, for being so in love that it had driven him to madness. 

And now – this perfect, peaceful reality where James doesn’t remember any of that, where he’s smiling at Sirius because he doesn’t know why he’d hated him – it’s starting to fracture, the way all falsehoods eventually do. It’s starting to crack and crumble – and Sirius knows without a doubt that before long, the entire ugly, terrible truth will reveal itself to James.

And just like that – Sirius is going to lose him, all over again.

How can he have been so stupid, how can he ever have taken for granted even one single moment with James? How can he have wasted all this time not making the absolute most of each and every minute that he gets to have him back for?

“Sirius – ?“ 

A sharp, breathless noise cuts off the rest of his sentence without warning, and then Sirius is kissing him, so suddenly that his own heart stops in its tracks, so fiercely that it hurts. James’ mouth is slack in shock for a moment but he’s quickly pushing back into him with hungry, eager impatience. Fuck. Fuck. Sirius can’t feel his own limbs, can’t feel anything but James pressed against him, kissing him, tugging him closer by his robes. Every atom in his body is ablaze with explosive star-heat, thrumming with colour and light. James' skin feels like it's touching him everywhere at once, swimming all over Sirius like billowing, hazy plumes of smoke; he has no idea whether James' hands are on his face or in his hair or even under his clothes, and it doesn't matter, because it all feels so desperately good anyway, it's all fucking incredible. His whole body feels restless and fluid, shifting in response to everything James does, moving into him like a current and searching for a way to close every tiny inch of space between them. 

Sirius doesn't know how it's taken him this long to kiss him, because right now James is moaning into his open mouth, kissing him like he's been doing his whole life - the shape and taste of him still so familiar, still just the way Sirius remembers - and fuck, he can't stop now, can't think, can't imagine ever doing anything else. How could he possibly have thought he'd forget how this feels, that he could go even a moment without it? He would do anything, anything, to always be with James like this, to spend their whole lives doing nothing else. Just being together; overlapping, rippling, unfurling over each other. Here and now and forever. 

And then James makes a startled sound and suddenly pulls back – a moment too soon – and he's staring at Sirius in flushed bewilderment.

“We’ve done this before,” his eyes are wide, several layers of understanding disentangled in his voice. “You and me."

Sirius doesn’t feel like he can breathe, let alone speak. His cock is so hard it’s throbbing, and his brain is still reeling uselessly under the liquid glow of James' lips. 

“I just had – the strangest feeling, like this has happened before, like it’s not the first time,” James is saying, looking at Sirius in soft awe. “Because it has, hasn’t it?”

Sirius nods slowly, like he’s in a trance, unable to verbally produce any words.

There's a muted, swollen silence. Sirius isn't sure how long it lasts, but it feels like an eternity. 

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Sirius,” James says. “You should’ve just told me – it would've saved us so much time.”

And then, before Sirius can even begin to process those words, James steps forward and starts kissing him again.

--

Chapter Text

The shock of it washes into Sirius like a wave, but his body responds to James without any conscious control – his heart is slamming so hard against his ribs that he’s certain it’ll tear right through his chest, and he thinks he might actually die from the serotonin overdose. James’ lips are relentless, demanding, bruising Sirius’ mouth with the force they're driving into it with.

He thinks he’d be moaning, if he could, but no sound escapes the strangled silence caught in his throat. James’ fingers have fastened around the back of his neck, digging into the skin, a marked pressure that Sirius can feel all the way down his spine. His breathing has gone raw and erratic, and no amount of air that he’s trying to draw into his lungs feels quite like enough. He’s so fucking dazed that he can’t process a single thing in his brain except I love you, I love you, I fucking love you, and they don’t even feel like words, they’re shrouded in so much maddening need that they feel primal, as if they exist in a language that only James’ skin can understand.

James whines, a low and needy noise, pressing so roughly into him that his lower lip gets caught under Sirius’ teeth. And Sirius can feel the reflexive jerk of James’ body before he sees it, just before he sinks his teeth down into the soft flesh.

“Fuck,” James breathes, and the word is just a wet, hot push of air against Sirius’ mouth, but it feels fevered, knifelike.

Sirius keeps trying to snap himself out of whatever frenzied dream his brain keeps rationalizing this out to be – but the sharp tug with every sound that James makes keeps him grounded, pinning him down with the knowledge that he’s really here, he’s really kissing James Potter again.

There is no way he could possibly be imagining this, because even the most lucid and desperate chimeras he’s ever fashioned from his dreams are a cheap and watery imitation of what it actually feels like. Like every single one of his ribs has come alive, buzzing with colour inside him, every cell suffused with a hazy, hypnagogic heat. 

And, yet –

Don’t you fucking dare touch me, Sirius, or I swear to God I’ll kill you.

The echo blasts suddenly through his head, swift as a bullet, and Sirius goes still.

You are a fucking psychopath, and you’ve ruined it, you’ve ruined everything. 

The memory collects inside his head in a flood of red – Sirius had been crying, so loud that it was almost a scream, and James had just stood there and looked at him like he was a fucking stranger.

“Sirius?”

He flinches when James’ hand touches his face. “No, don’t – don’t do that.”

“What’s wrong?”

Sirius’ chest feels like a damaged holding cell for all the wounded, dirty words that his mouth can’t translate. He can’t tell if it’s guilt or anger that’s tumbling about through his bloodstream, infecting everything in its path with livid, messy pain.

James is staring at him, confused, but all Sirius can see is the ghost of him from two years ago – recoiling at the insanity he had found, feral and frothing, in Sirius’ eyes. Almost like he would’ve been frightened of Sirius that night, if he hadn’t been distinctly bleeding with rage. James had been so angry he could have broken every bone in Sirius’ body with the sheer force of his fury alone.

Sirius wishes he had.

He wishes James had done anything other than just leave him there, saying I never want to see you again.

How can he ever forget that feeling – being cast aside by the only person who’s ever mattered to him, left there to scream and splutter and sob so hard it had racked through his whole skeleton, the filthy bitterness seeping out of him like insects crawling from his skin?

“Look, is it something I did?” James is glaring at him, the beginnings of an indignant scowl forming around his mouth.

The lamplight has clothed the room with a creamy tinge, the colour of a yellow moon. It sweeps onto James and makes everything about him – every ridge, every curve, every space and hollow – look more delicate than usual. He's so perfect it seems almost engineered, as though all of his features were designed with the careful precision of a Greek sculptor. The sharp awareness of it runs like a current under Sirius' skin.

“No, you didn’t do anything.”

“Why’d you just shove me off like that, then? I thought you wanted to kiss me.”

Sirius shakes his head, biting down on the coppery taste that’s erupted inside his mouth. “I do, James, but – maybe we shouldn’t.”

James is studying him, eyes narrowed. “Why not?”

Sirius looks away. When he speaks his voice comes out dripping with shame. “I don’t think, after we stopped talking, that you would have ever wanted me to kiss you again.”

James raises his eyebrows. “You're joking.”

“Why the fuck would I be -"

“Because,” James lets out an exasperated huff, “I don’t give a shit about what I wanted after we stopped talking, okay?”

“Well, I do.”

“I see.” There’s a stubborn heat plastered against James’ eyes, making them shine with defiance. “Okay, then. If we’re going by what I would’ve wanted before I lost my memory,” he says, before Sirius can open his mouth again, “I might as well pack up all my things and go live somewhere else – and not tell you where it is, seeing as how I didn’t think it was fucking necessary to last time!”

Sirius’ fist curls, but he ignores the anger swimming through his fingers. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Oh, isn’t it?” James snaps. “I cut you off, didn’t I? And it must’ve been for a completely valid reason as well. Wasn’t it?”

The words lash down like they’re being flung at him with a whip, opening gashes on his skin.

“I can do it again, you know,” James is continuing, loud and unapologetic. “If what you want so badly is to go back to the way everything was before I lost my memory, then I will do exactly as you wish.”

Shit.

“Is that what you want, Sirius? Because I’ll do it, you know I will.”

“Are you being obnoxious on purpose?” Sirius demands irritably. “That’s obviously not what I want.”

“Then listen to me. Fuck whatever happened before, okay? I honestly, truly don’t care anymore.”

“But –“

“I don’t care,” James repeats, and gives Sirius’ wrist a sharp tug, shutting him up. “I’ll forget about asking questions if you stop letting it get in the way. Can’t we just – can’t we do that?”

He makes it sound so easy. Like Sirius can just flick his wand and have all these tender, ugly scars in his memory smoothed out into oblivion. Start indulging in the same lackadaisical indifference that James gets to enjoy.

Does he even deserve that?

“Just say yes, Sirius.”

“Yeah,” he exhales, quietly realizing that no, he doesn’t deserve it. He never will deserve it, because there’s no way to take back what he did and Lily is dead now. “Okay, James. Whatever you want.”

--

“What, no rum today?” is how Emmaline greets him when Sirius shows up ten minutes late to their designated spot across Gringotts the next morning.

“Morning to you too,” he says, sidling up beside her and leaning himself against the wall. “And no – we’re all finished, unfortunately.”

His body is aching all over. James had fallen asleep on his bed last night and Sirius could bring himself to neither sleep on the bed with him nor leave the room to take James’ bed instead. Eventually he’d settled for the floor, conjuring up a few extra blankets to make it more bearable, and listening to James’ quiet breathing had been so hypnotic that he was out within minutes.

“Pity,” Emmaline sighs. “Well, if we’re lucky today we might catch another abduction. We should probably have a plan, though, for when it happens.”

“You get the goblin, and I’ll take care of the Death Eater,” Sirius says. “Simple.”

Emmaline glances at him uncertainly. “By ‘take care of’, you don’t mean…”

“I’m not going to kill him, obviously,” Sirius rolls his eyes, but he's annoyed by the implication. “I do remember why I got kicked off last time, you know. He just needs to be sufficiently incapacitated for us to take him in for questioning.”

Emmaline nods, chewing her lower lip. “Did you hear, about the Prewetts?”

“No, has something happened to them?”

“They were found dead under the Dark Mark last night,” she says, very softly.

“Both of them?”

“Took five Death Eaters to do it, apparently.”

Sirius lets out a low, shuddering breath. The McKinnons, the Prewetts, Lily… with every new member of the Order dropping dead it gets harder and harder to wrap his head around the thought of it, to fully grasp that this is it, and they’re gone. It’s like a kick to the stomach – sharp, sudden, nauseating – a reminder that this is the foul, terrible reality of the war they’re caught in. That people are dying, good people, fighting against a megalomaniac who’s ravaging the world with his hateful crimes.

“Don’t you ever worry, Sirius,” Emmaline’s voice is small, trembling slightly, “that next time it’ll be one of us?”

“What would be the point?” he says, blinking the garish morning light out of his eyes. “All it does is make us more afraid of doing the right thing.”

“Yeah,” she sighs, though she sounds unconvinced. “You’re right.”

The rest of the morning crumbles away uneventfully, as they stand and watch for something to happen. Sustaining small talk with Emmaline proves to be nearly unbearable now that he’s sober, so they wait in silence instead.

Without anything more than the usual, dull crowd of people walking in and out of Gringotts to take up his attention, Sirius finds his thoughts returning constantly to James, to the conversation they’d had last night, to the fact that James had touched him and kissed him and it had been fucking incredible.

He should feel like it’s selfish for him to have enjoyed it so much, despite knowing that it never would have happened if James hadn’t lost his memory. To know that James had made it so clear, so absolutely crystal clear, that he would never want Sirius again – and for Sirius to let it happen anyway, shamelessly, almost like a part of him wants to say I knew you’d never stop, I knew you’d always come back in the end.

If anything, trying to pretend that this isn’t what he wants or that it isn’t what they should be doing is just a stupid and pointless way of prolonging the inevitable. The truth is that if he’d been given the choice just a day ago he might have have been able to resist, to say no. But all it had taken was for him to feel the press of James’ mouth on his own, just once, to know he’s never going to forget how much he wants it. How desperately and senselessly he needs James.

“Sirius.”

He looks up at the sound of Emmaline’s hushed voice, meaning to say what, but he sees it before she can reply.

The same tall, hooded figure, carrying a similarly large bag. Now that the bag is still and unmoving, it’s understandable how it hadn’t looked suspicious before – it just looks like a big cash withdrawal, and no one around the figure even bats an eye.

“We need to move closer,” he says to Emmaline. “But be quiet.”

“Here,” she says, handing him a hat to wear, which drops so low over his head that it partially hides his face. “In case he knows what you look like.”

Together, they step smoothly out from beneath the concealment charm.

“Walk normally,” he tells her, “we don’t want him noticing and running off again.”

It’s easy to blend with the usual afternoon crowd that’s crossing the street. The hooded man seems to be trying to seem nonchalant too, in no hurry as he takes confident, calm steps down from the entrance of the bank.

“Remember, you take the goblin,” he says, and she nods.

They stop walking a few steps to the side of the man, who’s continuing to walk down the stairs.

“Wands out,” she whispers. “And on the count of three.”

Slowly, they raise their wands together, and Sirius murmurs, “petrificus totalus” at the same time that Emmaline says, “accio goblin!”

The two events happen simultaneously; the hooded man goes stiff and collapses onto the ground, and the large bag he was carrying slides swiftly and stops at Emmaline’s feet.

“Okay,” she breathes out, staring at the bag uncertainly. “Uh, now what?”

“38 Southlands Road,” he says, without thinking. “We can question them there.”

Emmaline grabs onto the bag. “Quickly,” she says, glancing around at the people that have stopped walking to stare at the spectacle. “Let’s go.”

Sirius grabs the immobilized figure by the back of the robes and screws his eyes shut.

Pop.

They both appear in the garden of the house at the same time, holding on to their respective packages.

Emmaline tumbles forward with the weight of the bag. Cursing under her breath, she dusts herself off and looks around. “Where are we?”

Sirius glances at the small house in front of them. He’s never been here before, but he knows that it’s empty inside. A vague flicker of sadness rises inside him, but he crams it away.

“James and Lily’s old house,” he says.

Emmaline’s eyes widen, and she turns to stare at him. “Is this where… where they –“

“Yeah,” he exhales quietly.

He doesn’t know why this was the first place that came to mind. He’s only been told this address once before, by Remus in passing conversation sometime over the last couple of months, and he can’t think of why it’s even stuck in his memory at all, or how it had surfaced so effortlessly.

This is the place James had moved to after they stopped talking and felt that Sirius wasn’t deserving of an invitation to come see. Where James had lived for a year and a half, with a life that Sirius was not allowed into.

This is where Lily had been killed, where everything had changed over the course of a single night.

“Come on, no point standing around,” he says, biting down on the nauseous sensation in his throat.

They haul the goblin and the man into the house, through the hallway and into the dining room. Abandoning the frozen goblin in the bag, Emmaline helps Sirius prop the man onto one of the chairs, and then Sirius conjures a few metres of thick rope, waving his wand so that they wrap securely around him and hold him in place.

“Get his wand,” he tells Emmaline.

While she digs around his robes, Sirius removes the man’s hood and pushes up one of his long black sleeves, revealing the Dark Mark branded onto the skin.

“Death Eater,” she glances at him.

She extracts the Death Eater’s wand and snaps it easily in two, incinerating the remaining pieces with a hard, cold expression that Sirius finds unusual on her normally agreeable face. He finds himself liking her a little more.

“We don’t know anything about that goblin, so I’d tie him up too,” she says after a moment.

Sirius agrees, and does this while Emmaline conjures a Patronus to carry the message to both Remus and Moody. When they’re both finished, they turn to the tied-up hostages in front of them.

“Start with the goblin?” Emmaline suggests.

Sirius nods and performs the counter-curse on the goblin.

No sooner has the spell hit than its mouth is open, streaming a long, dirty list of vulgarities. “ – loathsome, traitorous thief, honourless criminal, disgrace –“

“Hey, you speak when I tell you to speak,” Sirius snaps, pointing his wand at the goblin.

“I will never agree to this heinous crime, this foul robbery –“

“I said shut up,” Sirius jabs his wand into the space between the goblin’s eyes, and it lets out a loud cry of pain. “We’re not trying to steal from the bank, stupid, we’ve obviously just rescued you.”

The goblin glares at him. “Is that why I am tied up like an animal? I was warned, I was told you’d torture me to try and get access to the riches I protect, but I will never –“

“Do we look like Death Eaters to you?” Emmaline scowls.

“All thieves are the same, all hideous from the greed in their hearts,” the goblin says coldly.

Emmaline points at the immobilised figure sitting on the chair next to the goblin. “That's your real captor right there. We just want to ask you some questions. And you're only tied up because we don’t know anything about you.”

The goblin glances at the Death Eater and immediately makes an ugly face. “Thief! Scoundrel, pathetic bandit! Repulsive plunderer –“

“Yes, yes, we get it,” Sirius interrupts irritably. “Why was he trying to kidnap you?”

“He asked for us to empty out the contents of several vaults for him – expensive, priceless contents. Spoils of war, he said – disgusting! I know many other goblins have given over, but I refused. I refused! I have spent my life guarding those vaults and no wizard, Dark or otherwise, will retrieve their contents unless I say so!”

“How much of the bank have they infiltrated?”

The goblin glances down, shame sliding into its features. “It is my deepest regret that we could not guard Gringotts like we did before.”

“Do you know where they keep the abducted goblins? Or what they’re planning to do once they’ve taken over?”

“I don’t know anything,” it says grievously. “None of us do.”

“Don’t fucking lie to me.”

“I don’t think he’s lying,” Emmaline turns to him. “How could he know what they want? He's not one of You-Know-Who's. It’s the Death Eater we have to talk to.”

Sirius looks between her and the goblin, then lets out a frustrated breath, realizing she’s right. “Alright. I’m going to try and get him to talk. You,” he says to the goblin, “just sit and be quiet until we figure out what to do with you.”

“Aren’t we waiting for Lupin and Moody?” 

“No,” Sirius says shortly, narrowing his eyes at the Death Eater.

“Sirius, just…” Emmaline clears her throat, lowering her voice so only Sirius can hear her. “Just remember we need him alive until they get here.”

“I know that.”

“Okay,” she nods. “Let’s do this.”

Sirius raises his wand and releases the Death Eater from the body bind. He eases smoothly back into motion, rolling his neck around and smiling lazily up at the two of them.

“It really gives you a cramp, being cursed like that out of nowhere,” he says. He sounds exactly like he looks, Sirius thinks – ugly and slimy. “Any chance you could get me a pillow?”

“You’re lucky I haven’t ripped your fucking throat out.”

“Ooh,” the Death Eater flashes him a nasty, maniacal grin. “Kinky, I like that. What’s your name, gorgeous?”

Emmaline grabs Sirius’ arm before he can throw a punch. “He’s just trying to piss you off, don’t give him what he wants.”

“Yeah, listen to your girlfriend,” the Death Eater drawls, tilting his head to the side. “She looks smarter than you. Nowhere near as pretty, though.”

Emmaline’s face reddens and she loosens her grip on Sirius’ arm. “Just because we need you alive doesn’t mean we’re not allowed to inflict pain on you,” she snarls at him. “Don’t push it.”

“With tits like that you can do anything you want with me, baby,” he bares his teeth at her.

Emmaline’s face screws up in anger, and she slaps the Death Eater hard across the face. His neck snaps to the side from the force of it, but he turns back up laughing gleefully.

“What do you want with Gringotts?” Sirius demands. “Where are you taking the goblins?”

“Bite me.”

“If you think I won't pluck your eyeballs out of your fucking head and -”

The Death Eater laughs again. “Won’t you at least take me to dinner first?”

“Crucio!”

“Sirius!” Emmaline shouts, as the Death Eater’s grin suddenly warps into a blood-curling, raw-throated scream. She stares at his writhing body in horror, hands over her mouth. “Sirius, stop!”

Sirius pretends not to hear her.

The Death Eater’s face is white, eyes cramped shut in agony. Sirius wills the curse through every limb in his body – and that’s the thing about the Cruciatus. It's fuelled by anger, by rage and hatred. No lovely, innocent-hearted person would be able to use it to inflict anything more than a few stinging pricks; but Sirius has had this feeling sitting inside him for two years, and he uses it now, uses it to drive the pain as viciously as he can into the Death Eater.

“Sirius!”

He only stops when he sees his eyes rolled upwards back into his head, his mouth bloody from biting into his tongue. “There’s more where that came from.”

“Right,” Emmaline glances nervously at Sirius and then back at the Death Eater. “Let’s start with your name, then.”

“Maltby,” he croaks. “Arnus Maltby.”

“Where have you been taking the goblins?”

Arnus spits out blood, making an ugly face at her. “It’ll take more than a torture curse to make me betray the Dark Lord, you bitch.”

“You sure about that?” Sirius steps forward.

“Oh, Sirius, don’t,” Emmaline says softly. “He’s just going to let you torture him until he passes out, and then he won’t be of any use to us.”

Sirius finds himself enjoying that idea anyway, but before he can say anything the door behind them bursts open, spraying rubble across the room.

“Sorry we’re late to the party,” Alastor Moody says grimly as he walks into the house beside Remus. They’re both dressed in long black cloaks, swishing against the dust lying on the floor. “What do we have here?”

Emmaline puts the Death Eater into another body bind, then turns to face them. “Arnus Maltby. He’s not a big talker.”

“Why is he bleeding?” Remus raises his eyebrows, and Sirius knows he’s not addressing anyone else in the room. “Did you hit him?”

“He bit his tongue. He was under the Cruciatus.”

“Oh, for –“ Remus inhales sharply, then lets out a long breath. “Sirius, you know that we shouldn’t –“

“Had him here for ten minutes and you’ve tortured him already?” Moody says, disgruntled. “Bit uncreative, aren’t you?”

“What, did you want me to stick knives into him like a Muggle?” Sirius snaps. “I did what I had to.”

“You clearly haven’t changed at all,” Moody glares at him. “I should’ve known you’d compromise us again."

“Sirius, come with me please,” Remus clears his throat loudly, eyes flicking between them. “Alastor, you’re the best at interrogation. Get started without us. Pads, come on.”

Anger still spiking deep in his belly, Sirius throws Moody a dirty look and follows Remus into the next room. “Is he being fucking serious?” he demands, once they’re alone. “I tortured him for two minutes.”

“I know,” Remus sighs. “He’s just – look, we’ve all been under a lot of pressure with the Prewetts gone, he’s still upset about the Death Eaters that you killed last –“

“It’s been two years!” Sirius shouts. “I wasn’t going to kill him, alright? I know what I’m doing.”

“I’m certain you do, Pads, but that’s not what I want to talk about,” Remus says, looking at him with lowered lids. “We’re in James and Lily’s old house.”

“So?”

Remus blinks at him. “Why did you bring them here?”

“It was the first place that popped into my head, why does that matter?”

“Look, are you sure that you’re okay?” Remus says. “You don’t have to lie to me. You know that.”

“I’m fine,” Sirius says, a little too harshly. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Remus shakes his head, but doesn't push it. “Alright. Whatever you say. Just – I think we’re going to be here all night, by the looks of things. Just try to keep your cool, okay?”

“All night? What about James?”

“What about him?”

“Well, he’s not going to just sit at home all night if I don’t show up, is he? He’ll go out looking for me.”

“James is an adult,” Remus states. “I’m sure he can be left unattended for one night.”

“No, he can’t,” Sirius scowls. He doesn’t want to say that he’s not even that concerned about James leaving the flat, he just wants to talk to him. “I need to let him know.”

Remus gazes at him for a long moment, then shrugs. “Okay. You can use Floo powder to talk to him, I’m sure there’s some left near the fireplace there. Make it quick, though. We have work to do, okay?”

Sirius nods and Remus leaves him to it. It doesn’t take long to find the Floo powder and toss a handful of it into the empty fireplace, where the green flames rise up almost immediately. Sirius shuts his eyes and stick his head right into the centre of the heat, announcing the address.

It’s only a moment or two until his head pops into his own flat. He notices with pleasure that James is already sitting at the table they catch up at every evening, restocked with a brand new bottle of firewhiskey and two glasses in front of him. James glances up in surprise when the flames come to life in the fireplace, and then he’s staring unsurely right at Sirius.

“Padfoot? What are you doing there?”

“Floo powder, I’ve only got a few minutes. Listen, I’ve –“

“Floo powder? What’s that? Are you really here?” James gets up and walks over, kneeling down in front of the fireplace. He reaches out, then starts rapping Sirius on the top of his head with his knuckles.

“Ow – yes, I’m really here, you bellend, but it’s just my head,” Sirius tries to dodge, but his fireplace is small and there isn’t really much space to avoid James’ hand. “Stop – James, it’s just a way to communicate, I can’t talk for long.”

“Where are you? This is bizarre,” James is grinning, the light glinting off his glasses. “Where’s the rest of your body? D’you think I’d be able to pull you out of there?”

The smile on his face softens the frustration bubbling inside Sirius’ stomach. He feels himself relaxing a bit, taking the time to just look at James, to allow the warmth at the sight of him to diffuse slowly through his body.

James’ mouth lifts up a little more when he sees Sirius staring. “What?”

“Nothing,” Sirius says, but he’s smiling, realising how much he’s wanted to see him all day. “Hi.”

Interrogating the Death Eater or finding out about Gringotts doesn’t seem nearly as urgent anymore, now that he’s here talking to James.

“Hi, you weirdo,” James laughs, and it’s so beautiful Sirius feels his chest squeeze. “Would you like me to get you a drink? Can you even drink from this thing?”

“I can drink, but I don’t really think I’ve got time –“ he sighs and cuts himself off when he sees that James is already up and going back to the table to pour two glasses. “James, honestly –“

“Sirius, honestly,” James mocks, walking back over and setting the glasses down. “Do I have to pour it into your mouth for you?”

“Well, I’ve got no hands, have I?”

James starts laughing again and the way the sound flares through Sirius’ body is so quick, so startling and pleasant. “Alright, say ahhh.”

Sirius does, and James gently tips the firewhiskey into his mouth. His eyes stay locked onto Sirius' the entire time, the bright brown burning at him beneath dark lashes. Despite the alcohol pouring down his throat, Sirius realizes he’s never felt more present, more solid, than when James looks at him like that.

“You’ve got a dribble – here,” James smiles, and lightly wipes a thumb over Sirius’ mouth, the rest of his hand cupping his chin.

Sirius doesn’t even feel like he can speak. All he wants to do is climb out of the fireplace and right onto James.

James’ thumb lingers for a few moments on Sirius’ mouth, pressing down on his lower lip, and he’s still gazing at Sirius intently.

“Prongs,” Sirius says, his voice almost too quiet, and James blinks, abruptly pulling his hand back.

“Sorry,” he grins, picking up his own glass and swallowing it all in one gulp. “So what’s all this? Where are you, anyway?”

“Uh, I’m at your house,” Sirius says. “Your old house.”

“Oh,” James frowns, confused. “What are you doing there?”

“We, uh,” Sirius tries to choose his words carefully, to make them sound as unexciting as possible, “we stopped a Death Eater while he was trying to take a goblin, and –“

“You what?” James yells. “Another goblin abduction? And you caught them?”

“Well, yeah, and we’ve brought them to your old house for questioning,” Sirius says. “I just wanted to tell you that we’re probably going to be here all night, so don’t – don’t wait up for me.”

“I’m not waiting up for you, are you completely fucking mental?”

Sirius opens his mouth, unsure of what to say.

“Pads, I swear to god, if you don’t Apparate yourself over here right now and take me there with you, I will literally –“

“No,” Sirius snaps. “Don’t be an idiot. I can’t bring you here, it’s too dangerous.”

“Of course you can! I’m done with work for today anyway, what’s the problem?”

“It’s a Death Eater, James, stop it.”

James is wringing his hands, worked up onto his feet in his excitement. “I’m not sitting this one out, Pads! Come back right now and bring me with you.”

“No, Remus will skin me alive –“

“Remus is there too?” James exclaims.

“Remus is a trained member of the Order,” Sirius points out, “and you are not.”

“Fuck off, Sirius, I know how to take care of myself,” James says hotly. “If you don’t let me come along –“

“Ouch, wait, something just poked me in the back,” Sirius grunts, “give me a moment.”

“IF YOU’RE NOT BACK HERE IN FIVE MINUTES I’M COMING OUT TO FIND YOU!”

Sirius pulls his head back, re-emerging onto the rest of his body in James’ old house. “What?” he asks irritably, when he sees that it was Remus who poked him. “I was talking to James.”

“What was taking so long? I thought you were just telling him you’re not going to be home tonight.”

“I tried,” Sirius shrugs, “he’s not having it. He wants me to bring him too.”

“What, is he insane? There is a Death Eater in this house.”

“That’s what I said, but he won’t listen, and I know James – he won’t give up."

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Remus groans, rubbing at his eyelids. “Look, we don’t have time for this. Just go and get him.”

“You want me to bring him here?”

“It’s James, he’ll be able to look after himself, and there’s four members of the Order here anyway. He’ll be fine. Just hurry up and get him. Go! And don’t waste any more time!”

Pop.

He lands in front of his apartment, and he only gets two seconds to fumble with the lock before the door swings open and James is standing right in front of him, already cloaked-up and ready to go.

“You came! I knew you would!” he says brightly, throwing his arms around Sirius.

“Hey, hey,” Sirius stumbles back slightly with the weight, but his entire body explodes in a flurry of blazing warmth. “Yeah, ‘course I came.”

James steps forward, even closer, so that their noses are almost touching. “Hey,” he says softly, and Sirius can feel the air leaving his mouth as he speaks. “I know that there’s a goblin abduction, and a Death Eater, and that we don’t have much time. But I just wanted to say that –“

“James,” Sirius interrupts, flushing, because he already knows where this is going.

“No, listen to me,” James says. “I just want you to know I meant what I said yesterday, okay? About forgetting whatever’s happened with us before. I just want to focus on what we can do now. And when I say I want to do everything with you, I mean literally everything – no matter what it is. Because you’re my best friend. Okay?”

“Okay,” Sirius breathes, highly aware of the heat splashing across his face, of James’ arms still around him.

I love you. I’m so fucking in love with you.

“Aren’t you going to say it back?” James demands, looking annoyed.

“Say what back?”

“That I’m your best friend.”

“What are you, five?” Sirius snorts. “You know you are.”

“Good,” James says.                

There’s a moment of silence, and then –

They move at the same time, so that their noses clash and James lets out a little laugh, and then they’re kissing – just like that, so easily – James’ lips soft and mellow on his own, and for five entire seconds Sirius can’t think of anything but how fucking nice it is, what he would give to just stay here forever.

“Alright,” James is smiling when he pulls back. “Let’s go fuck up a Death Eater.”

Sirius wants to feel irked that James thinks all this is some type of game, but his energy is contagious and Sirius can’t help but be excited. He feels fearless next to him, fearless and strong and better than anyone who would try and cross them.

“Grab on, then,” he holds an arm out, and James takes hold of it.

Pop.

They arrive at the house together, James’ fingers still wrapped tightly around Sirius’ forearm.

“Oh, wow,” James says, letting go and looking around at the room they’ve Apparated into. “We should move here instead, it’s much nicer than your flat.”

“There you are!” an anxious-sounding Remus hurries into the room. “It’s about time. Come on, we’re still questioning Maltby.”

“What kind of name is Maltby?” James wrinkles his nose.

“Look, James – before we go,” Sirius says, noticing the tense expression on Remus’ face. “Be careful, okay? We’ll do what we can to keep you safe, but don’t – don’t do anything stupid or try to take him on alone – you don't have the training to –“

“You don't have to keep saying that like I'm some kind of idiot,” James huffs, irritated. "I heard you the first time."

Remus sighs. “Okay, then. Let’s go.”

They walk into the next room together, where Maltby is hidden from view behind Alastor and Emmaline, who both have their wands held up.

“We’ve been trying to interrogate him about the goblins,” Sirius murmurs to James, as Emmaline turns around to look at them.

But James doesn’t reply.

He’s staring, pale-faced and frozen, right at Arnus Maltby.

From under the blood splattered across his face, Arnus’s features morph into a horrid smile, laughing loudly when his eyes land on James.

“What’s the matter, Potter? You know, I always did tell Vinead that his memory charms were shit.”

“You fucking –“

“JAMES!” Sirius shouts, instinctively diving forward to grab onto James and stop him from charging directly at Arnus. “James, what did I just fucking say –“

“It’s him, Pads,” James is breathing heavily, his eyes still trapped on the Death Eater. His shoulders are trembling with rage. “He’s the one who killed Lily.”

--

Chapter Text

Silence drops like a stone, burying the room in its depth.

Sirius’ brain feels like a cauldron sloshing over with volatile liquid, except that the liquid is fury and it’s so hot that it’s melting through the barriers of his body. He’s vaguely aware of the blinding heat flashing through his skull, but it’s not until he feels Remus restraining him by the arms that he realizes he’s been aiming directly at Arnus Maltby’s throat.

“Padfoot,” Remus hisses, tugging him backwards with a sharp yank. “Stop –“

“Let me fucking go,” Sirius snarls. The shock has vapourized away, leaving nothing but unfettered, murderous violence in its place – now amassing inside him like a volcano minutes from eruption.

“Padfoot?” Arnus laughs again, a dirty and muculent noise. “You’re Padfoot? The Padfoot that Potter was crying for when we killed his Mudblood girlfriend?”

“She was my fiancée, you rotten piece of shit!” James shouts, struggling against the iron grip Moody has on his arm. “I’m going to kill you – I’m going to fucking –“

“Padfoot, they’ve killed her,” Arnus whines in a high-pitched voice, sneering. “She was all I had and they’ve killed her, Padfoot, wahhhh. You sounded like a little girl.”

“Silencio!” Moody snaps, and Arnus stops talking, his mouth forming soundless, indignant words. “Right. Black and Potter, in the other room. Vance, watch the scum.”

Remus and Moody pull James and Sirius into the next room, with James resisting belligerently and Sirius, slack in shock again, barely able to stand on his feet.

“I’m taking both of you off this interrogation,” Moody grunts once they’ve both been released. “Too closely involved. It won’t do us any favours.”

Sirius steps back, livid. “What the fuck?“

“He’s the reason Lily is dead!” James shouts.

“Let me,” Remus says softly, glancing at Moody. “Go ahead with the interrogation.”

“I’m not changing my mind,” Moody says, looking sternly between them. “Both of you are off. That’s an order.” With that, he turns around and stalks back into the room.

“Remus, you can’t possibly – that Death Eater –“

“I know what he did,” Remus clears his throat. “I know.”

“How can you tell me to just fucking turn around and go home and ignore the fact that the man who ruined my life is sitting here, in my old fucking house?”

“All he’s doing is winding you up and making it difficult for us to do our job,” Remus crosses his arms. “Moody’s right. The two of you are too closely involved in this.”

“And you’re not?” Sirius glares at him, seething. “She was your friend too.”

“You know what I mean,” Remus sighs, looking straight at Sirius. There’s a pained, desperate look on his face. “Take him home. Please, Sirius.”

“I’m not taking him anywhere. That’s not fair.”

“Take him home,” Remus says again. “Just –“ he bites his lips and lowers his voice to a murmur, so hushed that it’s almost inaudible, “remember fifth year.”

It’s the dark tone etched underneath his words that finally strikes a chord inside Sirius and compels him to agree, despite wanting to do nothing less in the entire world. Remus’ eyes are firm but disturbed, and they look uncannily sombre.

“Alright,” Sirius says quietly, holding his arm out to James. “Come on.”

James stares at him, mouth falling open.

“Come on.”

“No,” James says resolutely, his lips setting into a hard line. “No, Pads, what the fuck – you’re supposed to have my back, you said you would.”

“I know what I said,” Sirius says through grit teeth. “And I do.”

James splutters. “How is taking me home having my back?”

“James,” Sirius swallows the sharp-edged lump in his throat, with difficulty. “Trust me, okay? I’m not asking for anything else.”

The brilliant, blazing light in James’ eyes extinguishes like a candle being snuffed out, and it makes Sirius’ heart shrivel up inside his chest. He takes a prolonged breath and expels it tiredly. “Okay. Fine.”

He glances at Remus, and Remus nods.

“I’m sorry,” Sirius whispers.

James shrugs, but his face is hard and impassive. He takes hold of Sirius’ arm with more force than necessary, staring into the ground.

Pop.

The second they arrive at the flat, James lets go and starts striding toward his room.

“James,” Sirius groans, exasperated. “Don’t –“

The door slams shut.

What a fucking child. Sirius kicks the sofa, hissing slightly at the resulting throb in his foot. What is James trying to achieve, throwing tantrums and blaming Sirius for things that he has no control over? Did he expect Sirius disobey a direct order from Moody, and put even more of a strain on the Order?

Of course he’s gone and locked himself up in his room, of course he has to make this ten times more difficult than it genuinely needs to be, and of course now it’s Sirius’ job to pacify and placate and babysit him as usual.

It’s not like James to be the less level-headed of the two of them in any situation – although Sirius will admit that this is a situation unlike any that they’ve been in before. And – okay, it is selfish to throw his own concerns onto this towering tower of shit that James is already going through, but for a while now Sirius’ thoughts have been fixated on what the Death Eater has said about the night James lost his memory.

Can it really be true, that James had cried for him, that even after a year and a half of fury and stone-cold silence, that James had thought about him?

It should seem insignificant now that they’re friends again. But it’s not – the thought is enough to close up his throat, making everything beneath it feel hollow. Does it change anything? That for just a moment, even if it was a moment of desperation and anguish, the old James had missed Sirius?

What if he hadn’t lost his memory that night? Would James have come to find Sirius eventually? Would the grief of being attacked in his own home and Lily being killed have driven him back to Sirius’ flat for solace, so much so that even after eighteen months of anger James would need his best friend again?

It seems almost too bizarre to hope for, too ridiculous, and yet… hadn’t everything changed that night? Hadn’t that one tragic assault somehow led to what is now more than anything Sirius had the nerve to ask for – James moving in with him again, James wanting to spend every minute of the day with him, James kissing him?

He’s not one to put too much faith in the concept of fate, having had the one thing that he was certain he was meant for ripped away from him, but for once it doesn’t seem like a delusion to consider that one way or another this is what was always going to happen.

That somehow, whether or not James had lost his memory that night, they would still find themselves back here together – like they should have been the whole time. 

If even the old, terrifyingly enraged James would have been able to find it in him to see past what had happened two years ago – does it not make sense that this James, the one who doesn’t remember anything, might too? Doesn’t it follow that the right thing to do is tell him anyway?

The sound of James’ bedroom door clicking open makes Sirius look up abruptly.

James is coming out of his room, evidently ignoring Sirius and heading straight for the liquor cabinet.

“You’re drinking without me?” Sirius raises his eyebrows, watching him.

James scowls, reaching for an unopened bottle of gin. “You do plenty of things without considering me first.”

“James, don’t be like that,” Sirius sighs. “I was following orders.”

“I could remember it,” James says quietly. He twists the bottle cap off and takes a swig straight out of it. “I remembered what happened that night as soon as I saw his face. What they did to us, what they did to Lily…”

There’s a short, staccato silence.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No,” James shuts his eyes for a moment, grimacing. “I don’t want to talk about it, alright, because you clearly don’t give a flying fuck about –“

“He's going to pay for what he’s done,” Sirius cuts him off. “I swear to you that we'll make him pay.”

James looks up, unsmiling. “How?”

An image of gushing, torrential blood appears briefly in his mind. “You said you’d trust me. I need you to keep your word, and I’ll keep mine.”

James looks at him without speaking for a minute. And then he rubs his face with one hand and sits down at the dining table. “Okay. I trust you.”

You mean more than anything to me.

I would die for you.

I would kill for you.

“Here,” Sirius waves his wand, conjuring two glasses and sitting down with James.

James’ mouth flickers slightly as he fills them up. “Thanks.”

They both drink quietly for a few moments. And then –  “What did it feel like?” Sirius asks. “Remembering?”

“Painful,” James looks away. “They tortured us, I could feel how it felt, I could hear Lily screaming – she was screaming and crying, begging me to make them stop – and I couldn’t… they made me watch her die, and I couldn’t do anything – “ he stops suddenly, taking a big gulp from the glass. “I don’t remember much about her, but no one – nobody deserves to die like that.”

The breath washing into Sirius’ lungs feels bitter and dry. James looks so broken, so lost, stuck inside a turbulent past he doesn’t even know anything about.

“They were laughing when they killed her,” James whispers, pinching the edge of his nose. “She was in so much pain, and they enjoyed it.”

Something inside Sirius splits open, and the blood rushing through his veins suddenly feels too hot, boiling up with a ruthless need to make this right. For James, and for Lily, and for everyone who’d lost her, everyone who'd loved her. 

“I thought it would help me make sense of things, remembering what happened, but…” James shakes his head, his voice fragmenting. “It doesn’t. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Sirius pours himself a new glass and downs it in one go. Gentle, kind Lily. Gone. He’ll never get to say sorry now; he'll never get the chance to undo his stupid, selfish actions. It’s one thing to have James beside him again – it’s a whole other to live with his own cruelty without ever making amends with her.

“I wish there was something I could have done.”

James is staring blankly at the wall. The gin lies abandoned in front of him on the table. “There’s nothing anyone can do now, except make sure he’s punished.”

“He will be, as soon as Moody has the intelligence that he needs for the Order.”

"Yeah." James shrugs, dismal. “Whenever that happens to be.”

“James, I know it’s difficult, but –“

“But nothing,” James interrupts, sounding irritated. “I know they need him alive. I know winning the war is more important than me getting my revenge.”

“It's only until –“

“Yeah, I get it,” he says again, pulling away and getting to his feet. “I want to go to bed."

"Are you going to be okay?" The question sounds stupid and unnecessary as soon as Sirius asks it. Of course he isn't going to be fucking okay.

“I think I need to be alone for a bit," he says. "I'm just a little tired – of everything."

“I know. Go get some rest. I'll see you in the morning."

James offers him a vague smile just before he turns to go; but it's fractured, flimsy, empty as a starless sky.

--

He arrives at the house several hours after midnight, encroached in darkness and silence.

The journey here had been easy once James fell asleep. It’s better this way, Sirius thinks. James has enough on his plate, he doesn’t need this one more thing. And after hours of tossing and turning over in bed, trying to sleep had proven futile. Thoughts of Lily had kept invading his mind, thoughts of what he himself has done, and thoughts about how there is really only one way to do right by her now.

This has always been the plan, anyway. He had only needed to find a moment alone with the captive Death Eater. Does James truly believe that Sirius will not rip Maltby's throat out, that he won't make him beg for mercy, to regret the day he ever laid a finger on James? Does James truly think Sirius is capable of being anything but violent and vindictive now that they know who did this to him? Sirius scoffs. Have a little faith, James.

He starts walking soundlessly toward the front door, taking large purposeful steps.

The noise of a twig snapping behind him makes him jump, and he immediately swivels around with his wand held out.

It’s Remus. Pale, skin stretched a little bit taut over the bones on his face.

“I knew you’d show up back here,” he says.

Sirius exhales. “Yeah, well, I’m really not in the mood to argue with you.“

“I’m not arguing,” Remus shrugs. He nods toward the house. “Couldn’t sleep?”

“No,” Sirius looks down morosely. “I just keep thinking about what he did.”

“Me too.”

“I know that it’s going to cost us intelligence, but –“

“Fuck the intelligence,” Remus tells him. “Moody says Maltby is nowhere close to talking anyway. And every day that that vermin gets to live, while Lily lies in a grave…”

“But you said –“

“I know what I said,” Remus cuts him off. “I needed Moody to trust me. He knew we were all close to Lily and I didn’t want him to take me off as well. He let me stay overnight to guard Maltby.”

“You planned this?”

“Of course I did. Someone had to.”

Sirius stares at him in amazement, a rush of warm, blinding pride filling his chest. “You're fucking incredible. So much cleverer than James and me.”

"No, just a tad more rational," Remus smiles softly. “Remember what I said? About fifth year?”

“Yeah, with Snape,” Sirius glances up at the sky, where the full, swollen moon is hidden behind a ribbon of clouds. “Have you taken the potion?”

Remus nods. “Let’s do this."

A few moments pass by as they cast their gaze upwards, watching the clouds slide away from the moon to reveal the perfectly round sphere in all its luminescence. Its crystalline light seems to bend downwards from the sky and touch every inch of the neighbourhood.

Sirius waits for several more seconds. And then –

A long, haunted howl sounds beside him, reverberating through the night.

On cue, Sirius feels his body begin to shift and morph too.

For James. For Lily.

And together, bristling, they pad steadily towards the unlit house: werewolf and dog, side by side, hungry for blood.

--

Chapter Text

In the morning, Sirius’ head feels clearer than it has in months.

He returns home just as the gentle heat of dawn starts seeping into the sapphire sky. The flat is quiet, which can only mean that James is still sound asleep. Good. Sirius doesn’t know what excuse he could possibly come up with for disappearing in the middle of the night anyway – and besides, lying to James feels like something he has to strain against his very nature to accomplish – like using his wand with the wrong hand, or taking Muggle transport.

He slips back inside and heads straight for the shower. Steaming hot water rains noisily onto his skin, and he watches the red-brown swirls of bloody muck wash away and disappear into the drain, carrying the violence of the night along with it.

It had been quick, in the end – neither him nor Remus had the patience to draw it out for long, but the screaming, the pleas for mercy, and the way Arnus’ blood had spurted out, hot against Sirius’ fangs…

It’s what he deserved.

Once he’s clean and dry, he dumps the dirty robes into a nondescript bag and down into the bottomless bin that James conjured up (after the countless arguments they’d been having on whose turn it was to take the rubbish out). The sun has fully risen by now, but James still hasn’t emerged from his room.

Sirius briefly considers going back to bed, but the thought seems pointless as soon as it appears in his head. After an uncertain look at the dwindling options available in the pantry (they definitely need to go food shopping soon), he decides eating is off the table as well. Is it too early to drink? Of course it’s too early to drink, it’s seven in the bloody morning. Drinking alone has lost its old appeal anyway, now that he’s used to doing it with James.

Several minutes of pacing around the living room later, he finally elects to go stand outside James’ closed bedroom door, for lack of anything else to do. It’s unfathomable to him now, how he managed to spend so many days in complete, unbroken solitude before James moved in. How he’d been content to shut himself inside alone and not speak to a single living soul for weeks on end. What did he even do, day after day after day? How did he manage to entertain himself? He can’t think of a single enjoyable activity now that doesn’t involve James.

He raises his knuckles and raps on the door, unnecessarily, because he knows James won’t hear it if he’s still asleep. The silence that follows confirms this, so Sirius hesitantly turns the knob and grins when he sees that it’s not locked.

He’s been in James’ room before, obviously, but not often. They’re both fond of the dining table near the living room (mainly because of its proximity to the liquor cabinet) and normally only retire to their bedrooms when they get into fights or go to sleep. Sirius pushes the door open and steps inside, taking a look around the place.

James hasn’t changed what used to be a spare, empty guestroom much, except to fill it with his possessions, yet the room already seems to reflect its owner: chaotic, glowing with pride and warmth. There are ridiculous posters of him and Sirius, blown up larger than life and smiling awkwardly, that James insisted on immortalizing on his wall the day after he moved in – “the beginning of an era, Pads” – alongside half-open spellbooks filled with studious scrawls and a growing collection of merchandise of his favourite Quidditch team. It’s all so undeniably, unapologetically James that Sirius can’t help but smile when he enters.

And then he looks at the bed, and his chest suddenly feels too small to contain the swelling heart within it. James is a stomach-sleeper, a bad habit Sirius used to chide him about at Hogwarts, but one side of his face is turned toward Sirius, the other side pressed into the pillow. As always, he looks younger without his glasses on, and his entire body from the neck down is bundled up in blankets, like a baby.

Fuck.

It’s so stupidly, impossibly unfair how just the sight of James kindles such a dizzying feeling in Sirius. It doesn’t make sense, it never has. It seems like all James has to do is exist to infect Sirius with this relentless devotion that he still struggles to understand. Years and years have passed since the moment he first became aware of how he felt for James – but instead of diminishing, the feeling has only escalated and deepened over time; even when it was excruciating to do so, even when it had nearly killed him – Sirius realizes now that he doesn’t actually know how not to love James.

James mumbles something incoherent and shifts slightly on the bed, knocking Sirius out of his thoughts, and suddenly he’s aware that he’s here, he’s in James’ room again. “Hey,” he says, shaking James’ shoulder gently. “Wake up, you sloth.”

“Bugger off, Pads,” James groans and rolls over, huddling under the blanket. “I don’t want to go to work today.”

“I know that,” Sirius says, pleased that he’d already thought of this. “I told Remus we’re both taking the day off.”

“Both of us?”

“Did you think I’d just let you sit around at home by yourself?”

James’ head reappears from under the blanket. He rubs at his eyes with the back of his hand, squinting at Sirius. “And what, the Order’s just agreed to that?”

“Given your circumstances, they’d kind of be dicks not to.”

James lets out an annoyed huff. “I don’t need anyone feeling sorry for me.”

“Nobody’s feeling sorry for you,” Sirius smiles slightly, “not even me. Now get up, I’m not letting you stay in bed all day.”

“I take that back, I want you to feel tremendously sorry for me.”

“Nope,” Sirius pushes the blanket off James, tugging him by the arms and dragging him into a sitting-up position. “I’ve got big plans for our day off.”

“What plans?”

“I’m taking you to St. Mungo’s.”

“The hospital? Why?”

“I think it would be a good idea to get a Healer’s opinion on the way you’ve been remembering things lately. They told us that you’d lost your memory for good, which you clearly haven’t.”

James considers this and nods. It occurs to Sirius, in the few moments of casual silence that follow, that when James is sitting against the white backdrop of his bedsheets like this, with the sunlight seeping over his skin, glinting against his eyes and turning the soft brown to burnished gold – he looks like he’s in a painting, something resplendent, something priceless. Every bone inside Sirius’ body aches to touch him, to pin James’ body down with his own and taste the feverish heat of James’ mouth.

"How do you feel today?" 

James reaches toward the bedside table for his glasses. "Better," he puts them on, then glances across at Sirius and grins. "Now that you're in my bed, I mean."

A self-conscious flush floods into Sirius' face, but he rolls his eyes. "Yeah, well, try not to wet your pants over it."

"Too late," James laughs and knocks his shoulder. When he moves sideways to give Sirius more space, Sirius finds himself shifting closer, drawn to him like a magnet. “You look like you haven’t slept."

He shrugs. "I didn't."

James hesitates – very briefly – and then brushes the pads of his fingertips, like a kiss, just above Sirius’ cheekbone. Like he wants to make sure that it’s okay, as if this would ever not be okay. “You’ve got dark circles, here. Were you having nightmares?”

Sirius says nothing, wanting neither to lie nor tell the truth. He feels like James’ touch has turned him to stone; he doesn’t want to move, doesn’t want to do anything at all that might shatter this delicate moment.

James smiles, and it irradiates his whole face. “I wonder what kind of terrible things scare Sirius Black,” he says, eyes twinkling. He’s leaning forward as he speaks, a movement that would appear almost imperceptible, if not for how closely Sirius is watching him. “Dragons, maybe, anyone would be stupid not to be scared of them. Vampires? Giants? Maybe it’s something ridiculous, something small – are you afraid of spiders? There’s no shame in it, you know, arachnophobia’s one of the most common fears in the world.”

“If I were afraid of spiders I wouldn’t have rescued you from that big hairy thing in the kitchen last week,” Sirius points out. “You were the one who jumped up on the table screaming your head off.”

“I wasn't screaming, wanker, I was just startled. That thing was a monstrosity and you know it,” James is so close now that Sirius can see every fleck of colour in his eyes, can breathe in the faint, minty scent of his skin. “What are you afraid of, then? If you are of anything, that is.”

“Of course I am,” Sirius says, and he loves the way this makes James’ eyes gleam, like a child being offered a forbidden treat, or being let in on an important secret.

“Go on,” James says, voice hushed and sounding awed. “Tell me, what is it?”

“Okay,” Sirius warns him gravely, “but if you laugh -”

“I won’t.”

“I mean it, it’s a very traumatic subject for me.”

“Promise,” James is grinning now, and it’s growing difficult for Sirius to keep drawing his attention away from that mouth.

“I am afraid,” Sirius whispers, and James moves even closer to hear, so that their noses are almost touching, “… of dolls.”

“Dolls?” James repeats, after a pause, his eyebrows knitting in confusion. “Like voodoo dolls? Or like little girl dolls?”

“All of them.”

“Why?”

Sirius hesitates. “It’s – well, it’s stupid, really.”

James’ face is excited and eager, and when he speaks Sirius can feel the hot air leaving his mouth. “I want to know.”

“Alright. When I was younger, long before I'd even started school, my mother had this hideous doll that she kept shut away in one of the cupboards at home. It was almost as big as a human child, had a horrible smile painted on its face, and long black hair – the whole works. It even had its own raggedy, bloodstained dress."

"So you're saying it looked just like your mother, then."

Sirius snorts. "Yeah, it kind of did, actually. And whenever Regulus and I misbehaved, if she was in a particularly foul mood, she’d bring this doll out and sit it on a chair and lock us in a room with it. And as soon as she closed the door, the fucking thing would spring to life and start shrieking about what bad children we were, how it was going to punish us. It would even jump up and start chasing us around the room sometimes – well, you can imagine what that was like when we were kids. It scared the living shit out of both of us.”

“Was the doll haunted?”

“No,” Sirius laughs, and it comes out sounding only a little bitter, to his credit. “No, that was just my mother’s way of carrying out justice in our household. It was a spell, bewitching inanimate objects to make them do whatever she wanted. I know that now, of course, but it still makes me uncomfortable to be around dolls. I don't think I ever really got over that. Just some residual childhood terror, I suppose.

“Well, yeah,” James says, and Sirius is surprised to see that there’s no hint of laughter, no mockery on his face, the way he’d expected – there’s nothing there but a fierce, firm tenderness. “It’s not stupid, by the way. You shouldn’t think that it is.”

Fuck, this is too much – James' unbearable proximity to him, how he still looks soft with traces of sleep in his eyes, and how good it feels for Sirius to unpack these private, intimate, buried-away pieces of himself, showing them to James, having them accepted so quickly, and without hesitation…

Even if Sirius wanted to, he knows he’d be powerless to stop the way his body pushes itself onto James, his mouth moving quick and hungry until it finds James’ lips. And nothing, nothing that Sirius has ever felt feels as good as this does, as James kissing him back, the way his fingers scrabble and get caught in Sirius' hair. The way he drags him in closer, closer, shutting every bit of space between them, so close that Sirius can't tell how much of them their skins are keeping apart anymore; he feels like he's just being poured right into James, or maybe James is pouring into him – no longer their separate, distinct selves, just being corralled into each other, until they've become one, until they're the same.

James must know how much Sirius wants him, it must be so obvious – his hand slides under Sirius’ robes, tender against the dazed heat of his body; and even this is enough, Sirius thinks, even if this is all he ever gets it would be fucking enough, because it’s James who's touching him, who's kissing him like he never wants to stop –

Suddenly, as though a current of lightning has passed through him, James jolts and pulls away.

“What?” Sirius hears his own voice spilling out high and stupidly needy. “What is it?”

James shakes his head and blinks. A sweeping arc of colour has lent his face a light coral flush.  “Nothing. Forget it – I said I wouldn’t ask you about the past anymore.”

A piece of Sirius' heart chips off and sinks to the depths of his stomach. “Did you just remember something?”

“Yeah, but I said –“

“Tell me what it was.”

"I don't want to bring it up if it's just going to –"

Sirius is starting to feel smothered by his own panic. It’s a reminder of how fragile this little game he’s playing with James is, how reckless. How at any moment now something could materialize in James’ memory and make him leave again. “James, tell me.”

James frowns, puzzled at his agitation. “I just – I got this feeling, I don’t know… I said I wouldn’t ask any more questions, but – well, it wasn’t just something we did for fun, was it? I mean, it wasn’t just… messing around, like I’d thought.”

Sirius feels like the air has suddenly become too thick to breathe, collecting like resin in his lungs.

“I don’t want to push it, Pads, you know I don’t – so tell me to shut up if you want to, at any point,” James says, watching him like he’s afraid Sirius is going to bite, “but I just got this feeling, and it was so strong, and so clear – it was like –“

“Like what?”

In the short silence that follows, Sirius thinks about James asking him what are you afraid of? And he knows that this is it, that more than dolls, more than anything, this is what he’s afraid of – this very moment right here, feeling like they’re on the brink of everything they've got together being wrecked all over again.

But there's no anger on James' face, no shadow of the cold, terrifying revulsion Sirius had found in his eyes two years ago. Instead, it’s a look of wonder, of warmth, one which Sirius finds himself sinking into like a pool of sunlight.

“Is it a bit too early for me to say that I love you, when I feel like I’ve loved you for years?”

Sirius is dimly aware that his heart must be pounding – the blood is hot as it rushes all over him, but he can hardly feel it, as though it’s beating from outside of his body.

Flustered blotches of red flare up under James' cheeks when Sirius doesn’t respond. “Look, forget I said anything –“

“No, it's not too early,” Sirius breathes, and he wants to laugh, or maybe cry, because it’s so ridiculous that James should be embarrassed by admitting this – and because it’s such a relief, such a beautiful fucking relief to hear him say those words again. He has no idea how his body is even able to contain the magnitude of emotion that's whirling around in it; he’s so in love right now that it should just be burning right through his skin.

“No?” James smiles weakly at him. “Thank fuck for that.”

“I should’ve told you,” Sirius murmurs. “I should've told you about us.”

“What would’ve been the point if I couldn't remember it?” James shrugs. “And I was starting to guess myself, anyway. It probably wasn't normal how quickly I went from just fancying you to, well, feeling the way I felt. I had some suspicions that maybe I was remembering emotions from before.”

“It doesn’t have to change anything between us. I know that everything's different now, so –“

“If changing anything means I get to do this more often,” James’ hands are on his face again, sentences coming out punctured with kisses, like an excited puppy, “then I’m all for it.”

Sirius laughs – a genuine, loud laugh – and he’s suddenly so full of light that he doesn’t feel like himself, doesn’t feel anything like the hardened, bleeding shell of himself he’d become two years ago. He feels, for the first time after all those months like the real Sirius, the one he’d been when he’d had James, during the best and brightest years of his life.

And it doesn’t erase anything that happened, of course, it doesn’t take away the chance that James might remember what had gone wrong – but sitting here with James holding him, like this, he can’t bring himself to think of anything but how fucking mesmerized he feels. This is what it should have been like, every single day for the past two years. It feels like there’s so much lost time to make up for and James is only just starting to scratch the surface. All Sirius wants to do now is lie here forever and have James keep kissing him, over and over and over again –

And James does.

--

Chapter Text

The questions come soon after, of course, and without relent.

Now that Sirius has revealed a tiny corpuscle of truth about their history, James seems ravenous for more, all previous promises of “forgetting the past” abandoned in a newfound search for answers. The questions are more difficult to answer now than before, entering dangerous territory like why was I engaged to Lily if I loved you and who else knew about us and is that why we fell out?

“Stop it,” Sirius snaps irritably after about a good hour of pointless interrogation. If he’d known that this was the price to pay for having James all over him again, he thinks he might have declined. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You know I’m just going to remember it all again eventually anyway.”

“I don’t know that,” Sirius lets out through gritted teeth.

“Come off it, Sirius,” James frowns. “You know me well enough now. What could be so bad that you can’t tell me about it?”

“I knew you well enough when it happened,” Sirius says, voice quiet. “And you knew me a lot better than you do now.”

“You can’t hold me accountable for something I don’t remember doing, that’s not fair,” James’ arms are crossed defensively over his chest, and even though they’re only a few inches apart on the bed, Sirius feels like he’s talking to him through a brick wall.

His temper is rising steadily, buoyed by an undercurrent of bubbling anxiety. How many times is James going to try and reuse the same old, tired argument? Sirius is fucking sick of it, and not even the afterglow of kissing is enough to override that. It’s an infuriating irony, how in wanting to quash the past down into oblivion, all he’s done is make it stronger and more powerful.

“I need a cigarette,” he announces finally, pushing his way off of the bed.

“Pads,” James throws him an exasperated look. “Okay, fine – I’ll drop it.”

Sirius pauses, not saying anything.

“You’re right, you don’t need to tell me anything you don’t want to. I shouldn’t have asked. Just – stay here. Please.”

Please.

Sirius takes a deep breath and exhales it slowly. James is looking up at him, in that adulating, vulnerable way – and Sirius can’t refuse that look, he never has.

“Alright,” he surrenders, after a moment. “But I’m smoking in here.”

James smiles at that, looking relieved. It’s almost intoxicating, how with just a few words Sirius has to power to change James’ moods, to grant him irritation or laughter or lassitude.

Sirius digs for the pack of cigarettes, pulling one out of the misshapen carton and lighting it with his wand. James doesn’t say anything, just watches him as he takes a drag, the incalescence of his gaze cutting straight through the spires of grey smoke that float up between them.

“I meant what I said,” Sirius says after a moment, discomfited by the silence. “I really don’t want to talk about it.”

“I know. And I said I wouldn't ask. I just – I was curious, that’s all.”

“Can’t really blame you,” Sirius shrugs. “But I’d rather not revisit what happened.”

“That’s okay,” James squeezes Sirius’ free wrist briefly. “You don’t need to.”

Sirius puffs on the cigarette, trying not to think about the way James had looked that final night; a stranger, the revulsion and fury etched like physical wounds on his face. And Sirius had done that to him, it had been his fault.

You fucking ruined this, Sirius, don’t you fucking look at me like that.

 At least he can admit that now. He hadn’t been able to, two years ago. Sirius thinks that must count for something.

--

“We should’ve brought something to drink,” he grumbles, looking rancorously around the hospital waiting room where he and James have been sitting waiting to see a Healer for what feels like ages.

“Why is it that your response to every minor inconvenience is to demand a drink?” James laughs. “It’s only been ten minutes.”

“Ten minutes I could’ve spent getting drunk,” Sirius says pointedly, then adds, “I hate hospitals.”

“Why?”

Sirius glances at the myriad of unsightly, injured and magically disfigured witches and wizards sitting around them. One witch is vomiting something purple and pungent into a bucket across the room, another letting out loud whistles every few minutes like a kettle. “It’s not exactly pleasant, is it?”

“No, I guess not. This is where I met you, though. Well, ‘met’,” he says, adding quotation marks onto the word. “You know what I mean.”

“Mm, that’s true. That might be one of the only pleasant memories I’ve had of this place.”

“Why, what were the others?”

Sirius shakes his head, unwilling to delve into the firmly shut-away memories of every single morning that he’d woken up in the hospital – waking up to the miserable and pathetic fact that he was still alive, still intact enough to have to suffer the torment of losing James.

A tall, balding Healer in lime green robes steps out into the waiting room, holding a clipboard. “James Potter?”

“That’s me!” James jumps up enthusiastically, beaming. “Finally!”

“Yes, yes, finally,” the Healer repeats crossly, unamused. “Come on in.”

Sirius follows James and the Healer to the fourth floor, and into a humble consulting room that’s been meagrely decorated with a few plants in an attempt to make it feel more comfortable. James takes a seat and Sirius settles next to him.

“Now, I see from your records that you’ve been the victim of a memory charm, yes?” the Healer peers at James, after a quick scan of the clipboard. “It says here that the damage was permanent, due to the nature of the attack?”

“That’s what we thought,” James says. “But apparently not.”

“Apparently not?”

“I’ve been remembering things,” James says proudly, puffing his chest out a little. “Even though the last few Healers told me I never would.”

The Healer rubs thoughtfully at the bald spot on his head. “What kind of things have you been remembering?” he asks curiously.

“I remembered the person who attacked me. And some memories with Sirius here.”

“And Lily’s favourite cake,” Sirius adds quietly.

James looks at him for a moment. “Yeah. And my fiancée’s favourite cake.”

“Was there any connection between the things you remembered?”

James ponders this for several moments, then says, “No, not that I can think of.”

“Any similarities between how you felt – your emotions – when you remembered these things?”

James shakes his head.

“Very curious indeed,” the Healer muses, staring at him with a new kind of interest, like a botanist examining a strange new herb. “Do you normally faint after remembering things?”

“The first time it happened – it was at a Christmas party, I felt really ill and sort of lost consciousness afterward, for a few minutes. But not any of the other times.”

“Hmmm,” the Healer says. “Well, as I’m sure the Healers told you during your last visit, memory charms normally only come undone through the use of extensive torture under the Cruciatus Curse. We as a hospital are strictly against using this method on our patients, of course, but we have been studying it in Ministry-approved ways – it’s very new research, still in its infancy… but there is a theory, if you would be interested.”

“Well, that’s why I’m here, isn’t it?”

“Our experiments seem to suggest that the reason the Cruciatus Curse is able to reverse severe memory charms is because of its undeniable ability to cause pain. Physical pain, yes, but we humans are funny creatures. For us, pain tends to be very much an emotional experience as it is physical. Some might even say the two are intrinsically linked to one another. Physical pain leads to mental suffering, and vice versa. Does that make sense?”

James nods.

“Can I ask,” the Healer says. “Each time you remembered something, did it happen at moments that you were experiencing very powerful emotions?”

“What do you mean?”

“Pain, though not many are aware, is one of the most powerful emotions one can be subject to. There are others, of course: love, fear, and so on. The reason we believe the Cruciatus is able to restore memory is that it taps into emotional pain in such a direct and efficient way that is rarely mirrored by normal, everyday occurrences. This powerful emotion helps fire up your neural links, reactivating some that may have been silenced by the memory charm.”

“But I haven’t been put under the Curse,” James says, forehead creasing. “Not since I was attacked anyway, and that was before the memory charm.”

“No,” the Healer says, “but as I said, pain is not the only strong emotion. Though not yet recorded, it is possible that other feelings that you experience very intensely may act on your brain in a similar manner.”

“That does make sense, actually,” James says, looking at Sirius. “Remember? When I was at my old place, and I saw Arnus’ face, how angry it made me… and that day at work, when I had the dream about Hogwarts, I’d been so frustrated and bored. And when you –“

“That’s all very well,” Sirius interrupts, flushing. “But what are we supposed to do about it?”

“There’s not much to be done, unfortunately,” the Healer replies. “I can put you on a course for remedial potions, which may help speed things up slightly. But as powerful emotions only flare up once in a while, as and when life merits them, the memories will probably only come back to you in random, disjointed intervals.”

“Oh,” James says, looking disappointed. “Is that it?”

“I’m afraid so. Take the potions, I’d like for you to come back in several weeks and let me know if they’ve helped.”

James sighs. “Well, I wouldn’t get my hopes up. The memory potions didn’t do anything to help the last time. But thanks anyway, at least now I know what’s causing me to remember things.”

The Healer scribbles a prescription for them, advising James on the doses to take his potions in, and several minutes later they’ve gathered themselves up and are heading back down toward the reception of the hospital.

“How underwhelming,” James says, as they make their way towards the front door of the hospital. “Are you okay? You’ve been very quiet.”

Sirius lights himself a cigarette once they’re outside in the crisp evening air. “Doesn’t it bother you, that every time we – that it’s been after we kissed that you remembered things about us?”

“Why would it? He said love was a powerful emotion, didn’t he?”

Sirius casts his gaze to the ground. The smoke from the cigarette tastes dirty and shameful. “And what if us being together causes you to remember other things? Bad things?”

James stares at him. “What bad things?”

“The things that I don’t want to talk about, James,” Sirius says, struggling to get the words out without crushing them first. “What if I kiss you, and you remember something that makes you hate me?”

“Why would I ever hate you?”

“Because you did,” his voice does break this time, and Sirius feels like his throat is so tight he can barely breathe. “Because I did something stupid two years ago, something selfish, and you – you hated me for it.”

It’s frightening, how difficult this is to admit to James, how every word that he says feels like broken, bleeding glass in his mouth – any moment now, he will have said too much and James will turn around and walk right out of his life again – and Sirius can’t even imagine that, he knows that there’s no way in hell that he can possibly survive losing James a second time; it would be too much, too fucking much for him to take again.

“What are you talking about, Pads?”

“Have you ever stopped to consider,” Sirius flings the half-smoked cigarette aside, “that maybe the things you’re so eager to find out about me may not be entirely to your liking?”

James tilts his head at him, confused.

“That maybe the reason I don’t want to tell you why we stopped talking is because – because you wanted me dead, Prongs, you –“ he stops sharply and shuts his eyes, the memories strangling the words into oblivion. “You said you never wanted to see me again.”

James opens his mouth and closes it again. “I –“

“I can’t lose you,” Sirius whispers, pain flaring through his chest. “Not fucking again.”

“You won’t,” James says earnestly, and it makes Sirius want to cry, because he doesn’t know, he has no fucking clue what he’s saying.

“I tried to kill myself when you cut me off,” Sirius lets out a painful breath, and he can’t even bring himself to look at James while he talks, can’t stand the recrudescence of regret that’s now surging through his entire body. “I tried to kill myself, over and over, because I couldn’t take a day living without you.”

“What –“

“I need to show you,” he’s talking feverishly, the words suddenly spilling out like an avalanche, one after the other, desperate to be heard. “I need you to know that I – I wasn’t going to hurt her, James. I just wanted – I just wanted you back, all I wanted was to have you back, and – “

“Padfoot, hey, calm down,” James looks alarmed. “It’s okay, it’s okay.”

Sirius can barely hear him. He’s heaving out throaty gasps for air, breathing so hard and fast that his lungs feel about to burst, as memories flood to the surface of his mind - he’d begged James, he’d done everything he could and it still hadn’t been enough - and James, looking at him like he was something filthy, a stain to have scrubbed off. How could he have left him there like that? Couldn’t he see Sirius falling into pieces right in front of him, couldn’t he see anything? 

James’ eyes are wide now, staring at him helplessly.

And suddenly Sirius is crying. Bewildered, hot tears, wracking out so hard, so quickly that it seems like they’re coming from everywhere at once. 

Don’t you fucking dare touch me, Sirius, or I swear to god I’ll kill you. 

”What is it?” James is asking, shaking him by the shoulder. “What’s wrong?” 

Sirius shakes his head, trying to blink past the tears, trying not to dissolve into a sodden, disgusting puddle of shame right in front of James. 

“Sirius.”

If James is to find out anything about what happened that night, if he is to remember anything at all, Sirius needs it to be from him. He needs to know. He needs to understand that all Sirius had ever, ever wanted was him.

“I can’t let you remember it the way you saw it,” he says at last, furiously wiping off the cold wetness on his face. “I need you to understand.” 

”Understand what? What is it that you’re trying to tell me?” 

“Everything,” Sirius swallows, raising his gaze to meet James’. “I’m going to tell you everything.”

--

Chapter Text

James gapes at him for several moments, all the final traces of nonchalance now seeping off his face. In the short silence that comes after, Sirius forces himself to breathe, furiously willing that his brain rescind all the messy red panic currently coursing through his bloodstream. It takes a few moments, but James’ stunned silence gives him enough time to compose himself and erase the wetness on his face with the back of his hand.

James sounds cautious when he finally speaks, but Sirius still catches the hopeful, fluttery note of excitement trilling beneath his words. “Wait. By everything you mean… everything?”

Sirius grinds a small pebble on the ground under the bottom of his shoe, unwilling to meet his eye. “That is what everything means, isn’t it?”

James opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. He shuts it, opens it again, gestures his arms around silently in speechless conversation.

Sirius resents that James looks like a child being allowed to open Christmas presents a day early. That to him, this is nothing but an elusive puzzle piece that he’s finally getting to slot into place – not a warzone, an ugly minefield planted with failures, regrets; both his and Sirius’. “You do know that I can’t read your mind, however much you’d like for me to,” he says stiffly, after half a minute of observing James’ silent hand-flapping about. 

The radiant excitement on James’ face grades away at that, as quickly as it had appeared, and then he frowns, suddenly suspicious. “Hey, are you – are you feeling quite alright?”

A stinging burst of humiliation rushes to Sirius’ skin like a slap. The damp remnants of tears on his face start prickling, turning to acid. “I’m fine,” he says, his voice rough around the edges.

“But a moment ago you were just –“ James pauses, his eyes flicking over Sirius hesitantly, searching like headlights. “Look – I’m just trying to understand here. What’s going on with you? You’re all over the place.”

“Nothing’s going on.”

“What were you talking about, killing yourself, and – and me hating you? What was all that? Why do you suddenly want to tell me everything that happened?”

For one agonizing moment Sirius tries to picture what that must’ve looked like to James, the way he’d disintegrated like dust, corroded so pathetically to tears right in front of him – but the thought revolts him so much that he can’t stand to sustain it for longer than a second. James is still looking at him, the space between his eyebrows tightened together, with golden diamond shards of late afternoon sun glinting off his glasses.

“I think,” Sirius says finally, speaking very slowly and with each word making his ribs feel like they’re shrinking within his chest, “that I’ve been pretending not telling you about what happened might make all of it disappear. That if I didn’t talk about it, or even think about it, it would be like it didn’t happen.”

James watches him, the fissure lines in his forehead deepening.

“You were my best friend, James, does it not bother you that whatever happened must’ve been really fucking terrible for us to fall out like that, and for so long?”

“Look, I told you that if you don’t want to talk about it, we don’t –“

“No, we do need to talk about it,” he interrupts. He doesn’t know how to explain that every moment since James came back has felt like his breath’s been trapped in his lungs, rattling against his chest and growing desperate to escape. “You said it yourself – there’s a good chance you’re going to remember all of it anyway. I’d like for you to at least know my version of events before that happens.”

So that if you decide to stay after this, it won’t only be because you’ve lost your memory anymore.

James looks like he’s considering this. For several quiet, swollen moments Sirius almost wants to take it all back, waving everything he’s just said all away like smoke, letting himself stay here with James in this little alternate universe of theirs for as long as he can possibly make it last –

But then what? Sooner or later when the memory returns, won’t he just have to lose James a second time? Have all the ugly events from two years ago replay themselves like some sickening, recurring nightmare that he’s caught in, powerless to change? No, fuck that. Sirius will shred the world to pieces with his bare hands before letting James walk out of his life like that again. These past few months can’t have all been for nothing, this whimsical, star-studded resuscitation of the only thing that has ever made Sirius happy, the one thing he’d thought was lost to him forever, renewed so deliciously right here in front of his disbelieving eyes – this is a second chance, damn it, and Sirius is not going to let it burn without putting up a furious fight.

“Okay,” James says at last, turning back up and letting his gaze fasten onto Sirius attentively. “It’s your call, Pads. If you’re ready to talk about it, I’m all ears, you know I am.”

He shakes his head. “Not like this. There’s something else I need your help with first.”

James raises his eyebrows in question. “What?”

“You’ll see.”

--

“Please tell me you’re joking.”

Sirius ignores him, stalking around the graveyard like a predator and scanning the names inscribed onto the tombstones, one by one. The sun’s long gone beneath the horizon now, and the sky it leaves behind is a smoky velutinous black; obsidian and completely starless. The earth smells damp and woody, with the remnants of a light drizzle still making it squelch under their shoes.

The journey here has allowed Sirius to cram away the terror of having to rip open all these bone-deep stitches in favour of a clear, logical head. What began as the faintest glimmer of an absurd idea is starting to make so much sense, now that they’re basically knee-deep in it – he decides promptly that this has to be the best, if not only way to go about explaining what happened to James.

Telling him would be stupid, of course, because words are unreliable, easily manipulated and far too flimsy. Showing him, on the other hand…

“Ah,” he says, finally happening upon the small sepulchre that he’s been looking for, with the words Arcturus Black III gleaming beneath the glow of his wand. “Reducto.”

The curse blasts violently against the stone wall of the tomb, splitting it into grainy bits of rock and rubble that explode everywhere.

“No, no, no,” James interrupts suddenly, pulling Sirius backwards by the sleeve of his robes. “You look here, Sirius fucking Black. I agreed to Apparate all the way to Windsor with you, I agreed to break into a cemetery with you, but I absolutely, positively draw the fucking line at destroying some poor old man’s grave with you.”

“He was my grandfather, and he was anything but poor,” Sirius scoffs, tugging himself free. “Move out of the way.”

“Oh, he’s your grandfather, so that makes it okay then, does it?”

“Yes,” Sirius gives his wand another harsh, sharp wave, so that when the second curse splinters through the tomb, the dark wood of a coffin lying within it becomes visible. “Are you going to give me a hand, or do you plan on just standing there squawking at me all night?”

“Can you at least explain to me why we’re doing this, before I indulge your insanity?”

“I thought it was obvious,” Sirius stops and turns to face him. “I need to dig up my grandfather’s grave.”

“Yeah, I got that,” James says testily. “But why?”

“Because we need to borrow something that he was buried with.”

“Borrowed, implying you’ll put it back?”

“When we’re done with it, yes.”

“Insanity,” James declares, shaking his head and pulling out his wand to help. “Insanity beyond question.”

With James’ assistance, the rest of the obliteration of the protective layers of stone encasing the coffin takes only a few moments. Flecks of dust and ash swirl in the air around them like snow, spraying into their eyes and falling in a fine layer over their robes. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?” he murmurs absentmindedly to James, stepping into the space and lowering his gaze into the coffin that contains his grandfather’s remains. When James continues to look doubtful, he adds, “He was a miserable, rotten old bastard anyway. There’s really no need to feel bad for him.”

“Can we just get on with it?”

“In a minute,” Sirius tells him, pulling his sleeve up to reveal the pale stretch of arm underneath. “Diffindo.”

James winces slightly as the severing spell slices Sirius’ skin open, carving a neat slash across his arm. “What are you doing that for?”

“The coffin is sealed with magic,” Sirius says matter-of-factly, holding his arm out over the coffin and letting the blood drip down towards it in glistening crimson pearls. “Only someone with Black blood can open it.”

As he speaks, the droplets appear to sink into and become absorbed by the wood, and this is shortly followed by a quiet clicking noise, like a lock being snapped open.

“If only he’d had the sense to make sure that nobody the family disowned could open it either.”

The lid of the coffin pops off and slides elegantly to the side. Within it, what’s left of his grandfather is nothing but a decayed, degraded skeleton, adorned in frayed, insect-bitten velvet robes and the burnished opulent jewellery he’d been buried with.

“What exactly is it that we’re looking for?” James asks warily, looking inside.

“This,” Sirius says, spotting the bejewelled stone dish lying by the corpse’s feet, with a shimmery silver substance floating around inside it. “Accio Pensieve.”

The dish obediently floats up and out of the coffin, landing silently next to Sirius. James gapes at it, open-mouthed. “A bowl? That’s what we desecrated his grave for?”

“Not any bowl,” Sirius says calmly. “A Pensieve.”

“And what the fuck is a Pensieve?”

Sirius uses his wand to toss larger bits of the stony rubble back onto the grave, carelessly, without bothering to shut the coffin. When it’s finished, his grandfather’s final resting place looks like a lazy, slipshod pyramid constructed out of mounds of fragmented rocks.  

“A Pensieve,” he says then, looking back at James and dusting off the layer of ash that’s settled over him, “is an object that’s used to store memories, replay them, revisit them and such. They’re fairly rare and difficult to find, but luckily old Arcturus here happened to have one, being the aristocratic snob that he was. Asked to be buried with it, taking whatever shameful secrets he was hiding in there to the grave with him.”

James arches his brows impatiently. “And what could we possibly need a dead old man’s memories for?”

“Not his,” Sirius uses his foot to tip the Pensieve over, so that the pearly silver memories of his grandfather spill out and disappear into the earth, hissing slightly. “We’re going to use it to look at mine.”

--

Back in their flat, with the Pensieve set comfortably atop the dining table like a crown, Sirius takes what may possibly be his last look at James before this lavish little daydream he’s allowed himself to bask in for so long shatters into jagged, irreparable pieces.  

It’s a wonder to him, how he has every single one of James’ features memorised so scrupulously, and in so much detail – but finds himself caught off-guard and breath-taken every time he looks at him anyway, like even the most perfectly constructed image that he has embedded of James in his memory is nothing compared to the real, astonishing thing.

“I love you,” he says, unnecessarily, because love seems like such a poor, insubstantial way to describe the true force of how he really feels about James. Adore, maybe. Worship, more like. “I think that will become fairly obvious when you see the things that I’m about to show you, but I just wanted for you to hear it from me first, before everything.”

James lets out a strained laugh. “I don’t know how to feel now that we’re finally doing this. You’re making me nervous.”

“Imagine how I feel,” Sirius says, and the mild, tender smile that he gets from James in return sweeps all over his insides, temporarily dismantling the surfeit of anxiety accumulating around his heart.  

“It’s not too late to change your mind, you know, if you want to.”

“What, after we broke into a cemetery and destroyed my grandfather’s grave?” Sirius arches an eyebrow. “In Windsor?”

James snorts. “That’s a good point, actually.”

“I think,” Sirius exhales slowly, taking advantage of the lapse in tension to be honest for a moment, “that I need to show it to you, whether you want to see it or not.”

James’ eyes flick dubiously to the Pensieve sitting between them.

“And it may or may not change the way you feel about me, but it’s – it’s necessary.”

“Okay,” James nods solemnly, unquestioningly. The look on his face is clear as day: if it’s important to you, it’s important to me. It makes Sirius’ heart beat so loud that he almost flinches with the cognisance of just how painfully, startlingly much he needs James, how much he’s always needed him.

“You’ll be wading through the memories that I show you, sort of like a ghost that no one can see or hear. Nothing you say or do while we’re in there will have any effect on the events or people that you see, except for me. Me me, not memory-me. Does that make sense?”

“A little.”

“James,” Sirius says, hesitating for a sharp flicker of a moment. “What we’re doing, it’s – I’m letting you into my head, you do get that, don’t you?”

The words lying carefully concealed underneath that he can’t quite bring himself to say are: this is as much of me as I’ll ever be able to give you and please don’t use it to ruin me.

“Of course,” James is looking at him intently, like it goes without even saying.

He nods. “Okay. We can start with a simple memory, maybe the first time we met.”

“In first year?” James frowns. “Weren’t you going to show me what happened the night we stopped talking?”

“The first memory is just for you to get the feel of being in one – we can look at the important memories in question after that.”

“There’s more than one?”

“Showing you that night on its own wouldn’t be enough. There were things leading up to it, and things that followed after, that you need to see too.”

James blinks at him, confused.

“I just think that it’s a good idea for you to understand that we – that when I did what I did, it wasn’t to hurt you,” Sirius says, his tongue growing heavier with each word. “That’s what you believed, two years ago. It was the reason – one of the reasons – why you cut me out so completely.”

Frustration washes into every crevice in his body at the acrid reminder of it. James had actually been convinced that Sirius’ intention had been to hurt him that night. Sirius understands why he’d been angry when it happened, of course, furious when he found out – it had been an irrational, cruel thing for Sirius to do and it was wrong, he knows that now, he really does, but James flipping the whole thing on its head and accusing Sirius of having done it of spite, or jealousy, or any of the other farfetched, ridiculous theories he’d come up with – that was the last thing Sirius saw coming, because James should have known better than to think that Sirius could want to hurt him. The thought that he’d done it out of anything but love shouldn’t ever even have crossed James’ fucking mind. Delirious, sickening, obsessive love, yes, but love all the same – and the fact that James failed to see that feels every bit as drastically wrong now as it did two years ago.

“What did you do?” James asks him.

Sirius looks away, the barbed words that he wants to say catching in his throat before he can get them out.

“I suppose that’s what you’re going to show me,” James’ voice approaches low and gentle, like he can already sense the electromagnetic waves of discomfort crawling under Sirius’ skin. “Isn’t it?”

“It’s one of the things, yeah.”

“Alright, well, we’ve come this far,” James offers him a soft, encouraging smile. “The suspense is killing me – now I really want to see what eleven-year-old Sirius looked like.”

Despite himself, Sirius feels the corners of his mouth inflecting slightly. James has always been good at this, at being Sirius’ personal anodyne, able to detect and defuse any crackling, spitting sparks of tension inside him and turn them insipid. Always knowing just where to touch him to make all the strain go away. “I wasn’t nearly as handsome back then, I’m afraid.”

James laughs, a starburst of loud, musical sound that reverberates all around them. “You can’t even say that with a straight face, you liar. Go on, then, show me how it works.”

Sirius concentrates on the memory that he wants to share with James and uses his wand to extract it out of his head like he’s unravelling a string of yarn. It’s a strange feeling, having a memory materialize from inside his mind into a real, tangible thing – almost like bleeding, except that it’s painless and there’s no wound. When he casts it into the basin, it catches the light, opalescent and shimmering before him.

“How am I meant to watch your memory?”

“You sort of just lean into it, I think, and –“

James is gone before Sirius can even finish the sentence, obviously, so he bends forward into the Pensieve to follow him. As he does, the living room around him disintegrates into swirling, nacreous particles; he’s caught in a whirlwind of colour and prismatic light that sweeps everywhere, almost blinding him, refracting against itself, so mesmeric and rapid that he hardly even keeps track as the billions and billions of particles rearrange themselves into the scene of their first encounter.

--

(They’re on a train, jolting over the pebbled tracks, the remnants of the steam whistle still vibrating through the air like a tremolo.

“Hogwarts Express?” James says, looking at Sirius, and Sirius nods. “It’s nice to finally know what it looked like. Where’s little Padfoot?”

“Coming this way,” Sirius turns his head to face the door between the carriages, and James looks too.)

In the memory, Sirius is eleven, and so excited he can barely stay still in his seat. Less than five minutes after the train has left King’s Cross, he’s already abandoned his compartment in favour of jogging round the train, peeking curiously around into the other carriages like a little thief. He’s scaling a good proportion of the entire train, examining every passing nook with great interest, carrying out mental assessments of the other students he passes, and occasionally glancing into hidden-away spaces for that silent, elusive ghost that Bellatrix had sworn she’d encountered on the train once. 

“Someone might think you’re up to something, you know,” a loud voice says, catching Sirius about twenty minutes into this in-depth ghost hunt.

(“Is that really what I looked like at eleven?” James says, laughing. “How did I ever make a good first impression on you?”

“You didn’t,” Sirius lies.)

Sirius turns around, seeing a short boy in glasses with wild black hair that’s growing out in every possible direction. It’s the sort of messy, improper haircut that Sirius’ mother would hate, and Sirius decides that he likes this boy, whoever he is. “Why would anyone think that?”

“Because you look like you’re spying,” the boy has a bright, matter-of-fact way of speaking, like every word rolling off his tongue is backed up with indisputable fact. “What are you looking for, anyway?”

“My cousin told me she saw a ghost on this train. I wanted to see if she was lying.”

“Bet she was,” the boy says. “No one I know has ever mentioned a ghost on the Hogwarts Express before.”

“That’s what I thought,” Sirius admits, a little reluctantly, “but I didn’t want to look stupid if I was wrong.”

“Well, I think you’d look even stupider trying to hunt down a ghost that doesn’t exist, don’t you?” the boy says. “Are you sure you’re not getting mixed up with the ghosts in the castle?”

“I think I can tell the difference between a castle and a train, thanks,” Sirius huffs, now annoyed. “Anyway, why were you spying on me?”

(“Ah, there’s the pair that we know and love,” James is smiling. The tips of his fingers knock gently against Sirius’, and even here inside the Pensieve it makes Sirius feel like he’s glowing.)

“I wasn’t spying, I just noticed you lurking about and chose to investigate.”

“And you followed me, which makes it…” Sirius pretends to have to think really hard about this for a moment, “spying, if my calculations are correct.”

(“How were you so much funnier as a first-year than you are now?”

“Shut up, James.”)

“If I was spying,” the boy insists, chest puffing outwards indignantly, “it’s only because you were spying on a ghost first.”

“You mean the ghost that you just said doesn’t exist?”

“You didn’t know that. But me spying on you spying on the ghost means that it gets cancelled out. It’s just maths.”

Sirius takes a moment to wrap his head around this, then says, quite seriously, “You must be terrible at maths.”

The boy laughs at that, and it echoes in electrifying waves all across the carriage. “You’re right, I am. This is stupid, anyway. Do you want to play Exploding Snap instead?”

Sirius glances around for any last sign that a phantom might be hiding somewhere in the carriage, then shrugs and agrees to follow the boy into a nearby compartment, where there are two other first-years chuckling to each other and unwrapping sweets inside.

“Look, boys, I’ve found us a friend,” the boy announces, and Sirius can’t help but notice the way that the two others straighten up to look at him almost immediately.

“Hi,” they say in unison, regarding him for a short moment before returning to their candy.

The boy swivels around, quite suddenly, to face Sirius, and their noses nearly collide from the abrupt movement. “What did you say your name was again?”

For a split, startled second Sirius considers saying anything but his own stupid name, but no clever alternative floats to mind. “It’s Sirius.”

The black-haired boy grins at him, stepping back. “I do hope you’re joking, Sirius.”

“No, I’m being serious,” he says, and it makes the boy laugh again, a loud and effervescent noise that makes Sirius feel unnecessarily pleased with his stupid (and extremely overused) joke.

“I’m James,” the boy tells him, climbing onto one of the seats and reaching for a Pumpkin Pasty. “James Potter. And this is Remus, and Peter.”

Sirius nods at the other boys politely, but his attention gravitates back towards James immediately after. James. It’s such a straightforward, no-nonsense type of name. Short and simple. Not like Sirius, after a stupid pointless star in the night sky that isn’t even part of any constellation.

“What house are you hoping to get put in?” James asks him, his limbs stretching out, columbine, over the length of the seat that he’s flopped onto. “It’s not Slytherin, is it?”

“What makes you think that?” Sirius frowns at him reproachfully, shame flaring up like a rash over his skin and making it itch.

James’ gaze glides over him, head to toe, taking him in thoughtfully. “Don’t get me wrong, you just look… the sort.”

“Well, I’m not,” Sirius’ face flushes with indignance, and he stamps his foot down loudly. “Not like the rest of my family, anyway. They were all in Slytherin.”

“Why don’t you want to be in the same house as the rest of your family?” James peers at him curiously, leaning forward.

“Because I’m not like them,” Sirius says, lower lip jutting out in defiance. “I’m better.”

James tilts his head and considers him, not saying anything for a moment. Then he splits the Pasty that he’s holding in his hands into half, and reaches out to offer a piece to Sirius. “You know what, you’re okay, Sirius,” he tells him, smiling, and Sirius lets out a breath of relief. “And I’ve got a funny feeling that you and I are going to be friends.”

(“What’s happening?” James says, startled, as the scene before them starts dissolving away piece by piece.

“The memory’s over.”)

--

They’re back in the apartment, as if they hadn’t moved an inch. And maybe they haven’t, Sirius muses. He’s not entirely sure how Pensieves work – but then again, no one is; it’s a part of their rare, unique magic to be so mysterious and inexplicable.

“Why couldn’t we have stayed a little longer?” James pouts a little. “I was really enjoying that.”

“Good, because you’re not going to like these next few bits as much,” Sirius tells him, unspooling a series of diaphanous memories from his temple and casting them into the bejewelled bowl as James watches. “We’re going to skip several years ahead, and do the next few memories in succession so that we won’t have to keep jumping out of the Pensieve with each one.”

“Sounds good.”

“If there’s anything you want to see that might answer any questions you have, just tell me – we can do those ones after.”

It occurs to Sirius, now that they’ve begun going down this harrowed, terrifying road, that his mind is nowhere near as paralyzed with fright as he thought it would be. Instead, he feels quite detached and methodical at the moment, as if none of this is actually happening, and he’s just here as an observer in somebody else’s bizarre dream. He knows what’s about to come, of course he does, but the choked-up anticipation of it has made everything feel surreal, weaving shadows of phantasmagoria through the cold, hard reality of having to finally show James.    

“You hanging in there?” James asks him quietly, his eyes keen and attentive.

The ephemeral brush of his fingers landing on Sirius’ arm pulls him out of his thoughts, rooting him back into himself. “Yeah. You?”

“Yep. Ready to do this?”

He sighs with resignation, and begins leaning forward over the Pensieve. “Ready as I’ll ever be, I guess.”

Chapter Text

(Morning light, honey soft, dappling over the white, crumpled bedsheets. Silver cigarette smoke swimming in serpentine swirls and weaving through the air around them, catching constellations of dust in its stream.)

Sirius is fifteen and really has better things to be doing than sitting here and counting the seconds that slide by one by one, waiting for James to return to the dormitory they share with Remus and Peter at Hogwarts. A sleepless night, coupled with the irritation of having to do this, has put him on edge, and by the time James finally comes bursting back into the room with his cheeks flushed and eyes bright, Sirius feels quite ready to throttle him.

He doesn’t, though, because every violent impulse that fires up from his nerve-endings at the sight of him boils away as suddenly as it appears, startled off by the way the maple light dances across James’ skin, whirling and glazing around the peripheries of his body in ribbons. James pauses in surprise when he sees Sirius sitting there, but a moment later a big, pleased smile brightens his entire face.

“What’re you still doing here?” James asks, all familiar and affectionate, and Sirius’ pathetic heart barely has time to force out a single, stuttering beat before James is beside him, so close that the warmth and scent of his skin is unavoidable, demanding all of Sirius’ attention at once. “I thought you’d have gone for breakfast by now.”

Sirius doesn’t say anything, all the anger he’d been meaning to unleash just moments ago suddenly tasting hollow in his mouth.

“Well, aren’t you going to ask me how it went?” James probes, his ankle bouncing lightly against Sirius’ leg as he speaks. “Aren’t you curious?”

“No, I’m not fucking curious,” Sirius snaps at him.

“Pads,” James frowns, the smile on his face dissolving away slowly. “Hey, is something wrong?”

Sirius busies himself with lighting a cigarette and shakes his head, not trusting himself to speak without saying something stupid.

“Don’t be like that,” James says, his fingers deftly catching Sirius’ wrist and plucking the cigarette out of his hand. “Are you really going to be upset that I went on one date with Lily?”

“I’m not.”

“Pads,” James says again, in that lilting, pleading voice that makes Sirius want to hit him for somehow making himself out to be the victim here. “We didn’t even kiss, you know, she wouldn’t let me. There’s nothing for you to be jealous about.”

Anger hisses through Sirius, and he yanks his wrist out of James’ grasp, making the other boy blink at him in surprise. “I’m not jealous, you fucking snake, and don’t touch me – I’ll break your arm.”

James scowls slightly. “What is it, then, if you’re not upset that I went out with her?”

It makes Sirius bristle, the casual, harmless way he says it – I went out with her – like the very thought of it doesn’t sicken Sirius, doesn’t feel like a hard, cruel punch crushing all the air out of his windpipe.

“Hey,” James noses the side of Sirius’ neck, persistent, the breath coming out in whispers by his throat. “Talk to me. What’s the matter?”

Sirius closes his eyes, refusing to give in to the subtle physical distraction because he bloody well knows what James is trying to do, but finding it impossible to resist him anyway. His body betrays him and paralyzes into place, rendering him unable to defend himself.

“You’re lucky I’m in the mood to entertain your tantrums today, you know,” James murmurs, his lips moving upwards towards the tender space of skin behind his ear, and Sirius actually whimpers – he feels so irritatingly helpless with James, having all his autonomy so quickly and easily stolen away from him without the slightest bit of effort. “Now tell me what’s wrong.”

“James,” Sirius breathes, the name sounding broken, desperate, as James’ mouth traces methodically over his neck.

“What?” James grazes Sirius’ earlobe with his teeth, with just enough pressure to direct a sharp shiver down Sirius’ body, surging out into every vein. “Do you want me to stop?”

“I’m serious –“

“You’re too easy to read, you know, that’s your problem,” James tells him. “Sitting up all night and waiting here to find out if I kissed Lily or not – it’s actually sort of cute in an unhealthy, possessive way, if I think about it –“

That finally does it. It requires every last molecule of strength in his body, but Sirius manages to extricate himself from James forcefully, pushing the other boy off with hands that don’t even feel like his own. “Don’t do that,” he spits out, disgusted by his own weakness. “Don’t just – come in here and kiss me and act like everything’s the same after you spent all fucking night with –“

“There it is,” James laughs lightly, and for one maddening moment Sirius thinks he might actually, truly just kill him right there and then. “So you are jealous.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

“I don’t understand what you’re making such a big deal about. I told you we didn’t do anything, and even if we did, it wouldn’t matter because you’re not replaceable, Sirius, do you need me to spell it out for you? A million dates with Lily won’t change what you are to me – you’re mine.”

“And you?” Sirius asks him coldly. “Whose are you?”

James opens his mouth, offended. “That’s not – the fact that you even have to ask that –“

“You know what? Don’t bother,” Sirius tells him, squashing the cigarette out into a porcelain ashtray and pushing it aside. “I think I already know.”

--

(The memory they’ve shifted into is in the Prefect’s bathroom, hours after midnight, where the only illumination comes from shafts of soft moonlight falling in sideways from the domed windows.)

“This is,” James decides, examining himself in the mirror with a mixture of wonder and bewilderment on his face, “the weirdest sex thing we’ve ever done.”

“What about the time we did it in our Animagus forms?”

“No, you’re right – that was definitely weirder.”

“And while you were wearing your Invisibility Cloak?”

“Alright, third weirdest,” James concedes, turning around to face Sirius and nearly jumping out of his skin at the sight of him. “My God, look at you. I don’t think I can go through with this.”

“Taking Polyjuice Potion and changing into each other was your idea,” Sirius points out, though he has to admit that seeing James in his own body has soared right past the ballpark of sexy and is currently somewhere around the realm of really fucking disturbing. “You were the one who was so fucking enthralled by the idea of having sex with yourself.”

James moves closer, so that moonlight casts a ghostly glow over him and Sirius can get a better look. Obviously, Sirius has some idea of what he looks like, but to see himself from this perspective is still unnerving. For starters, he’d had no idea that his hair’s been getting so long, or that the shadows under his eyes are this pronounced. But while looking at James being him is definitely bordering on unbearable, he has to admit that he’s not entirely in disagreement about transforming himself into James. To be so intimately slipped into the beautiful skin he’s always been so fixated by – to have James’ hands be his own, to touch his torso and feel James’ muscles tensing beneath his fingers, to look down and see James’ cock under his robes –

“Have you got a hard-on?” James asks in disbelief, staring at him incredulously.

“Um.”

“You absolute deviant,” James grins. “Take your clothes off.”

“Only because I’d like to get a better look at myself like this,” Sirius says, as his robes land with a soft swishing sound onto the marble ground. In the mirror, James’ naked, sun-browned body looks back at him, every fucking bit as resplendent as Sirius has ever known it to be. It makes heat prickle under his veins.

James is looking over him with a sort of critical interest, like an artist contemplating his own painting. “I did think my quads were a bit bigger than that,” he muses after a moment. “You should’ve told me.”

“I think you were right, you know – this is actually sort of doing something for me,” he tells James, still regarding his own reflection and battling a sudden urge to start jerking himself off. “Take the robes off, you’ll see.”

James undresses too, and Sirius only wastes a short, disinterested moment glancing over at the sight of James in his body before returning to the far more absorbing sight of himself in James’.

“I see what you mean,” James says thoughtfully, his eyes traveling down himself, his fingers sliding over the pale hardness of his cock experimentally. “Defeats the point if we’re still just getting turned on by each other, though, doesn’t it?”

“Not really,” Sirius shrugs, “I’d quite happily stand here in front of the mirror and watch myself have a wank. It’s fucking hot being you.”

James laughs at that and takes two steps forward to shut the space between them, and okay, it’s definitely strange being kissed by his own lips, because the texture and shape of them are wrong, but the manner of kissing is all James’ own – the way his mouth collides onto Sirius’ like an asteroid, the hungry, bruising pressure of it, the shuddering gasp of his breath against Sirius’ skin.

“Oh, fuck –“

James tugs back abruptly, then, as if stunned by his own movement, stands panting for a few moments and staring at Sirius with wide, stricken eyes, like he’s upset.

“What, was it really that bad kissing yourself?”

“No – it’s not that,” James blinks at him, after an awkward pause suggesting he took an extra second to process the question. “I just – I wish we weren’t leaving tomorrow, Pads. This year went by so fucking fast.”

Sirius glances down at the top of James’ head as James leans forward again to rest his forehead on his shoulder with a defeated sigh. “I know. Me too.”

“I hate not being able to see you all summer.”

“I know.”

“And it infuriates me,” James tells him roughly, head whipping back up to glare at Sirius with a righteous, helpless sort of anger blazing bright against his irises. “You going back to those people for two whole months – after how they’ve treated you – and me not being able to do a fucking thing about it, just sitting around and worrying about you –“

“James, really, it’s fine – I’m used to it. I’ve dealt with them my whole life, remember?”

“Well, I haven’t. There has to be something we can do – “

“Look, are you really going to ruin our last night together by talking about my family? This was supposed to be sexy.”

“Don’t go home,” James suggests suddenly, his fingers clutching and tangling into the hair at the back of Sirius’ neck.

“Don’t be stupid,” Sirius says, starting to get irritated now. “I have to.”

“No you don’t,” James yanks on his hair, eliciting a sharp, sibilant noise out of Sirius as pain flares into his scalp.

“I quite fancy the idea of having a roof over my head, James, as shitty a roof as it may be.”

“Come live at mine.”

Sirius lets out an annoyed breath. He’s not at all in the mood for James to so insistently come up with these ridiculous ideas when they’re standing here naked on their last night at the school before summer.

“Look, think about it,” James is saying, his voice rising a pitch, the strange grey eyes flaring with a certain, intoxicating heat that Sirius has never seen in his own before. “You already come over every Christmas anyway, and my parents love you. And you’ve got all your things packed up – well, the things that matter – all you’d have to do is come with me tomorrow once we’ve gotten off the train.”

“Right, but – but what you’re suggesting is for me to move in with you, permanently.”

“Do you not want to?” James asks, his voice taking on an accusatory edge that fills Sirius with annoyance.

“Of course I fucking want to,” he snaps, “it’s not about what I want, James, it’s about you being unreasonable.”

“What’s unreasonable about moving in with me?”

“Well, you haven’t even asked your parents, for fucking starters, and what about Regulus? And who’s going to pay for my school stuff, because you can count on my mother cutting off any financial support the instant she realizes I’ve left with you. And –“

“Pads, listen to me – please,” James cuts him off, his voice fracturing like shattered glass, raining down around them and slamming Sirius’ protests into silence. “I can’t stand the thought of you going back there again, okay?”

Sirius looks at him, aware of the way his pulse is accelerating to keep up with the dangerously swelling heart in his chest. “You don’t have to worry about me. I can take care of myself.”

“What, by getting beaten and locked up in your room like some – some animal in a cage?”

“It’s honestly fine – “

“It’s not fine for me!” James shouts at him. “I hate it, I’ve always hated it –  I just want you to leave, I don’t care about any of the rest of it, we’ll figure it out, we’ll take you in and pay for your school shit and do anything that you fucking ask, but just – just – ”

“Okay,” Sirius breathes, startled and completely thrown off by the urgent, pleading look on James’ face, the way he sounds like he’s going to fucking cry or something. “Shit, don’t – Merlin, don’t get all weepy on me, alright, I’ll come with you – I’ll come, for fuck’s sake, stop it, you baby.“

“I love you, you wank,“ James swallows and takes a deep breath in, his eyes furious and wet. “I'm so, so fucking in love with you, can't you see that –“

Sirius is kissing him before he can finish the rest of his warbled sentence, and James relaxes immediately into his mouth like a soft sigh – his lashes still damp against the crest of Sirius’ cheekbone, both his hands reaching up to encase the sides of his face, holding him, fervent and desperate, like there’s no Lily, like they’re the last two people in the entire world, and like nothing else could matter more.

--

(The memory that flits before them next is drowsy with the soporific haze of summer, with arabesque white clouds twining against a wavering wheat sky. The air is steeped in the heavy, sweet scent of honeysuckle. Butterflies drift lazily over the lawn, and from the house nearby comes the faint sound of a woman singing.

“Where’s this?”

Sirius takes a moment to respond, because his chest is still heaving with everything that had lodged itself inside him during the previous memory, after the first time James had ever said he loved him – followed by the knowledge of how quickly all of it would crack open with fissures and swallow them whole. He hadn’t realized that he’d be able to feel everything so clearly in these memories, as if all the emotions that he’s spent years trying to bury have only just been brimming under the surface this whole time, waiting to emerge. “Your parent’s place, after I ran away from home.”)

Sirius is laying on the grass, watching James play with a gleaming golden Snitch. The winged ball flutters around them, slipping in and out of sight for several moments at a time, until James’ quick, precise hand darts out to clasp around it easily.

“Lily asked about you in her letter,” he says absently, when he releases the ball again. “She wanted to know if you settled in okay and everything.”

“You’re still writing to her?”

“Of course I’m still writing to her. We’re only on a break for the summer.”

Sirius shades his eyes with his hand and squints up at James. “Maybe in your next letter you should tell her how you spent the whole summer fucking your best friend. I’m sure she’d love to know all about that.”

James smiles, but it looks slightly pained. “Do you have to be like that? We talked about this.”

“Yeah, well.”

James rolls himself over so that he’s laying down next to Sirius, not touching him but still close enough to coax goosebumps from his flesh. “Isn’t it enough just to be like this?”

“Like what?”                                                                                                          

“Like this,” James does touch him this time, his fingertips sliding softly, secretively, over Sirius’ collarbone. “You don’t have to make it feel so messy and complicated all the time, you know.”

“Oh – well, thank goodness, for a moment there I was almost under the impression that it was messy and complicated.”

“Stop it,” James frowns at him, indignant lines burrowing around the corners of his mouth the way they always do when he’s annoyed. “I told you, it’s different with you, and –“

“If you spout that bullshit about how it’s not a competition one more fucking time –“

“It’s not,” James sits up suddenly, staring at him with a weary, exasperated look on his face. “Look – I find it impossible to believe that you can’t wrap your head around this. What I have with Lily is nothing like what I have with you, there’s no point trying to compare the two. Lily completes me –”

“Oh, here we go again.”

“Listen,” James snaps at him. “You never fucking listen to me. Lily completes me but you’re – you’re part of me, like one of my organs. I adore you, you know I do, but I can’t be with you because it would be like dating myself. And even I’m not as conceited as that.”

“That’s your excuse? I’m part of you, so I have to sit around and watch while you’re going out with her? Because she counts as a different person but I don’t, because I’m just one of your organs?”

“Well, yes,” James says, looking at him quizzically. “Is that really so difficult for you to grasp?”

Sirius scoffs and hoists himself up, snatching away the Snitch before James can reach for it. “Merlin. You are so full of fucking shit.”

--

(The memory morphs again, and this time they’re in Hogsmeade, which is a flurry of sound and colour in its usual weekend crowd. In one corner a clearly intoxicated wizard is arguing defiantly with the portrait hanging askew on the wall, and past the windows snow is hammering down noiselessly into the white-blanketed ground.)

Sirius and James are crammed round a small table with Lily, Remus and Peter. Empty pint glasses lay stacked between them, and the conversation has grown lively with drink, spattered with raucous laughter and Lily’s pink-faced giggles each time James makes a particularly crude joke.

James is sitting in the middle of Sirius and Lily, telling everyone how much his mother has loved having Sirius living with them over the summer, and confiding with great distress that he thinks a part of it is just because he’s so good-looking.

“You should see him, too,” James laments, as Remus and Peter snort and splutter over their drinks, “always walking around without his shirt on like some kind of poster boy for abs – offering to help her out in the garden or to fix things, always flexing his muscles when she looks at him. It’s horrifying. God – the way my mother swoons over him as well, ‘oh, that Sirius, he’s such a good boy, so handsome, so helpful.’”

“It’s not my fault you’re such a useless son,” Sirius tells him, polishing off his drink. “Euphemia just likes that I actually help out around the house, instead of admiring my own reflection all the time.”

“Euphemia,” James repeats, as the other boys and even Lily collapse into laughter again. “She’s Mrs Potter to you, and don’t you bloody forget it.”

“Say, Sirius,” Lily says, leaning forward so that she can catch Sirius’ eye across James. “Why haven’t you got a girlfriend?”

Sirius raises his eyebrows at her, stopping himself from asking how that’s any of her business at the very last second.

“It’s not like you haven’t got options,” she tells him. “If you could only hear how the girls talk about you in our dormitories – I think half the bloody school fancies you at this point.”

“Why wouldn’t they?” James puts in, knocking Sirius’ shoulder lightly with his own. “Look at him.”

“Dorcas Meadowes keeps asking me to ask James to put in a good word about her to you,” Lily smiles, nodding towards a beautiful, tall girl with almond eyes and cocoa-saturated skin sitting in the corner of the pub, who’s been sneaking coy glances over at Sirius from the moment they walked in. “She thinks, and I quote, that you’re the epitome of male beauty.”

“She’s very pretty,” Peter sighs helpfully, looking over at Dorcas. “Very, very pretty.”

“If you’d just ask her out,” Lily continues, “it might get her to stop talking about how in love with you she is every once in a while. It gets terribly boring, you know, no offense – but I think I’ve listened to her describe your glorious Greek god body in far more detail than I feel comfortable with.”

“Well, that settles it,” James nods at him decisively, patting Sirius on the back. “Go on, ask her out – you’d be doing Lily a favour.”

“You really would,” Lily agrees.

Sirius fiddles with the empty glass, nausea suddenly spiking through him. “No, I think I’m alright, thanks.”

“But she’s so pretty,” Peter says again, sounding personally offended by the refusal.

“I know she is.”

“What’s the problem, then?” James demands.

“There isn’t a problem.”

“Well, she’s sitting right there, isn’t she, just go over and –“

“I’m not interested.”

“How the hell can you not be interested in that?”

“Leave it, James,” Remus says sharply, throwing James a warning look. “Don’t push him.”

Avoiding James’ searching, disapproving gaze, Sirius gets up from the table, nearly knocking over a pint glass in his sudden, suffocating hurry to get away from there. “I’m going out for a smoke.”

James makes to get up too, but Remus beats him to it first and follows Sirius out of the pub into the silent, snowing night. Christmas lights twinkle prettily on the exterior walls of the establishment, feeling strangely discordant to the roiling, choking discomfort inside Sirius’ stomach.

“You didn’t have to come after me,” he tells Remus gruffly, after a moment of silence following his lighting of a cigarette. “I really do just want to smoke.”

“I know,” Remus shrugs. “I just thought it’d be nicer for you to have some company while you do.”

Sirius nods in response. “Thanks – for what you did back there, I mean.”

“James wasn’t doing it on purpose, you know,” Remus slips his hands into his pockets to keep them warm. “I think he just wants you to date someone else so you don’t feel so upset about him and Lily all the time.”

“You don’t need to make excuses for him.”

“I’m not making excuses.“

“I just don’t –“ Sirius stops and sucks in a sharp, angry breath. “I don’t understand how he can be with her after all those things he says about loving me and wanting me –“

“You know how he is,” Remus purses his lips, and Sirius feels himself soften slightly with approval at their mutual displeasure regarding James’ inflated entitlement. “He’s convinced he can have anything he wants, even if those things are in conflict with each other.”

Sirius forces out a rough laugh at the stupid, pathetic irony of it. “And to think that all I want is –“

“I know,” Remus says, his voice soft and sad and of absolutely no comfort at all. “I know.”

(“Sirius?”

Sirius looks up, distracted, to see James watching him with a strange, misty look in his eyes.

“I’m so sorry,” is all he gets time to say, and then the memory changes once more.)

--

(Mid-summer again, the night warm and wine-coloured, with a glossy motley of stars burning right through the fabric of the sky.)

James is sitting with his knees propped up on the alcove, his back against Sirius’ chest, the half-smoked joint in his hand like a neon cherry in the dark. “Do you sometimes think about what it would’ve been like if we never knew each other?” he asks. “If we’d never been friends – or if one of us never existed?”

“I don’t know,” Sirius says, rubbing his tired eyes and stretching his legs a little to give James more space to nestle between them. The weed has suffused his blood with a sleepy, mellow warmth, and his thoughts are currently being distracted by the weight of James’ body against him, the friction of his bare arm rubbing along Sirius’ each time he takes a drag. “Why, do you?”

“Well, yeah – it’s just human nature, isn’t it?”

“Pass the joint, you selfish dick, you’ve had it for ages – how’s it human nature?”

James hands him the joint and exhales a mouthful of smoke, watching it rise out the window and seep into the maroon sky. “It’s human nature to ruin our possession of good things by wondering how long they’ll last.”

“Not too sure I follow, Shakespeare.”

“Well, look. When people have something they really love – or someone they really love – all they can think about is how to protect it, right? They become frightened of losing it, so much that it consumes them, and they start dreaming up all kinds of scenarios where they don’t have that thing anymore, or never had it in the first place.”

Sirius ashes the joint and takes a drag. “Yeah, I guess.”

“It’s the inevitable consequence of loving things to wonder what the world would be like without them.”

Sirius snorts out a laugh and ends up choking on the smoke, but quickly stifles it back down when James turns around to glower at him irritatedly. “What?” he cracks a smile at the ruffled look on his face. “Don’t pout at me like that. How stoned are you?”

“You think I’m chatting shit.”

“No.”

“You do – I can tell you do.”

“No,” Sirius says again. “It’s just – where’s all this coming from? You were just sitting there and staring at the sky in silence for ten minutes, and now all of a sudden you’re going on about human nature and the inevitable consequences of love –“

James faces the other way again, but not before Sirius catches the slight, sullen flare of his nostrils. “We can talk about something else if you’re not in the mood.”

Sirius presses the joint back into James’ hand, leaning forward to touch his lips softly, in apology, against the back of his neck. “No, I want to talk about this,” he says, breathing in the sea-salt smell of James’ hair. “I’m sorry – go on.”

“I just sometimes think about what it would’ve been like if I never met you – or worse, if I’d met you and then lost you. I don’t think I’d be able to be myself in either scenario.”

“Right, well, we’re not in either of those scenarios. So you’re free to be as much of yourself as you please.”

James takes a deep, frustrated breath, turning back again so that his cheek bumps against the bridge of Sirius’ nose. “How can you know that?”

“Because there’s this neat little thing called time, and it generally only goes forward, and considering that we’ve already met and nobody’s planning on going back six whole years just to prevent that from ever happening –“

“Not that scenario, obviously, the other one.”

“What, the scenario where you lose me?” Sirius asks, kissing the jumping pulse on James’ neck and feeling it quicken under his lips. “I think that’s even less likely than someone deciding to go back six years just to stop us meeting each other.”

“I don’t,” James says quietly.

Sirius looks up at him, at the beads of starlight reflected against his eyes. “How come?”

“I just think – I don’t know,” James lets out a slow exhale. “I worry about you changing your mind sometimes. About me.”

The idea of it is so outrageous Sirius can’t even bring himself to dignify it with a proper laugh, so he just retrieves the joint from James again instead. “Stop smoking this, I think it’s starting to make you stupid.”

“Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“I don’t. Are you listening to yourself?”

“Sirius, stop it,” James says forcefully. “I’m not fucking around.”

“Neither am I.”

“You hate that I’m with Lily.”

“Yeah, so what?”

“So what?” James repeats. “So – what if one day you decide you’ve had enough of me being with her and you just – I mean, she’s important to me, but I know you don’t get that, so sometimes I feel like –“

“Shut up,” Sirius says. “So what if you’re with Lily? It’s shit, yeah, but I wouldn’t change my mind about you because of that.”

He has to admit, though, that the thought has occurred to him very briefly on occasion these last two years, that maybe it might be healthier for everyone involved if he just takes a step out of this fucking triangle or whatever it is that he’s somehow got himself into with James and Lily. But the idea of it is not just stupid, it’s inconceivable – because as much as his pride is wounded by the fact that James genuinely likes her, the incredible anger and jealousy pales in comparison to what Sirius would feel if he could never have James at all. Both overridden by the simple fact that he doesn’t even believe it possible for himself to exist without James.

“Look, it’s not like – like I don’t get to do anything with you,” he says, after a moment, struggling to find the right words. “I still get to be with you, just a lot less often. Yeah, it was really inconvenient at first, but I don’t know – I'm used to it now, as unfortunate as that sounds. I’m certainly not going to leave you because of it.”

“But what if –“ James closes his eyes, frown lines appearing in his forehead. “What if you don’t feel like that forever?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“I don’t know,” James shakes his head. “I just see how miserable you look when I’m with her.”

“Well, obviously,” Sirius says. “That’s sort of unavoidable. But you’re an idiot if you think that’s going to make me change how I feel about you.”

James sighs and leans back again, his fingers intertwining around Sirius’ hand and bringing it to his mouth for a kiss. His lips are soft and gentle against Sirius’ skin. “I love you, Pads. Sometimes I’m scared of just how much.”

“I know,” he says, and thinks, most of the time, anyway.

--

Chapter Text

(The hollow, breathless quiet of midnight; the room around them washed with a chiaroscuro of inky shadows and stippled flecks of light from a newly waxing moon.)

Sirius is shaken out of a dreamless slumber by a pair of unrelenting hands, whose shape and feel are so familiar to him, even in sleep, that when his eyelids flicker open he doesn’t even jump at the sight of James kneeling over him on the bed.

“What?” he groans, scowling at the barely-visible sketch of James that he can make out while his eyes adjust to the darkness.

“We need to talk.”

“Fuck off, James, what time is it?”

“It’s important,” James says, shifting over and shaking him again. “I’m serious, get up. Stop being a dick.“

Irritation zips through Sirius’ spine at the utter nerve of him. “You have no right to be making demands like that when it’s the middle of the fucking night, alright, so get off me –“

“I’m not demanding,” James’ tight grip around Sirius’ collar slackens slightly at that. “I’m asking. Okay? I need to talk to you.”

Sirius blinks, momentarily confused by this sudden change in tact – and then James lets go of him and sits back expectantly, watching while Sirius pulls himself up to lean against the headboard.

“Okay,” he says, folding his arms and looking at him. “What was so bloody important that it couldn’t wait till morning?”

James doesn’t say anything at first, fidgeting with the sleeves of his pyjamas.

Sirius waits for him to break the silence, as minute after minute flits by, and just as he thinks the very last of his patience is about to expire, James says –

“I wanted to tell you first.”

“Tell me what?”

In the limited light, the edges of James’ body are all sloping into shadows, but Sirius can picture him with perfect clarity through the darkness, from memory alone.

“Sirius,” he says, and then stops, and breathes out, shaking his head. “Fuck – I had it all planned out, you know – everything I was going to say, and now it all sounds so fucking ridiculous – “ he swallows and gives Sirius a searching, pleading look. “Look, I’ve been wondering for ages how to – how to tell you, and – I don’t want you to be upset, alright?”

Sirius watches him, the back of his neck starting to prickle.

“I would say that this is harder for me than it is for you, but I think you might actually snap my neck in half if I did,” James offers him a weak smile, which Sirius doesn’t reciprocate. “But there’s no point in sugar-coating it; I should just rip the bandage right off, shouldn’t I?”

He looks up again at Sirius, and he’s nervous, it’s so obvious from the trembling, pale look of him – James, who’s never been afraid of anything. Now looking at Sirius like he’s awaiting a fucking reckoning, waiting for Sirius to rain hellfire down on him.

“What is it?” he snaps, more to get it over with than anything.

“I’m – I’m going to ask Lily to marry me.”

The words don’t hit Sirius at once like they should – they bounce right off him and then shatter into a million glass pieces, as if they’re being repelled away. He keeps his gaze on James, inexplicably calm without really knowing how he’s managing it, and for a moment or two feels like he’s not quite aware of being in his own body. He can’t feel his own limbs, can’t remember how to move his jaw, how to draw air into his lungs. The darkness in the room grows more pronounced in the quiet; turning visceral, suffocating.

“Sirius,” James whispers, with that hesitant, vulnerable look still shining behind his eyes. “Did you hear what I said?”

Slowly, sensation starts crawling back into his body, feeling like it’s breaking every bone along the way.

“Say something," James pleads.

Words don’t feel accessible to Sirius at the minute – a shrill, head-splitting ringing is going off in his ears and everything in his field of vision is being blotted a murderous, bloody red.

“I want kids, and obviously – obviously Lily can have kids –“ James’ voice is soft but starting to border on panic, and he reaches forward to grab Sirius’ hands. “Look, we’re getting older and – and – I’ve been thinking about it for ages and I just thought – “

“Get off me,” Sirius says, quiet and venomous.

James stops blabbering, his eyes shifting down towards his grip on Sirius' hands and then looking back up in surprise. Something that he sees on Sirius’ face makes him let go immediately and shrink back. “Just – listen to me, please, I knew you were going to be like this –“

This was a fucking trap, Sirius should’ve fucking known – James cornering him here, in the boys dormitory, in the middle of the night when he knows Sirius can’t just leave without alerting some teacher or other, not without James’ stupid Invisibility Cloak, anyway – that fucking bastard – that scheming, traitorous, lying prick –

“Sirius –“

“Get off,” he snarls, because James has started edging closer to him again, and Sirius can’t – he can’t fucking think right now, not with James looking at him like that, urgent and helpless like he’s the one whose every atom is collapsing into chaos, like he's the one whose heart feels like it’s been blown to fucking smithereens. 

James doesn’t draw back from him, and instead presses closer, his face stubborn. “Listen to me, this doesn’t have to change anything, anything at all –“

It’s Sirius who’s retreating now, pulling away from James as he moves in on him, so dangerously close that if he doesn’t back off right now Sirius is going to just –

James catches Sirius’ fist before he can land the punch, twisting his wrist sharply and making him hiss with pain.

“Fuck you,“ Sirius gets out through grit teeth, after James intercepts the second punch and pins him back against the headboard by his wrists. “I mean it, James, fuck you, fuck you –“

“Sirius,” James snaps, the word coming out sharp and silver, like the blade of a sword, like he’s made a fucking weapon out of Sirius’ own name. “Stop – stop struggling, just calm down and listen to me!”

“I don’t have to listen to shit. Get off.”

“No,” James says, his dark eyes now black with irritation. “No, you listen to me, and then you can hit and scratch me all you want – but listen first.”

“Get off me, James, I swear to god, I’ll –“

“You’ll what?” James challenges, as Sirius furiously thrashes against him, powerless when he’s literally being pinned up like this.

Defeated, fuming, and utterly humiliated, Sirius stops struggling and goes limp, resolutely glaring at the wall past James’ head and refusing to look at him. Still holding his wrists against the headboard, James starts talking, and every word feels like the lash of a whip hissing down onto his skin.

“We’re growing up, Pads, we can’t do – do what we’re doing anymore. I want a family,” he says, his fingers digging hard into Sirius’ skin, scalding it. “I would do anything for you – I would fucking die for you, you know I would, but you can’t give me what Lily can – and it’s not your fault, I know it isn’t, but it’s just the way things are and we need to live with that.”

Sirius doesn’t say anything, but with each passing second it feels like his veins are wilting, all the strength starting to sap out of him as the full realization of James’ words sink in.

I’m going to ask Lily to marry me.

“You and me – that’s not going to change,” James continues firmly. “You’re my best friend, you’re – you’re my whole fucking soul, so don’t start getting stupid and jealous over an issue of technicality, okay?”

He holds Sirius there, staring at him for a few moments, like he’s waiting for Sirius to say something in response. When it becomes clear that Sirius isn’t going to speak, he sighs and lets go of his wrists gently.

In the heavy, shivering silence that follows, Sirius slides back down the headboard, unsure of where all the snarling fury from two minutes ago has gone. What’s left in its place is nothing but screaming numbness, somehow even more unsettling than the anger had been.

--

(The fireplace crackles quietly with dying embers, spitting up carmine sparks. The Common Room is mostly deserted, all the other students already in bed or feverishly going over their exam notes in the library.)

“So – this is it now?”

Sirius is on the ground next to the hearth, chewing the end of his quill as he blankly flips through his textbook. The bottle of brandy by his side is nearly empty, and all the words on the page have melded together into one long, unreadable stream of gibberish. 

“Sirius.”

“What do you want?” he snaps finally, looking up at Remus. “I’m studying, alright?”

“You’re drunk,” Remus states, arms crossed over his chest, looking every bit as cross and intolerably Prefect-like as he’s acting. “We’ve got our first exam tomorrow, and you’re drunk.”

“Oh, are we just stating facts now? I’ll help,” Sirius grits his teeth. “Remus is an insufferable asshole. James is marrying Lily. And I really could give less of a shit about the exam tomorrow, if you hadn’t noticed –“

Remus kicks at Sirius’ bottle, and it topples over, spilling its remaining contents out onto the rich red carpet of the Common Room. “Call me insufferable all you want,” he says calmly. “But I’m not letting you throw your whole life away just because James is getting married.”

“Go to hell, Remus, that was my last bottle.”

“Good.”

Sirius pulls himself to his feet, stumbling slightly as the room starts spinning around him. “Leave me alone. I won’t say it again.”

The gleaming Prefect’s badge on Remus’ lapel is starting to irritate Sirius’ eyes. “Do you need me to give you a detention before you start taking this seriously?”

He lets out a loud, harsh laugh. “Is that supposed to frighten me?”

“I’ve had enough of this – this mess you’ve turned into,” Remus tells him firmly. “You’re not yourself, you haven’t been for weeks now. I’m tired of covering up for you when you turn up drunk for classes or start fights in the hallways –”

“No one’s asking you to do anything for me. Let the school expel me if they want – see if I care.”

“Pads,” Remus sighs, and then his shoulders soften sadly. “I know this is hard for you –“

“Did James send you here to talk to me?”

“No,” Remus takes a step closer to him, eyebrows furrowing. “I worry about you. We all do, because we’re your friends, and seeing you like this is –“

“I didn’t ask for you to worry about me!” Sirius shouts, his voice ringing violently around the expanse of the silent Common Room, making Remus flinch. “I didn’t ask for any of this – not you, not this stupid, stupid school, not James, and not fucking Lily –“

“I know,” Remus says, dropping his arms to his sides. “I know it’s not fair, alright, I get it –“

“You don’t get anything,” Sirius throws back, glaring at him. “What would you possibly get? How could you even begin to imagine – you don’t mean a thing to anyone, Remus! You've never even been in love with anyone, and nobody cares all that much about you either, so don’t fucking tell me that you've got the slightest inkling what I feel like – “

He stops suddenly, the breath catching like glass in his throat at the look on Remus’ face, hearing his own words just a moment too late. Shame starts gnawing at him almost at once, and he swallows the rest of his anger back down.

Remus is staring at him, pale and hurt, his shoulders stiff. “I know you’re upset. But if you keep pushing away everyone who cares about you, soon there won’t be anyone left.”

“I didn’t mean –“

“You’re in detention first thing tomorrow after your exam. And if I catch you drinking again I’ll go straight to the Headmaster, so just pull your shit together, alright?”

He strides off before Sirius can gather up the nerve to apologize, leaving him swaying there slightly in the abandoned firelight.

--

(The sky is black and bejewelled above them, bare branches of forest trees stretching upwards forlornly, like lovers’ fingers searching for each other in the dark.)

James’ mouth is wet with whiskey and want, every inch of his body warm as he presses himself against Sirius. “Fuck, Pads,” he murmurs, the words frantic and coupled with slippery, clumsy kisses, “I missed you, I missed this –“

It should feel wrong, it should feel sacrilegious, but having James all over him for the first time in weeks is nothing short of intoxicating. Sirius sinks his teeth into the thin skin overlaying James’ collarbone, breathing in the scent of him, the heat rising from his body and enveloping the air around them. He feels more alive than he has in a long time – furious and frustrated, but alive, because right now James is under him, moaning into his hair, and the sheer rush of it is fucking dizzying.

“What are you waiting for – just –“

Sirius pushes James back down against the ground, more forcefully than necessary, and James lets out a grunt as his head smacks onto a thin cushion of fallen leaves undulating the floor of the Forest. “You’ve got some fucking nerve, ordering me around like that when you’re lucky I’m even talking to you right now.”

“I’m not asking you to talk,” James’ words are low and impatient, his hands tearing at Sirius’ robes and pulling the fabric loose. “Stop arguing and fuck me. Think you can manage that?”

“Are you trying to piss me off?”

“Are you trying to make me beg for it?”

“Maybe you should.”

James stops fumbling with his clothes and stares at him, the watery moonlight dappling over him as he tries to ascertain whether Sirius is joking. “What, really?”

“Really.”

The conflicting knots of desire and pride on James’ face while he works out whether he’s willing to go to such lengths is enough to make the blood rush straight to Sirius’ cock – and though he’ll never admit it, he knows he’d fuck James right here without another word if James lies under him like this long enough, beautiful and undressed and swilled in starlight, just for him.

“This is ridiculous,” James mutters after a moment, cheeks flushed and vivid with embarrassment. “Alright, fine: please, Sirius.”

“Please what?”

“Oh, for – why are you so difficult, I said please – “

The needy, restless way that James is tugging Sirius closer floods his veins with a startling, potent urgency. “Please what?”

“You know what.”

“I want to hear you say it.”

James is trying to glare at him, but his mouth is too swollen and sulky for it to have any real effect. And, oh. There’s just something so – something, about seeing him like that, about him wanting Sirius so obviously, so much. “It’s been weeks, you fuck, I don’t want to play your stupid games – just do whatever you want to me, anything you want.”

“Beg, James,” Sirius reminds him, softly.

“Please,” James huffs with irritation, “please shut up and touch me already – use your hand, your mouth, I don’t care – just do it, just fucking touch me –“

When Sirius’ fingers glide along the edge of James’ cock, he cuts himself off with a sharp, reflexive whine. Sirius has barely just touched him, but James’ whole body ripples in response, his pupils dilated and dark with liquid heat – when Sirius lifts his hand off, James grabs his wrist, pushing it back down. “No – don’t, don’t fucking let go of it –“

He sounds so hungry, so desperate. A bright, billowing flux of lust makes Sirius’ whole head swim, and he sinks back onto his side beside James. Eyes shut, just listening to James moan while his hand delivers its sleek, slippery strokes. It’s too much for him to speak right now. Too much to do anything else at all.

James hasn’t even gone near his cock yet, hasn’t so much as acknowledged its fucking presence – but Sirius is already so hard it hurts, every sound that James makes sending violent shockwaves through him. It wouldn’t matter if this is all James ever lets him do – he’d never need to do anything in return for Sirius, wouldn’t even need to touch him, because just listening to this is enough – just hearing these gasping, fragmented noises that he makes, because it’s him that James is moaning for –

His eyes fly open when he feels James’ voice, warm and breathless, in his ear. “Look at me.”

“What, James?”

“It’s been so long,” he says, unwrapping the fingers Sirius has on him and intertwining them delicately with his own, “all these weeks – you’re all I’ve wanted, all I’ve thought about.”

The supernova flash of heat that’s been building under Sirius’ skin feels like it’s dimming now, growing shadowy. “Will you shut up? I don't feel like talking to you quite yet.”

“I know you’re upset, and I don’t blame you. But avoiding me, acting like I don’t even exist just because I’m getting engaged to someone else? How is that even remotely acceptable, Sirius? Did you even stop to think how it would make me feel?”

“You know, every time I convince myself that you couldn’t possibly get any more selfish –“

“No, what’s selfish is you throwing a tantrum when I’ve already told you that my engagement doesn’t change a thing between us.”

Sirius yanks his hand free from James’, annoyed. “I know you’re not stupid enough to believe that, and neither am I.”

“Are you going to be angry at me forever, then? It’s been three weeks – how much longer do you plan on staying pissed off for? Because I’m starting to get a little tired of you being acting like such a baby just because –“

Sirius doesn’t even stop to think about what he’s doing, he just does it – in a series of rough, furious movements he’s both on top of and inside James, his cock driven all the way into the firm, tight flesh with absolutely no warning – and that must hurt, it must feel fucking brutal – James sucks in a sharp, shivering gasp, the colour draining suddenly from his face.

“Fuck, Sirius – what the fuck –“

“Shut up, don’t ruin it by talking.”

James is shifting slightly on his hips, panting and trying to adjust to the friction, the pressure of Sirius’ jerky, forceful movements. His voice is taut, eyes wide and glazed – whether it’s from pleasure or pain, Sirius doesn’t know. Probably some ridiculous, insane blend of both. “You stupid, hot-headed, sexy bastard,” his teeth are grazing Sirius’ neck, “you have no idea how much I miss you.”

“I said don’t – talk –“

“Shut up, Pads – shit, slow down, you fucking sadist – just give me a minute to – “ James pauses to swallow, closing his eyes and letting out a quiet groan. For several long, blissfully silent moments he doesn’t say a word, trying to recollect himself. And then – “Fuck. Fuck.”

Sirius ignores him, doing his best to focus on the fact that he’s inside James, doing something to him that Lily never will. The thought of her touching what's his makes Sirius so angry he thinks he’d be clawing James’ eyes out right now, if not for this – how good it feels to be alone with him.

“I love you,” James murmurs, the words guttural against his ear, “I’ll love you every single day for the rest of my life.”

Shit, shit, shit. Sirius feels his eyes well up as soon as he hears those words, his skin burning hot and humiliated, because – oh god, he’s about to cry. He’s actually about to cry during sex, and it’s all James’ fault. Everything just feels so stupid, so unfair, so irrevocably fucked-up.

James’ mouth pauses on his cheek, tasting the salt of tears. He pulls back, staring at him in amazement, and suddenly Sirius is so embarrassed he wants to die.

“Sirius,” James breathes, his voice going tender, awestruck. He splays his hands over Sirius’ hipbones, begins to guide their movement gently. Sirius’ furious thrusts decelerate, now rolling slow and deep instead. “Yes – that feels so good, keep going slow, just keep doing this.”

“Mine,” Sirius tells him, his face buried in James’ shoulder, starting to feel overwhelmed by all of it – by how much he needs James, how pathetically low he’s willing to sink for him. “I wanted you to be mine.”

“I am yours. That’s what I keep trying to tell you, stupid – ah, you feel amazing – “

Sirius can’t help himself. “Better than Lily?”

“So much better, Sirius, I swear to god,” James tilts Sirius’ lips back up towards him, the words interspersed with long, lingering kisses. “Nobody compares to you – not her, not anyone.”

The words induce a flustered, lightheaded feeling in Sirius, and he lets out a low moan.

“Yeah? You like that?” James whispers. His tongue parts Sirius’ lips, slipping inside, swift and silky. “You like knowing that I think about you while I'm with her?”

 “James, oh my god –“

“You’re so hot when you’re trying not to come,” James pulls Sirius’ lower lip between his own, sucking lightly. “I can't seem to ever get you out of my head, you know, I think about you even when I'm in her – because I’m yours. All yours, always.”

A wet sob catches in Sirius’ throat. “Fuck, James, I’m so close –“

He feels his breath hitch, unravelling and coming undone at the exact same moment that James does. His whole body pulsates with it, ultraviolet hues of colour lighting him up like a solar flare. And then James is pulling him close again, and Sirius can no longer even tell whether he’s in his own body or not; he can’t feel anything but this, James’ skin on his own – everything else is just heat, sound, weightlessness.

--

(The memory splits and crackles again, shifting in kaleidoscope shades all around them. While it changes, Sirius steals a glance at James, hardly daring to breathe. The other boy is quiet, his shoulders braced slightly, and Sirius doesn’t allow himself to look long enough to decipher the tangled emotion on his face. In this memory, everything is a whirl of smearing colours, all the details hazy and wavering, as if they’re watching the world behind a wall of frosted glass.)

Sirius is really, really, really drunk.

It’s impressive, even by his own standards, and he has no idea how he’s managed to get dressed or stay on his feet or even get here, for that matter. In front of him, Lily’s home is vibrant and lushly decorated. Lively chatter laps effortlessly against the backdrop of Vivaldi’s music, and the evening air feels honey-sweet, warm as velvet against his skin. He’s perched on the rim of the marble fountain in the garden, smoking cigarettes and watching the immaculately-dressed crowd outside mingle together.

When the last of the carton he’d packed with him disintegrates to ashes, he grinds it out under a shoe and takes a deep breath, bracing himself before pushing the door open and stepping into the heat of the house. Inside, former classmates and acquaintances alike glide around merrily. Their gauzy silks and charmeuse dresses flutter in the summer breeze like wings, champagne-tinged laughter rippling carelessly into the air.

Just one look at it all is enough to sicken Sirius.

Before he can make himself vomit right there and then, he feels the familiar weight of James’ hand closing around his arm – and for just one sublime moment, that touch almost makes him forget where he is and why he’s here.

“You came,” James’ relieved, earnest face is all warmth, the smile lines around his eyes crinkling. He looks extra put-together tonight, something that’s unbearably difficult not to notice – black hair somehow gelled back and staying in place, dressed in sleek black robes trimmed with shimmering pearly velvet, the sharp, deft lines of his features heightened with genuine happiness.

Sirius glances down at the hand on his arm, at the flash of silver gilded around James’ fourth finger – and then the lurch in his stomach returns. Despite the distance between them that has been widening over the months following James’ announcement of his engagement, Sirius hasn’t managed to completely shut James out the way he sometimes wants to. They steal moments together in bathrooms and broom cupboards and under the stars, and each time Sirius allows himself to imagine that somehow this might be enough, that James will see that this is all he needs; and each time a piece of him shrivels up and dies when James inevitably returns to Lily in the morning.

James notices him looking at the ring, and retracts his hand at once. “You’re drunk,” he says, after a moment of silence, and Sirius doesn’t have to look up into his face to know that James is frowning.

“Is that really such a surprise?”

“Pads –“

“Cut me some slack, James,” Sirius tugs himself away from him, suddenly irritated. “So what if I’m drunk? It’s not every day that the love of my life gets engaged to someone else, is it?”

James winces slightly at the clipped, irascible edge to his voice. “Are you just going to give me headaches all night? Because you might as well not have come, in that case.”

“I somehow find it in me to show up to your fucking engagement party and now I’m the one giving you headaches?” Sirius snorts and shakes his head. “That’s really fucking rich.”

James sighs, looking him over and shaking his head. “Come on,” he says finally, “you need to sit down, you big baby.”

His hands are on Sirius’ shoulders now, guiding him gently around the peripheries of the room and towards a corner lined with soft chairs. Sirius can feel James’ touch on his skin through three layers of clothing, and it makes something tighten painfully in his chest. “Are we really doing this?” he asks, after a moment.

“Doing what?”

“This. Here, at your engagement.”

“Yeah, well,” James allows a hint of a smile to pass his lips temporarily. “I’m glad you’re here – wasted or otherwise.”

“I love you,” Sirius tells him pathetically, as if that’s somehow going to make any difference at all to the rest of this shitty night. “I loved you first.”

James exhales with considerable difficulty. “Just – just sit tight and sober up, and try not to cause any trouble, okay?”

“I love you,” Sirius repeats, louder, his voice breaking on the second word. The blind rush of hurt that sweeps up his chest at the heaving realization of it is nearly enough to make him want to cry. “I love you, and you’re marrying her.”

James’ face softens slightly, and he glances around for a moment before leaning in close, keeping his hands on Sirius’ shoulders. “Sirius,” he whispers, “I know being here is hard for you, and I appreciate that you came anyway.”

“I only showed up for you.”

“I know you did.”

Sirius looks up into his face, the warmth from James’ hands seeping into his skin, touching every bone in his body with ochre light. “You look nice,” he mumbles, clearing his throat after a long pause.

James laughs, the candlelight making his eyes gleam. “You wouldn’t believe how long it took me to get my hair to behave.”

“It’s behaving like I’ve never seen it behave before,” Sirius touches it lightly, letting the pads of his fingers skim over James’ hair, now stiff with gel, and James smiles again. “Did you have to use magic?”

“Obviously.”

An ache that’s been growing inside him since the moment he stepped inside is now pooling over every nerve, soaking into every muscle fibre, becoming impossible to ignore. Every cell in Sirius’ body feels swollen with how much he wants to drape his arms around James and just hold him. “I suppose it’s too much to hope that you’ve suddenly gotten cold feet about this whole engagement thing.”

“No,” James says quietly. His face is so close to Sirius that the lush heat of his mouth is starting to become far too distracting. “Well, not until you walked in, anyway.”

The words slide, opulent and delicious, down Sirius’ spine with a shiver. He tilts his head closer toward James’, the motion buoyed by the liquor he can feel turning to stars in his veins.

“Pads –“

Some invisible force moves Sirius’ body without warning, and then he’s kissing James before he knows what he’s doing, his heart tripling its pace incessantly the moment his lips land on James’.

James goes still for a startled moment, and a stupid, hopeful, inebriated part of Sirius almost believes that James will kiss him back – but then James shoves him off with both hands, his eyes suddenly alight and blazing with annoyance. “For fuck’s sake, Sirius!”

The room begins to hush around them. From near the refreshments table, Lily turns to stare.

Damn it.

James takes a long, deep breath, like he’s willing himself to stay calm, and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Sirius watches the movement, something inside his chest swaying and then crumbling like broken stone as he does. “You’re drunk,” James tells him, his voice lowered but unmistakably angry. “Stop fucking ruining everything.”

It’s too much, all of a sudden. The tinkling classical music in the background, the curious eyes around them, the glint of James’ wedding ring scorning everything Sirius has ever dreamed of having – his blood goes hot, rushing to his head, burning through every reasonable instinct. “Ruin everything?” he repeats, rising to his feet. “I’m the one who’s ruining everything?”

James tenses as murmurs sweep through the party guests. From among them, Sirius catches sight of Peter instinctively sliding closer to Remus for cover. When Remus’ eyes momentarily meet Sirius’, he gives him a small, warning shake of the head. The tiny, disapproving movement does nothing but make Sirius want to catapult a fist into his stupid face.

“No, I’m done being careful,” Sirius raises his voice, anger now swarming red all over his veins, suffusing every word. He can still feel the way James pushed him off, like the handprints are imprinted across his chest. “I’m done keeping quiet and letting you treat me like a fucking toy. No, fuck that and fuck you, James.”

“Sirius,” James says.

“Shut up,” Sirius snaps, his words slurring clumsily into each other, bordering on being incoherent. “I’m so sick of this – this running around and hiding and being your dirty little secret – you don’t get to do that to people. You don’t get to make people love you and say you love them and then marry someone else. You’re a selfish, entitled, lying dick who doesn’t care about anybody else. You’re manipulative and a cheater and I’m so sick of pretending that you get to get away with this shit. So you want to get married? Fine, go ahead, go right fucking ahead. But I’m going to make sure everyone sees you for what you really are – a fucking narcissist who thinks he’s somehow too good to abide by the same fucking morals that everyone else does. Let me tell you what you are, James.”

“Sirius, please.”

“Please what? Please stop?” Sirius laughs, every word catching fire when he spits it out into the room. “Doesn’t everyone deserve to know? Doesn’t your precious Lily deserve to know?”

James’ face pales at that and he shakes his head silently, his eyes pleading. It gives Sirius a sense of sick, shameless satisfaction to see him like that – as if all the ugly black pain that he’s been thrashing under for so long has finally come roaring up to the surface, blooming violently from beneath his skin, and it hurts, it hurts so much that all Sirius wants to do now is cast it away onto every single other fucking person in this room, to make them feel what he feels, to make it all stop for just one fucking second.

“And you,” he continues, turning to glare scornfully at Lily, who’s still staring confusedly from near the bar. “Too stupid to know that your own boyfriend has been cheating on you for years with his best friend – he didn’t tell you that when he asked to marry you, did he? And I’ll be pretty willing to bet that he didn’t tell you that he let it go on even after you said yes.”

Audible murmurs of shock ripple through the guests. Tears spring to Lily’s eyes as she turns to look helplessly at James.

“Yep. Sorry to break it to you, Lil, but your fiancé’s a fucking swine. Oh, that’s right,” Sirius laughs again, a broken, jagged sound that cuts through the painful silence like a scimitar. “What was it you said to me, James? This doesn’t change anything between us? How long did you think you were going to keep this up for? Until you and Lily were old, with a million kids, living in some fucking cottage on a hill? Don’t scowl at me like that – I’m not the one who’s destroying your marriage. You’ve been doing that all by yourself for years now. You are a terrible person and you deserve for everyone to know it.”

Lily is sobbing, with soft choked noises, mascara running like black blood down her cheeks and her small hands clasped over her mouth as she turns away from both of them.

“Stop it, Sirius!” James roars, furious. “That’s fucking enough!”

“You want to marry Lily, Prongs?” Sirius snarls at him. “Marry her, then, but don’t pretend to be some perfect, loyal fiancé when you know you’re anything but that. In fact, you’ve never done anything for anyone but yourself, because you’re a foul, traitorous piece of shit, and you don’t deserve a day of happiness in your fucking life! You don’t deserve anything but to be alone and unloved, wishing you’d been a better person. And I hate you, I fucking hate you, James, you’ve ruined everything for me. All you do drain everyone of all the life they have, and you never give anything back! You’re nothing but a leech to anybody unfortunate enough to care about you. And if Lily had a single fucking morsel of intelligence in that head of hers, she’d leave you to rot.”

He pauses, breathing heavily. James’ face is hard with rage, and somewhere inside Sirius it stings to see what this has done to him, but the twisted pleasure of having done it anyway is overpowering. He reaches for a nearby glass of champagne and downs it in several smooth gulps while everyone watches, the alcohol spilling like an analgesic through his body.

“Cheers,” he says at last, tossing the glass aside and letting it smash rudely against the wall, echoes singing out softly through the room. “I wish you and your fiancée a miserable fucking marriage together.”

--

(The memory dissolves away and rearranges into a familiar setting this time – Sirius’ apartment, in its previous state of single occupancy. The windows have been left open, and the sheer curtains billow outwards, dancing lightly in the afternoon breeze.)

“Lily wants to postpone the wedding. Indefinitely.”

Sirius snorts and swirls the drink around his glass. It’s been two weeks since his outburst at James’ engagement party, and having blacked out most of the night, finds himself unable to feel much (if any) remorse concerning his behaviour that day. “You’re lucky she still wants to marry you at all.”

“Is this what you wanted?” James says, looking stonily at him. “Are you enjoying this?”

“I’ve already apologized about a hundred times, I’m not really sure what else you want me to say. I was drunk, alright? I didn’t know what I was saying. But am I terribly upset that you’re postponing your wedding as a result? No, I’m not, James, and I’m sure you’d appreciate why.”

“I know you were drunk, and I know you didn’t mean those things you said,” James mutters after a moment, looking highly irritated. “But you could at least pretend to feel a little bad. Do you even have any idea what you did? I was fucking furious with you.”

“Sit down and join the club, then,” Sirius shrugs.

“Look –“ James pauses, rubbing his eyes, and he lowers his voice without looking at Sirius. “I’m sorry it took me this long to realize it wasn’t fair to treat either you or Lily the way I did. I have been selfish, you were right about that.”

Sirius takes a smug sip and doesn’t say anything.

“I’m sorry, alright?” James says. “I never – I didn’t know how much I was hurting you. Or maybe I did, and I just pretended not to see it because it was too hard – but you don’t deserve that at all."

“Spare me the pity party. I think you’re two weeks too late for all that now.”

“You were right, Pads. It’s not right to string two people along like that. And Lily – I can’t stand what this is all doing to her. Do you know what she said to me? She said that if it had been anyone else that I’d been cheating with, she would’ve just walked away from me. But because it was you –“ he shakes his head, the shame on his face almost palpable. “I don’t know how I ever managed to find someone as kind as her.”

“What, she forgave you for sleeping around because it was just with me?”

“She hasn’t forgiven anything,” James’ mouth is a tight line, his voice going brittle. “Like I said – the wedding’s been postponed till God knows when.”

“Are you implying I should take some fault in that?” Sirius raises his eyebrows. “You’re the one who cheated.”

James’ face reddens. “Only because you're trying to sleep with me every chance you get –“

“I’m not the one who’s engaged, James. Besides, you’re still fucking getting married anyway, so I don’t really know what you’ve got your wand in such a knot about.”

“Stop it,” James says suddenly, glaring at him. “I don’t know what’s come over you lately – ever since I told you about marrying Lily you’ve become this – this whole other person, just drinking all the time and – being angry and cruel to everybody – I don’t like it. I don’t like seeing you like this.”

Sirius thinks those words might have hurt a little bit if he’d been sober, but the warm sloshing of rum in his stomach helps dull their edges down. “Yeah, well.”

“Everyone’s noticed it, not just me. You’re not being yourself.”

“Did you just come over here to lecture me about my drinking?”

James’ face hardens slightly. “No. But that doesn’t mean I can’t express my concern when I see you falling apart.”

“I haven’t even begun to fall apart, so spit out whatever it is you wanted to say.”

“I just came to tell you that – that Lily and I talked. And this probably goes without saying, but – well, you’re you, so it seems necessary to have to make it explicitly clear.”

Sirius looks up at him, frowning. “Make what explicitly clear?”

“This has to stop,” James says. “You and me – whatever we’re doing. It’s not fair to you or her, and you deserve to find someone who can make you happy. Who can give everything to you. Not – not just in bits and pieces, like I have.”

“What do you mean, stop?”

“It’s pretty self-explanatory, Pads,” James says patiently.

Panic begins settling like icy snow over Sirius’ bones, filling him with the cold of it. “I’m not stopping anything. What’s the fucking matter with you? Are you hearing yourself?”

“Yeah, I am, actually,” James tells him. “Just like I heard you call me a cheater and a selfish, entitled narcissist who doesn’t do anything for anyone but himself. You’re right, I've made some mistakes and it was wrong to think I could keep getting away with them.”

“James, I didn’t –“

“No, it was my fault for letting this go on for so long. But enough is enough – it’s time for you to move on. When was the last time you went out on a fucking date? Have you ever even thought about looking for someone else?”

“No,” Sirius says blankly, his mind reeling under the weight of all these stupid new propositions James is bombarding him with. “Why would I –“

“Because what I’m giving you shouldn’t be enough!” James shouts suddenly, his shrill voice blowing up against the silence of the room. “How can you not see that? How could you possibly think that a lifetime of crawling behind me while I’m engaged to someone else could be enough for you?”

“Is that what you think I’ve been doing? Crawling behind you?”

“No,” James exhales slowly. “But please just - don’t make this harder than it has to be."

Sirius is starting to feel nauseous. “You’re not thinking straight. You’re upset about what happened at the engagement party and now you’re –“

“I’m not punishing you, if that’s what you’re about to say.”

“Aren’t you?”

“No, Sirius. This is for you – and I know your stupid sense of loyalty won’t let you see this, but this is a good thing for you. You deserve to be happy. You deserve everything.”

“Seven fucking years of loving you is not the same thing as a sense of loyalty.”

James shakes his head and drums his fingers across the table impatiently. “Listen to me. I know you, inside and out, and I know that your feelings for me are more real and fierce and powerful than anyone else’s, but – but you can’t deny that you haven’t even tried to feel that way about another person. Someone who’s not me, I mean.”

“You can’t have any fucking clue what I feel, so shut –“

“Yes, I do,” James snaps at him. “You think that I don’t know what goes on in that insane head of yours? That I don’t feel your pain when your heart’s lying around in a hundred fucking pieces inside your chest, like it is now? That I haven’t felt you starting to crumble apart since the moment I went out with Lily in fifth year? Of course I do – I love you, for fuck’s sake, but that made me selfish, and I let you suffer because I wanted to have it all – it was just like you said at the engagement, Pads, everything was true. I’ve been ruining you.”

“No,” Sirius says at once.

“You love with this – this fire, that’s unlike anything else. I just think it’s time you find someone who deserves you. Someone better.”

“I don’t want better!”

“Maybe not right now,” James agrees, surveying him. “But you will eventually. And I mean to be right here to celebrate with you when you do, because as difficult as this might be for you to believe, I actually want what’s best for you.”

“What if what's best for me is you? Did you ever consider that?”

Sadness pools into James’ eyes, and he glances away. “I really wish it were true, but we both know it isn’t.”

“Everything was fine until Lily came into the picture, don’t project your own guilt onto me. Everything was fine until you decided I wasn’t enough!”

“That’s –“

“First you wanted me, then you wanted Lily, now you’re playing along with this whole marriage sham because you want kids – and what then? What new thrill will it be next? At what point will you stop and realize that nothing is ever going to get rid of that hole in your heart you’re so desperate to fill?”

“So you’re saying I should just be like you, then?” James demands. “I should just sit around and dig into my own wounds over and over again, and complain about the world being unfair just because I’m so bloody disagreeable to any sort of change –“

“Shut your mouth, or I’ll rip your insolent fucking tongue right out.”

James shuts up, glaring at him irritably. Afternoon light is shedding itself lightly through the half-open curtains in his flat, soft like rain. James’ face is hard-set, with that stubborn clench in his jaw that Sirius recognizes. For a moment in the glaze of the noon sun, Sirius almost wants to believe that this is all a trick – an illusion of the light, a gimmick to be laughed over in the future – but the flash of James’ engagement ring strips that away from him in minutes, and he blinks uncertainly. Unsure of where to look. All the pieces he’d imagined fitting together suddenly fragmented, fracturing, falling apart.

After a moment of silence, James says, “You’re clever enough to put two and two together. I’m engaged. You need to move on. That’s really all there is to it.”

Sirius shakes his head, but nothing comes out. With every passing moment he feels like his grip on what’s actually happening here is growing frailer. For the first time since this conversation began, he’s starting to wrap his head around the fact that James might actually be fucking serious. 

“Hey,” James’ voice is suddenly gentle again, his fingers appearing to reach out over the table but halting at the last moment. “Maybe it won’t be easy, but you’re not going to be alone, Sirius. You will always have me, you’ll always have Remus and Peter, and someday you’ll have your very own Lily too. And on that day you’ll know that this was the right decision to make. We’re not going to be kids forever.”

That hurts, even if James’ hadn’t meant for it to. His words are painted all over with the one glaring truth that Sirius has always known but did everything in his power to avoid – that his relationship with James has never been equal, never been fair. That James is all Sirius has, a dynamic which has never truly gone both ways. He'd lie down on railroad tracks if James asked him to – while James would find that sort of compulsion terrifying. Even the way he says it – we’re not going to be kids forever – as if the fact that Sirius loves him for being the first thing that ever made the world feel like a place worth staying alive in is nothing more than childish infatuation, some game that they’ve been playing at that now needs to be stowed away in place of more serious and grownup commitments.

“You can do this for me, can’t you, Sirius?”

For me.

It echoes passively around in Sirius’ head, like a reminder; James’ favourite words to use whenever he needs to reign Sirius back into obedience – do it for me – a neat little trick of his that somehow still hasn’t grown old, even after all these years.

“Fuck you,” Sirius says, getting up from the table, and he means it. “You’re free to go and pretend to the whole world that this is what you really want, but if you think for just a second that I’m going to play along with you, then you’re a fucking lunatic.”

--

Chapter Text

(As the patterns and colours start shimmering and swirling around them again in construction of the next memory, lattices of light spidering outwards from where they’re standing, Sirius catches James’ slanted eyes on him, heavy with questions.

He realizes with a start how precisely detailed James looks here, how undeniably solid and real in this hazy world of memories. He feels like he should say something, ask if he’s okay, but nothing comes to him. He just stands there, looking back at James in the silence as they find themselves back in the same flat, this time markedly untidier and with empty bottles splayed across every surface.)

The night is warm and sticky, formed of a damp and windless heat, excoriated by the rising sounds of shouting. James’ skin is florid with irritation as he waves his hands around and raises his voice, but Sirius can’t hear a word he’s saying, can barely keep track of why they’re having this argument in the first place – he’s finally starting to feel the six or so drinks he’s downed since James arrived; the alcohol throwing a blurry, dreamlike tinge over everything in the room, turning James into a figure from a watercolour painting, handsome and surreal at the same time.

“Are you even listening to me?”

Sirius shrugs and puts his feet up on the sofa, not saying anything. He’s cold, he notes with faint surprise, despite the general humidity of the evening. His whole body is tired and aching, but he hasn’t been able to fall asleep for several days now, even with all the continual drinking.

James lets out an exasperated noise. “This is what I mean – you just don’t care anymore, about anything. When did you last eat something? When was the last time you slept, or stepped out of this flat?”

“Tomorrow,” Sirius waves a hand at him dismissively. His lids are growing heavy, and all he wants is for James to lie down next to him – the thought of it makes something prick behind his eyes, and he blinks it away. “Stop shouting, will you, my head hurts.”

“Your head hurts because you’ve been drinking firewhiskey instead of water, like some type of cretin,” James snaps impatiently, starting to pace, but he lowers his voice anyway. “You can’t live like this, Pads, I mean it. I won’t let you.”

“You don’t have to let me do anything,” Sirius reminds him.

“I’m trying to help you.”

“Help me?” Sirius repeats, a bitter smile pulling at his mouth. “And how exactly do you propose to do that? Are you leaving Lily?”

James stops pacing and frowns, a troubled look flickering across his eyes. Sirius’ attention lingers drowsily on the crease in James’ forehead, the stubborn pout clinging to the soft, round swell of his lips. It makes his heart want to come crawling out of his chest on all fours, weak and trembling all over. Every line on James’ face fills him with longing, every single stroke, every impeccably fine point – it’s maddening, the way James is more beautiful to Sirius now than he’s ever been.

“Why can’t you just be happy for me?”

“Because I don’t believe that you are. Happy, I mean.” Sirius props his knees back up, watching James take a seat next to them on the sofa. “You wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

“I’m here because I wanted to make sure that you weren’t drinking yourself to death – which, honestly, you may as well be,” James says, annoyed. “I’m allowed to give a shit about my best friend, even if we’re not sleeping together anymore.”

“How very platonic of you.”

“Will you stop being so difficult?” James’ volume rises again. “It’s pretty obvious to everybody in the whole world that you’re not okay right now.”

Despite the tiredness weighing down his limbs, a momentary flash of irritation passes through Sirius like lightning. “Big surprise,” he says. “What would you like for me to tell you? That I’m going to go put on a ring and miraculously get over the last seven years of my life too?”

“I didn’t –“

“I can’t just do what you did, okay, James? My feelings for you were actually real.”

James’ shoulders slacken with bewildered hurt. “How can you say that? How can you even think that what I felt wasn’t –“

Sirius lets out a scoff and looks away.

James gazes at him without speaking for a long, drawn-out couple of moments, and an uncomfortable silence soaks into the room around them. “Tell me that you don’t actually believe that.”

“Wouldn’t you? If you were in my place?”

“I’ve loved you since before I even knew what that meant. On your best days and through all of your worst – every single minute that I’ve known you for. Whatever else you might think of me, you can’t possibly be convinced that all of that has just gone away somehow.”

Sirius’ chest tightens; a familiar, dull ache reawakening within it and pulsing outwards through his body. “I can, because you’re still marrying Lily.”

“I’ve already given you my reasons –“

“I don’t accept your bullshit reasons, James, they’re not good enough anymore!” Sirius shouts, sitting up suddenly. “I don’t give a fuck if you want kids – you chose her. Do you understand me? I would have done anything that you asked me to, I would’ve stepped off a cliff without a moment’s hesitation – and you still chose her, not me.”

“Look. I know you’re hurt and angry, you have every right to be –“

“Stop it,” Sirius says, when James’ hand touches his shoulder. The word falls out almost reflexively, sounding strangled. “Stop acting like you care how I feel all of a sudden.”

“I always care how you feel. Why are you being – ” James pauses and gives him an exasperated look. “You’re my best friend, Sirius, doesn’t that matter to you anymore?”

“No, don’t spin this around and make it my fault. You did this, alright?” Sirius snaps. “Do you expect me to pretend as though nothing’s wrong, to go back to normal as if you aren’t fucking engaged to someone else?”

 “No, of course not – ”

“And I’m just supposed to, what, live happily with the fact that I’ve meant nothing to you all these years?”

“That’s not true! You know it isn’t!”

“Isn’t it? Fucking hell, James, you won’t even touch me anymore –“

“Do you think I’m any happier about that than you are?” James asks him fiercely, eyes black and hot with irritation. “All I can think about is you. But I made a decision – it wasn’t easy and no, I didn’t just put on a fucking ring and forget all about you, okay, so you can get that absurd idea out of your head right now.”

Sirius crosses his arms and turns away.

“I’m sorry that I was a dick last week, alright? I was angry that the wedding was postponed, that you embarrassed me, and that a part of me knew you were right. I know I was harsh with you, when I really should’ve just told you that the things you said at my engagement party hurt me more than I wanted to admit. But I honestly don’t know why you’re acting as if I don’t care about you anymore – and worse, like I never did – when not being with you is actually the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. You’re my favourite fucking person in the world. Somewhere under all that anger you feel right now, you must know that.”

“I really don’t think I do.”

James’ brows furrow, the frustrated crease between them appearing to deepen. “Will you stop being such a knob? You know as well as I do that it’s hard for me to even sit here without wanting to tear all your clothes off. But I can’t – I won’t – because then my marriage wouldn’t stand a chance.”

Sirius grits his teeth and shrugs James’ hand off his shoulder. “What kind of idiotic reasoning is that? Don’t get fucking married, then.”

“It’s not that simple –“

“You know what isn’t simple? Looking at you and realizing that I will never kiss you again. And that the last time I did, you shoved me off, in front of everybody. That was our final kiss – the one I’ll have to remember for the rest of my life. Where you made me feel like a dirty secret that you couldn’t bear for anyone else to know about.”

“Stop it,” James says. “That’s not –“

“And the last time we fucked – oh, was it in a tiny bathroom or a broom closet? Or hidden away somewhere deep inside the Forest? You probably don’t remember, anyway, because you were always so fucking drunk when it happened, always too ashamed to talk about it after  – “

“Pads, stop –“

“Don’t you dare pretend that I’m telling anything but the truth. It really makes me want to fucking scream, James, when you say shit like you’re my favourite person, because for just one moment, I wish you’d actually act like it!”

James gawks at him, his face taken aback.

A nauseous, crawling sensation is slowly slipping through Sirius’ chest, squeezing like a serpent around his organs. His heart is fluttering in panicked, desperate bursts. He gets to his feet, seized with a sudden urge to get as far away from James as possible. Every cell in his body is raw and red with hurt, anger, resentment. It makes him want to throw up or cry or something – the look on James’ face is only making it worse, and being in the same room as him is bordering on unbearable.

The shrill silence prolongs itself painfully, swirling into the air like particles of radioactive waste. James watches him wordlessly as he strides over to the door.

When Sirius’ hand lands on the handle, James’ voice sounds from behind him, soft and uncharacteristically meek. “Where are you going?”

Sirius opens the door and steps out, slamming it shut behind him.

--

(The memories are spilling against each other faster now, each one bleeding into the next in quick, volatile succession. They’re in a dusky bedroom, sheets crumpled and pulled off the sides. The windows are latched shut, trapping a residual smell of smoke in the enclosed space. On the floor, an abandoned bottle of gin with the cap off lying on its side and leaking into a dark puddle.)

When Sirius finally manages to fall asleep a day later, the experience is short-lived and disturbed by nightmares, a shadow in the shape of James always slinking around the peripheries and darkness, always turning to smoke and dust when Sirius tries to reach out to him.

He awakens, shaking and cold, exhaustion dredging through his whole body. In his room there’s nothing but quiet, no sound except that of his own ragged breathing.

The realization of just how alone he is seems to sweep into him all at once. Involuntarily, he conjures up the thought of James lying peacefully in bed next to Lily, and the image fills him with dark, fulminant anger that makes him fist the sheets in his hands furiously. It’s not fair, she doesn’t even fucking know James like he does. James should be here. All of this is so stupid and pathetic and irritating – and there’s absolutely nothing he can do about it. The aching in his heart makes him want to carve the whole sick, bloody thing out of his chest and throw it onto the ground in disgust.

Sirius digs his fingers as hard as he can into his palms, but it’s not enough to stop the hot, humiliating sting of tears sliding corrosively down his face. His throat tightens and closes up, and he leans forward, burying his head in the pillow, sobbing.

--

(Stereo music, throbbing faintly from inside the pub. Stars like glowing eyes in the sky, blinking in and out of the blackness. A narrow, claustrophobic brick alley, graffiti scrawled on the walls, shattered glass lying in disjointed constellations everywhere.)

He stands there trying not to breathe in the heavy, nauseating whiff of whiskey emanating off the complete stranger lying knocked out cold in front of him – a big man, whose loud voice and mean face had been enough to warrant picking a pointless fight with.

What time is it, and what is he even doing here? The preceding portion of his evening is a chaotic, noisy blur – there had been another argument with James, he remembers that, something stupid again. He’d lashed his way through the town, stopping at every inn for a drink, just walking and then finally stumbling for hours on end. With each passing minute his mood had only grown more terrible, the memory of James’ hurt expression as he stormed out embedding deeper and deeper into Sirius’ brain, like an insidious tumour.

He’s bruised and aching all over, but the alcohol has numbed away most of the pain. He feels sickeningly detached, everything inside him dead and cold as winter. The anger that had rushed through him, so vivid and justified mere moments ago as he was pummelling the big stranger, now dulled out and displaced as he stares at him lying on the ground like some kind of broken doll. It occurs to Sirius as ridiculous, the thought that this little brawl might have made him feel any better. What he feels instead is cruel, violent, insane. Teetering mere millimetres from the edge, yet lucidly aware of how close he is to falling right over it.

Nothing is enough, that’s the fucking problem – nothing he does is ever enough to bury this emptiness that’s carved out all the parts that used to be inside of him, the parts that let him operate as a normal, functional person. He wakes up each morning with the day ahead already seeming impossibly long and vacuous, containing hours upon hours of pointless nothingness that he can no longer bring himself to fill with anything meaningful. And this permanent numbness feels like it’s pervading every membrane of his being, impossible to scrub off. Nothing works – not the drinking, nor the tears, nor even the physical violence. It makes him want to smash his head against the wall; anything, just to get rid of it.

His grip around the glass he’s holding tightens enough to feel it crack. A jagged edge slices laterally into his palm, leaving a thin rivulet of red in its wake. The sharp burst of sudden pain makes him drop the glass with a start. For a moment or two, he holds his hand up to the pale light of the stars, watching it bleed with dazed fascination. When the pain dulls down a bit, he closes his fist, fingertips gouging into the wound to reawaken it.

Back inside the bar, he lights a cigarette with his good hand and orders a double martini. The young witch that’s been serving him gives him a sympathetic smile as she hands him the drink. “I don’t normally take sides when people get into drunken fights here, but I’ll be honest – I was hoping you’d win that one.”

“Cheers,” Sirius says, taking the glass and downing it.

“You know, when you spend enough hours of your life working behind a bar like I have, there are two things you learn how to spot a mile away: broken hearts, and job promotions. Something tells me you’re not the latter.”

“No, I’m not,” he says listlessly. Unbidden, his thoughts wander back to James – as they always do, rolling around an endless cul-de-sac that forever leads to same place. The frothing, hot-cold feeling of gin in his belly has made it difficult to picture James whole in his mind – what materializes in his hazy head does so in fragments; the fine curve of a cheekbone; the smooth jut of a clavicle; the ridge on the back of his neck, leading down to his spine. He thinks of the way sunlight slips over James’ skin like silk, the weight of his wrist lying absently on Sirius’ shoulder, the indelicate crook of his mouth when they’ve been out drinking with friends and his fingers glissade down Sirius’ thigh under the table, whispering let’s get out of here.

The witch leans on her elbows behind the bar. She’s got vibrant red hair – like Lily, he notes bitterly. “Broken heart or not, you’ve been here all day, so I should thank you for bringing us business. It’s been quiet around here lately, you know, with everything going on in the world,” she lets out a disapproving cluck. “What’s your hot take on the subject?”

He shrugs, still distracted. “They’re saying we’re on the brink of war.”

“Personally, I don’t believe that all this will last for much longer,” she says. “Or, well, I hope it doesn’t, or I’ll be out of a job.”

Sirius hands the glass back, not replying.

“You may be right, though.” She starts making him a new drink. “Just this morning the Minister of Magic passed some ridiculous new law allowing the use of the Unforgivable Curses. I mean – seriously, next he’s going to say there’ll have to be some nationwide curfew –“

He frowns at her. “What?”

“Didn’t you read it in the Prophet this morning?” she asks, looking surprised.

Sirius shakes his head, and she gives him a bright smile as she slides the drink over.

“Well,” she says theatrically, “the Curses are really only supposed to be used by the Aurors, of course. The Minister was just going on and on about the rising conflict with so-called Death Eaters, how we’ve got to break a few eggs to make an omelette, that sort of thing. Anyway, you know how The Unforgivable Curses are all really dark magic, and you can get Azkaban for life if you’re caught using them? The Minister says he’s legalising them because we need to give the Aurors a fighting chance.”

Sirius takes his time with the drink, sipping as he listens. Something has started humming in the back of his subconscious mind, some sort of machinery getting to work, but he’s too tired to take note of the thoughts forming quietly there. “That can’t be a good sign.”

“It’s absurd, isn’t it? I mean, I don’t think he’d have done that if the situation wasn’t really bad,” the bartender’s saying. “Anyway, I just think this is going to encourage a whole bunch of idiots to go out there trying to throw Unforgivable Curses at their enemies, and the Minister didn’t mention any tracking system to make sure it’s only available to Aurors.”

The machinery whirs louder, growing to a ringing buzz in his head. It makes his temples throb.

“Another drink?” she asks after a moment of silence, looking at him hopefully.

Sirius glances up, and the noise in his head comes to an abrupt stop. He sets his glass back down on the countertop. “No. I think I’ve had enough tonight.”

--

(A different house now. There are playing cards and parchments strewn carelessly across the table, and candles burning low, emitting faint spheres of light that waver against the dimness around them. An owl watches ruefully from inside its cage, large yellow eyes glowing like full moons.)

As the first official meeting of the Order of the Phoenix draws to a close, quiet chatter breaks out amongst the small group of individuals gathered there. Remus swiftly leaves Sirius’ side, where he’s been standing for the better part of an hour, to address the room.

“Would you all care to stay for dinner?” he asks, and is met with enthusiastic nods. “Well, I can’t cook for shit – excuse the language, Professors, but I really can’t – I’ll have to pop over to the pizza place just down the road. James, come give me a hand, will you?”

Sirius watches as James shrugs and gets up from the table. As he moves to join Remus, his eyes land on Sirius’ for the shortest, most fleeting moment – but the moment is gone before Sirius can be sure that it even happened, and then James is walking past him without a second glance.

Like I’m not even here, Sirius thinks blankly.

So this is what it’s come to – the two of them acting like strangers in a room where no two other persons know each other even half as well as he and James do. Drifting past each other, silent and brooding, like ghosts, neither acknowledging how fucking disturbing or wrong this all feels. And all it had taken to get here were numerous horrible fights that recurred over the course of the last two months. To James’ credit, he’s actually made considerable efforts to swallow his pride and appease Sirius’ anger about the engagement. He’s returned to Sirius’ flat, apologetic and tender, nursing the wounds his words left on Sirius and nobly making no mention of the ones Sirius’ left on him. But Sirius has remained adamant that nothing short of James actually leaving Lily is going to make a difference to him – and at that point, the yelling and fighting often gets going again. Always the same bitter, furious accusations thrown back and forth at each other, words sharpening into weapons, always ending with the same hurt, indignation and frustrated rancour they’d begun with.

And now here they are. Pretending not to look at each other across the room, when they used to be glued at the sides. James striding past him like Sirius is part of the wall. Sirius supposes it’s to be expected after all. He must’ve gotten tired, just like Sirius has, of the caustic, repetitive arguing. In the beginning he had come to Sirius’ flat every day, but this thinned out to every few days, then dwindled down to only once a week. Now, it’s been a whole fortnight since the last terrible quarrel, and all Sirius has heard from James since then is a measly letter delivered by owl two days ago, asking if he planned on attending the meeting tonight at Remus’ place.

As James leave the house with Remus, Sirius considers making his own exit. What’s the point in being here, anyway? He doesn’t really give a shit about the war that's got everyone so worked up right now; the whole world can burn to ashes, for all he cares. And the sick, sour feeling which materialized inside him the moment he walked in and saw James standing near the kitchen with his hand in Lily’s has only worsened considerably all night.

He’d had the decency to stay sober for this bullshit meeting, but now that it’s over, all he can think about is a drink. He slips silently out to the back garden and takes furtive swigs from a flask, feeling the way he did when he was fifteen, crouching behind James’ shed with him and dizzily sharing the expensive bottle they’d nicked from his dad’s cellar.

A quiet noise of movement from behind him makes him stuff the flask away and whip around almost guiltily.

He finds himself looking at Lily Evans, with a nervous smile on her delicate face and the thin moonlight splaying behind her like a halo.

“Don’t bother putting that away,” she says, nodding at his flask. “I brought one too.”

Sirius stares at her, dumbfounded, as she unclips her slim green purse and pulls out a little flask of her own. She unscrews the top and takes a big swallow, letting out a grimace as it goes down.

“Liquid courage,” she smiles again, biting her lip. “I thought I might need it tonight, when James said you were coming.”

The mention of James dissolves away the initial shock of the conversation, and Sirius bristles immediately. “What do you want?”

“Look,” she says, her green eyes watching him carefully. “I’m sorry about what you’ve been going through.”

“Right.”

“I know we were never really friends – but I know what you mean to James, so –“

“Funny, because if you truly knew, you wouldn’t be marrying him at all.”

Her shoulders shrink slightly under the weight of his glare. “Sirius, I can’t imagine that you’re my biggest fan right now, and I don’t blame you. For a while I could barely stand the mention of your name, let alone entertain the idea of us having a conversation, like we are right now. But the more I thought about it, the less sense it makes to hate you. And believe me, I did try. The thought of you with James, under my nose for two whole years – it made me feel stupid, and betrayed, like I was just another one of James’ playthings.”

He looks away from her, eyes fastening onto the ground sullenly.

“Maybe a little bit like how you feel right now. That’s why I can’t bring myself to hate you. I know you’re the only other person in the world to feel about James like I do, who would understand the pain that I felt when I found out about the two of you.”

“Then why are you still with him?”

“Because I love him, Sirius,” Lily says quietly. “The same as you.”

“He said that you would have left, if it had been anyone other than me.”

“Yes.” Lily takes a sip from her flask. “I would’ve. I’ve always understood your friendship with him to be something special. Obviously I was heartbroken when I found out, anyone would be, but I don’t know. A part of me felt – relief, almost, that it was you and not anyone else. It’s like I can understand why it would be you, given the intensity of your friendship with James – I even admit I’ve always been slightly jealous of it. If it had been with someone like Meadowes or Vance, I’d be tormenting myself, wondering what they could give James that I couldn’t. With you, I already know – James has always said that each of you carries a piece of the other in your souls.”

“That’s just some shit I came up with when we were high.”

“Well, he repeated it to me often, so I know that it means something to him. Anyway, all of this is just to say that I can’t hate you for loving James. And I hope that you don’t hate me for marrying him.”

Sirius wishes he’d remembered to bring cigarettes. His hands are trembling and he needs to busy them with something. “It’s much easier to get over a finished affair than a marriage that’s going to last for the rest of his life.”

“But the fact that he chose to marry me doesn’t erase how he feels about you. I don’t doubt that he loves me and that he’ll keep his word, but I will never be able to shake that small part of me that wonders whether he might regret his choice someday.”

Sirius shuffles his feet and stays quiet, helping himself to a generous mouthful of vodka to rinse the words on his tongue away – it doesn’t matter if he regrets it, because it’ll still be you that he kisses and wakes up to every morning, it’s you he’s going to hold hands and dance with, whose bed he will come home to lie in every night; I would take that any day over this fucking black hole that he’s left in my world – a sudden rise of anger makes his whole body tense up and he has to force himself to breathe through the urge to break something.

“We want the same thing, at the end of the day, don’t we? We want James to be happy.”

“No,” Sirius swivels around to snap at her, his voice turning harsh and icy. “How dare you speak for what I want – how dare you compare yourself to me? The way you feel about James is only a small, miserable fraction of what I feel. You’ve known him two years, Lily, and you wouldn’t even glance in his direction before that – I’ve known him for seven. I’ve seen him at his brightest and his darkest, as he has seen me. I know the sides of him that he would never dare show you, all his secrets that you will never learn. So you have no right to act as if we are anywhere near the same. He was mine first.”

Lily’s face tightens, but when she speaks her voice is calm and controlled. “I respect your right to feel that way. But James and I have promised each other to build a life together, a family. I don’t think I need to tell you how deeply it is possible to love someone after two years – all you have to do is remember how you’d already felt when you’d only known him that long. Did I dislike him before? Yes, I did, and for good reason. I’ve never just loved James blindly, the way you do. I waited until he showed me he was capable of growing up, willing to be a better person, and I don’t have any regrets about it.”

“And yet this whole time he’s been sleeping with someone else,” Sirius says, lip curled in contempt. “So much for growing up and being a better person. And instead of leaving him like any self-respecting woman would do, you chose to forgive him, to marry him anyway.”

“You speak of self-respect,” she says softly, “yet you’re the one who’s been spiralling for months since we got engaged. If deciding to leave James just because he loves someone else is so easy, why haven’t you done it yet?”

His eyes flash at her, vitriolic and cruel. “He doesn’t love you, you stupid girl, he just wants children –”

“You’re angry,” she interrupts, slipping the flask back into her purse and snapping it shut deftly, “and looking for a fight. I didn’t come here to argue with you. I just wanted to explain that we don’t have to be enemies – I see that you’re not quite ready to accept that yet, which is fine. Have a good night, Sirius.”

Sudden, inexplicable panic sparks through him as Lily turns to go. The bolts in his mind are clicking and rolling together, gears shifting into place and forming messy shapes. “Wait,” he says.

She glances at him over her shoulder.

“Everything was fine between me and James before you came into the picture.”

“You’re being childish, Sirius.”

“I love him,” Sirius says hoarsely. Saying it out loud to someone else seems to somehow makes it worse, amplifying the terrible ache in his stupid, relentless heart. “And it hurts so much it makes me feel like I’m dying.”

Lily faces him again slowly. “You may not believe me, but I really do feel sorry that you’re suffering like this.”

“You can help. You can make it all stop.”

“How?”

“Leave James.”

Impatience flickers briefly across Lily’s face. “You know I can’t do that.”

“Why wouldn’t you, knowing how I feel about him? He’d be happy with me. It would be just like it used to be. And you could have anyone that you wanted – ”

“It’s really not up for discussion, Sirius,” Lily says, frowning at him disapprovingly. “I know you’re going through a difficult time, but now you’re just being ridiculous.”

“He’s all I have,” he says finally, his voice cracking. “Please.”

Her eyes soften and she reaches out to pat him gently on the shoulder. When Sirius lets out a choked sob, she immediately steps forward and puts her arms awkwardly around him. Sirius accepts the embrace, his heart thudding erratically out of time, sending tremors across his chest.

“It’s okay,” she says, her voice kind and bewildered. “Oh, don’t cry, Sirius, everything’s going to be just fine – ”

“Yes, it is,” Sirius whispers, lifting his red, swollen eyes to meet hers.

Lily goes still when she feels the blunt, thin edge of his wand press against the soft skin along her throat, and her eyes widen. She starts to struggle against him, helpless as a bird with two broken wings when his grip around her tightens suddenly.

“What –“

Her eyes are wild and panicked, fear lifting off her in sickening waves that he can nearly taste. For a moment, some small, rational part of his brain almost feels like it’s shuddering, and he stares down at Lily in dazed awareness of what he’s actually doing. A flood of pity surges into him, and he nearly lets go of her right there. This is Lily fucking Evans, the same Lily he’d seen gently cradling an injured rabbit she’d found at the edge of the Forest, the Lily who’d pushed James into forgiving Sirius for that whole fiasco with Snape in fifth year, even after he refused to tell her what had happened –

The Lily who’d taken James away from him.

The Lily who’s marrying James.

Sirius thinks of the miserable purgatory that his life has been over the last few months. The wide, cavernous fissures that have been splitting open inside him every single day; the way his relationship with James has slowly been suppurating, turning fetid, now at last a grotesque deformation of all that it used to be –

And it used to be so good. It used to be a beautiful, raw thing, pure and untouched by Lily’s marring hands. Unadulterated. Within a split second, hundreds of memories race like meteors across Sirius’ mind – James kissing him for the first time in fourth year on the school bleachers, James laughing with his face pressed into Sirius’ collarbone, James leaning over him, eyes glinting, and that proud, bold smile daring him to do more. Sirius wants all of that back so much that the thought makes his mouth feel dry, filling his head with a drowsy, narcotic rush. He wants James back, more than anything in the entire fucking world.

It’s with sudden clarity and unfettered conviction that he realizes he could care less about the rest of it. Nothing is as important as having James again, regardless of the fact that this is going against every one of his morals. And anyway, it’s not like he’s terribly hurting Lily. Only… providing her with an alternative. Giving her a chance to do the right thing for everybody involved. 

“I’m sorry,” he tells her now, blinking away the wetness gathering around his eyes. “But I need James more than you ever will.”

“Sirius, don’t do this –“

“I really wish I had a choice, Lily,” he says, his wand hand shaking as he steels himself, “but I don't. Imperio.”

--

(They’re in Remus’ dining room again, now empty of all of the guests that had previously filled it. The dancing candlelight make the shadows churn and ripple against the peacock blue walls, and lilting classical music plays from an antique gramophone.

James is looking at Sirius in a pale, stunned silence, and Sirius pretends not to notice.)

He thinks he might be on the verge of passing out.

Everything in his body feels wrong, every organ somehow turned inside out. He can hear his pulse roaring in his ears, and his hands are clammy, shaking. Still, he makes himself eat a bite or two of dinner, despite the food threatening to come gushing right back up. He keeps expecting something disastrous to happen, as if the ground is going to disappear from beneath him, or the room is going to blow to bits right in his face.

Across the table, Lily is smiling pleasantly and chatting with James. That’s good, at least. It’s just the four of them left in Remus’ house now. Sirius forces in a few deep breaths, trying to still the frenetic hammering of his heart. It’s no use – any semblance of logic in his brain has long since abandoned him, and a relentless stream of chaos is continually ringing in his ears.

Did he even do the fucking spell right? He should’ve really studied it, learned the technique beyond a few quick glances through his old library book – it was beyond stupid to just point his wand at Lily and perform an Unforgivable fucking Curse on her with barely any clue of what he was doing. Lily had been terrified, struggling fiercely one moment, and then suddenly calm and serene the very next, looking expectantly back at him as if waiting to be told what to do. Sirius had taken that as a sign that the curse had had effect on her, but what if she’d been faking it, knowing that’s what he expected to see? And what about the actual instructions he’d given her? Sirius had no time to make them detailed; by the time the incantation had left his mouth he’d already been losing his nerve, stunned by what he’d just done.

Act normal until you get a moment alone with James. Then tell him you’re leaving because you know he’ll be happier with me. Say it like you really mean it.

Those are the words he’d said to Lily. When she heard them, she seemed to barely register what they meant – her only reaction had been to smile vacantly and nod at him, as if caught in some pleasant daydream. Now playing over and over again in his mind, they sound unbelievably inadequate to Sirius. What if James probes her further, what if he puts up a fight, as he inevitably will? Sirius should’ve added a final line: no matter what, don’t let him change your mind. Fuck, it’s too late now. What’s done is done, all that’s left to do is to watch events play out how they will. That knowledge does nothing to quell the anxiety shredding Sirius’ stomach into ribbons, though.  

From where he’s sitting, he feels James’ gaze shift toward him. Their eyes meet for a lingering moment, and it saturates Sirius with a feeling of lightheaded giddiness. If this works, if it actually works, if just for a moment Sirius dares to entertain the hope that everything will go the way he wants – James will be back to being his by the end of the night. And then they can leave all this behind, this intolerable nightmare that’s been tearing through the space between them; they can be together again the way they’re meant to, two binary stars in combined orbit forever, gravitationally bound to each other, always. Everything will make sense again. Everything will be alright.

Better than alright. Everything will be perfect. Sirius allows himself to dwell on this thought, and it makes the rest of the turbulent entropy inside him fade away.

Twenty minutes later, Lily stands up from the table and yawns. “Merlin, it’s not even eleven yet and I’m already exhausted. Shall we head home, James?”

James rolls his head back on his shoulders to look at her. “If you want to.”

“I’ll go get my coat,” she says, bending down to leave a chaste kiss on his cheek on her way out.

Remus glances between James and Sirius, then gets up too. “I’m going for … a drink of water. In the kitchen.”

“Very subtle,” James says, rolling his eyes. He watches Remus exit the room, leaving the two of them alone, then looks back at Sirius. “Are you okay?”

Sirius’ heart doubles its pace instantly. It’s difficult to ascertain whether it’s because these are the first words James has spoken to him in two weeks, or because he’s so fucking nervous about what he’s just done. “Fine. Why?”

“Nothing,” James shrugs. “You look a bit upset, that’s all. More than you have been lately, I mean.”

Sirius examines his hands and says nothing.

“Look.” James exhales after a moment or two of scathing silence. “I can’t even remember what it is I’m supposed to be angry at you for, or keep track of any of the stupid things we keep fighting about. Can we just not do this? The whole acting like we don’t care thing? It feels – it’s weird. It’s not us.”

“I know.”

“I don’t know what else you want from me. All I can think about is how much you’re hurting and how it’s my fault. I just – I want to be here for you, as much as I can be. I know that things have been a bit odd between us lately, but I still – I love you. You’re my best friend. I hope you know that will never change.”

Sirius takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. He feels hazy and faint, insubstantial as smoke. “If you say so.”

“I do say so.” James regards him hesitantly. “I really would like to see you be happy again someday, you know. You deserve it, more than anyone.”

“I was happy with you."

“I know,” James says, his voice quiet. “But, Sirius, just because two people are soulmates, it doesn’t always mean that they should end up together.”

“And why not?” Sirius challenges, head flipping round to glare at James. “Why the fuck not, if the only thing that got in the way was the fact that you wanted someone else?”

“Is that really what you think the issue was? It never occurred to you that what we had – it was unhealthy and co-dependent? It never bothered you that we never gave each other any space –“

“We didn’t need space.”

“Everybody needs space, Sirius!” James snaps. “Whether you want it or not. And I’d be lying if I said that the way we felt about each other wasn’t fucking terrifying –“

He cuts himself off abruptly when Lily re-enters the room, all wrapped up in her bright scarlet coat and matching scarf. She looks quizzically at their strained expressions. “Am I interrupting something?”

“No,” James says, getting to his feet and accompanying her to the door. He glances back at Sirius wearily for a moment near the entrance. “Take care of yourself, Pads, alright? I’ll – I’ll stop by to see you again soon.”

Sirius barely hears him. His entire focus has already shifted onto Lily. His pulse is skittering violently, and the nausea has returned tenfold. He can’t even wrap his head around what he’s done; his own actions seem to him to be growing more and more bizarre each moment, as if carried out by some other version of him, some decidedly less sane version. Was it really him that put an Imperius Curse on her just an hour ago? A spell that’s until very recently been illegal because of how dangerous it is?

And yet, the smallest, merest possibility that it might work…

The slimmest chance that he might get to touch James again, to take all his clothes off one by one and kiss every inch of skin on his body, to say I love you, I love you the fucking most without it feeling like an admission of failure, of humiliation…

The throb of ceaseless yearning that fills Sirius vastly overshadows any hesitation he feels. It’s as if his mind has been poisoning itself all these months, growing sick, unstable. Sirius is highly aware that without a doubt, what he’s doing is absolute madness – but does it really matter? If he’s honest, he doesn’t actually give a fuck whether it is or not. The vile, black emptiness that he feels without James is a thousand times worse than the very real possibility that he’s having some sort of psychotic break – if this is the only way to get him back, then so be it.

He doesn’t care how insane it is.

Act normal until you get a moment alone with James. Then tell him you’re leaving because you know he’ll be happier with me. Say it like you really mean it.

Will James buy it? Sirius supposes it might be hard not to. It’s not as if Lily would be lying, anyway. He watches them step out of Remus’ house together, arm in arm. The smart thing to do now, of course, would be to get the fuck out of here and wait for James to come over with the news that it’s all over with Lily. But Sirius can’t help it, can’t fight the agonizing anticipation. He needs to see it for himself.

He bids a hasty goodnight to Remus, thanks him for dinner, and quietly glides out of the house and onto the street. Under the half-moon sailing in the sky, he spots the slightly further-away twin silhouettes of James and Lily ambling together down the road. Sirius’ heart is beating so hard and fast that it might just stop and fail at any moment.

As he paces along behind them, dodging behind rubbish bins and parked cars like a spider, he feels the solid knots inside his stomach starting to harden and constrict. Why isn’t anything happening? His instructions had been clear enough – wait until you get a moment alone with James – what is Lily waiting for? Again, the awful worry that the Curse had failed and never actually taken effect spreads through him, cold and cruel.

James and Lily stop walking suddenly in the middle of the street, and Sirius’ breath catches wildly in his throat.

Lily is clearly talking, gesturing with her hands, but Sirius is too far away to catch the words. Slowly, barely daring to breathe, he edges towards the pair of them, sidling along the fence of neighbouring houses as quietly as he can.

“…well, obviously, it’s something that’s been on my mind since – since the engagement party,” Lily is saying. Sirius notes that her arm is no longer linked through James’. “But tonight, well, I saw how you and Sirius were were acting –“

“I was just upset that he was sulking, Lil, it’s nothing. I told you we’ve been arguing.”

“That’s my point,” Lily says. “The two of you are miserable without each other.”

“It’s not that we’re miserable without each other, he’s just taking a long time to process the engagement, and I get frustrated because I don’t enjoy knowing that he’s so bloody depressed all the time.”

“James, do you honestly not think that you would be happier with him?”

Sirius feels a swoop of bright, flushing relief go through him. He isn't sure what he expected, but this is much better than anything he could have hoped for. If he didn’t know that Lily’s been put under the Imperius Curse, he’d have thought of her words as being entirely genuine – which can only mean that James will be convinced too. The emotion and manner behind everything she’s saying seem so authentic, so unscripted, as if she really means all of it.

“What are you talking about?” James demands, in a tone of clear puzzlement. “I chose you, Evans. I’m marrying you.”

“And the fact that I have the ability to carry children has nothing to do with it?”

“Bloody hell, have you been talking to Sirius?” James asks, plucking off his glasses and massaging his nose.

“We had a little chat while you were gone to get the pizza, yes.”

“Lily, my sweet thing, I’m not marrying you just because you have the ability to pop little babies out. I mean, yeah, I do want a family, but that’s not – it’s definitely not the only reason.”

“You love Sirius.”

“Well, obviously, he’s my best friend –“

“No, I mean, you love him.”

James pauses and puts his glasses back on, studying her. The frosty night air has left a pink smudge across the tip of his nose. “He’s important to me,” he shrugs. “But so are you.”

“I don’t think that’s enough for me, James,” Lily says, and Sirius is amazed to see that her eyes are really shining with tears. “I’ve been getting between the two of you for years now.”

“Lil,” James breathes, wrapping his arms around her narrow shoulders and pulling her close to him. “Stop it, please. I adore you, I always have. Whatever Sirius said to you, you need to remember that he’s still upset. He can be – unkind, sometimes, and says things he doesn’t mean. Don’t let it get to you.”

“It’s only the truth,” Lily tells him, her voice quivering. “You know it is. He makes you happier than I ever can – that’s why you cheated with him –“

James steps back from her, his face genuinely distraught. “That’s not true; I cheated because I’m a selfish piece of shit. It’s got nothing to do with you at all – you’re perfect, and so much better than I deserve.”

“No,” Lily shakes her head. “I’m not going to stand between you and your chance at love any longer.”

Sirius straightens up, veins becoming electric. This is it.

“You made a mistake asking me out in fifth year. You made a mistake being my boyfriend for two years. And you’ve made a terribly grave mistake now, asking me to marry you.”

James’ jaw swings open. “What are you –“

“Your heart has always belonged to someone else, James Potter. Someone who can make you much happier than I ever will,” Lily wipes at her lashes. “And that’s why I – I –“

James stares at her, bewildered. “Why do you keep saying that? That I’d be happier with him?”

“Because it’s –“ Lily hesitates. “It’s true. I know it.”

“It’s true?” James says incredulously. “No, it fucking isn’t. What is going on with you?”

Again that hesitation. Something on Lily’s face changes. “I – I’m supposed to leave you. I am leaving you.”

“What?”

“I know that you’ll be so much happier with Sirius –“

Sirius feels his heart capsize and sink to the depths of his gut, the relief that has just passed through his system immediately turning into battery acid. Something’s wrong. This isn’t how it’s supposed to happen.

“Are you feeling quite alright?” James asks her, the confusion on his face melding with concern, taking on a new tenderness that fills Sirius with incredible jealousy. “You seem –“

She grabs his shoulder suddenly; Sirius can see that her knuckles are white from the force of the grip. “James,” she gasps, talking in between great heaving breaths, as if she’s just surfaced from drowning underwater, “James. Oh my god.”

“I’m here, love,” he says, his hand reaching up to clasp the one she’s got on his shoulder. “What’s the matter?”

She shakes her head again, eyes filling up and spilling over. “I can’t –“ she stops and lets out a frightened, trembling breath. “I – I don’t want to leave you.”

“Nobody’s asking you to,” James’ voice is gentle.

“You don’t understand,” she whispers, so quietly that Sirius almost doesn’t hear it. “I have to. I have to.”

James frowns, touches her cheek with his fingertips. “Lily, what’s going on?”

“He said –“ she pauses again, struggling, as if unable to form the words. “James, it’s so hard to talk –“

Sirius’ blood is pounding in his ears, a hot deafening rush. He needs to get out of here. He doesn’t know where, but something’s wrong and – and the Curse is unravelling, and if James realizes what he’s done –

“Imperius,” Lily says, forcing the word out with considerable effort.

“Imperius?” James echoes. “Is that what you’re trying to say?”

She nods, tears freely gushing down her cheeks now. “I have to – leave you.”

“You’re under the Imperius Curse?”

When Lily nods again, a harsh stillness rearranges James’ features. The lines of concern and worry etched into his face are flattened out, replaced with plain, stoic fury. “Who was it?” he asks quietly, his voice very nearly a tremolo. “Who did this to you?”

Sirius freezes. His legs feel like they’re decaying under him, all the tissue and bone rotting away, losing all function and capability. A dizzying noise is clanging in his head. His heart, racing so frantically just a few minutes ago, is now slow and lost and disoriented, as if aware that it’s all over. Aware that he’s about to lose everything. Above them, the crescent moon reappears from behind a cloud, a pearly sideways grin in the sky, laughing madly at him.

From a few feet away, he hears Lily’s struggling voice pushing the name out of her mouth: “Sirius.”

"Sirius," James repeats, as though it hasn't clicked at first. "Sirius - Black? He did this?"

Sirius doesn't need to look to know that Lily is nodding.

“Sirius fucking Black!” James bellows, a terrifying, thunderous sound that sends sleeping cats scurrying immediately. “Where are you?”

Dread fills him, makes Sirius feel like he’s suddenly shrinking. No, no, this can’t be happening, this isn’t how it was supposed to happen. He can’t think, can’t figure out what to do now. His brain has gone numb with shock, and the look on James’ face makes him want to evaporate off the face of the planet.

“I know you’re here, you prick!” James shouts. His wand it out, dark wood gleaming under the starlight. “Come out and face me, you fucking coward!”

Sirius can’t move. He feels paralyzed, trapped.

“Reducto!”

An ear-splitting blast strikes the rubbish bin across the street from where Sirius is crouching. Sweat breaks out on his forehead, but somewhere beneath the stupefaction he finds that his feet are slowly dragging themselves along, one step at a time.

“I’ll blow this neighbourhood to pieces,” James is shouting. “You fucking know I will! Come out, you prat! Where are you?”

Another curse goes flying from James’ wand and reduces a nearby car to rubble. Wailing alarms go off all around them. A second later, Sirius steps onto the street, in front of James.

James’ face is white with rage, the skin stretched out so thin and frightening that it hardly even looks like him anymore. It looks like James is wearing a mask, a horrible, opaque mask that’s made him completely unrecognizable. Sirius only has a single short moment to think that he’s never, ever seen James this angry, before he’s striding forward, wand pointed straight at Sirius’ chest.

“Tell me you didn’t,” he says, words swollen and harsh. “Tell me you didn’t put the fucking Imperius Curse on my fiancée!”

Sirius swallows a large, solid lump in his throat. Nothing comes out of his mouth.

“Say something!” James yells, prodding him hard in the chest with his wand. “Say something, or I swear to god –“

Sirius stumbles back from the force of it. He feels drunk on his own fear, his legs unsure of where to go or how to hold up the swaying weight of his body. He can’t stop staring at that awful expression on James’ face – the way he’s looking at Sirius as if he’s someone else, a stranger. It makes a bitter, coppery taste fill his mouth.

“How dare you!” James’ wand is jabbing into Sirius’ neck, his words cracking loudly against the quiet like a whip. His pupils are blown up wide with fury, so that his eyes look completely black, demonic. “How dare you touch her! I should fucking kill you – what was your plan, Sirius? To put Lily under the Imperius and make her leave me? And then what? Make her hurt herself? Throw herself off a bridge?”

The venomous conviction in his words startles Sirius into finding his voice. “What? James, I would never – you know that –“

“How could you!” James roars again, driving his wand brutally against the side of Sirius’ throat, pressing onto his windpipe. “What is fucking wrong with you? How could you even –“

“I swear I wasn’t going to hurt her!” Sirius feels like his brain is coming undone under the indelible shock of the situation, unspooling into barely coherent threads. “I – I just wanted – I wanted you back, that’s all –“

“And to think that I’d felt bad for you all evening,” James is staring at Sirius, aghast. “That I’d been worrying about you, when this whole time you’ve been fucking scheming to hurt Lily – to hurt me –“

“No, that’s not what –“

Along the street, lights from behind windows have been turned on, the silhouettes of curious onlookers appearing like ghosts at the sills. Sirius hears the thump of running feet on pavement that he’s certain is Remus coming toward them. 

James takes a step back from him. The feeling of his wand being lifted off Sirius’ neck, instead of being a relief, only serves to deepen the delirious, howling frenzy he feels. “Nothing’s ever fucking enough for you, is it? I wanted to make this work, Sirius, I was ready to hold your hand through all this shit, I was willing to let you mope and whine and shout at me – but that was never going to be enough! You always ask too fucking much of me, you always want too much!”

The words slam into Sirius with the force of an asteroid. “James, I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking –“

“You never think about anything!” James shouts. “You are so fucked in the head that all you care about is how you feel! First at the engagement party, now this, what will it be next, Sirius? Are you going to curse me, too? Fuck's sake - you want to know why I didn't choose you? Because of this. Because you are a bloody maniac, and it's terrifying.”

Remus arrives, out of breath and panting hard, swathed in mist and yellow street-lamp light. “What’s going on? I heard a crash – I came as fast as I could –“ he stops to stare at James’ exposed wand, eyes widening in disbelief. “James, Muggles live here!”

James ignores him. His gaze feels white-hot, searing against Sirius’ skin, burning through him, layer by layer until he’s nothing but a morass of bones and dirty blood underneath. “All I asked was for you to respect my decision, and you couldn’t even do that.”

“Listen –“

“No,” James cuts him off. An emotion that looks unbearably like revolt appears in his expression. As if Sirius disgusts him. “Enough is enough. I have had it with you.”

When James takes another step back, Sirius feels like half of his insides have just been ripped out of him in chunks. The sudden emptiness makes him suck in a sharp breath, his heart crumpling; shrivelling up and wilting. He suddenly finds himself wishing that James would hit him, beat him black and blue, bloody him senseless; a punishment that makes sense, one that he can accept so that they can get up and brush this all off once it’s over. He’d take a thousand punches to the gut over this – the detachment in James' eyes, as if he's not really seeing him there, as if he can't even bear to. 

The clouds swallow the moon again; it disappears behind a veil of smoky grey and indigo, and a dark shadow casts over James’ face. “If you ever come near Lily or me again,” he says, “I will fucking end you.”

The biting chill of night air makes his tears feel like they’re burning. “James,” he croaks, “James, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to –“

“You fucking ruined this, Sirius, don’t fucking look at me like that,” James spits. “You fucked everything up. Do you understand me?”

Sirius’ head is a whirlwind, thoughts screaming and tangled together unintelligibly. Everything feels wrong and he's struggling to make sense of what's happening. He’s crying like a child, his body heaving out shuddering gasps as though it will never stop. James’ voice razes into him with every word, serrated and pitiless, slicing away slabs of flesh and hollowing him out. When Sirius takes a step forward, James recoils immediately, and the look right then on his face makes Sirius want to scream.

“Don’t you fucking dare touch me, or I swear to God I’ll kill you.”

A sickening current of panic swells in his chest. “No, don’t – don’t be like this –“

“I was trying with you!” James’ words erupt against the night violently. “I was trying so hard to be there for you! And you fucked it up, you fucked it all up!”

“James, stop," Sirius says, and it sounds like he's pleading, "stop, just listen to me, I love you -"

“Merlin, I am so sick and tired of hearing that! This is not love, Sirius, look at yourself! This is – it’s fucking insane!” James tightens his fingers around his wand, brandishing at the air around Sirius. “You are a fucking psychopath and you’ve ruined it, you've ruined everything.”

“I’m sorry –“

“Shut up, shut your mouth, I don’t want to hear another word,” James snarls at him, savage anger flooding into his face again. “I’m finished with you. Is that fucking clear? You sicken me and I am done.”

And that’s when he says those words; those final words that burrow deep under Sirius’ skin like carnivorous maggots, eating their way through all the muscles and tissue in his body. The words that feel like they trigger a widespread necrosis across all the cells inside of him at once; when he hears them, Sirius knows immediately that he'd rather be dead than feel like this for another moment.

"I never want to see you again."

--

Chapter Text

They’re back in the apartment – early dawn light is fighting its way in through the half-shut curtains, orange and gold strips beaming across the space between them, giving the room a vaguely vintage, photographic quality.

How strange, Sirius thinks, to realize that a whole night has passed them by so stealthily, when moments ago they were just there; back in those last terrible moments with James, the fragments of Sirius’ broken heart lying like shrapnel within his chest. It’s pathetic, the way reliving that night has made Sirius feel every bit as shaken as he did the first time. The pain hasn’t subsided in the slightest, all that blind, whirling panic, like it had been only yesterday.  

When James clears his throat, Sirius looks over at him, his stomach plunging at the sight. He finds himself struggling to distinguish between the James now standing in front of him and the one who broke his heart two years ago, as though the two separate versions have finally merged back into one. He almost feels angry again, the way he’d felt when he walked into that hospital ward and saw him there for the first time; angry because it had been months since James had vanished from his life; because James was supposed to be his best friend, and yet he’d never cared to check in on Sirius even once in all that time.

“Lily – how did she do it? Why didn’t the Curse work on her?”

The question is unsurprising. It’s something that Sirius himself has had plenty of time to agonize over in the months following the incident. “The Imperius Curse can be extremely difficult to resist, but not impossible,” his voice is careful, tense. “Wizards or witches with a certain… strength of character have been known to do so. Lily wasn’t just a talented witch, she was also – well, she must’ve really cared about you, to be able to fight it the way she did.”

“She must’ve really loved me, you mean.”

Sirius purses his lips. “Maybe. Or maybe I just didn’t do the spell right.”

“What happened after that?”

“Nothing. We didn’t see each other again until – until the night you were attacked.”

James’ eyebrows dive together dramatically. “But you said that you tried to kill yourself.”

“I did.” 

“But didn’t I –”

“No,” Sirius says, "you didn't."

James falls quiet at that. Sirius keeps his eyes off the other boy’s face. Instead, his gaze tracks the repetitive, nimble tap of James’ fingers against the table, the slender arch of his wrist as it swivels to accommodate the movement. Even now, even after so much else has happened, it still feels wrong – the fact that James hadn’t been bothered about Sirius trying to die, like it would have made no difference if he’d actually succeeded.

“Why did you do it?” James asks him finally. “When Remus called you after the attack, why did you still decide to come see me, when I never did for you?”

“I should’ve thought it obvious why.”

“You didn’t even know that I’d lost my memory before you got to the hospital. You just… came anyway.”

Sirius shrugs, thinking back to the panicked half-daze he’d found himself in that first night, the way hearing James’ name after a year and a half had felt like all his scars reopening. “Remus said that you’d been hurt. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“Why?” James asks again. “After everything I did to you?”

“The way Remus was talking – I knew it was bad, and I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I didn’t check that you were alright. And maybe – I don’t know, maybe I just wanted an excuse to see you again, after…” He looks down, embarrassed by his own candour. “Well, after all that time.”

“Ironic, isn’t it?” James says in a flat, dull voice. 

“What is?”

“That even though I can remember loving you so clearly, I did nothing in those memories to show it.”

Sirius glances up at him. A swift, breathless sensation in his chest makes him bite back a gasp – for a split second, he feels almost like he’s looking straight at the old, pre-amnesiac version of James again. A staggering realization dawns on him: that the events of last night mark an irreversible turning point in their relationship. That by sharing his memories with James, Sirius has cemented the fact that from now on, he will never again enjoy the luxury of James not knowing what did two years ago. And that James has now seen their chaotic, turbulent, wildfire history in its entirety, learning more about both Sirius and himself in the course of a single night than the last six months combined. 

“You know, what you did to Lily was unacceptable, and I was right to be angry. But that doesn’t excuse the way that I treated you either. How could you have wanted anything to do with me?”

“You were only like that towards the end, and I can’t choose the way I feel, anyhow,” Sirius says, feeling a little defensive at the way James is looking at him. “Why does it matter? That’s not the point.”

“It is the point. I just don’t understand how – I mean, the fact that I didn’t even come to see you when you – how were you okay with that? How could you have come running to me the moment Remus told you I’d been attacked?”

Sirius searches his face in contemplation. The mandarin morning light turns James’ eyes to discs of honey, but there’s no softness in them. His forehead is furrowed and tense, the jaw set rigidly. Sirius wonders what he’s thinking, what sort of emotions must have flowed through him while he watched those memories. “I never said I was okay with it. But there's no use getting upset about the things you did before you lost your memory, James.”

“I should’ve bothered to visit you in the hospital, because no matter what else had happened between us, I should’ve cared that you tried to kill yourself.”

“Well, I did perform the Imperius on your fiancée.”

James’ eyes whip up to glare at him impatiently. “I know that. Don’t you think I know that now?”

“So maybe that’s the bit that we should be focusing on, then,” Sirius says, annoyed that he needs to point this out at all. James’ reaction to his actions that night feels so ambivalent, as if he’s trying to steer clear of the topic on purpose. “You’ve been trying to get me to tell you what I did for months on end, and now it's no longer worth mentioning?”

“Alright,” James says abruptly. “That was a selfish and fucked-up thing to do. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t harm Lily – you took away her choice, you treated her like some kind of object you just needed to get out of the way. And now – well, now she’s dead, so there goes your chance to ever make it right with her. Is that what you want me to say? That you’re a terrible person, Sirius?”

Shadows roll lazily around the room. Sirius’ breathing comes to a halt, waves of anxiety making the muscles in his shoulders and chest constrict. You fucking ruined this, Sirius, don’t you fucking look at me like that. He can still feel the devastating impact of those words, the way James had slung them at him like stones. 

“Well, I’m not going to punish you for something you did two years ago,” James’ voice falls back into that hollow, distracted lull. “I expect you’ve had to suffer enough for it already.”

“But –” He stops and frowns, unsure of what he meant to say. “I don’t understand. What I did to Lily –”

“Was stupid and dangerous,” James interrupts. “But you were just hurt, the way anyone would be after being treated like that. And yes, it did considerably cloud your judgement but – after everything you showed me, it would be hypocritical to blame you, wouldn’t it?”

“I don’t understand,” Sirius says again. He looks at James blankly, unable to explain what he’s feeling. 

What is he feeling? It’s as though he’s resentful – not at James, exactly, but himself. For having shouldered the burden of keeping the truth from him all these months, torturing himself into hysteria and sleeplessness, allowing his own fear of James finding out to become the subject of so much jagged conflict between them. How many times had James demanded to know what happened, only for Sirius to grow prickly and shut him out? What was the point in all of that if James doesn’t even seem bothered by it now?

He feels like he’s missing something, like this is some kind of cruel trick. He keeps waiting for James to start shouting, to throw hexes at Sirius and make the very walls shake with his rage. He keeps thinking that any moment now the gravity of what Sirius did will really sink in, and it’ll fill James with the same disgusted, white-faced hatred he’d felt for Sirius the night it happened.

“You’re upset.” It’s not a question. James’ gaze is still fixed on him, and he can feel the weight of it sliding around his skin. 

“Are you being this way just because you don’t remember Lily?”

“Being what way?”

“Acting as though you’ve got nothing else to say about what I did,” Sirius says, and the words come out sounding several shades more accusatory than he intended. “You were in such a tremendous hurry to toss me aside when it happened, and now you’re not even – look, I just expected this to be different; you finding out, your reaction, everything. I expected you to – “

“To what?”

Sirius lets out a breath, irritated at himself for feeling like this and being unable to properly verbalize why. “To leave again. I thought you wouldn’t be able to forgive me, once you knew.”

The words plant themselves patiently into the space between them, landmines waiting to blow at the slightest misstep. Distant traffic from the streets below hum steadily in the background, and the rising dawn projects watery, distorted shadows onto the wall. The rest of the world suddenly feels very, very far away, as if they’ve stepped out of time and right into their own little dreamscape, all the buttery light in the room soft and surreal.

James is looking at him strangely. “Do you really think I’d do something like that?” 

“Didn’t find it too difficult last time, did you?”

“Hasn’t it occurred to you that maybe I’m the one who’s at fault?” James asks. “That everything you did – it was because of me?”

Sirius blinks, astounded by the idiocy of the statement. “Of course it was because of you. All I wanted was you.”

“That’s not what I mean.” 

“What, then?”

“How can you not see it?” James demands. “How can you still not understand that I’m no less guilty of what happened than you are?”

Sirius opens his mouth, then closes it stupidly at this odd new development. 

“I let you think that it was all your fault, and you believed me. Even now, two whole years later – you’re still carrying all this guilt around, convinced you were the one who ruined everything, but I did that to you. It was me who lied and fucked with your head and pushed you to it. And somehow you’re still worried about my forgiveness,” James lets out an acidic laugh, “when it's clearly you who needs to forgive yourself.”

Sirius stares at him incredulously. “Forgive myself? How can I do that, after making you hate me the way you did? I’d known you for seven years, James, and not a moment of it mattered to you. I don’t know what was left of our relationship before that night, but fuck – you were my best friend. You were still my best friend, right up until the moment you found out. ”

“I don't –”

“And afterwards? You wouldn't even have cared if I was dead. You looked at me like you could finally see me for what I am – a Black,” his lip curls back into an angry snarl, but he feels on the verge of hysteria, all the jarring shame and guilt breaking out over his whole body like a rash. “And why wouldn’t you? I did exactly what one of them would’ve done.”

James is frowning. “You are nothing like your family.”

Quiet words, offering little comfort. Sirius thinks of Lily’s face that night, the power he’d felt as he waved her terror away with his wand, wielding her will like a weapon. “You were afraid of me, of what I’d do to Lily. You fucking moved away and wouldn’t even tell me where!” 

The truth is that Sirius really had torn himself loose of the few remaining tendrils tethering him to his sanity that night. It had been a process in the making for months, yet no one had been more surprised than Sirius himself at how quickly he’d unraveled once it was all over. He’d stumbled around for weeks on end in a state of violent disorientation, only ever conscious of himself in fragments, losing sense of time, confusing reality with fever dreams...

The shock of losing James had turned his mind into a hostile place, so angry and unstable that it was easier just to operate on instinct most of the time. Surrendering to the darkest of his impulses seemed to help shut James out of his thoughts, so Sirius did it often. There had been a kind of nightmarish ecstasy to his behaviour in those months; he ran through the streets all night, howling, the blood laughing in his veins, filled with mad delight at the onset of his own maniacal frenzy. When later people tried to describe to him the things he had done, Sirius found he could remember very little of it.

James had known it first, though; he’d seen that starving, unhinged brightness in Sirius’ eyes for exactly what it was. In the months that came after, many other people would begin to look at him the way James did that night – as if he’d turned into some wild, dangerous animal. People started hurrying to steer out of his way, their sideways glances and hushed whispers following him around like stitches on the back of his cloak: there goes Sirius Black, he’s got a terrible temper you know, did you hear about the way he sliced all those Death Eaters open and left them to bleed out for hours on the street?

“You’d just performed the Imperius Curse on Lily – anyone in their right mind would have been afraid after that,” James points out. “But so what? That was two years ago. I’m here now, aren’t I?”

Sirius throws up his hands. “You’re only here at all because you lost your fucking memory!”

“What matters is I’m here,” James says firmly, getting off the table. “I am, Pads. Look – I can’t speak for what I would’ve done if I hadn’t been attacked. But what I know is that I lost everything that night. Not just my memory – I lost Lily, my home, I lost any sense of who I even was. Do you have any idea what that’s like? To look in the mirror and realize you know nothing about yourself?”

Their eyes lock, and the fierce, tender expression on James’ face causes a sudden shift in Sirius’ gravity, so powerful and astonishing that it leaches the anger right out of him.

“And you were here for me, more than Remus, or Peter, or anyone. Don’t you see? It was you, only you, who made me feel like I'd be okay again,” James tells him. “So no, I’m not in any position to be angry about the way you reacted when I got engaged to Lily. Not after the way I treated you then, and certainly not after everything you’ve done for me these last few months.”

“You were the first thought in my head every time I woke up in the hospital,” Sirius says, the words escaping his mouth before he can think to stop them. 

James blinks warily at the change of topic. 

“I didn’t care for living anymore, not with you gone. And when the Muggle methods didn’t work I started brewing up all kinds of toxic potions. Remus must’ve used a spying spell to keep an eye on me, because he always seemed to show up in time to get me to the hospital.”

Holographic sun-rays strike the floating dust particles around James, making them glitter and dance. “How many times did you try?”

“More than I can count.” 

James stares at him for a long moment, mouth parted slightly. “Oh, fuck. I had no idea.”

Sirius chews the inside of his cheek, trying to ignore the rivers of hurt bleeding crimson from his chest. It feels odd to be saying these things out loud, to give shape to the emotions he’s spent the better part of two years trying to bury. “The only thing shittier than waking up and realizing I was still alive, really, was looking around and seeing you weren’t there.”

“You must've been in so much pain, for so long, and I… I wasn’t there to help you through any of it," James punctuates his words with an anxious, heaving breath. "Shit, I can't even – there's no excuse for it. You needed me and I let you down."

Sirius shuts his eyes briefly, as James’ words swill around the vistas in his head. His hands fumble around clumsily for a cigarette, just for something to do, giving him an excuse to avoid looking at James because he thinks he might actually cry if he does. Not for the first time in his life, or even the hundredth time, Sirius finds himself wondering if there’s something genuinely wrong with him. Some glitch in his code, an ingrained flaw predisposing him to complete weakness in all matters regarding James. The raw and sensitive way that James makes him feel is so at odds with the rest of Sirius’ personality that it hardly even feels real – even though the powerful lucidity of the feeling itself is undeniable. 

James picks up the carton of cigarettes from the dining table and leans over to hand one to him. “Why didn't you ever tell me? Before last night it never even crossed my mind that being here with you is a privilege, one I never had any right to.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Sirius says irritably, extracting the cigarette from James’ fingers. “Of course you have a right to be here.”

“I’m starting to think you’d believe that no matter what I do.”

Sirius doesn’t say anything, eyes fixed on the vivid, neon-bright glow at the end of his cigarette. Denying it would be pointless, given everything James has now seen.

“You’re willing to love me even when I make it impossible,” the words come out saturated with a kind of hushed wonder, “it’s… insane and incredible, at the same time.”

“Willing implies I have any control over the matter,” Sirius shrugs. “It’s not some grand, miraculous thing to be so amazed by. Just the way I feel, whether I want to or not.”

“Doesn’t that ever bother you?”

He lets out a short, barking laugh at the absurdity of the question. “What do you think?”

“And if you had a choice, if you could stop the way you feel – would you?”

“I don’t know. Why are you even asking me that? Does it matter whether I can stop when you know I never will?”

The sky is darkening past the windows, clouds gathering in the wind and dampening the sunrise with shades of grey. James looks away, and the change in light makes all his outlines seem slightly smudged through the smoke. “I just hate the way it hurts you. All you’d need is about five seconds of clarity to see how much better you really deserve.”

Sirius scowls, bewildered and pissed off now. “Were you dropped on your head as a baby? What makes you think I want better?” 

“Because you should. Is that really so bizarre to you?” James glares at him. “Doesn’t it drive you mad knowing you love someone who does nothing but cause you pain?”

A rise of déja vû makes Sirius flush with annoyance. “Are you fucking serious? Are you going to try and tell me to move on and find someone else now too? Because how well did that work out the last time, you dick?” 

“I just think –” James stops, swallowing with difficulty. “That all these feelings you have are being wasted on me.” 

“No,” Sirius stands up abruptly, all his patience abandoning him. “No, we’re not fucking doing this again. You sound like an idiot, and I don't care whether you think you deserve it or not – I'm not going to change the way I feel just because you’ve decided I should.”

“Listen to me. I couldn’t figure it out at first, why I proposed to Lily,” James says, his voice cautious. “But now it’s obvious, isn’t it?”

A tide of immense irritation surges through him. “What could possibly be obvious about it?”

“You act like I’m some kind of god, Sirius. Don’t you realize how illogical that is, how unfair? I've hurt you time and time again, and somehow you still want me.”

“So what?” Sirius asks loudly, humiliation flooding the back of his throat like bile. “I can’t just decide to get over you whenever it’s convenient, alright –”

“You can’t decide to get over me, full stop.”

Outside, rain has started hurling itself against the window, washing the entire apartment in a dull, glaucous grey. Sirius clenches his fingers around the cigarette, wishing he could hit something. James is making all of it sound so stupid, as though Sirius is some idiotic doormat actively begging to be tread all over. The realization, as soon as it appears, implodes like a bomb in his chest – a paroxysm of anger passes through him and makes him step back roughly.

“Do you take me for a fucking imbecile?” 

James frowns at the empty space that Sirius was just standing in a second ago. “No, of course not.”

“What makes you think I’ll just stand here and let you talk about me like – like I’m a fucking sycophant, kissing the ground you walk on?” 

“Don't you start with that, you know it isn't what I meant.”

“I don’t think you’re a god,” Sirius throws him a scalding look, eyes narrowed and voice harshening. “Is that really all you managed to get from watching those memories? That I’m – what? Delusional? Stupid? Poor, pathetic Sirius, so in love with James that he just couldn't say no to him – ”

“Will you stop being such a – ”

“No, because it’s true, isn’t it? That’s what you think – that I’m an idiot for coming to see you when you got attacked, for letting you move in with me after you ignored my existence for two years. Is it just so bloody pitiful to you, James, the fact that I couldn't fall out of love with you? That I couldn't bring myself to do what you did, and leave you to rot in that hospital after you lost everything?”

“Do you even hear yourself?” James has to shout to make himself heard over Sirius, features twisted between frustration and disbelief. “Do you realize how insane you sound? If you’d stop being so wildly neurotic for a second you’d know that you couldn’t be further from the truth! Because in case you haven't noticed, I've given you no fucking reason to love me the way you do, and maybe – maybe when I chose Lily, it was because I didn’t want to have to spend the rest of my life trying to feel worthy of you!”

Sirius’ breath catches in his throat; in the sudden quiet, it sounds like a choke. He can feel every throb of his heart in his whole body, each stricken beat like a thunderclap inside him.

Something about the tortured expression on James' face slices clean through the dazed disbelief collecting around Sirius. Several long, shocked moments trawl by before he manages to find his voice again. “No.”

“No?” James asks. “You don't think one day you're going to wake up and see that this idea in your head you’re so in love with is just – just a man after all, Sirius? Just me.”

“How can you even say something like that?”

“Because I could feel it,” James doesn’t take his eyes off Sirius as he speaks, every word being handed over to him with careful and deliberate conviction. “First during those memories you showed me, and again just now – while you were shouting your bloody head off.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I know what I felt, Sirius. The way I knew Lily loved cream cakes, and that we’d kissed, and that I loved you before you even told me anything.”

The words in Sirius' mouth boil away suddenly, startled and entirely unnerved by the way James is looking at him; with that air of anguished impatience darkening his stormy eyes, exactly as though it’s the James of two years ago who’s sitting there in front of him now. The James who’d created a vacuum the size of a galaxy in Sirius’ world, who’d sucked everything that was good out of him when he left, like marrow from his bones. 

“I didn't notice it at first,” James is saying. “But as we went through your memories, I kept getting this feeling, I just couldn’t shake it off –”

“No,” Sirius breathes, unable to tear his eyes off him. “No, that's impossible.”

“Powerful emotions can trigger memories to return, that’s what the Healer said, isn’t it? Can you think of anything more powerful than the guilt of seeing how much I’d hurt you?” 

Sirius can’t feel anything in his body except the pathetic, sickly sensation of his own heart trying to push out each agonizing beat in time for the next. “What are you saying – that you remember something?”

“Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying.”

Chapter Text

The temperature in the room seems to have fallen by several degrees, but Sirius can barely feel it. The entirety of his attention is frozen on James, and he finds himself trying to perceive him all at once – all dark, arched brows and angular jaw, his glasses leaning against the concave slope of his nose – but he can’t. It’s as though everything about James has suddenly become unfathomable to him, with no trace at all of the casual intimacy they’ve shared since he lost his memory.

“I remembered that we were in your flat,” James is saying, careful and measured. “We’d just gotten back from a night out and everyone was crashing here.”

Quick as anything, the memory flashes silver in Sirius’ mind, thrumming vividly as it comes back to him. “I remember. It was just after seventh year; before your engagement party.”

“Right. And all our friends, even Lily, were passed out in your living room.”

Sirius nods, sliding his hands into the pockets of his robes. A majority of that night is a blur to him now, just abstract paintbrush strokes in hallucinatory shades; the sky full of violet ink, and James’ shoulder slipping against his own as they’d Apparated back to the flat. There are other details, too, that he’s allowed himself to forget about that night, or maybe just gotten used to over time: the visceral ache of watching James dance with Lily all evening, his body enigmatic and weightless under the strobing lights, and how that feeling had vanished as soon as James’ eager hands pulled him into the bathroom. Bright-eyed laughter, the hair around James’ forehead slick with sweat, his skin flushed and warm under Sirius’ mouth. And that had been enough for Sirius, at some point – he’d once devoured these delicious few moments with James as if each were the last.

“You came into my room to see if I was awake,” Sirius says, following a short pause. “Said you couldn’t sleep.”

“Neither could you,” James’ eyes haven’t left his for a moment, almost metallic in the delicate grey light. “And when I saw you there sitting by yourself and smoking out the window – it was like something came over me. It was such a relief to finally be alone with you, Pads, I can’t explain the way it made me feel.”

Sirius’ fingers have been digging into his thigh for so long that he can feel the crescent-shaped indentations they’ve left on his skin. He remembers the way they’d sat up, sharing a joint and just talking till the sun rose, knees propped up and crammed against each other. Hushed voices, cold tea, James’ face tender and dappled with starlight.

“I don’t understand you,” he mutters eventually. “It’s all you ever talked about – how much you wanted me, how important I was to you. But they were just words, James, nothing more. You never did anything to back them up.”

“Maybe I didn’t act like it, but you knew how I felt about you. You knew I wouldn’t have been able to stop, even if I’d tried.”

Sirius throws him a bitter sideways glance. “Yeah? That’s not really the impression you gave me when you proposed to Lily.”

“I’m just saying that –“

“You know what you told me that night?” Sirius says. “You said I was a disease. That I’d infected you – like I was something you were stuck with. Something you never even wanted in the first place.”

“Look, that feeling I got while watching your memories – it was fear, Sirius. I was afraid of being in love with someone like you, someone who’d jump in front of a train for me.”

“What was there to be afraid of?” Sirius demands. “You’d do the same for me.”

“But I didn’t. I didn’t even –” James heaves in an angry breath, eyes snapping shut for a second. “Even when you tried to die, when it had mattered the most, I couldn’t swallow my pride long enough to be there for you.”

Outside, the storm has passed, leaving only a few icy winds in its wake. To know that beyond this apartment there’s a whole entire world out there is nothing short of bewildering to Sirius; it seems like everything outside of this room should have burned away by now. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Everything to Sirius looks infused with grey, all the colour bleached from the room as the pervasive smell of smoke flits around them. He’s on his third cigarette in fifteen minutes. “Why not? What was it that you were so fucking terrified of – knowing that I'd do anything for you? Was that such a difficult burden for you to bear?”   

James watches him, his gaze glistening against the ruby light of Sirius’ burning cigarette. The room is silent for several minutes, neither of them taking their eyes off the other. “I ruined your life two years ago, Sirius, and I can barely even remember why.”

Sirius closes his mouth, swallowing the knot that’s congealed in the back of his throat. It feels stupid now, to have hoped that telling James would make him feel any better about what happened. He’d been so certain that James would leave once he knew – and even that, in its own insane way, would’ve made sense to him. More sense, at least, than this crossroads they’ve arrived at, a strange and obscure space in which Sirius is too paralyzed to move. Where every word he says might be the wrong one. All his old, forgotten stitches seem to be rupturing; the skin falling off, every fossilized wound now frothing and bloody all over again.

“It’s not your fault,” he manages to get out. “You don’t even remember doing it. I can’t expect you to apologize for something you may as well have not done.”

“But I did, though, didn’t I? Fuck, Sirius, you could’ve died. I left you alone for eighteen months – my best friend, my fucking soul. And no matter what you did, even if you had slit my throat in my sleep, you didn’t deserve the way I made you feel. You didn’t deserve trying to kill yourself because of me.”

Sirius presses his lips into a thin, tight line. “You would just as soon have killed me yourself.”

“No.” James shakes his head. “That’s bullshit and you know it.”

“Okay, so what? Who cares what you would’ve done?”

“I know you still do, Pads,” James frowns impatiently. “Even if you say you don’t. Why do you keep trying to act like it doesn’t matter anymore – like it doesn’t still hurt?”

“Because you’re nothing like you used to be. Sometimes I forget that you’re even the same person.”

It really does feel like a ghost has been sewn into James’ skin, so familiar and yet so unnervingly distinct from the person Sirius used to know. He can’t quite put his finger on what it is, though it’s entirely possible that James is like this now just because he has no memory of Lily, no idea of the doting attraction she had once held for him. And what if Lily had lived? Would everything be the same now – him and James, spreading over each other’s skin like vines of ivy? Or would she resume her place as the empty expanse between them, a black hole always dragging James just out of reach?

“Is that enough for you?” James is asking. “Because it certainly isn’t for me.”

“Look, when I showed you my memories I wasn’t trying to get you to take back everything you did. I did it because you deserve to know the truth.”

A touch of irritation sours James’ voice. “I’m not an idiot. I know I can’t take anything back.”

“So why is this so important to you? You got what you wanted. You wanted to know what happened, and I told you – what else is there?”

“Because I want to know where it leaves us now, all of this.”

“I’m exactly where I’ve always been. The question is really where it leaves you.”

James sets his palms down on the table, his hands kinetic and distracted as they drum against the wooden surface. “You want to know too, don’t you? Why I left you when it would have made so much more sense to stay?”

Sirius puts out his cigarette and crosses his arms. “If you were ever going to be able to tell me why, don’t you think you would’ve done it by now?”

James reaches forward to press his hand onto Sirius’ shoulder, fingers overlaying it lightly. “I can’t even look at you, Pads, without seeing the way I left you like that on the street.”

“I don’t care about that anymore.”

“I don’t believe that. I think that it’s eating you alive, just as much as it’s eating me.”

“I said I don’t care. You’re going to drive yourself insane if you go on talking like that.”

A cherry-dark glaze dilates James’ pupils slightly. “What if I told you there might be a way?” he asks. “To get all my memories back – every single one?”

“I’d tell you that you’re stark raving mad.”

James lets go of his shoulder abruptly. “Maybe. But you want answers too, and there’s no way of getting them without my memories.”

Sirius looks across at James, whose features are geometric and sleek with a strange kind of light that seems to be swimming under his skin, illuminating him from within. He’s so impossibly beautiful it’s almost cruel, something that Sirius seems to be constantly aware of. Even when he had been at his hollowest, nothing more than an empty vessel somehow stumbling from one day into the next – he’d still dreamed of James’ flesh against his own, an amber silhouette in the firelight, his gossamer laugh coursing into Sirius’ bloodstream. Even then, James had been as riveting to Sirius as he’s always been. Even then, Sirius thought of James’ hands and relished in the idea of them closing around his throat.

“Alright,” he relents. “What exactly do you have in mind?”

“This is going to sound insane, so bear with me,” James tells him, eyes probing Sirius cautiously with every word that tumbles out. “Do you remember what that Healer said yesterday? About the only way to reverse a memory spell?”

“He said to tap into powerful emotions.”

James shakes his head. “No, before that. He said that the only known way to reverse a memory spell is through extensive torture by the –“

“No - stop right there. I won't hear it.”

“Extensive torture under the Cruciatus Curse,” James finishes calmly. “He said that it causes so much pain that it can reactivate memories.”

For two entire minutes, Sirius can’t speak. He'd known where this was going, but still his mind feels vacant, every thought inside it diffusing away into foggy semi-darkness.

“Look, I want my memories back. I want to explain myself to you, to apologize – as myself. My old self. Because it wouldn't mean much otherwise, would it?”

“Have you lost your fucking mind?” Sirius demands. “Who the hell do you expect will be willing to torture you just so you get your memories back?”

“Isn’t that obvious? You, Sirius – it has to be you.”

Acute irritation pulses into Sirius, leaving him blotchy and red all over. “If you believe for one moment that I would ever –“

“Who else could it be?”

“I’m not going to torture you, and neither is anybody else, for that matter,” Sirius clenches his jaw, pissed off that this even needs to be said at all. “You sound like a lunatic.”

“It’s the only way to reverse the memory spell. So if you’ve got a better idea, I’m listening.”

“I don’t care about reversing the fucking spell, and certainly not if –“

“Well, I do,” James interrupts. “I care. About making it right with you.”

“No, nothing in the world is worth doing that. Do you hear me? Nothing.”

“Why not? How did you think all of this was going to make me feel – watching your memories?” James asks, lips slitted open into an affronted part. “Can you even imagine? Knowing what I did to you, how I left you on your own for a year and a half – did you think that I would just be able to live with that? Did you think I’d be content with not even knowing why?”

Sirius slaps the empty pack of cigarettes back onto the table angrily. “So now just because you feel guilty, I’m supposed to put you under the Cruciatus? What if I fuck it up? What if I end up scrambling your brains, or – or killing you?”

James shrugs, and the fact that he seems completely impervious to just how deranged he sounds makes Sirius wants to throttle some sense into him. “Think of it as reparations. For all the hell I gave you.”

Sirius stares at him, too stunned to form a response. He can hardly believe what James is suggesting, let alone his decision that Sirius should be the one to torture him, as if the very thought of it doesn’t make him want to vomit his guts out. As if he even has it in him to hurt, truly hurt, James.

“I can’t do it,” he says, and is startled by how fragile his voice comes out sounding, the echoing undercurrent of fear in it. “James, I can’t. Not to you.”

There’s a short, fleeting silence. And then James’ fingers are on his face, brushing up gently against his cheekbone in one deft, sweeping motion.

Goosebumps emerge along Sirius’ skin where James has touched him, his heart instantly rendered a feeble, drunken thing, staggering uselessly around his chest. He can’t stand it, the way he’s so easily disoriented around James, how much he wants James to touch him all the time; to bear his hands down over Sirius’ knuckles and his collarbone and his lips, branding him with bruises.

“You’re not going to hurt me, not any more than necessary,” James tells him, eyes soft and unexpectedly tender. “And if you do, it’ll be nothing that I haven’t already done to you.”

Voice almost breaking now, all the words cracked and fractured around the edges. “No. It’s too dangerous.”

“You told me that you’d do anything for me, Pads.”

“Not this.” Sirius shakes his head, stepping back. “It won’t work. The Cruciatus – you have to mean it, really mean it, if you want it to work.”

“You don’t think you will?” James raises his eyebrows, scrutinizing him with an intensity that makes Sirius want to run for cover. “After what I did? You don’t think you have enough anger left over to make you want to hurt me?”

Sirius closes his mouth, not trusting himself to speak without saying something stupid. Of course he still has enough anger left over. It’s never gone away, this feeling, never completely receded. The fury and resentment have been collecting dust in the crevices of his chest for two whole years, like old buried bones. Waiting for the slightest nudge to crackle back to life again – because that kind of hurt leaves a stain that can never truly be scrubbed off, remains tattooed across the memory forever.

“How can you ask that of me?” he lowers his voice, and it’s about as close to pleading as he can manage. “After everything, how could you even – “

“Because it’s what I want. And it’s nothing I don’t deserve, anyway.”

“Is that what you think? That you deserve to be tortured for what you did?”

“Yes,” James says fiercely. “I think I deserve that, and worse.”

Sirius shakes his head again, but his resolve is starting to weaken under the way James is looking at him, expression gilded with a vulnerability that Sirius can’t get away from. James has used that exact look time and time to bend Sirius to his will, because it works, every single time. Sirius can’t refuse anything James asks when he looks at him like that, doesn’t think he ever will.

He doesn’t say that all he wants now is for James to stay. That he wants it to last forever; James’ delight at being around him, the soft, lyrical inflections in his voice as they stay up talking, burning the night away. That there’s something unbearably terrifying about the thought of giving it all up – of helping James get his memories back, reverting him to the person he'd been as he watched Sirius shatter like glass in his own two hands. As delicate as this is, whatever they’ve got going between them now, it feels too precious to throw away so soon. Especially not if doing so means this new and incredible version of James will be replaced by the cold, merciless shade of a person he’d been on that last awful night. Sirius doesn’t even believe in the devil, but it feels like if he does this, he’s going to be summoning him right into their flat.

So no, he doesn’t want to. He can’t lie about how good it feels to have James to himself again, all over him, the way it used to be so long ago. And the fact that it’s only taken six months to get here, from strangers to this – so effortlessly, without Sirius even having to try. James had dropped right back into his orbit in the most organic, predictable way. As though falling in love, for them, is inevitable.

If an infinite number of universes exists, Sirius thinks he and James would find each other in every single one. 

James wiggles his fingers in front of Sirius’ face to get his attention. “Listen to me. I know you’re worried, but I’m not going to change after my memories come back. I’m not going to be a new person, or treat you any differently – I’m still me, I always have been.”

“Easy for you to say,” Sirius irritably smacks James’ hand away. “We don’t fucking know that.”

“Yes, we do. Remembering everything that happened before the attack isn’t going to make me forget the last six months, or everything you’ve done for me.”

“Why are you so convinced that once you get your memories back, you’re still going to want to apologize, or even explain yourself to me? You never once bothered to, not back then. What’s miraculously going to be different this time around?”

“You are,” James says, looking puzzled. “Don’t you get that? You let me back into your life, you helped me move on after the attack; you gave me everything, Sirius, even after I left you with nothing.”

He dusts the cigarette ash off himself, avoiding James’ gaze. “Yeah. For my own selfish reasons.”

“There’s nothing selfish about it. You just wanted me back, so let me give you what you want.”

“Maybe I don’t want it anymore,” Sirius snaps. “Maybe I like things the way they are now.”

James’ eyes narrow at him. “The way they are now? With me having this huge chunk of memories missing – nearly half of my life, gone, as if it had never even happened? This isn’t just about you, alright? You deserve answers, of course you do, but – I want my memories back too, Pads, not just of you, but of everything. My whole life. I just want to remember who I am.”

He’s got that naked, wide-open rawness on his face again. Sirius exhales and searches furiously inside himself for something to say; anything that might get James to change his mind, that might convince him what a terrible idea this actually is. He comes up with nothing, though, because he knows James is right. That their relationship is only a tiny sliver of everything he’s forgotten, everything that make him who he is. Even if Sirius might be able to argue forever against doing this so he can stay in this little made-up reality of theirs, he can’t deny that it would give James the chance to be his old self again. To get back everything that he’s lost.

How can Sirius justify refusing James his life back, when he’s the only one who can give it to him?

“I don’t know,” he says. “It’s insane – this whole thing. We don’t even know that it’ll work.”

“We still have to try.”

Sirius scans James over, taking in the determination cast into features, even the slight gleam of hope in his eyes, of excitement. He tries to imagine how he might feel himself, if the situation were reversed, if he’d lost all his memories and were given the chance to get them back – and as unendurable as the thought is, he knows he’d want the same thing that James does. He also knows that James would give it to him without hesitation.

It’s this realization that chips away at the final smatterings of resistance he’s clinging to. The plain truth of it is that he cares more about James than he’s ever cared about himself, and if this really is what James needs, Sirius doesn’t have it in him to say no anymore.

“Okay. I hate myself for this, but – fine. You’re right.”

“Yeah?” James lights up, brilliant as fireworks. “Really? You’ll do it?”

Sirius shrugs in resignation. “Yeah, well. Can't say I've ever seen anyone this excited to be put under the torture curse.”

“Sirius – look. I know this is hard for you. And I love you, you know. I always have.”

Sirius feels his throat close up, without really understanding why. It’s like he’s already begun grieving, watching everything they’ve shared these last few months go up in flames. As if he’s already lost James, or is starting to, at least.

“Yeah,” he says thickly, painfully aware of how close he is to crying all of a sudden, how close the tears are to bubbling right out of him. “I know.”

James lowers his lids and gives him a small smile. “Okay. How do you want to do this?”

“I don’t really want to do this at all,” Sirius tells him, pinching at the wetness gathering in the corners of his eyes. “Uh - I don’t know. Maybe you should sit down or something. Don’t want you falling over and cracking your skull – unless, of course, you think you deserve that too.”

James’ smile falters. “Hey, I – I know you don’t believe me, but I’m not going to get my memories back and then abandon you all over again. I wouldn’t do that to you.”

You don’t know that, Sirius thinks. James has done plenty of things to Sirius that he said he never would. “Can we just get it over with?” he sighs. “Just – just sit down. And don’t fucking talk – it’ll only make it harder for me to hurt you.”

James pulls up the dining chair and takes a seat obediently. He’s only in it for a moment, though, before jumping back up again. “Wait,” he says hurriedly, moving rapidly towards Sirius. “I need to do something first.”

Sirius shuts his eyes, skin growing hot with impatience. But then James’ mouth is soft and sudden against his own, the kiss so unexpected that it arrests his breath and converts it into an embarrassing whimper. And though it only lasts for a minute or so, he finds himself clutching the sides of James’ face as hard as he can, pushing into him with a kind of urgent desperation. He thinks I love you, I love you, I love you, or maybe he’s saying it out loud, he doesn’t know, he can’t think right now; he just wants to be here, wants to fold himself up and crawl after James forever.

“Okay,” James sighs, when he lets go. “I had to do that, one last time, just in case.”

“In case of what?”  

“I don’t know, in case you fry my brain or something.”

Sirius shoves him back down onto the chair forcefully, annoyed again. “I hope I do, because this is the stupidest idea you’ve ever had.”

James extracts his own wand and tosses it easily across the room. Then he rolls his shoulders back, bracing them, looking at Sirius expectantly. Sirius notices with an ache that the fading sunrise has turned James’ skin a deep, lush gold.

“Alright, go on. I’m ready.”

Sirius’ wand is already in his hand, but it’s trembling uncontrollably. He can hardly aim it straight at James.

“Crucio,” he breathes, before he can lose his nerve.

The curse shoots out and gets James square in the chest, but Sirius can see immediately that its effects are flimsy at best; James’ face tightens in pain, but only for an instant. “Really?” he snorts, eyebrows raised and completely unimpressed. “Is that all you can manage? That barely even stings.”

“I told you I wouldn't be able to do it,” Sirius snaps, simultaneously angry and humiliated. “I don’t hate you enough to get the spell right.”

“Just think of everything I did to you,” James says, sitting up straighter. “I made you watch while I went out with Lily. I did things with her I didn’t with you – I kissed her in front of everybody, I never tried to hide that we were together, the way I did with you –“

“It won't work,” Sirius says coldly. “I know you’re just trying to goad me into hurting you.”

“No, I’m trying to piss you off. Picture it – me with Lily. Think of every time I fucked her, if you must – think of the first time I did it, and then the next, and the next, and every time up until –“

“Stop,” Sirius’ knuckles are white as they tighten around his wand. The flux of anger that swarms through him makes him grit his teeth. James’ words are working – against his will, he’s picturing it; James with Lily, her fiery hair splayed against the pillow, moaning into James’ ear – he tries to close his eyes to shut the image out, but it’s imprinted into his brain and now he can’t get it out, can’t stop thinking of it, when it should’ve been him, damn it, it should’ve been Sirius that James had pressed into the sheets, every single time he slept with Lily; it should’ve been Sirius, it should’ve always been him. He feels his mouth go dry, the sudden bitterness twisting his stomach and crashing violently into his veins. “Crucio.”

James’ breath catches, and his head slams against the back of the chair as the curse hits him again. “Better,” he grunts, when the pain passes. “But not good enough.”

“Look, this is getting ridiculous –“

“You shouldn’t have hung around me for so long,” James goes on resolutely. “It was your fault, what happened – if you hadn’t been so blinded by your feelings, you would’ve had the sense to leave me before I ever got the chance to hurt you.”

Sirius breathes through his nose, trying his absolute hardest to remember that James is doing this on purpose, that he’s choosing every word deliberately in order to piss him off. And that’s exactly what he’s doing – pissing Sirius the fuck off. His temper is rising perilously out of control. “What right do you have to say that? You wouldn’t know the first thing about how I felt –“

“But I did,” James is still prattling, loud and stubborn. “I knew exactly how you felt, Sirius, that’s why it was so easy to fuck you up – I knew you’d put up with anything, really, even me going out with someone else, even me getting engaged to someone else! You really haven’t got a limit, have you? I could do anything to you, and you’d just take it, and you’d love me anyway, like a dog.”

“Crucio!”

This time he makes James double over, eyes widening in surprise.

“Don’t,” Sirius says, when James opens his mouth again. His anger ebbs away suddenly, frightened off by the genuine pain he’s just inflicted. “Stop, don’t – don’t make me do this anymore.”

“I could make you do – anything,” James coughs, raising his head to meet Sirius’ eye. “You worship me, Sirius, just say it. I own you.”

“James, don’t –“

“Why not?” James challenges. “Admit it, you want to do this – you’re angry, aren’t you? Good. Use it. Go on, like you fucking mean it this time.”

“I can’t –“

“Did you really believe I loved you? Is that what you imagine love is – being thrown away over and over again for someone better, someone prettier and more talented than you?” James continues, eyes flashing with a knife-like cruelty that’s so unlike what Sirius has come to expect from him. “But then again, I can’t blame you – given the family you’re from, of course. I mean, what’s worse? Being treated like shit by your family, or by the person you think you love? Maybe that’s the reason you’re so obsessed with me. I’m the first person in the world who’s ever shown you a drop of kindness.”

“Shut the fuck up, James,” he hisses, wand poised in his hand without realizing, the mention of his family immediately summoning a new wave of blind anger from his gut.

“It’s pathetic, if I’m honest,” James goes on, “all I had to do was be nice to you a couple of times. You were following me around like a lost puppy before I even knew it. I mean, fuck – how are you not embarrassed by that? How do you not feel ashamed of being so fucking submissive?”

The fury feels like it’s clotting in Sirius’ blood, a chemical reaction that blots every other rational thought out of existence. The incantation tears forth from his lips before he can reel it in. “Crucio!” 

James lets out a sharp, high-pitched noise as the curse strikes him again, the colour draining from his face. “I – let you – try to kill yourself,” wheezing, every word coming out strained, “because you’re – just – like them –“

The curse flies from Sirius’ wand again; James chokes on his own voice, his breathing reduced to short, stuttered gasps.

“What?” he pants weakly, looking up at Sirius again. “No more begging me to stop? No more ‘please, James, don’t make me do this’?”

“Careful,” Sirius says, throwing James a deadly look. “Be very careful what you say next.”

“Or what?” James lets out a spluttering laugh, the pain making him brutal, but his veins are starting to throb beneath the skin. “We both know you won’t kill me. Merlin, you can’t even torture me right –“

Sirius is only very faintly aware of his actions as he carries them out – he sends curse after curse slamming into James in rapid succession, each blow striking him barely an instant before the next. James’ body twitches like a dying animal’s – Sirius is hardly even seeing him there, hardly able to recognize him; all he can think of is the empty hospital ward he’d woken up in again and again and again last year, waking up each time a little less than he’d been before – the power James had held over him, even months after he’d left, nothing more than a thought form, a phantom still capable of stripping the flesh off Sirius’ bones.

“How dare you talk to me like that!” he shouts suddenly, the rage finally detonating inside of him at the unfairness of it all, at the dead and shriveling thing that James had turned him into, the way he’d carved Sirius into pieces and then merrily disappeared for eighteen months, and James had known – he’d known each and every time Sirius tried to kill himself, and it still hadn’t mattered, he still hadn’t bothered to show up – not like he would have, anyway, not even if it were to Sirius’ fucking funeral.

The swift cascade of curses he’s throwing has melded into a single long, relentless one now. Sirius twists his wand and wills it into James with every fiber of his being – he’s furious, furious because James should have loved him, instead of hollowing him out, instead leaving him drowning in all – that – pain –

James lets out a strangled scream, no longer laughing, no longer even able to talk. Sirius doesn’t think about that. He focuses on the rage, which he doesn’t even need to try and dredge into his awareness anymore. It’s already there – white-hot, feral, turning everything else to molten cinders. It’s violent and vengeful; because how could James do that to him? How could he so willingly ruin Sirius like that?

“You left me!” he snarls, driving his emotions into James, watching them make him writhe and shriek with sick satisfaction. “I would've done anything for you and you left me. All you had to do was tell me the truth, all you had to say was that you didn’t love me anymore, but no – you couldn’t do that – you had to make me crawl after you for years and fucking years. Telling me over and over that you loved me, not doing a single thing to actually show me that you did, then fucking right off the moment I tried to get you back!”

James is groaning unintelligibly, all the fight gone from him, blood seeping from his mouth from where the convulsions have caused him to bite into his tongue.

“I did everything, everything to get away from the way that made me feel!” Sirius roars, strangely detached from the sight of James in front of him, as though James has turned into an inanimate ragdoll – his presence there is more symbolic than anything else, because it’s really the old James that Sirius is torturing, the James that had brought all of this on in the first place. “Do you want to know what I did? How many ways I tried to die?”

“Sirius,” James sobs, begging, “no more – I’m sorry –“

“I tried the pills, of course, then pitched myself off a bridge, then tried to tear myself up to pieces. I would’ve tried a Muggle gun – if I could get my hands on one,” he seethes, the memory of every attempt flaring lucidly inside him, sinews of red and black breaking out all over his brain. “And the potions – who could forget those? I brewed potions that would’ve burned my insides away, James, that would’ve made me drop into an endless coma, or otherwise bleed to death. But did any of that make a difference to you? Would it have mattered one bit – if Remus' magic hadn’t saved me, if I’d died?”

“Stop, it hurts – I can’t -”

Sirius steps closer, breathing heavily. James is starting to lose consciousness, only the whites of his eyes visible now. “It hurts, does it? How does it feel – to be tortured by your best friend? Because this –“ he digs the tip of his wand against the line between James’ throat and jaw, “ – this is nothing compared to what you did to me.”

He can see James’ pulse slowing, the strength sapping from his body. He’s not even sure James is hearing him right now, because he doesn’t look cognizant enough to, but Sirius can’t stop. This was dangerous, tapping into the ocean of hurt he’s tried to stash away for years. It rises from the ground and contorts all around him; it’s exhausting, and his heart feels like it’s eroding in his chest, just pieces and pieces of broken, wretched love, and still Sirius can’t step out from under it, can’t make himself forget that feeling.

“It took you being attacked, and Lily getting killed, before you would even look at me again,” he says, all gunpowder eyes and savage sobs. “It took you losing your memories to even sit in the same room as me – because I was as good as dead to you.”

When he twists his wand again, the curse juts directly into James’ neck, and his body bucks violently one last time. A moment later, James slumps forward, limp and lifeless.

Sirius drops his wand.

It takes a couple of minutes to come back to himself, for the anger to dissipate. Even then, he feels traces of it like contusions, dark yellow and indigo, marring his clarity. It isn’t until he hears the barely audible dripping of blood from James’ mouth onto the floor that he realizes what’s happening; as if he’s awakening from a dream, the breath hitching in his throat, drowsy and disoriented, wading slowly back to reality.

Fuck.

He drops to his knees beside James, searching desperately for a pulse. When he finds it, faint under his fingertips, he lets out a long, hushed breath that he hadn't known he’s been holding. It’s only been a few minutes, but James already looks like he’s on the verge of death. How long had he wept, pleaded for Sirius to stop? Sirius hadn’t even felt James weakening, fading away. He hadn’t felt anything but the delirious swell of anger in him, eclipsing everything else.

“James,” he breathes, suddenly horrified. “James – wake up.”

James’ head rolls around his neck uselessly when Sirius shakes him. He finds himself starting to panic – the Cruciatus Curse has never killed anyone, of course, but it has caused irreparable damage to its victims. Sirius knows of people that have become comatose, or lost their minds, entering vegetative states in which they wouldn’t even have registered someone sticking a knife into them. The possibility that he’s now done that to James makes Sirius go numb with shock.

He keeps saying “no, no,” while trying to wake James up, shaking his shoulders and slapping him desperately across the face. He feels like he should’ve expelled the last of his tears by now, but he’s still crying, the thought that he’s nearly killed James now freely pulsating all over him.

When James is still unconscious five minutes later, Sirius clamps a hand over his mouth, moving back from him with a kind of unspeakable, silent terror. He can’t think of what to do – can’t even rationalize what’s happening. His chest feels like it’s filled with broken glass, bloody debris, puncturing his lungs and spilling crimson everywhere.

What the fuck has he done?

He opens his mouth to scream – don’t you leave me again, don’t you fucking dare – and just as he’s about to let it loose, James draws in a huge, heaving gulp, torso flinging back up against the chair. His eyelids flutter open, crumpled and creased.

“Prongs,” Sirius begins, flushed with so much relief that he doesn’t know how it all manages to fit inside him. And then he stops, freezing, all the clashing sentences on his tongue evaporating as suddenly as they appeared.

James is looking at him – his gaze curious and searching, as if he’s just seeing Sirius there for the first time, but with a light of long-lost familiarity that slips all the way down Sirius’ body like wine. The boy in front of Sirius looks like James, but he's also not James.

Not the James that Sirius has been living with for the last six months.

Sirius knows that at once, though he doesn’t know how he knows. Something about the intricate arrangement of James’ features, maybe, or the startling prick of recognition in his eyes. Sirius knows James' face like the back of his hand - and he would know it anywhere, anywhere. The moment they're in is suddenly suspended in time, not the slightest drift of air disturbing the stillness in the room. Sirius can’t feel his own heart beating anymore.

James only says a single, breathless word, and that's all it takes. “Sirius.”

If Sirius hadn't been entirely convinced a moment ago that James - his James - is here, sitting right in front of him again, he sure as fuck is now.

Chapter Text

Sirius has only just begun to process what’s happening when James takes a huge running leap forward and collides right onto him.

He staggers back from the impact of it, the sudden weight of James’ body against his. There’s no time to think – the overwhelming immediacy of James’ presence washes over everything like rain, and Sirius’ skin is turning gold wherever James touches him.

“Sirius, you did it, it worked. It worked.”

The air around them has turned aqueous, too slippery and formless for his lungs to properly cling to. The momentum of his own breath seems to be growing fainter every second; rising, diminishing, spilling away. James is here, he’s right here, and the whole room is burning with the knowledge of it – everything melting over everything else, all the light coalesced and hot as stars. Breathing, speaking, moving – all of it’s impossible. The only thing Sirius feels capable of is staring down at James’ head on his shoulder, caught in silent, startled wonder.

Although it’s only been a moment, he finds himself noticing small, mosaic changes in James right away, all the particularities that were lost along with his memories six months ago. Years of Quidditch practice have altered the way James carries himself, making his body graceful with an intimate knowledge of itself – his posture more fluid, his movements laced with supple and effortless precision. There’s something different in the way he looks at Sirius too, the fever-flash of familiarity from a lifetime of knowing him, knowing everything about him. Even the way he’s latched onto Sirius now, all that sudden closeness and the dizzying, explosive rhythm of James' heart against his chest. Sirius recognizes every bit of this change as easily as his own name, because how could he not?

This is James, the one he’s always known – more familiar to him than anything in the world, whose sight and shape and scent is inscribed into Sirius' bones.

And yet so much about James has hardly changed at all. He’s still got the same intensity in his expressions and speech, as though he somehow experiences things more deeply, more profoundly than other people. The same air of easy, excitable energy around him, the visible lack of inhibition fueling everything he does – each action as dramatic and untamed as the emotions underlying it. 

Daybreak bleeds the pale, exhausted shadows that the Cruciatus has left on James' face; it lights him up in sepia tones, and Sirius is so mesmerized he can’t even wrap his head around it. James being here with all his memories back still feels so surreal – like it's all just some illusory figment in Sirius’ imagination, seeping into reality from the fabric of his dreams.

“Hi,” James laughs, a silvery sound that springs into every inch of the room. He lets go, stepping back and allowing his eyes to run giddily all over Sirius. “You’ve gotten tall.”

Sirius just stands there like an idiot, watching as his own image ripples back at him from James’ glasses. He can’t decide whether he feels drunk or more lucidly awake than he’s ever been in his life.

James furrows his brows. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You remember.” His voice comes out odd and splintered, hardly recognizable as his own. “Everything?”

“Yep. All of it.”

Sirius doesn’t dare look away from him for a moment. Like he’s standing in the sun, blinded by light and too dazzled to feel the heat. “You’re still bleeding,” he says awkwardly, glancing at the slight smears of red around James’ mouth.

“Doesn’t hurt much anymore,” James shrugs and wipes the blood off with the back of a hand. “Forget that – fuck, Sirius, I can’t tell you how nice it is to see you.”

Infrared warmth rises from under Sirius’ neck and crescendos up his face as James continues to study him, razing over every single one of his features in avid contemplation. It makes him unnecessarily self-conscious, as though he’s being devoured alive by James’ eyes. Split down the middle so that everything’s exposed. He’s suddenly embarrassed by the state he’s in – his own high, flushed cheekbones and tangled charcoal hair, still wearing yesterday’s robes, still covered in graveyard dirt and cigarette smoke.

“Fuck,” James murmurs again, his dilated pupils forming wide spheres against liquor-dark irises. “I can’t believe it. You’re still so fucking gorgeous.”

Sirius swallows and moves his feet, so that they’re standing a little closer together. “How does it feel? Having your memories back?”

“Weird, if I’m honest. Kind of like waking up from a long dream. And you? After – well, after the Cruciatus and everything?”

Sirius is quiet for a minute, unsure of how to respond. Somewhere in his chest, his heart is still soggy, curdled from the fury that had set fire to it as he'd performed the torture curse. “I thought it hadn’t worked,” he admits slowly. “I thought I’d fucked it up somehow.”

“You didn’t. Quite the opposite, actually.”

“You kept asking me to stop, and I couldn’t make myself do it –“

“I know. You don’t need to say anything.”

“I was so angry, Prongs,” Sirius whispers, the words clogged and thick in his throat. “I wanted to –”

He hears his own voice disappear when James leans in to touch his face, brushing the hair back from his temples. The gentle, almost careless gesture makes Sirius blink in surprise. A lightheaded sensation drapes itself all over him, leaving him unable to sense or perceive anything except the thin, singular line James’ fingertips are tracing across his skin.

It's this stark reminder of his own vulnerability that causes him to stiffen and jerk away immediately. 

“Eighteen months,” he says, the realization that James is back hitting him all over again. James, who’d left Sirius panicked and screaming and broken on the street two years ago. Who’d slipped out of his best friend's life like a shadow while Sirius tore himself apart for months. “Didn’t you think to check in on me, even once? Didn’t you care at all?”

James falters; a kind of nervousness seems to cast over him, giving his movements a slightly frenetic edge.

“It never mattered to you, did it?” Sirius accuses, before James can respond. “Everything I was doing? It never bothered you that I could’ve died – because that’s what you wanted, wasn’t it?”

“I never wanted you dead, Sirius.”

Sirius finds himself letting out a flat, hollow laugh. It burns like lava pouring from his mouth. “Don’t give me that. You couldn’t have cared less that I tried to kill myself.”

James’ smile vanishes.

“Of course I fucking cared,” he throws back, his voice sharpening at once. “Who do you think asked Remus to put that spying spell on you? Who made him use every protective enchantment under the sun to keep you safe from yourself? Don’t be an idiot, Pads – did you think it was an accident, the fact that you managed to survive so many times? That you never even really got hurt, no matter what you tried to do?”

The words crack deftly against Sirius’ skin, finding every one of his most tender wounds and filling them with blood.

"Don’t ever say that I didn’t care about you trying to kill yourself, because –“

“I never even got hurt?” Sirius interrupts. “I never stopped hurting. Because you left me – you left, you prick, and it made me want to die. You didn’t protect me from shit.”

James is looking at him incredulously. “But the spells did protect you," he says. "Look – I knew you were going to do something stupid after that night at Remus’, alright? I could see it on your face, and I was just trying to keep you alive.”

“Is that what you told yourself? That you were doing me some kind of favour?" Sirius asks, his pulse going stilted and erratic with anger. "Fuck you, James, because all your fucking spells did was make me have to try more times than I could even –”

“What would have had me do, then? Just sit back and watch you die?”

“That’s exactly what you did!” Sirius shouts. “I waited a year for you to show up! What good was being kept alive, if it meant living the way I did? It’s worse than being dead – because at least that doesn't fucking hurt!”

James grimaces, his face waning to a dull cigarette-ash colour. “You don’t know what a wreck I was when Remus told me you were in the hospital.”

“You don’t get to say that. You don’t get to pretend like you didn’t know what I’d do.”

“He said that you’d spent the whole night there, violently ill and throwing up three bottles’ worth of Muggle pills. You hadn’t even made it to the end of the week, Pads. You didn’t make it another month before trying again.”

“Yeah. I was there, thanks.”

“I was losing my fucking mind," James' volume drops, and everything comes out sounding shaky. "I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. And every time I let myself think that you were done, that you were finally going to stop, I’d get another owl from Remus... sometimes a few months apart – sometimes only a few weeks, a few days.”

Sirius flexes his fingers, trying to diffuse the rigid tension building within them. It makes him uneasy to recall the things he did to end his own life, and talking about it is even worse. It always startles him, the memories of his own suicide attempts bleeding from his subconscious, slipping through the cracks of the wall they’re locked behind. They have a way of jolting through him, causing a sudden rush of loud, inexplicable panic – it’s like hearing a gunshot go off in his head. “And it never occurred to you to come see me?” 

James turns his gaze to the floor uncomfortably. “I thought I was doing the right thing by staying away.”

“How was that the right fucking –”

“I thought that if I did, if I could convince you that I didn’t love you anymore, you'd finally be able to move on with your life.”

The sheer stupidity of the statement makes Sirius' whole face steam with vivid, scalding irritation. All the fibers holding his thoughts together are stretched taut; any minute now his mind is going to snap in two, turning him feral with rage.

“I just wanted to make it easier for you to hate me,” James tells him. “Don’t you see that for the first time in your life you had the opportunity to get away from everything? To finally be free of this whole bloody nightmare?"

“What the hell are you –"

“You know it as well as I do. If I came to see you, even if it was only for a moment, nothing between us would've changed. We’d both go right back to where we started, and you’d just go on convincing yourself that there's something in me worth loving.”

“What gave you the right to decide what I would fucking feel?” 

“Don't act like it isn't true, Pads. Your feelings for me are like – they’re like some kind of tumour in your brain. They don’t let you think straight. All these years and you still can’t see it. Fuck, does it even matter how I choose to explain myself to you now? Will it make any difference at all to the way you feel? Or will you just keep finding excuses to want me, to act like everything I did can somehow be forgiven?”

Sirius narrows his eyes at the note of insolence in James’ tone. “Who says anything about being forgiven?”

“But you don’t care about that, do you?” James lets out a breath, his expression mottled with frustration and weariness. “You don’t want to forgive. You don’t even want to understand, deep down. You just want me, and you don’t care how many times it gets you hurt, as long as we're together.”

An infuriated snarl starts to form in Sirius’ mouth, but James is talking again before it can make itself heard –

“When I stayed away I was just trying to give you something you aren’t capable of giving yourself – a chance to leave this all behind. To leave me behind.”

Sirius’ fury goes stale at those words, numb under the weight of his disbelief. All the sentences he’d been meaning to shout dissipate and turn to dust on his tongue.

“This thing that we have – it’s not even love, I don’t even think that’s the word for it,” James says. “The way that you feel, it’s devotion – a kind of violence. And the more it hurts you, the more you tell yourself that you need it. You were even ready to let it kill you – because at least then it would have mattered, wouldn’t it, everything I put you through? You’ll never agree to walk away, or give up on it. Love, for you, is a slaughter-house, Sirius – you can’t leave until you’re dead.”

The quiet ticking of the wall clock sounds amplified in the resounding silence that follows. Despite the pale, opal-shaped sun flooding the turquoise sky, the flat feels oddly bare and very cold. Six months ago, James had moved in and transformed this place almost overnight – he’d embellished it with colour just by being here, painting ultraviolet hues over everything. But for a few moments, Sirius can’t see any of the clutter that’s now in it, the vast array of items James has accumulated and splayed across every surface. Standing here in the silence, there’s something familiar in the way it looks. The tracks of wintery light on the walls emptying the room of everything in it – the sofa, the lampshade, the walnut bookshelf. All of it fading away, just blurry shapes mingling into a bloated, vacant background. The flat feels like a prison cell again, the way it had in those months after James left. Sterile, blank, void of any warmth.

“I didn’t come see you after you tried to kill yourself because I was trying to let you go. To let you see how much better off you’d be without me.”

The words are out before Sirius can extinguish them, tar-black and doused in gasoline. “If you really believe that, then you should've just let me die.”

James’ face twists and tightens, as if hearing that has caused him pain. 

“No, enough,” Sirius snaps, when James opens his mouth. “What exactly do you want me to say, Prongs? That I’m sorry I love you? Because I’m not – I’m never going to be. I don’t care if it hurts, I don’t even care if it kills me! And for you to be so stupid as to believe that it could ever just go away – why? Because it did for you, so easily?”

“Easily?”

“You left me!” Sirius shouts, his voice exploding into the room like a grenade, a flash of heat and light and deafening sound. “I was fucking dying, and you were too busy with Lily to give a shit!”

James doesn’t speak for a long while. When he does, his words churn low and distant, all underwater echoes and ocean-song. “You’re right,” he says quietly. “I left, there's no excuse for it. I wasn't there when you needed me. And you deserve to know the truth, to understand why.”

“Why what?”

“Why I chose Lily over you,” James clears his throat, dark eyes burning with cinnamon-cider heat. “Because we both know that I never loved her the way I do you.”

Sirius stares hard at James, trying to ignore the fact that the floor is starting to feel like quicksand under his feet. “It’s hard for me to believe that, given that you asked her to marry you.”

“She was an amazing woman, and I loved her – but only in the way that I love Remus. As a person, a friend. It wasn’t anything like the way I felt about you.”

The effort of trying to digest those words makes Sirius' stomach sick within seconds. Memories bubble up in his head, boiling with venom - James catching Lily in his arms on the train platform at the end of every summer, laughing and swinging her around; sitting in the Common Room with his arm slung around her shoulders; smirking as he passed her dirty notes in class.

"You're lying," Sirius says. "You were obsessed with her. Wouldn't fucking shut up about it."

"I fancied her at school. That's not the same as being in love."

His lips are dry and waxy, moving without permission, stumbling over his own sentences. "But you - you proposed to her. You said -"

“Yes, because I was a coward. Because Lily was everything I thought I needed at the time – she was safe, and she made sense – because she was the complete opposite of you in every way.”

“Since when have you ever wanted anything safe?” 

“Maybe you don’t understand that,” James clears his throat. Sirius suddenly notices how much older he looks from the person in his memories, as if James has aged right in front of his eyes. “Because you didn’t grow up like I did. You never learned what love was as a child, your family made sure of that."

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"Because it wasn't like that for me. I know what it’s supposed to look like when two people are in love – it’s meant to be something healthy, Pads, something stable - like my parents’ marriage. And I always thought that’s what I’d find someday."

"You'd have been bored to death by something like that."

"I wouldn't have been, if not for you. Because you came along and you –" James' gaze flicks over him, "you turned it all upside down, didn't you? You tore everything I thought I knew about love to pieces. And I don’t think you have any way of realizing how terrifying that was for me.”

A sudden rush of hurt almost makes Sirius flinch, as though something's just sunk its fangs deep under his skin. “So you had to deal with something complicated for once in your life, something that wasn’t handed to you on a spoon, and it was just too much fucking work for you?” 

“No, but I was just a kid. Just fifteen, falling in love with someone like you – someone who liked picking fights with me every other day, someone capable of throwing punches and saying the most cruel things when angry – and you were always angry, Pads, always so easy to offend. You’d take the smallest comment and turn it into some vile insult in your head. Then you’d use it as an excuse to blow up, swear your fucking head off at me –“  

All the walls are starting to close in on Sirius at once, and he feels trapped, suffocated. Buried alive. Like James has got him backed into a small corner, forcing him to stare at a thousand distorted reflections of himself in a cracked mirror, every shard capturing and casting the ugliest parts right back in his face – because of this, because you are a bloody maniac – 

The words from two years ago reverberate through Sirius' skull; James' face electrified with rage, eyes like live wires that crackled and spat mad, fiery sparks into the night. 

Because you are a bloody maniac.

A maniac.

You are a bloody maniac and it’s TERRIFYING.

The light in the room turns blinding, garish, a microscope that uncovers Sirius and lays all of him out bare. His voice comes out punctured with short, shallow hyperventilations. “I’m just too difficult, too fucked-up to love, is that it?”

“You are the single most callous, irritable, defensive dick I’ve ever known,” James shakes his head, “but – you’re also the only person in the world who's ever understood anything about me. Who's ever made me feel alive.”

Sirius' heart skids and stops abruptly in his chest.

“How could I not love you?” James asks. “I feel like I’ve done it forever. I never even knew how empty I’d been – I was well-cared for, sure, but bored and indifferent about nearly everything. I’d always had comfort, security, a loving home. And that should’ve been enough, because it is for most people, isn’t it?”

“Maybe the problem is that nothing is enough for you,” Sirius says sullenly, pulling up a chair but too restless to actually get into it. “I’m sorry that you had such a splendidly spoiled childhood, James. Do you even know what I would’ve given to grow up the way you did?”

James shrugs, eyes on the seat. “Like I said – I don’t expect you to understand. I had everything I could ask for, anything I wanted, and it all just seemed… empty."

"Sit," Sirius pushes the chair toward him. "You must feel like shit after the Cruciatus."

"I'm fine," James says, then sits down anyway. "I can't explain, exactly, what changed the moment I spoke to you. But it did – and it was like suddenly I was wide awake for the first time in my life. Everything I’d experienced up ‘til then just became so dull, so bland in comparison.”

James' gaze is a dagger-blade pressed against Sirius' throat; it fills his mouth with the sour, acrid fumes of burnt rubber. "What, even from that first day on the train?" 

“Yes, even from then. You were unlike anybody I’d known before, wild and proud and fierce, without a shred of civility in your whole body. Do you remember all the things we talked about on our way to the school? How we stayed up all night when we got there?"

"Of course I remember."

"Well, you were the most interesting person I'd ever met – I knew that we'd be friends right away. My whole life felt boring and uneventful next to what you told me about yours, and I could’ve listened to you talk about yourself forever. You’re not too difficult or fucked-up for me, Sirius – I’ve loved you longer than you know.”

All the bones in Sirius’ body seem to have vanished; he's inert, numb, speechless. It's almost obscene, the effect James is capable of having on him with just a few sentences. He's close to choking on the feeling of it, caught in that deep, disorienting twilight state he always finds himself in around James – forever frozen between the words I love you and you make me want to die. 

“And Lily…” James breathes out distractedly, shifting his attention to the window. “I wasted so much of her time. If I’d known what was going to happen to her, if I’d had the slightest idea, I wouldn’t have – “ He stops, then looks over at Sirius again. “But I didn’t, not in fifth year. I was just doing what I thought all teenage boys wanted to do at that age – sleep around and take pretty girls on dates. Going out with Lily just felt like a harmless bit of fun, I never expected you to get so jealous about it.”

“I wasn’t jealous, you arrogant –“

Sirius’ voice clots suddenly in his throat, and he can’t even make himself finish his own sentence. The memory of James laughing at him that day sears across his brain like acid, filling him with a poisonous anger that instantly swallows everything else – because it must’ve been so fucking easy for him to act as if it was all just some stupid game, to joke about the way Sirius sat up waiting for him to get back – because it hadn’t been James' insides writhing at the thought of what he'd done on that date with Lily; it hadn’t been his heart falling off itself in slices all night.

“You were threatened,” James tells him calmly, “and not just upset, furious. Don’t bother denying it, because you’d only be lying to yourself – that’s not the point, anyway. The point is that your reaction that morning honestly scared me a little.” 

“My reaction wasn’t particularly uncalled-for,” Sirius snaps at him. “Anyone would’ve reacted the same way.”

“No – I wouldn’t have minded you going out with someone else at school, as long as it was just for fun. I wouldn’t have gotten so worked-up about it. But you were hurt, Pads. And that was the first time I really saw it – how different our relationship was to any of our classmates’. How much more intense. I started to think about it all the time, to wonder what exactly it was we had… and by the end of fifth year I knew I was in love with you.”

Sirius’ words taste slick, bitter, and red as they leave his mouth, like open wounds. “You had a funny way of showing it, running right back to Lily the first day school reopened.”

“Look, just –“ James winces and shuts his eyes for a moment. “I’m trying to explain it to you, alright? Just listen, and stop interrupting every two seconds with your snide little remarks.”

Sirius knows that tense note of irritation in James’ voice well enough to expect the abrasive stream of accusations that usually follows, but James stops there. Annoyed, he crosses his arms and leans back, silencing the sudden, childish impulse to throw something at him. “Fine. You were saying?”

“I was saying – that I couldn’t get enough of you, the summer you moved in with me. I’d lived in that house my whole life, and it had never been as fun as it was with you there. I wanted you with me all the time, Sirius – going even a moment away from you actually made me feel a bit sick inside, like I was missing something. And at first I didn’t think there was anything wrong with that – but then I noticed the comments other people made. My mum asking me if you and I had to keep getting into fights all the time, as if you’re not allowed to argue with someone if you love them. Lily making it sound like it was weird I wanted you to come along on activities she’d suggested. That’s when it occurred to me, that they didn’t understand what we had – because what we had wasn’t normal.”

“Unhealthy and codependent,” Sirius states, echoing James’ words on the last night they’d seen each other. “That’s what you said – that we never gave each other any space.”

“It was Lily who told me that,” James’ gaze rests carefully on his face. “She told me a lot of things that made sense, actually. Things I’d always known, but tended to forget around you.”

“Like what?”

“Like the fact that I needed to work on myself,” James says, gesturing down over his chest. “She was always talking about how it’s our responsibility to try and be better, and to help the people we love be better. She wanted me to teach her to be more assertive, and she thought I’d do well to be less cocky – that sort of thing.”

A vaguely smug expression slides down Sirius’ features. “At least I never tried to change you.” 

“No,” James agrees, “you loved me exactly as I was. I’d even say that the things Lily tried to improve about me, the things that made me flawed to everyone else, were the bits you liked most.”

It’s true – James’ infuriating pride, how he never lets anyone else convince him of his own worth, and his stupid, inflated sense of entitlement, making him bold and unapologetic enough to go after everything he wants – these are Sirius’ favourite things about him. The things he admires the most, even if he’ll never admit it out loud. “That’s the reason I wasn’t worth loving? The fact that I had no interest in making you a better person?”

“You’re doing it again,” James says, following a short pause.

“What, making snide remarks?”

“Turning every little comment into an insult. It’s like – like you just imagine people’s voices in your head all the time, saying the most awful things, even when – “ He shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter, that’s not what we’re talking about. I never said that you weren’t worth loving. It’s not particularly healthy, but who wouldn’t want something like that? To be known so thoroughly by someone, to be seen for everything that you are – the good, the bad, the downright shitty – and for it to be enough? I never had to be anything but myself with you, and I can't say that about anyone else. Not even Lily.”

Sirius throws him a cold, scornful look. “And somehow you thought you’d be happier with someone you couldn’t even be yourself around?” 

“Dating her gave me a taste of everything my parents taught me about love,” James’ fingers scrape absently at the elaborate carvings on the edge of the table, making the wood rasp under his nails. “Everything I knew it should be. We had fun together, but we still had our own separate lives. She was never jealous, she never picked fights with me just because she was in a bad mood, and she was always going on about things like compromise and boundaries – “

Sirius snorts; he can’t help himself.

“Don’t laugh, Pads,” James scowls. “This might come as a shock to you, given your general temperament, but sometimes shouting yourself hoarse isn’t the only way to resolve a conflict. Sometimes all it takes is a little bit of communication.”

Sirius raises his eyebrows. “You shout yourself hoarse all the time.”

“Yeah,” James’ eyes flash at him furiously. “But maybe if we’d just communicated, instead of exploding at each other like we always do, we could've avoided all the awful shit that happened these last two years.”

“You never bothered to communicate after I tried to kill myself,” Sirius shoots back, “so get off your fucking high horse. You’re not all that much better than me.”

“That’s what I’m trying to say: being with Lily was nothing like being with you. I didn’t know what to think, what to make of it, because on one hand, there she was – the perfect example of a stable, healthy relationship. And on the other –“

“Me,” Sirius says, in a flat voice.

“Us,” James corrects softly. “You and me, Sirius. Because you’re right – I wasn’t much better than you.”

The way he looks at Sirius makes Sirius want to unzip his skin and slide out of himself, to be unknotted from the stupid, wasted thing throbbing weakly under his ribs. How many beatings can a single heart take before it fails, before it decays into scattered, bloody atoms, drifting away like snowflakes? Sirius has lost count; he’s not sure he was ever keeping track in the first place.

“And do you know what the difference is – was," James says, catching himself momentarily. He stops and looks about, frowning. The room almost appears alive around him, swelling and shrinking with every breath. “Was, not is. Because she’s… fuck. She’s dead.” 

“James.”

He meets Sirius’ gaze, the rustle of curtains throwing an assortment of dancing sun-rays across his face. It takes a minute or two for him to recollect his thoughts and speak again. “The difference? Do you know what it was, between you and Lily?”

“What, besides everything?”

“It's that she would’ve stepped in front of a train for me if it meant saving my life. But you? You’d do it if I so much as asked you to.”

Humiliation turns Sirius’ skin hazy and hot, like smoke. “That’s not –“

“It’s not true?” James arches a brow, impatient. “Don’t you say so yourself, all the time? Don’t you always talk about how you’d jump off a cliff for me, how you’d do anything at all that I ask of you? The scary part is, I know you actually mean those things.”

“And you’re some big authority on healthy relationships now, are you?” Sirius challenges loudly, bristling. “After you cheated on Lily the entire time you were going out with her?”

“Why do you think I did that?” James asks him. “If a healthy relationship was what I truly wanted, why was it that I couldn’t stop coming back to you?”

“I assume cheating had simply become second nature to you by that point.”

James’ jaw hardens, the skin wrapping itself tight over bone. An annoyed flush has turned his face the colour of a fresh bruise. “It was because I loved you, you dick, not her. I wanted you, and I always have, as insane and infuriating and impossible as you are! Even if it was toxic, even if you had all the emotional intelligence of an actual toddler, even if it took more strength and patience to deal with a day of your bullshit than I ever needed in all my years with Lily – I love you, and I couldn’t change how I feel no matter how hard I tried!”

Sirius shuts his mouth. He can’t speak or even hear his own thoughts past the relentless ebb and flow of his blood as it pumps into every artery, every vein, every little capillary in his body. It makes him feel horribly exposed all of a sudden, as though James’ words have sloughed off layers of his flesh, leaving nothing but a ravel of raw, screaming nerves underneath. Leaving him ready to blister and bleed at the slightest touch.

“And I tried so hard to be happy with her,” James continues. “But all those things we did – the dinner parties, planning out our futures as if they’d already happened – that wasn’t me, no matter how much I wanted it to be. I thought I had it in me to be a good husband, even a good father if we ever had a child. And who knows, maybe I would have been, in some other world – but I’m not. I thought I was running away from the intensity of your feelings for me, but I was also afraid of admitting to myself that you and I – we’re never going to be those people. We’re not like my parents, or our classmates. We don’t want the same things they do.”

It pisses Sirius off, the way he's acting like any of this should come as a surprise to him. Like James has ever been the type of person he’s apparently been striving so hard to be – the type of man Lily would’ve married. To Sirius it had been blatantly obvious from the start that James’ relationship with Lily was only a feeble imitation of everything the two of them shared – just thin watercolours over the richest, silkiest acrylics in the world. The fact that James isn’t like the other vapid, painfully ordinary individuals surrounding them is precisely what makes him so alluring – and for him to have wasted all this time in denial of that, to try and force himself to fit the same tame, uninspired mould that everyone else seems to be made of, is something that irritates Sirius beyond belief.

“You ruined love for me, Sirius. You made it something most people won’t even come close to knowing their whole lives. How could anything else be enough for me after that?”

“Why didn't you just leave her?”

“I don't know. We must’ve known, deep down, that we were fucked, that it was all over between us the moment you pointed your wand at her. But we tried, and we kept trying, because I guess neither of us wanted to admit it – that everything we’d wanted, everything we’d both given up so much for, was gone. Funny how that works, isn’t it? Feeling that obligation to protect each other from something we both knew to be true?”

“And if you hadn’t been attacked? If she hadn’t been killed, would you even bother telling me this now?”

The question seems to disturb James, and he doesn’t respond right away. In the momentary silence that follows, Sirius can almost see the way he lets his own protective walls fall off him like a cloak. The transition happens almost at once, and he suddenly looks younger, more vulnerable than he did a few seconds ago. “No, Pads. That’s the fucking worst of it. If Lily were still alive I wouldn’t even be here right now – I’d have married her, and never stepped foot into your life again.”

Sirius had expected as much, but it still hurts to hear him say it out loud. As though James’ fingers are digging into his chest, peeling apart the wet, rotten fruit of his heart. 

“So nothing would’ve changed.” Sirius' voice doesn’t sound like it’s even coming from his own mouth anymore – or maybe it is, and it’s him who’s floating and disembodied somewhere outside of himself right now. 

Under the milky winter light, James’ eyes have deliquesced into stillwater pools, now the honey-brown of a sky during those final moments before dusk becomes night. “Nothing would’ve changed,” he repeats quietly.

It’s cruel, Sirius thinks, how those words take root inside him at once; spinning, spiralling, entangling through every memory he’s ever made with James over the last six months. It ruins everything in the space of a single breath, every last one of their brightest, happiest moments – twisting and tarnishing them with bitterness. Because it’s been true all along – Sirius’ secret, unspoken fear, one that’s haunted him since the very moment he saw James again: that James is only standing in front of him now because he’d had nowhere else to go after being attacked. That even after everything he's revealed about his relationship with Lily, in the end he was always going to choose her.

Because she was nothing like Sirius. She was never damaged or dangerous or deranged – she would never have eaten James’ heart just to be able to carry it around with her forever. 

Sirius feels like he should scream or cry or throw up, but his body seems too slow and static for any of it right now. All the normal processes inside him are grinding to a heavy halt, as if it’s all just become too much, and it’s too exhausting to keep sustaining this level of grief. He can no longer bring himself to do anything with his hurt except to let it sit there, rolling and spreading slowly over his whole body. Depleting all the strength left in him; muscle by muscle, bone by bone. 

He finds himself watching the fragile quiver of a lone leaf that the storm has left plastered against their windowpane as he talks. The leaf won’t blow away, and it won’t lay still. All it does is just stick there, trembling and pathetic, as if holding on is all it can manage to do. “You should’ve just told me, years ago.”

“Told you what?”

“That I made you feel like that. With the shouting, the arguing. I know I’m not like Lily, not gentle or easy to be around, but I wasn't trying to –”

“No,” James cuts him off. “This isn’t about you being toxic or difficult to be around – I mean, you are, but it’s like I said, that doesn’t change what I feel. I’d have left her for you in a heartbeat if that’s all it was – even after what you did to her.”

“It took Lily dying for you to come back into my life, James. You just said that if she’d still been alive, you wouldn’t even have –”

“I know,” James is trying to keep his tone tender, cautious, but it makes no difference. The blade of his voice still slits clean across Sirius’ jugular in one smooth motion. “But that’s not because I don’t want to be with you. It’s not even because we’re fucked-up and unhealthy together – that’s shit we can deal with. Stuff we can fix.”

Sirius’ ears are starting to ring, amplifying the blurry, sickening cacophony in his head. Everything about this feels overwhelming, and he doesn't know how much more he's going to be able to withstand.

“You had eighteen months to figure out your engagement wasn’t working. That you weren’t even in love with your own fucking fiancée. And you still –”

“Haven’t you been paying any attention at all?” James exclaims. “It’s not that I don’t love you, Pads – it’s that I don’t think you actually love me!”

Sirius feels his mouth drop open, and he gapes stupidly at James. Of all the terrible things he’d expected James to say, this is somehow the worst – this accusation that Sirius doesn’t even fucking love him, when it’s about all he’s ever known how to do. When his feelings for James are more immutable than reality itself.

James had taken everything from him when he left, but he hadn’t been able to take this; the one thing that had remained after all the rest was lost. And Sirius will do it forever – he’ll say I love you as James carves him open with a knife; I love you as James strangles him to death; I love you as James beats him to a pulp. 

Him even daring to suggest anything to the contrary is so ridiculous, so idiotic, so utterly unfounded, that it causes Sirius’ anger to resurge all at once, like a flash of lightening – making his whole head swim with bright, lucid plasma-heat. 

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

Chapter Text

A resounding silence makes the room shiver, settling over them like ash. 

It’s the worst silence Sirius has ever known, bleak and muted, as though the volume of the entire world has been turned down somehow. He can no longer hear the wind, or even the sound of his own breathing; the quiet is so heavy that it drowns everything out. Stormy grey light flares against the windowpanes, and the air still smells damp with rain and stale cigarette smoke. Time feels strange and frozen, encasing them like fireflies in amber. 

It’s not that I don’t love you, Pads – it’s that I don’t think you actually love me.

In the stillness, James’ words echo continuously through Sirius’ mind. It still makes no sense to him. Hasn’t he already given James all he has to give? Hasn’t he offered James every last piece of his cracked and wounded soul, every bleeding inch of his heart? What is there left for Sirius to do now, how else can he prove the way he feels? 

He can hear his own desperation as he finally speaks, the words thick and clotted against his throat. “Isn’t it enough – everything I’ve done, everything I’ve been through? What else do you want from me? What else could you possibly need?”

“Don’t you understand?” James’ voice is soft, pale as moonbeams on a wintery night. “I don’t need anything from you. Did I ask for any of this?”

“No, but –”

“Am I supposed to enjoy knowing how much pain I’ve caused you?”

“No,” Sirius gets out through his teeth. “But –”

“But it’s all the same to you, isn’t it?” James says. “Love, and rage, and suffering – can you even tell those things apart anymore?”

Sirius stares at him, the blood growing hot under his skin, but he can’t think of what to say. How can he explain it to James? How can he describe what it’s like to be so in love that it rewires the heart, reducing it to a single elementary function? Every breath becomes a prayer, every word a wish: I love you, I love you, I love you. All other emotions exist only in relation to that hunger, that strange internal alchemy, turning ardour to bitterness and lust to wrath. 

“Does it matter whether I can tell them apart?” Sirius demands. “I know what I feel, alright, so –”

“You were ready to kill yourself because of me, Sirius!” James snaps, his expression turning hard and brittle. “You were ready to die!”

Sirius shuts up as if he’s been slapped. His whole body stings from it, like salt on open wounds. 

He can still taste the misery of that feeling; all his useless devotion turning to black rot when it had nowhere else to go. There’d been no way to escape it, no way to slow it down or make it stop. Like a massive star imploding and collapsing in on itself, James’ absence had caused a catastrophic disturbance in Sirius’ life, a vacuum that continually expanded and engulfed everything around it – leaving him alone in the cold, with an emptiness he’d had to carry inside him everywhere he went. 

He feels like exploding at James, just shaking him and shouting, I need you more than anything, can’t that be enough? But the words swallow him up before he gets the chance; they leave him floundering in an empty, useless silence that billows out all around him in fumes. 

“What is it about me?” James fiddles with the crystal shot glass on the table, absentmindedly spinning it around between his hands. “What has you so convinced that I’m the only reason you’ve got to live?”

The answer is so obvious that it makes the entire question seem redundant. Though the sky outside is overcast, the afternoon sun still smears over everything in the room like white-hot grease. Under its glaring light, Sirius feels more exposed than ever. As though his skin no longer exists, and there’s nothing holding his insides in place anymore, and he’s just unravelling in ribbons all over the creamy carpet. The potted plants arranged in rows beside the ornate furniture are wilting from neglect; their leaves that were so vivacious and verdant on the day James brought them home, now dry and drooping, poised to wither away. 

Sirius’ voice comes out rough and reluctant from where it’s crammed under his larynx. “Maybe you are the only reason I’ve got to live.”

James stares at him for a long, drawn-out moment. Then he says, “I can’t hold your whole life in my hands like that, Pads. Nobody can.”

“Do you think you have a choice?” Sirius snaps, irritated at having to sing this same sad song over and over again. “What if that’s just how I feel?”

“You don’t understand it either, do you?” 

“Understand what?”

“The way you feel about me,” James states, setting the glass down and fixing Sirius with a rapt gaze. “You wouldn’t be able to explain it.”

Sirius looks at him, his ribs splintering under the force of his own pounding heart. It’s true – he’s loved James for as long as he remembers, but the feeling has never made any sense to him. It seems less like something he’d had to learn than something he was made for, something he was born with – so integral it seems almost like an extension of himself, a part of him that’s just always been there. 

But Sirius has wondered about it, certainly. He’s tried again and again over the years to come up with some satisfactory explanation for the way he feels about James, some reason that might justify the wretched relentlessness of his own heart. 

It’s not that Sirius has ever wanted to feel this way. Why would he? It’s a calculated sort of cruelty, to be in love with someone. To be so easily unpeeled at the hands of another. There’s no way to survive it, or even be left in one piece – love is a blade that cuts both ways. It’s a deep and violent desire, a longing that burns within his blood. And loving James has brought Sirius more torment than he can even fathom – there’s nothing soft or tender about it. It hinges on madness, a kind of delirious, heartsick passion that’s eaten through everything in its path. 

It’s not even that he thinks of James as some icon of perfection who deserves undying love, a saint capable of doing no wrong. On the contrary, it’s Sirius – perhaps more than anybody else in the world – who truly sees and understands all of James’ flaws for what they are. But that doesn’t change the way Sirius feels about him. It doesn’t dampen the yearning in his bones or the ache in his heart; only turns them more potent and powerful, because it’s James’ imperfections that define him, making him who he is to Sirius. 

The slate of sky outside seems too close, too heavy, too threatening, as if it might shatter the windows and come caving in over them at any moment. Sirius wills himself to take a deep breath, trying not to look at his own shaking hands. 

“There’s nothing to explain,” he says finally. “I love you – that’s all there is to it.”

“Love?” James repeats, squinting. “Is that what you want to call it?”

“What would you call it?”

“You’ve made your happiness, your wellbeing, even your life, my responsibility,” James’ gaze is a turbulent black sea, beating against Sirius’ skin in waves. “You tried to kill yourself the moment I left, because – because even dying scared you less than having to be on your own!”

Hot, foaming fury makes Sirius clench both fists at once. “You have no idea what I went through without you.”

“I lost you too, Sirius!” James raises his voice, the words fracturing the space between them with a loud, jarring crack that nearly makes Sirius jump. “I lost my best friend on the same night you did! Don’t I know how it felt? It broke my fucking heart, too!”

A deep and startled silence floods into the room, throbbing like a heartbeat.

Sirius heaves a huge, slow inhale, his gaze sliding off James’ face and down toward the delicate lines patterning his knuckles, the bronze undertones of his skin, the slender geometry of his hands. Even James’ wrists are beautiful – intricate and narrow, as if hewn from marble. Sirius wonders if there will ever come a day when he stops noticing things like that, if he’ll ever not be taken by the sight of James. 

After a moment, he says, “I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe the way I do it isn’t the way Lily did it – and maybe my feelings don’t make any sense, but –”

“But love should make sense,” James interrupts. “There’s no use in feeling that way about someone who hasn’t given you any reasons to.”

Sirius’ jaw twitches with annoyance. “That doesn’t mean what I feel isn’t real.”

“I never said it isn't real.”

“What, then?”

“Don't you think I’ve asked myself what it is – your whole thing with me?” James lifts an eyebrow. “Don't you think I’ve wondered why you feel the way you do?”

Sirius scowls. “Why would I? You chose to make me believe that you’d forgotten my fucking existence for two years.”

“You know, I don’t believe your feelings are about me at all,” James says, ignoring the remark. “I think… that I just represent something to you. Some sort of symbol.”

“What the hell are you on about?”

James chews on the inside of his cheek, his words coming out low and calm. “I know what your childhood was like, what your family was like. I know it can’t have been easy to think favourably of the world, or see it as a good place – one worth staying alive in – after growing up that way.”

Sirius gapes at him. The mention of his family is so unexpected that it stuns him into not speaking for several minutes. Screaming winds make the china on the shelf rattle, dancing perilously close to the edge. He finds himself wishing that they would just fall, smashing onto the ground around them hard enough to break up the tension in the room.

“And maybe I was the first person in the world to ever make you feel important,” James shrugs, rolling his shoulders back in a haphazard, restless fashion. “The first person to make you feel loved. Maybe that small act of kindness changed everything for you.”

How simple and idiotic it sounds, when James puts it like that. All the bone-deep wounds, the bloodstained tears, the devastating anger and loss and grief Sirius has suffered through – James has managed to condense it all down to one sad, pathetic fact: Sirius had never known what it was like to be loved by anyone, until the day he met James. 

It makes something shiver inside him, a filament of injured pride that flickers like firelight against the recesses of his mind. Can it be true? That Sirius has created some sort of association between the feeling of being loved for the first time and his meeting with James, conflating the two until they’ve become so inseparable he can’t untangle one from the other? James coming into his world had been an awakening, a breath of spring air after the harsh, hostile winter Sirius had known all his life. It set azaleas blooming across all the cracks in his heart, staunching the flow of blood from old, rotting wounds he’d carried all throughout youth. Around James, Sirius felt whole and unbroken for the first time in his life. How long has he spent since then, trying to repay James for that initial kindness? How many years, how many sacrifices, how much bloodshed?

“James, I –”

He swallows thickly, blinking. Confused. His chest suddenly feels too tight, full of words he can’t make himself say. The rest of his body seems to be waning, drying up – no longer solid or substantial, but turning to a hollow, cavernous desert of nothingness under him. 

“I wasn’t worthy of your love, but you wanted to give it to me anyway,” James continues. “You don’t care whether I deserve it or not, whether I’ve earned it or not. Because it doesn’t matter, does it?”

James’ words sink under his skin, seep into his brain, colour all his thoughts with haze and smoke. Sirius’ heart is gradually turning into wet, bloody rubble in his chest, and he can’t make himself move a muscle. 

James’ face softens, his rum-tinted pupils meeting Sirius’ earnestly. “The truth is that you don’t really love me, Pads – just the idea of me. You’ve built up this false image of who I am in your head – a version that deserves everything you have to offer. You think of me as someone who’s saved you from the misery your family tried to make you believe you deserve.”

Sirius avoids his eyes. A ceaseless ache has begun to unfurl over his bones; it’s a peculiar sort of sensation, pulsing and receding every moment, straddling a fine edge between the silence of stupor and the deafening roar of sheer, unfettered feeling.  

“Because something must’ve changed inside you, after you met me. Maybe I showed you that there’s more to the world than just how your family treated you,” James exhales a thin, quiet sigh. “But the world doesn’t end with us – there’s so much of it out there, and you just keep dragging yourself back here, back to me.”

Sirius’ fingertips are quivering; he wishes he still had something to smoke. Thoughts of his upbringing run like water through his body, eliciting a sharp, sudden spike of nausea. He thinks of the violence he grew up around, the anger that permeated so much of his early youth, always trying to find his place within a family that viewed him as little more than vermin. Navy-blue bruises, skin split and bleeding like squashed cherries, always being punished for his mere existence – his entire childhood had been spent like that. Holding his breath, constantly terrified of when the next thunderous blow would rain down onto his skin. 

Then he thinks of the first time James had touched him, his fingers gliding over Sirius’ wrists and hoisting him up onto a broomstick at some point in first year. It had made Sirius flinch, because he’d never been touched like that before – without a shadow of roughness or cruelty behind it. James’ hands had been nothing but soft and familiar, tender in Sirius’ own. 

A simple gesture, from a distant memory. But Sirius has never disclosed to James what that meant to him, how it had altered his world forever. 

“What if you did save me, Prongs?” he whispers now, looking up. “More than you know?”

James blinks; his dark lashes are wet and matted with tears. Despite the pale tint to his skin, he’s still more vivid than anything else in the flat, his body forming a lush and elegant portrait against a backdrop of storm-clouds and ivory wallpaper. “No, Pads. I just showed you that you deserved better – anyone could’ve done the same. I’m not some kind of hero who needs your eternal gratitude because of that."

Sirius shakes his head. He doesn’t know how to make James understand, how to make him see that meeting him had turned everything around. It had painted Sirius’ universe with colours he’d never seen before, rippling and chromatic shades that left stars in his eyes, twinkling like jewels. 

“Don’t you get it?” James breathes. “You don’t love me for the person I am – you don’t even see me for who I am. I’m just – just a symbol to you. Just a reminder that you’re important enough to be loved.”

“Is that why you stayed with Lily? Because you think I only see you as some kind of fucking symbol?”

“Why else would you have put up with everything I did to you?” James demands, grinding a vehement palm down against the table. “Why else would you have tried to kill yourself after I left? Why else would you have come running right back when Remus said I’d been attacked? I treated you like shit, didn’t I? You would’ve torn anyone else to shreds for half the things I did to you. And you really believe I’m the exception somehow?”

The response is short, automatic: “Yes.”

“It isn’t love you feel, Sirius,” James says, his expression tightening, as if his mouth is full of broken glass. “It’s just an obsession you never grew out of.”

A sudden spasm of pain makes Sirius wince; James’ words have sliced through him like swords, leaving scarlet gashes in their wake.

“Because love isn’t supposed to hurt the way this hurts you. Love isn’t supposed to make you suffer. But I did – and you want me anyway, in spite of that.”

“It only hurt because you chose someone else,” Sirius accuses, trying his hardest to ignore the sudden, putrid chill that’s swept through him, “because you left.”

“How do you think it made me feel?” James questions, eyebrows ascending. “Realising that you only wanted me because of the things I represent to you? I was terrified that one day you’d wake up and see the truth; that I’d done nothing to earn your love, nothing to deserve it.”

Sirius’ mouth falls open, but nothing comes out. He just gazes at James, perplexed and irritated, as though James has been speaking to him in a foreign language he doesn’t understand. He can’t believe it, can’t wrap his head around the fact that James had chained himself to an empty marriage with Lily for such stupid, ridiculous reasons – can’t accept that James had left Sirius alone, struggling to hold onto the fragments of his own shattered heart, just because he believes Sirius doesn’t love him for anything more than what he represents.

And yet – something about James’ words seems to be buzzing inside Sirius, nagging at his consciousness. He keeps trying to grasp at it, but it slips through his fingers, like a dream upon awakening. 

Is it possible that James is right? That all of this – Sirius’ endless craving for him – is nothing but a dark, obsessive remnant from his childhood? A desperate attempt to cling onto the first light he’d ever found in the world, no matter what it costs him? Because it has cost him. It’s left more scars on his soul than he can count. And even now, after everything, it’s all Sirius wants: James, James, James. Only him, forever. 

Beyond the windows, the sun sits like a milky diamond against leaden clouds, its livid glow partially obscured. Sirius suddenly realises how tired he is, how tightly he has been holding onto something that was always going to turn to dust in his hands. 

“James, I do love you.” It still seems important to explain this to him somehow. “You don’t have to deserve it, I just do. I always have, and I always will. Maybe I don’t do it in a way you understand, but I still – I still fucking love you.”

The sensation of James’ fingers alighting on his arm gives him a start – he’s uncertain how James has moved so quickly, now standing close enough to breathe in. 

He feels dizzy, thrown off by the sudden increase in proximity. James’ body takes up his entire field of vision; the contours of his shoulders, the shadows under his jaw, the dips in his collarbones. A wild, primal longing winds through Sirius’ veins, clogging them with a feverish urge to pull James in close. Their forms colliding in a sunburst of light and heat that burns the rest of the world to embers, kissing James hard enough to melt away any doubts he’s ever had about the way Sirius feels for him. 

“I know you believe that,” James says softly. “But love – real love – doesn’t do to a person what this has done to you. The way you feel, it’s terrifying, Sirius. You wanted to die because you couldn’t stand to be without me.”

The strength in Sirius’ body is slowly leaking away, like a fading and watery twilight. He doesn’t know what else to say, how else to make James accept something that should be so obvious, so undeniable. The swollen, septic feeling in his heart might be too bitter and dark for James to understand, but it’s still there. It’s still real enough to bring Sirius to his knees.

“I can’t be the only thing you live for,” James tells him. “It’s just – it’s not fair. I shouldn’t have to worry about you trying to hurt yourself the moment we fall out with each other.”

“Do you even have any idea what it was like, being alone?” Sirius snarls, baring his teeth despite the wet streaks on his face. “No, because you had Lily. Who did I have, once you were gone?”

“You wanted to be alone!” James hurls back, his voice splitting the quiet atmosphere into fractured shards. “You pushed away everyone who tried to be there for you, even Remus and Peter! The second I walked out of your life you decided to let it all go to shit, Sirius – it was like something inside you just snapped overnight. And some of the stories I heard people telling about you, about the things you were doing –”

Memories of the weeks-long rampage Sirius had gone on when he found himself alone blow up like a solar flare in his head; the nights he’d spent hunting Voldemort’s supporters down like prey; how his grief had been so powerful it had stifled every other emotion away – leaving him pitiless and numb, looking his victims in the eye as he’d carved them up like slabs of meat.  

“I had strangers telling me that my best friend was a murderer,” James lets out a short, delayed breath, still regarding him. “That he was torturing people, killing them. And then you got dropped from the Order, and everyone was afraid you’d –”

 Something’s started ringing in Sirius’ ears, nearly drowning James out. He can hardly think straight past the fierce, howling sound of it. “Afraid I’d what?”

“That you’d go down the same route your brother did,” James’ voice breaks, his face betraying his nerves for the briefest instant. “And I knew it was just gossip, but even Dumbledore was worried. The way you were acting – it was like –”  

“Like the rest of my family,” Sirius interrupts, before James can finish his sentence. “Is that what you were going to say?”

James casts his eyes to the carpet, shrugging. A long, deadened silence swells into the space between them before he speaks again. “I know I broke your heart,” he says, “but I never held a wand to your throat to make you do the things you did. It was your feelings for me which drove you to that.”

Something in Sirius’ chest cracks wide open. The sharp sensation makes him grit his teeth, blinking back a fresh wave of sudden, blinding tears – because of course James is right. Sirius had lost everything when he lost James. 

He’s always created a causal relationship between the two, between James leaving and everything in his life falling apart. Over the course of months Sirius had somehow pushed away everyone who tried to stay close to him, gotten himself kicked out of the Order, and earned a terrifying reputation for violence and cruelty among the community. It had been a combination of these things, and his general ongoing misery, that had led to the repeated suicide attempts. 

But for the first time, Sirius finds himself wondering whether James leaving really had been the catalyst of all the events that followed. Or had that just been an excuse? All these years, he’s always blamed his own deterioration on James’ absence from his life. But James has never forced him to hurt anyone – it was Sirius who did that, pushed to the brink of madness by his own anger.

How can Sirius have been so possessed by arrogance as to assume that James would look at this boiling, poisonous emotion and call it love?

“I blamed you.” He can feel his heart beating everywhere and nowhere at once, a hot, drumming rhythm that sets his blood hissing. “All those months, for everything I did – I told myself it was because I loved you, because I couldn’t stand to be without you, but – what if it wasn’t? What if this is just who I am?”

“Look, that’s not –”  

“Do you think it was love that made me use the Imperius on Lily? That led me to mutilate Voldemort’s followers for months after you left? Because I did – I thought it was love that made me spend a year trying to kill myself, and perform the torture curse on you. But that’s not what you think, is it? None of this is love, not to you.”  

James’ eyebrows flatten, shoulders shrinking slightly. He opens his mouth, but stops just on the verge of speaking, as if he’s thought better of it.

Sirius stares down at his own trembling hands, like he’s seeing them properly for the first time. The realisation of what he’s capable of hits him without prior warning – a sudden flash of awareness that brings into focus, finally, who and what he really is. And he sees it with perfect clarity now, the whole garish and excruciating truth of it.

He sees that there’s something dark and rotten inside of him; something that runs in his blood, contaminating him with the same filth that blights the rest of his family. What’s the point of denying it anymore? He’s wasted his whole life putting on a façade, telling himself that he’s different – better, even – than the vile scum that bred him. But he isn’t. He’s just as evil, just as cursed.

Just as insane.

James raises his palms. “Look. We both know you’ve done some stupid, fucked-up things, but – you weren’t being yourself.”  

“You didn’t make me like that when you left, did you?” Sirius’ throat is tight, swollen with tears. “That part of me, it was always there. I just didn’t have you telling me what the right thing to do was anymore!”

James’ eyes widen, bewildered. “You don’t need me to tell you –“

“Maybe I do!” Sirius shouts. He’s crying now; chest heaving, shame crawling all around his stomach like a ravenous parasite. “Maybe I am a bad person, and I always have been – because I’m not you. Being good doesn’t come easy for me, it’s not an instinct! And the night you left, it’s like everything good inside of me just –“

He stops, covering his mouth in horror. His whole brain feels like it’s on fire, all his thoughts screaming with panic as they burn to cinders. 

In an instant, James’ arms are around him, the weight of his body pressing sudden and firm against Sirius’ own. Sirius’ breath catches with a sob, and everything inside him comes undone all at once. And before he knows it, he’s falling apart. Melting against James’ shoulder, wracked with noisy, violent tears – James tightens his grip, and Sirius can’t make any of it stop, can’t get rid of the hurt and anger and fear exploding inside him. And James holds him and holds him and doesn’t let go because Sirius would crumble to dust if he did.

James is murmuring into his hair, his voice low and soothing, but Sirius can’t hear a word over his own sobs – and he hates himself for this, hates what a soft and sickening thing his heart is, how weak and miserable he must seem to James. It’s too fucking much to take; Sirius wants to rip his skin open and step out of it to stop the pain, wants to disappear or die or just disintegrate without a trace. Anything would be easier than having to be here, in all this agony. 

He wants to push James off, but his body won't listen – instead it only holds onto him harder, clinging to James like a frightened child. He can feel James’ lips in his hair, behind his ear, whispering against his neck, but it makes no difference – Sirius’ heart is broken in a thousand different places and nothing will ever make it whole again. 

He’s a monster. A fucking monster. No better than the cruel, selfish creatures who raised him. Of course James doesn’t believe Sirius loves him – how could someone like him even be capable of love? Why wouldn’t James choose Lily, knowing what Sirius is? Lily was sweet, gentle, tame – not wild and dangerous, not made of rough edges and sharp, carnivorous teeth. 

“You’re not a bad person, Pads,” James’ tone is feathery and mild, floating languidly over Sirius’ clamouring thoughts. “You’re not. You’re the love of my fucking life. And you’ve done some shitty things, but so have I. And if you’re a bad person, then so am I. I strung you along for years while I went out with Lily. I lied to you, lied to myself, lied to everyone, acting like she was what I wanted – when it’s always been you. I abandoned you when you needed me the most. Don’t you see? I’m just as fucked-up as you are.”

“Fuck, James –” Sirius chokes on the words, shuddering. “You left me because you’ve always known what I could do, how I could hurt people –”

“Listen to me,” James says, fingers sliding under Sirius’ chin and lifting his head up to look into his eyes. “I was afraid of my own feelings, and afraid of yours. I chose Lily over you because I thought I’d be able to escape the truth somehow – but I can’t.”

Sirius shuts his eyes, lets James’ words wash slowly down into him, lulling his mind.

James’ knuckles brush lightly against the crest of Sirius’ cheekbone. The soft, slight touch feels wrong somehow, because what Sirius deserves is to be beaten, burned, broken – James is cradling him so carefully, so delicately, that it’s almost unbearable. 

“The way we feel about each other,” James says, “it all happened so fast. And instead of accepting it, I ran away. I left you alone and pretended not to know how much you were hurting. But I was hurting too, Pads. Every minute of every day without you.”

The tears are starting to subside, drowned out by a deep, unsettling numbness that piles up inside him like snow. Sirius’ body feels weak, exhausted, ruined. He wants to curl up on the floor and just go to sleep for a long, long time. 

“What we do to each other – it’s mutual destruction. Nothing good will come of it, except this feeling I get when I’m with you. But nothing else comes close – the rest of the universe is just a speck of dust in comparison. And this is all we really want, isn’t it? Not something safe, not something gentle. We want this obsession, to be worshipped by each other.”

Sirius forces himself to breathe, sucking in tight, shallow gasps that don’t come close to alleviating the suffocated sensation in his chest. He can’t speak, can’t move. He just stands there, his weight swaying against James’ frame, wishing he knew what to say.

“I need you too, you know. Nothing was the same without you, no matter how hard I tried,” James takes a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “That impulse you have – that darkness – it’s mine too. Are we mirrors, or just reflections of each other? Did we make each other this way, or were we always the same?” 

Sirius looks away, wiping at his damp eyes. “What are you trying to say?”

“I’m saying that you and I were made for each other,” James tells him. “I’m saying that I choose you, Sirius. I should’ve chosen you from the very beginning, and you don’t know how sorry I am that I didn’t.”

“A fuck load of good that does now,” Sirius mutters, as raw pain curls over his veins like tendrils of black smoke. “You don’t even think that I love you.”

“I think you can,” James says gently. “If you want to. If you just – just learn to do it right, without sacrificing all your happiness in the process. The question is… do you want to? Are you ready to love me for who I am, and not just what I represent to you?”

Sirius stares at him for a long moment. He can hardly keep track of his own thoughts; they skitter out in every direction in his head, undulating, criss-crossing, overriding one another. His whole life, his feelings for James have simply been a given. Sirius has never had a choice in the matter – loving James has always been his one and only option. 

But what if it weren’t? If everything James has been saying is true – that Sirius’ devotion to him is just an obsession he never outgrew, a dusty relic from a traumatic, loveless childhood, doesn’t that leave Sirius with a choice? Is he really going to spend the rest of his life loving James for being the first person in the world to make him feel like he mattered? Does that one fact overshadow all the hurt and suffering James has caused him, all the times he made Sirius feel like he wasn’t enough? Does it make up for James leaving him alone for eighteen months while Sirius ripped himself apart again and again and again?

Would he still choose to love James, if he were given an alternative?

So much of Sirius’ energy has been invested in needing James that he’s never paused to consider things could be different. That with enough time, and distance, and effort, the memory of James might eventually fade from his mind, like an old scar. Leaving Sirius clean, unmarked, brand-new. He tries to imagine it – a life without James, a life without the constant, haunting ache of being in love with him. What would it mean to start over like that, if he could? Would it change Sirius? Would it open up new avenues into exploring himself, finding who he is without his best friend? Would he finally be able to exist as his own person for once, and not just a shadow forever trailing at James’ feet?

James lets go of him and steps back. His jaw trembles slightly. “I understand if you – if you need some time to think. I don’t want you to just love me because that’s all you’ve ever done. I want to earn your love. To do right by it, if you’ll let me.”

“And if I don’t?” Sirius asks, meeting his eye. His words come out slow, with long pauses in between, trying to organise his feelings. “If you were right about us being mutually destructive to each other? What would be the right thing to do, in that case?”

“I can’t tell you what to do,” James says, “because this isn’t about me. It’s about you now – all you. This is your decision. I love you, but I know I’ve done a shit job at showing it, so I get it if you don’t – I mean, if you decide that you’re better off without me. Because in all honesty, you actually might be.”

Sirius exhales, and the air leaves his chest in one fell swoop. It’s an odd, unnerving choice, having to contemplate whether or not he really wants to be with James. Just an hour ago the decision would have seemed simple, almost obvious. But now – after everything…

Is it even possible for him to love James without the feeling breaking every bone in his body, turning his heart into a dirty wound? Is there a way for them to fix this, polishing up the wasteland of ash and blood they’ve managed to create with their own hands? How many times can they turn back, start over, try again, if one way or another they’re always going to end up back here? Will they ever learn, ever grow, ever change?

And if not – what? Does Sirius just have to spend the rest of his days walking around in smouldering, charred ruins, aching desperately for James? Or is there a third option, an impossible one: that Sirius folds his feelings for his best friend up like old clothes, tucking them away in a hidden attic somewhere and just carrying on with his life? Living without this frenzied stain of love continuously tainting his flesh?

“I don’t know,” he admits slowly. “I have no idea what I want.”

A small smile jumps to James’ lips in response. It brings a sudden, startling change to his face, erasing the grim duskiness that’s settled over it and lighting it up like a firework display. “You know, that’s actually a pretty good start.”

“What is?”

“The fact that you’re giving this some thought,” James murmurs. “Not just rushing behind me and saying you love me, but stopping to think about what you want. What you deserve. I think that’s an important step.”

Confused, Sirius examines James’ features, trying to decipher his expression. “So what now? Where does this leave us – you and me?”

Silver light weaves into the room like haze, glittering slightly as it overlays James’ skin. His mouth is passive, resigned. “Like I said, it’s your call. I’ll respect your decision, whatever it is, but my feelings for you aren’t going to change. I’ll always be yours. I’ll always be here when you need me – it’s the least I can do.”

It’s still strange to try and turn it over in his mind. To actually have to ponder whether he wants to love James, instead of just doing it mindlessly, like he’s done all his life. To have some agency back, and be in control of their relationship for once, instead of the other way around. He could dismiss James without another word, if he wanted to, and James would just go. Sirius swallows the idea down like wine – one mouthful, then two; an unusual, dreamlike sensation that soothes his feverish nerves and softens the afternoon sun-glaze until it’s just paleness and mist. What if he were to finally leave this all behind – this unending, repetitive cycle of maddened fury and heartbreak and resentment? What’s there waiting for him on the other side?

“There’s just one thing I want to ask of you,” James’ voice breaks into Sirius’ thoughts, dispelling the fog swirling around in his head. “Just one tiny little favour, and then you can decide whether you want me in your life or not. We can part ways after that, if that’s what you want. If that’s what’s best for you.”

Sirius frowns. Pulling himself back into reality takes a few moments – his mind is still tesselated with clashing patterns, shapes, emotions. “What kind of favour?”

James is looking at Sirius intently, eyes burning hot and bright, filled with the liquid luminosity of starlit galaxies. “I’m going to hunt down the bastard who tortured me and took my memories, Sirius. I want you to help me get my revenge.”