Animalia; PG-13, James/Sirius, Remus/Sirius, James/Lily
Title: Animalia
Characters: James/Sirius, Remus/Sirius, James/Lily, Peter
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Everyone assumed that Sirius and James got on so well because they were exactly alike and they were all wrong; everyone assumed Sirius and James got on so well because they were both crazy and that was true.
As a general rule, Sirius did not like people.
It was, perhaps, one of those unalterable character traits bred by his family; Orion didn’t like stupid people, and Regulus didn’t like overbearing people, and Walburga didn’t like…well, living people, really. Thus, it made sense that Sirius, on the whole, possessed the firm wish that everyone would just sod off, thank you very much.
Sirius liked Remus, and most of the time he thought that was about the fact that Remus wasn’t exactly human. Not that he wasn’t-oh, well, bugger the mechanics, it was the monstrosity of him that Sirius liked, really, the deep and dark places mixed under all that stark normality. The growls that sometimes caught around the edges of those long difficult dictionary words and the nail growth barely kept at bay and the shivers under the moon and he still drank pumpkin juice at breakfast every day like he was real and regular; oh, yes, sometimes Sirius wanted to bite his fingers and lick him until he submitted.
Sirius liked James as well, in a way that was about more than dominance and submission, and that was odd because James was entirely human under all that bravado. He tried, he tried rather harder than he ought, to be as monstrous as the rest of them, but it was folly. James was human, horribly wholly human, with no hope of giving into madness and roaming the nights in a crazed bloodfrenzy. And yet Sirius still enjoyed his company, and didn’t often despair at his utter lack of comprehension vis a vis primordial urges. James made to Sirius a bizarre, close kind of sense, and possessed a strange control of him that probably harkened back to things about canines and their masters that Sirius didn’t wish to consider.
Sirius didn’t much like Peter, for all they were friends. He liked Peter more than he liked most everyone else, which is why they were friends at all; Peter was wild, but in a domesticated, twitchy sort of way. He was prey and Sirius was bothered by the small but constant urge to hunt him-he was naive and Sirius was bothered by the large, incongruous itch to give him first hand knowledge of Darwinian relationships. But still, always, the saving grace of Peter was that he was so shockingly ratlike that it was easy to forget he was actually fleshy rather than furry, and then all of his intense meekness was entirely excusable, because it was his nature.
--
“Sirius,” James said, watching him move about late one night in the Astronomy Tower. It was the kind of thing he liked to do, when they were alone; say Sirius’ name and mean it mostly just as an affirmation, proof that they were both still there. He didn’t know what was so comforting about the mmm noise he got in response, didn’t know why he liked everything so much better with a bit of distance and space from everyone else, but it was and he did and so he said “Sirius,” again.
“Mm-what, Potter?” Sirius’ eyes had snapped up from his work in mild irritation, fifteen year old emotions leaving him angry for nothing and forgiving of everything. James saw the howling rawness behind those eyes, and it made him all the more willing to say what he needed to, to say the thing he knew Sirius wouldn’t want to hear.
Everyone assumed James was the leader and they were mostly right; everyone assumed James was in control, and that was true. James liked control, knew its intimacies and footfalls, and also would never have offered it to Sirius, who only pretended he wanted it. It was merely the subtleties of friendship that rendered things more-complicated-and in truth Sirius was the leader, choosing to act through James, who made the decisions. This advanced puppetry was another facet of the world James liked and knew the intimacies of, so it was with slight trepidation that he said anything at all.
“Sirius,” James repeated, the third time, and plowed ahead before Sirius could bark out a frustrated demand for him to say it, already, whatever it was. “Maybe we shouldn’t do it.”
It was a sentence that had been inching its way out for two years, for countless hours of work, for a thousand inexplicably excited minutes. Normally when they did things Remus was there to be the law, but not this time, and James thought it needed to be said. Maybe they shouldn’t do this-this was a crazy, arrogant, illegal thing to do, a thing that could get them all killed or expelled or arrested, and James didn’t believe in consequences but knew they were going to fall to him eventually, and thus accepted them as his lot.
And now he’d said it, he’d said that shouldn’t word that Sirius never liked. He’d said it and he waited for the anger that was sure to come, for the Remus needs us and the But it’ll be incredible and the Why don’t you understand?, for the snarl and the baring of teeth and probably the punch that would accompany it all. Sirius was volatile.
But instead Sirius just looked at him, staring with wide clear stormcolored eyes, and finally said, “No, probably not,” in the tones of someone mulling it over. His smile, swift and bright, was unexpected, and James nearly laughed when he added, “But we’re going to do anyway, yeah? You’re a pillock, I can’t understand why you hang about, take your responsibility elsewhere. I think I’ve nearly got it.”
The causal arm slung about his shoulder was a surprise too, James thought, walking back to Gryffindor tower to get Peter and recite an incantation that they’d worked on for two years and wouldn’t (probably hopefully) kill them. It was all so-animal-to approach it this way, and James didn’t know why but he liked it. They’d go back and they’d do it, they’d get it right, they’d transform. And then they’d show Remus and Remus would smile that smile he liked to do, and also be horrified and also know, in that weird way he always did, that it had been Sirius’s damned stupid idea.
Everyone assumed that Sirius and James got on so well because they were exactly alike and they were all wrong; everyone assumed Sirius and James got on so well because they were both crazy and that was true. It was just that Sirius was loyally, utterly crazy, crazy that would lick people or bite them, crazy in a way that shouted the word forever, and James was crazy like it was a phase he was going through-like he’d wake up one morning merely eccentric, and not remember how to be dangerous at all.
---
Peter watched, and waited. It was the prudent thing to do, really, when one had the life skills Peter suspected he had-that is to say, very few or none at all. Sirius would smack him, irritated, if he said as much publicly, and Remus would probably look at him with something between sympathy and concern. James, of course, would lean back on his hands and close his eyes, but when he spoke it would be in that slow, rich voice he used when he was thinking, and he’d name some things Peter was good at until Peter laughed and told him casually to shut it, because he got the point.
Sirius, Peter knew, didn’t like him very much, but that was alright; Sirius didn’t like anyone very much, he just hid it well. People as…alive…as Sirius had difficulty with much of the population, in Peter’s limited but well-documented experience. Sirius burned like the star for which he was named, and wondered with a mixture of frustration and apprehension why no one else seemed as fiery, and acted generally like he felt three times as much as other people, because he did.
Peter wasn’t smart, but he noticed some things.
He’d noticed the way James looked at Lily long before James noticed it, long before the first of a thousand rants about damn beautiful damn Evans and how much of a bitch she was being but he loved her anyway, and why she wouldn’t just snog him already, they’d make such pretty babies. He’d noticed, too, the way Lily looked at James, the way she snarled at him with such intensity that she was almost as alive as Sirius, the way she rolled her eyes every time he bragged-like he was embarrassing her, and on purpose.
He’d noticed Remus was a werewolf before James, but after Sirius. He never mentioned it, of course, because he’d thought Sirius might kill him if he spoilt his private….whatever it was. Sirius liked having secrets almost as much as Sirius liked deceit, and Sirius liked Remus more than he liked anyone, except James. Peter knew that there was something important in the silences they kept, in the quiet glances between werewolf and madman, and even if he didn’t know what was so important about it, he knew it was James’ silence to break. When James did break it (matter-of-factly, and without preamble, and in the middle of the night), Sirius sulked, and Remus looked curiously caught between relief and sadness.
Peter wasn’t smart, but his instincts were spot-on.
---
Remus kept a careful eye on Sirius at breakfast, because if he didn’t keep a careful eye on Sirius, Sirius would plant a glancing blow on Snape. It worried Remus, the way Sirius needed an enemy all the time, the way James encouraged it like it was sport rather than insanity. Sirius didn’t need encouragement to hate the same way plants didn’t need encouragement to grow-it was in his nature, in his instinct, and in his roots.
Sirius was more animal than plant, which Remus of course understood better than the average human being; than any human being, really. But still, the boy was sixteen, and even if he had grown up love starved and haughty there was no reason to get in brawls before he’d had any marmalade. Not that the marmalade was cursory, not that Sirius could fight as much as he pleased so long as he’d had some delicious orange preserves first, but it was-base. It was base, that’s what it was, it was base and also cruel and James was leaning into Sirius’ ear again and goading him in that way he did and
“Pass the marmalade!” Remus yelped, perhaps with a bit more passion than was required. James twitched, and Peter jumped rather violently, and Sirius turned with one cool eyebrow raised and looked at Remus with amusement that was pleasantly condescending.
“I’m not deaf, Moony, honestly,” he said, and passed it, and added, “bloody hell, but you’re odd in the mornings,” like he was remarking on the weather instead of Remus’s character. And oh, he was maddening, he was smiling showing his canines and doing it again, acting like he was just a little bit better than everyone, and Remus couldn’t make him stop because Remus agreed with him and his stupid aristocratic pride.
Damn, damn, damn--
It was also maddening the way James was-just-everywhere, pushing all of Sirius’ buttons, the weirdest mixture of leader and accomplice imaginable, and people acted like he was the self-important one. Not to say he wasn’t; James’ ego was as real as its reputation and Lily Evans was quite right about his head needing its own orbit. It was just that Sirius oozed arrogance, Sirius had been bred for arrogance, and the fact that Remus knew he was scared and strong and sad under all that blood wasn’t enough sometimes.
And, oh, hell, Peter was talking about skiving off Transfiguration and Remus knew they would, and Sirius was eying Snape again and James was cackling about the horrible things they could do to him and Remus knew they would do those, too. He thought about chiming in and saying something responsible but then Sirius caught his gaze, leveled at him that grin that danced across the edges of carnality, and Remus forgot how to breathe.
Remus hated being sixteen-almost as much as being a werewolf, almost as much as the impracticality of envying James, whom he loved (almost as much as he loved Sirius).
--
Sirius had noticed James on the train when they were eleven, wandering about with an amiable grin that looked vaguely mischievous. He had appeared…speccy, really, and less afraid then the other first years. Sirius had already dismissed most of his classmates as “quivery,” and therefore bad hats, the lot of them. But this boy wasn’t quivering; he looked a bit nervous, perhaps, but who wasn’t nervous? People who weren’t nervous (Sirius tamped down the image of Regulus’ wide wet eyes and the sick fluttery feeling that went with it) were even worse hats than the quivery lot. They were atrocious hats. They were his Aunt Eldora’s hats.
This boy looked a bit like he needed a hat, actually, what with that hair up all over the place. Sirius’ mother would never have let him out of the house that way, but he supposed this boy couldn’t help it if his parents were hedgehogs. Sirius swallowed a lump in his throat that was the worst hat of them all and walked over. He tried out twelve different greetings in his head on the way (he was not nervous, he was not) and focused utterly on not making a fool of himself. “What was it like having woodland creatures for parents,” was probably not a tactful question, and also Sirius was starting to see the truth in his father’s insistence that he spouted nonsense when uncomfortable. “Hi, I’m Sirius Black,” would be calm and cool enough, wouldn’t it? And now he was level with the boy, and so he smiled and opened his mouth and stuck his hand out with a bit more exuberance than he really intended.
“Hat,” Sirius said, entirely by mistake.
The boy who turned out to be James looked at him for a long moment, and then smiled easily and took his hand. He said “Fedora.”
--
Peter tried not to think about it, but there was something about James’ mouth that kind of…distracted him. It wasn’t the shape of it, or the color, or even the way his left canine caught on his lower lip sometimes when he was impassioned. Mostly it was the words that came out of James’ mouth that drove Peter to distraction, and the tone in which they were said.
Peter wasn’t smart, but he knew enough to understand what he wanted.
James wouldn’t be anything special if he didn’t think so much that he was; power radiated from him in a cloud of arrogant self-possession, and Peter loved him for it. It was not the same power Sirius had, power born and bred, power taught and entitled, ancestral power passed through the bloodlines like a particularly tenacious house-elf. There was more than enough of that kind of power drifting around Hogwarts, in Lucius Malfoy, in all those other Blacks, and it wasn’t half as compelling as James’ sort.
Peter wasn’t smart, but some things just made sense.
James’ sort of power, the best sort of power, was self-made, self-taught, passed down from nowhere and full of a charismatic strength. It was one thing to be raised as the master of all around you-it was quite another to decide, of your own volition, that you deserved the title. James got everything he wanted-James knew everyone he wanted to-James did everything in such a precisely impossible way that his success shrieked of virtue.
Peter wasn’t smart, but he knew the difference between right and wrong.
--
Remus didn’t remember how long he’d been angry but it hadn’t been long enough; Sirius’ face taunted him in the night and haunted him in the daytime, showing up in ridiculous places. Tree trunks! Clouds! Atop the necks of unrelated passersby!
The stupid bastard didn’t mean it, Remus told himself, time and again. The stupid bastard wouldn’t have done it to James, and Remus hated that thought and was sickened and ashamed by the fact that it was true.
Not that the shame had anything to do with anything-not that Remus had been entertaining notions about Sirius that were as illegal as they were inappropriate. Not that Remus caught his breath all the damn time around stupid fucking Sirius, even still, even after stupid fucking Sirius almost turned Remus into a stupid fucking murderer.
Remus (of course) did really remember how long he’d been angry-he’d been angry since December, and now it was March, and Sirius kept getting out of bed in the nights and not coming back until the mornings. And even James couldn’t make Sirius feel better, lately, and something in Remus glowed and cackled about that. And also, terribly, Remus missed stupid fucking Sirius, missed his inanity and his weird, spontaneous laughter and his patented inability to relate to anything not slightly mad and his oozing arrogance.
So eventually Remus got out of bed in the night, after Sirius, and followed him stealthy-like out of the portrait hole. Sirius hadn’t even bothered to take James’ cloak (Remus knew this because Remus had it, and also because Sirius was visible) and Remus thought stupid fucking Sirius for the hundred thousandth stupid fucking time. They went outside, and Sirius stood behind the Quidditch pitch and lit a cigarette, and Remus thought Alright, then, and threw the cloak off.
“Moony!” Sirius choked (coughing, sputtering) and Remus suddenly didn’t remember what he’d wanted to say. Logic said to tell Sirius that he was forgiven, but that would have been lying. Remus knew he would never forgive Sirius this transgression, not completely-he would trust him again, yes, but some small part of his brain would always howl it was you who almost destroyed me. And also, in a pathetic and petty way, Remus knew he could never forgive Sirius the way he looked at James, the way everyone else was a little bit less.
“Padfoot,” Remus said, and then figured to hell with it and did it the animal way. He grabbed Sirius’ cigarette and broke it and dropped it and stomped on it, and then he grabbed Sirius and thought about breaking and dropping and stomping on him, too. Instead he pushed him backward, pushed him up against the wall of a shed and kissed him with a harsh claim caught in his throat.
Sirius made a soft carnal noise and shifted under his hands, and Remus didn’t break the kiss because he didn’t want to talk about it, because the best part of Sirius was that he knew about the physical thing. Everyone though that Remus was a word person and they would have been right, except that Remus was a werewolf. So really he was an animal wandering around tarted up like a word person, wrapped in cloaks of articulation and learning, and Sirius knew what a nuzzle followed by a bite meant even if he really liked James better. Remus thought that Sirius was probably the closest he was going to get to what he wanted, and he did like James better, he did and Remus knew that, but he’d take him anyway and pretend it was alright.
Sirius groaned into Remus’ mouth and Remus shoved a hand into Sirius’ pants, wrapping his fingers around the hardened cock too tightly. I am mostly still angry, this meant, and Sirius threw his head back and growled, which meant I mostly know that. Remus pulled, hard fast strokes and bites along Sirius’ jawline and Sirius was arching hissing gasping coming, and then they both knew they were as close to whatever they were going to be as they could possibly get.
They didn’t talk about it, but they did start talking in general again, making it clear to everyone that they weren’t fighting anymore. They didn’t talk about the way Sirius would slip into Remus’ bed in the night, either, though soon they both accepted that it would not stop.
They certainly didn’t talk about the way Sirius’ feet would cease their soft pit-pat some nights when he was crossing the room, though Remus noticed and knew he was stopping to look at James’ bed. They didn’t talk about it and they didn’t have to-Remus accepted that if it came down to it, between the two of them, if Sirius ever realized…well, there wasn’t even a choice.
--
James awoke confused, predominately because he awoke to the doorbell, and it was night. Not night, early darkness-night, in the middle of. Specifically four A.M., and James’ breath tasted badly like morning.
“Who the bloody hell is calling?” James’ father was not yelling, but muttering worriedly under his breath, as he walked past James’ room. James spared a fleeting thought for how real this new war business must be, that James’ father thought a knock at the door at four in the morning was something worrying enough to mollify his normal anger upon waking. James would have spared more than a passing thought for it, actually, had his father not called him downstairs.
Of all the people James didn’t except to see at four in the morning on his doorstep, Sirius Black was-actually, come to that, Sirius Black was one of the few people James knew who was audacious enough to ring his doorbell at this hour. But it was summer, and Sirius’ parents never let him out in the summer, and-
“Oh,” James said, beginning to guess at why Sirius looked so sick and miserable.
‘Quite,” said James’ father, who had turned back towards the stairs. “I’ll just leave you to it, then, shall I? See you in the morning, James. Sirius, I expect we’ll figure something out.” He left, and both boys heard the faint click of his bedroom door shutting.
“Prongs,” Sirius said, after a long moment, “hullo.”
James raised an eyebrow at that but said, “Hullo,” amicably enough. Then he looked at Sirius closely and added, “You’re rather damp, aren’t you?”
Sirius nodded and waved an expansive hand at the nearest window. “Raining,” he said, punctuating this with a shiver. “Should have taken the Knight Bus, but I was-“
“-angry?” James finished, and grinned. Sirius shook his soggy head, and James was upset at the way his almost-smile flickered and died. This was like that thing with Moony and they’d finally got past that, and James had missed Sirius in a rather intensely embarrassing way when he’d been all closed off and morose. “Well, bugger that,” James said, with feeling, and frowned at Sirius, who nodded.
James kept frowning, and eventually pulled off his shirt and tossed it to Sirius, who looked at him oddly. “Put that on, yours is wet, I have trousers too somewhere. Stay here,” he said, feeling strangely even more in control than usual, and went into the kitchen. After a few moments he returned, wearing a new shirt, and he had not only trousers but a bottle of Firewhiskey and a tall glass. Sirius did smile then, a real smile, however brief, raising an eyebrow in a half-hearted attempt at normalcy.
“I have developed a serious problem in the months we have been away from school,” James said solemnly, pouring a large drink. “Longing for Peter’s snores has driven me to truly shocking vice. You must drink,” he handed the glass to Sirius, who took it gratefully, “if only to save me from myself.”
“You’re raving, Potter,” Sirius mumbled, but took a long draught from the glass. He coughed once (he always did, grimacing; he was so much better with beer) and handed it back to James. “I ran away,” he said, after a minute.
“I rather figured you had,” James said, sipping the drink nonchalantly.
Sirius’ expression was caught between irritation and relief. “Aren’t you even going to ask me why?” he snapped, snatching the glass of Firewhisky and spilling it all over his already soaked trousers. “Fucking hell!”
“Oh, no,” James said, feigning horror. “Now you’ll have to change!” When Sirius didn’t reply, just snatched the dry trousers and whipped round towards the washroom, James decided he might need a new tactic.
He grabbed Sirius roughly by the arm, squeezed once, and said, “Why, then” so that it was neither a question nor a statement, but something far and away removed.
And Sirius smiled at him through the stormclouds on his face, and went to the bathroom, and came back with James’ trousers on. “Because I hate them,” he said, and then, groaning and collapsing onto the couch, “and also I fucking hate them, and I can’t stay because I’ll probably kill them.”
James nodded sagely. “Very few things are worth Azkaban, though,” he mentioned, pouring another drink.
“Cheers,” Sirius said. He drank again, and they sat in relative silence for a few moments, and then James (who could not stand it) tackled Sirius and sat on him.
“Bloody hell!”
“Yeah, quite.”
“Why the fuck did you do that?”
“Tell me what really happened, then.”
“Cunt.”
“Shirtlifter!”
“I’m not the one tackling vulnerable boys in my living room.”
“I’m not the one liking it.”
“…That doesn’t even make sense, Prongs.”
“Yeah, well.” James enjoyed this banter, was glad that Sirius was still Sirius enough to engage, but he wanted the truth and he would get it. “Tell me what happened or I shall tickle you.”
“You wouldn’t!” Sirius’ eyes were wide with mock-horror, but they were also pooled with something that might, James thought, be gratitude.
“Oh, I would.”
“Get off, then. Get off and I’ll tell you.” James, recognizing the honesty in this, crawled over to the end of the couch, and Sirius said “They’re supporting him” in a hollow and dead voice. “They’re supporting him, Voldemort, think he’s got ‘the right idea’ about it, about-fuck all, I don’t know, but the bloodcleaning and purity and that-they kept saying it, all summer, saying how they don’t know why I’m such a blood-traitor, and I was only staying for Regulus and he said it tonight, said blood-traitor and I thought to hell with this, him, all of it, then.”
James didn’t know why-maybe it was the emptiness of Sirius’ voice, or the cold sadness in his eyes, or maybe it was just a physical, an animal thing-but he reached out, slowly, putting one hand on the nape of Sirius’ neck and the other on the small of his back. And then before Sirius had time to protest James was pulling him close, holding him, and Sirius was trying to pull away and mumbling that he wasn’t a girl, Prongs, get off, but without any real effort. James realized after a moment that Sirius had stopped talking, and that his own shoulder was becoming rapidly and suspiciously wet, and that Sirius’ back was heaving up and down, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to say anything-he wasn’t even filled with the great panic that had overtaken him when Henrietta Chuff, grief-stricken at the death of her toad, had thrown herself weeping into his wholly unsuspecting arms. James knew Sirius was crying and all he felt was sorry, sorry and worried and being there. Perhaps (horror of all unspeakable horrors) he was growing up.
Soon Sirius pulled away, ducking his head to hide his face, flushed with shame, mumbling a mixture of apologies and “honestly, Prongs, I’m not a girl, hugging, you ponce,” in a shaky, choked kind of voice. James, who knew better than to ever mention again what had just happened, looked away to pour another glass of Firewhiskey.
“So,” he said, after allowing enough time for Sirius to compose himself, “so what you are telling me is you walked away from power and a shitload of money without even a spare pair of pants?
“Well,” Sirius said, the timber of his laughter laced with only a slight tremor, “I figured I could owl Evans, if I really needed knickers that badly,” and James looked at him for a long minute and then launched at him, laughing.
--
Lily Evans was as beautiful as she was passionate, and she was perfectly suited for James. Sirius knew that anyone else would have bored him quickly, that someone with his intelligence and drive needed to be with a challenge, and Evans was nothing if not a challenge.
Ah, that wasn’t true. Evans was one thing is not a challenge, one thing if not anything else-she was a bitch. A hugely hateful awful bitch, and Sirius wished venomously that she would die so he could Oblivate James and make her never have happened.
It might have been better if she had given some kind of warning that she was just going to up and end her six year campaign of hatred. For no reason! None at all! Fits and starts, and James had just wandered into Transfiguration one day with this glazed look on his face like he’d been hexed (and he had, Sirius thought darkly) and then it’d been Lily Evans all the damned time.
It wasn’t even that James was having sex and he, Sirius, wasn’t. Sirius was having plenty of sex-Remus was very accommodating, and some days Sirius thought that maybe he loved him. Most days, though, Sirius wondered how the hell it was that James hadn’t noticed it, why hadn’t James noticed it, he should have noticed it, and even Marauding wasn’t as fun now because James wasn’t quite as much focused on pack.
And the worst bit-the absolute worst bit-was that the smile on James’ face when she was around was open and warm and thrilled, and Sirius loved her a little bit for putting it there. He hated all of her, hated what she was doing to his friends, his family, but she made James so happy that he had to love her a little, he had to, fucking glorified bitch though she was.
--
Peter hated James by turns-a bit, passionately, and also not at all. It was hard, watching Lily’s wide green eyes take him in, watching Sirius brood and throw things, watching Remus watch Sirius with something between resignation and loss. It was hard and it was-raw, maybe, and James was the most human of them all so he couldn’t smell the tension and notice that he’d violated the pack.
Remus was a ponce, a fairy, a shirtlifter; like when he’d noticed the werewolf business, Peter saw this before James but after Sirius. Peter had the creeping feeling that Sirius had known about it for years, and known about it intimately for months, and that maybe Sirius was a ponce too, only in a more generally sex-driven way. Actually the word for Sirius was primordial, and urges for Sirius were just things to be acted up, and so it didn’t make sense to give him a label, because he’d only set it on fire.
Peter wasn’t smart, but he knew enough to stay out of things.
James’ seventeen year old fumblings were things Sirius couldn’t stay out of-Peter had noticed. Always Sirius was walking in, needing a new tie or a different book, while James had Evans eagle spread on her back and cursing that damn Black with her fiery temper. Once, Sirius had made a comment about carpets and drapes, and James had stood up and punched him with Lily all over his hand.
Peter thought maybe it was telling that Sirius laughed, and didn’t wash his face.
“I don’t understand,” he said, Sirius did, frustrated one night in the common room, “I don’t understand what he sees in her, hell, we’re better than she is, I’m stronger and brighter and who needs a girlfriend, he had a best friend, obsessive bastard doesn’t know what he’s doing,” and Remus looked ready to kill someone.
Peter wasn’t smart, but…he empathized.
---
Remus went flat hunting with Sirius out of something akin to bizarre affection, trailing behind him through slightly run-down midsize apartments in East London. Lily and James had bought a place already (sad, very sad, that Remus wouldn’t have helped with the flat-hunt if he hadn’t known Sirius wouldn’t be moving in with James), and Peter was staying with his parents for a bit, and Remus…well, it was only January. He had time to figure something out.
Unsurprisingly, after 7 hours and 12 flats, Sirius had found nothing he liked. “I’ll just know, Moony, I’ll just know it when I see it, it will call to me, I shall feel it in my very bones,” he kept saying, waving his arms magnanimously and jumping up and down. Also unsurprisingly, Sirius had spent all 7 hours flirting with and mocking their elderly realtor by turns. Least surprisingly of all, this tendency had begun to wear on the poor woman after hour four.
“This is the last of them, Mr. Black,” she said, her voice dead and her eyes broken. Her name was Barbara, and Remus wished in a halfhearted way that he could apologize by proxy. He’d been nothing but courteous all day, of course, but as was often the case, he’d been tarred with Sirius’ wide and blackened brush.
“Barbara, my darling, though this may be our last flat, my heart beats true for you! Leave me not, sweet swan of my affections!” Barbara gave him a look full of bottomless loathing, to which Sirius batted his eyelashes. Remus sighed-there was no escaping it. Sirius was entirely insufferable.
“Quite, Mr. Black,” Barbara said, dryly, obviously in full agreement with this opinion. She looked at Remus with disapproval and handed him the key to the flat. “I’ve another client. The wards will forcibly remove you if you stay more than two hours or damage the property. Please remember that this a Muggle neighborhood; do try not to do anything shocking. I expect that key returned. Good day, Mr. Lupin. Mr. Black.” She Disapparated with an air of extreme relief, and Sirius laughed and snatched the key.
“Right awful old baggage, wasn’t she?” he said, his tone as derisive as it was conversational. Remus never failed to wonder how he managed to do that, that thing where he was both scornful and pleasant. “I thought she’d never leave.”
“Well, she couldn’t actually leave,” Remus said, hoping his voice communicated the importance of logic and reason, “because she was, you know, hired, by you, to show us about-”
“Yeah, yeah, let’s have a look, Moony!” And Sirius unlocked the door and shoved it open, revealing, to Remus’s chagrin, a flat that was in a state of disturbing disrepair. The paint around the windowsills was chipped and peeling and the walls were water-stained and the hardwood floors were warped, leaving eddies and bumps that would be easy to trip over on drunken evenings--
“I love it!” Sirius’ affinity for things broken and maligned was actually a bit worrying, Remus thought. “Look, there’s a window, a huge window, and a guest room and the kitchen-don’t you love it, Moony?”
And Remus thought no, Sirius, no, we’ve seen better, you could do better, you’ve even got the money to do better, against all logic and reasoning, Remus thought how can you possibly see anything in this shattered wreck of a flat, and Remus said “I love it if you do, Sirius,” in a tone of resigned affection.
And then Sirius pushed him against the nearest wall (which, Remus noted, made an ominous sound of protest) and said “Great, good, because we couldn’t live here if you hated it,” and his kiss was so infectious and bright that Remus almost didn’t notice the pronoun.
Then his brain caught up with his body and he broke the kiss and said “We?” in a panicked, breathless voice-sad, very sad, that Remus assumed he had somehow missed some part of the plan, that he had been hunting for James and Sirius’ flat all along, and hated Sirius for doing this to him with a brilliant brutal passion...
...until Sirius looked at him with that carefully cultivated disdain and said “Yes, you git, we, as in you and me,” and Remus was happy, horrifyingly sickeningly happy.
“What,” he said, communicating none of his thrill and all of his confusion. Sirius frowned at him.
“Well, I mean, I haven’t asked you or anything,” (Sirius said this waving a hand as though the asking did not matter , and even in his euphoria Remus took a moment to be irritated) “but I figured-it’s just what should happen, what with us being, you know, what we are, and James and Evans buying their flat,” (Sirius said this with a scowl flitting over his aristocratic features, and even in his euphoria Remus took a moment to absolutely loathe James) “and anyway. You will, yeah?”
Remus wanted to say no, just to wipe that stupid grin off Sirius’ face, that grin he loved so well and wanted to never see again. He wanted to say no, to run, to distance himself from this madness, he didn’t want to live in Sirius’ den, be Sirius’ pack forever-but he did, he did want that, wanted it so much that he could see it smell it taste it dream it and so he kissed Sirius, hard, meaning yes, you shite, you absolute bastard, yes.
--
James asked Sirius to be his best man before he asked Lily to marry him, on a Wednesday evening outside a bar in Surrey. He knew-well. He knew better than to ask Sirius after he asked Lily, and he had the faint suspicion Lily wasn’t quite worth marrying if Sirius said no.
James was rather certain Sirius would say no, and he didn’t know where that left him except caught between two extremes, like always. It was very easy, James had discovered, to love Lily, very easy to get tangled in the cool jade of her eyes and forget about everything for a while. It was harder to like her, but James knew how to do that too, because Sirius had taught him. It was the same intensity, the same flaming uncontrollable pride, the same burn, except that Sirius was male and more up front about it, and Lily was female and kinder.
Sirius was drunk by the time James asked him, according to plan-Sirius punched just as hard when he was pissed, but his aim was significantly worse. James had written a script and practiced it when Lily wasn’t home, and felt pathetic about it. He felt pathetic about the whole thing, actually, but Sirius’ approval was…important, for reasons he didn’t know exactly how to explain.
“Padfoot,” he started, and then threw the script out the proverbial window and said, “I won’t marry her if you don’t want me to, Pads, but I want to, I want to marry her very much and in a choking can’t-imagine-it kind of way, so be my best man or I’ll kill you and then not marry her and then be lonely and missing the both of you forever and ever, you complete bastard.” This was probably not the best way to do things, and James was too busy closing his eyes against the punch he knew was coming to look at Sirius, who kissed him violently and on the mouth.
“I-what?” James mentioned, confused but not really inclined to do anything about it, and Sirius pulled away from him with wild eyes and beer on his chin.
“You’re such a fucker,” Sirius said, and kissed him again.
James ignored this for a moment, his eyes wide and shocked, and said “What are you doing, Padfoot, what are you-” talking hard and fast against Sirius’ persistant mouth. “Prat-bastard-can I still-why-“ and Sirius pulled away again and stared at him.
“You can marry her, she’s lovely and I hate her mostly but you’re in love with her, you cunt, you-and so it’s fine and do what you will, marry her make her have babies I don’t care just shut up now, Prongs, for the love of God shut up shut up,” and Sirius was kissing him again, mumbling shut up against his lips in a passionate and also insane way. It was-a lot like not kissing Lily, and very familiar and not familiar at all, and James liked it more than he wanted to.
“So you’ll do it, then,” James said, much later, leaning against the door of his flat with bruised lips, and Sirius punched him and said yes and kissed him furiously again, so that was alright.
fin.
Characters: James/Sirius, Remus/Sirius, James/Lily, Peter
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Everyone assumed that Sirius and James got on so well because they were exactly alike and they were all wrong; everyone assumed Sirius and James got on so well because they were both crazy and that was true.
As a general rule, Sirius did not like people.
It was, perhaps, one of those unalterable character traits bred by his family; Orion didn’t like stupid people, and Regulus didn’t like overbearing people, and Walburga didn’t like…well, living people, really. Thus, it made sense that Sirius, on the whole, possessed the firm wish that everyone would just sod off, thank you very much.
Sirius liked Remus, and most of the time he thought that was about the fact that Remus wasn’t exactly human. Not that he wasn’t-oh, well, bugger the mechanics, it was the monstrosity of him that Sirius liked, really, the deep and dark places mixed under all that stark normality. The growls that sometimes caught around the edges of those long difficult dictionary words and the nail growth barely kept at bay and the shivers under the moon and he still drank pumpkin juice at breakfast every day like he was real and regular; oh, yes, sometimes Sirius wanted to bite his fingers and lick him until he submitted.
Sirius liked James as well, in a way that was about more than dominance and submission, and that was odd because James was entirely human under all that bravado. He tried, he tried rather harder than he ought, to be as monstrous as the rest of them, but it was folly. James was human, horribly wholly human, with no hope of giving into madness and roaming the nights in a crazed bloodfrenzy. And yet Sirius still enjoyed his company, and didn’t often despair at his utter lack of comprehension vis a vis primordial urges. James made to Sirius a bizarre, close kind of sense, and possessed a strange control of him that probably harkened back to things about canines and their masters that Sirius didn’t wish to consider.
Sirius didn’t much like Peter, for all they were friends. He liked Peter more than he liked most everyone else, which is why they were friends at all; Peter was wild, but in a domesticated, twitchy sort of way. He was prey and Sirius was bothered by the small but constant urge to hunt him-he was naive and Sirius was bothered by the large, incongruous itch to give him first hand knowledge of Darwinian relationships. But still, always, the saving grace of Peter was that he was so shockingly ratlike that it was easy to forget he was actually fleshy rather than furry, and then all of his intense meekness was entirely excusable, because it was his nature.
--
“Sirius,” James said, watching him move about late one night in the Astronomy Tower. It was the kind of thing he liked to do, when they were alone; say Sirius’ name and mean it mostly just as an affirmation, proof that they were both still there. He didn’t know what was so comforting about the mmm noise he got in response, didn’t know why he liked everything so much better with a bit of distance and space from everyone else, but it was and he did and so he said “Sirius,” again.
“Mm-what, Potter?” Sirius’ eyes had snapped up from his work in mild irritation, fifteen year old emotions leaving him angry for nothing and forgiving of everything. James saw the howling rawness behind those eyes, and it made him all the more willing to say what he needed to, to say the thing he knew Sirius wouldn’t want to hear.
Everyone assumed James was the leader and they were mostly right; everyone assumed James was in control, and that was true. James liked control, knew its intimacies and footfalls, and also would never have offered it to Sirius, who only pretended he wanted it. It was merely the subtleties of friendship that rendered things more-complicated-and in truth Sirius was the leader, choosing to act through James, who made the decisions. This advanced puppetry was another facet of the world James liked and knew the intimacies of, so it was with slight trepidation that he said anything at all.
“Sirius,” James repeated, the third time, and plowed ahead before Sirius could bark out a frustrated demand for him to say it, already, whatever it was. “Maybe we shouldn’t do it.”
It was a sentence that had been inching its way out for two years, for countless hours of work, for a thousand inexplicably excited minutes. Normally when they did things Remus was there to be the law, but not this time, and James thought it needed to be said. Maybe they shouldn’t do this-this was a crazy, arrogant, illegal thing to do, a thing that could get them all killed or expelled or arrested, and James didn’t believe in consequences but knew they were going to fall to him eventually, and thus accepted them as his lot.
And now he’d said it, he’d said that shouldn’t word that Sirius never liked. He’d said it and he waited for the anger that was sure to come, for the Remus needs us and the But it’ll be incredible and the Why don’t you understand?, for the snarl and the baring of teeth and probably the punch that would accompany it all. Sirius was volatile.
But instead Sirius just looked at him, staring with wide clear stormcolored eyes, and finally said, “No, probably not,” in the tones of someone mulling it over. His smile, swift and bright, was unexpected, and James nearly laughed when he added, “But we’re going to do anyway, yeah? You’re a pillock, I can’t understand why you hang about, take your responsibility elsewhere. I think I’ve nearly got it.”
The causal arm slung about his shoulder was a surprise too, James thought, walking back to Gryffindor tower to get Peter and recite an incantation that they’d worked on for two years and wouldn’t (probably hopefully) kill them. It was all so-animal-to approach it this way, and James didn’t know why but he liked it. They’d go back and they’d do it, they’d get it right, they’d transform. And then they’d show Remus and Remus would smile that smile he liked to do, and also be horrified and also know, in that weird way he always did, that it had been Sirius’s damned stupid idea.
Everyone assumed that Sirius and James got on so well because they were exactly alike and they were all wrong; everyone assumed Sirius and James got on so well because they were both crazy and that was true. It was just that Sirius was loyally, utterly crazy, crazy that would lick people or bite them, crazy in a way that shouted the word forever, and James was crazy like it was a phase he was going through-like he’d wake up one morning merely eccentric, and not remember how to be dangerous at all.
---
Peter watched, and waited. It was the prudent thing to do, really, when one had the life skills Peter suspected he had-that is to say, very few or none at all. Sirius would smack him, irritated, if he said as much publicly, and Remus would probably look at him with something between sympathy and concern. James, of course, would lean back on his hands and close his eyes, but when he spoke it would be in that slow, rich voice he used when he was thinking, and he’d name some things Peter was good at until Peter laughed and told him casually to shut it, because he got the point.
Sirius, Peter knew, didn’t like him very much, but that was alright; Sirius didn’t like anyone very much, he just hid it well. People as…alive…as Sirius had difficulty with much of the population, in Peter’s limited but well-documented experience. Sirius burned like the star for which he was named, and wondered with a mixture of frustration and apprehension why no one else seemed as fiery, and acted generally like he felt three times as much as other people, because he did.
Peter wasn’t smart, but he noticed some things.
He’d noticed the way James looked at Lily long before James noticed it, long before the first of a thousand rants about damn beautiful damn Evans and how much of a bitch she was being but he loved her anyway, and why she wouldn’t just snog him already, they’d make such pretty babies. He’d noticed, too, the way Lily looked at James, the way she snarled at him with such intensity that she was almost as alive as Sirius, the way she rolled her eyes every time he bragged-like he was embarrassing her, and on purpose.
He’d noticed Remus was a werewolf before James, but after Sirius. He never mentioned it, of course, because he’d thought Sirius might kill him if he spoilt his private….whatever it was. Sirius liked having secrets almost as much as Sirius liked deceit, and Sirius liked Remus more than he liked anyone, except James. Peter knew that there was something important in the silences they kept, in the quiet glances between werewolf and madman, and even if he didn’t know what was so important about it, he knew it was James’ silence to break. When James did break it (matter-of-factly, and without preamble, and in the middle of the night), Sirius sulked, and Remus looked curiously caught between relief and sadness.
Peter wasn’t smart, but his instincts were spot-on.
---
Remus kept a careful eye on Sirius at breakfast, because if he didn’t keep a careful eye on Sirius, Sirius would plant a glancing blow on Snape. It worried Remus, the way Sirius needed an enemy all the time, the way James encouraged it like it was sport rather than insanity. Sirius didn’t need encouragement to hate the same way plants didn’t need encouragement to grow-it was in his nature, in his instinct, and in his roots.
Sirius was more animal than plant, which Remus of course understood better than the average human being; than any human being, really. But still, the boy was sixteen, and even if he had grown up love starved and haughty there was no reason to get in brawls before he’d had any marmalade. Not that the marmalade was cursory, not that Sirius could fight as much as he pleased so long as he’d had some delicious orange preserves first, but it was-base. It was base, that’s what it was, it was base and also cruel and James was leaning into Sirius’ ear again and goading him in that way he did and
“Pass the marmalade!” Remus yelped, perhaps with a bit more passion than was required. James twitched, and Peter jumped rather violently, and Sirius turned with one cool eyebrow raised and looked at Remus with amusement that was pleasantly condescending.
“I’m not deaf, Moony, honestly,” he said, and passed it, and added, “bloody hell, but you’re odd in the mornings,” like he was remarking on the weather instead of Remus’s character. And oh, he was maddening, he was smiling showing his canines and doing it again, acting like he was just a little bit better than everyone, and Remus couldn’t make him stop because Remus agreed with him and his stupid aristocratic pride.
Damn, damn, damn--
It was also maddening the way James was-just-everywhere, pushing all of Sirius’ buttons, the weirdest mixture of leader and accomplice imaginable, and people acted like he was the self-important one. Not to say he wasn’t; James’ ego was as real as its reputation and Lily Evans was quite right about his head needing its own orbit. It was just that Sirius oozed arrogance, Sirius had been bred for arrogance, and the fact that Remus knew he was scared and strong and sad under all that blood wasn’t enough sometimes.
And, oh, hell, Peter was talking about skiving off Transfiguration and Remus knew they would, and Sirius was eying Snape again and James was cackling about the horrible things they could do to him and Remus knew they would do those, too. He thought about chiming in and saying something responsible but then Sirius caught his gaze, leveled at him that grin that danced across the edges of carnality, and Remus forgot how to breathe.
Remus hated being sixteen-almost as much as being a werewolf, almost as much as the impracticality of envying James, whom he loved (almost as much as he loved Sirius).
--
Sirius had noticed James on the train when they were eleven, wandering about with an amiable grin that looked vaguely mischievous. He had appeared…speccy, really, and less afraid then the other first years. Sirius had already dismissed most of his classmates as “quivery,” and therefore bad hats, the lot of them. But this boy wasn’t quivering; he looked a bit nervous, perhaps, but who wasn’t nervous? People who weren’t nervous (Sirius tamped down the image of Regulus’ wide wet eyes and the sick fluttery feeling that went with it) were even worse hats than the quivery lot. They were atrocious hats. They were his Aunt Eldora’s hats.
This boy looked a bit like he needed a hat, actually, what with that hair up all over the place. Sirius’ mother would never have let him out of the house that way, but he supposed this boy couldn’t help it if his parents were hedgehogs. Sirius swallowed a lump in his throat that was the worst hat of them all and walked over. He tried out twelve different greetings in his head on the way (he was not nervous, he was not) and focused utterly on not making a fool of himself. “What was it like having woodland creatures for parents,” was probably not a tactful question, and also Sirius was starting to see the truth in his father’s insistence that he spouted nonsense when uncomfortable. “Hi, I’m Sirius Black,” would be calm and cool enough, wouldn’t it? And now he was level with the boy, and so he smiled and opened his mouth and stuck his hand out with a bit more exuberance than he really intended.
“Hat,” Sirius said, entirely by mistake.
The boy who turned out to be James looked at him for a long moment, and then smiled easily and took his hand. He said “Fedora.”
--
Peter tried not to think about it, but there was something about James’ mouth that kind of…distracted him. It wasn’t the shape of it, or the color, or even the way his left canine caught on his lower lip sometimes when he was impassioned. Mostly it was the words that came out of James’ mouth that drove Peter to distraction, and the tone in which they were said.
Peter wasn’t smart, but he knew enough to understand what he wanted.
James wouldn’t be anything special if he didn’t think so much that he was; power radiated from him in a cloud of arrogant self-possession, and Peter loved him for it. It was not the same power Sirius had, power born and bred, power taught and entitled, ancestral power passed through the bloodlines like a particularly tenacious house-elf. There was more than enough of that kind of power drifting around Hogwarts, in Lucius Malfoy, in all those other Blacks, and it wasn’t half as compelling as James’ sort.
Peter wasn’t smart, but some things just made sense.
James’ sort of power, the best sort of power, was self-made, self-taught, passed down from nowhere and full of a charismatic strength. It was one thing to be raised as the master of all around you-it was quite another to decide, of your own volition, that you deserved the title. James got everything he wanted-James knew everyone he wanted to-James did everything in such a precisely impossible way that his success shrieked of virtue.
Peter wasn’t smart, but he knew the difference between right and wrong.
--
Remus didn’t remember how long he’d been angry but it hadn’t been long enough; Sirius’ face taunted him in the night and haunted him in the daytime, showing up in ridiculous places. Tree trunks! Clouds! Atop the necks of unrelated passersby!
The stupid bastard didn’t mean it, Remus told himself, time and again. The stupid bastard wouldn’t have done it to James, and Remus hated that thought and was sickened and ashamed by the fact that it was true.
Not that the shame had anything to do with anything-not that Remus had been entertaining notions about Sirius that were as illegal as they were inappropriate. Not that Remus caught his breath all the damn time around stupid fucking Sirius, even still, even after stupid fucking Sirius almost turned Remus into a stupid fucking murderer.
Remus (of course) did really remember how long he’d been angry-he’d been angry since December, and now it was March, and Sirius kept getting out of bed in the nights and not coming back until the mornings. And even James couldn’t make Sirius feel better, lately, and something in Remus glowed and cackled about that. And also, terribly, Remus missed stupid fucking Sirius, missed his inanity and his weird, spontaneous laughter and his patented inability to relate to anything not slightly mad and his oozing arrogance.
So eventually Remus got out of bed in the night, after Sirius, and followed him stealthy-like out of the portrait hole. Sirius hadn’t even bothered to take James’ cloak (Remus knew this because Remus had it, and also because Sirius was visible) and Remus thought stupid fucking Sirius for the hundred thousandth stupid fucking time. They went outside, and Sirius stood behind the Quidditch pitch and lit a cigarette, and Remus thought Alright, then, and threw the cloak off.
“Moony!” Sirius choked (coughing, sputtering) and Remus suddenly didn’t remember what he’d wanted to say. Logic said to tell Sirius that he was forgiven, but that would have been lying. Remus knew he would never forgive Sirius this transgression, not completely-he would trust him again, yes, but some small part of his brain would always howl it was you who almost destroyed me. And also, in a pathetic and petty way, Remus knew he could never forgive Sirius the way he looked at James, the way everyone else was a little bit less.
“Padfoot,” Remus said, and then figured to hell with it and did it the animal way. He grabbed Sirius’ cigarette and broke it and dropped it and stomped on it, and then he grabbed Sirius and thought about breaking and dropping and stomping on him, too. Instead he pushed him backward, pushed him up against the wall of a shed and kissed him with a harsh claim caught in his throat.
Sirius made a soft carnal noise and shifted under his hands, and Remus didn’t break the kiss because he didn’t want to talk about it, because the best part of Sirius was that he knew about the physical thing. Everyone though that Remus was a word person and they would have been right, except that Remus was a werewolf. So really he was an animal wandering around tarted up like a word person, wrapped in cloaks of articulation and learning, and Sirius knew what a nuzzle followed by a bite meant even if he really liked James better. Remus thought that Sirius was probably the closest he was going to get to what he wanted, and he did like James better, he did and Remus knew that, but he’d take him anyway and pretend it was alright.
Sirius groaned into Remus’ mouth and Remus shoved a hand into Sirius’ pants, wrapping his fingers around the hardened cock too tightly. I am mostly still angry, this meant, and Sirius threw his head back and growled, which meant I mostly know that. Remus pulled, hard fast strokes and bites along Sirius’ jawline and Sirius was arching hissing gasping coming, and then they both knew they were as close to whatever they were going to be as they could possibly get.
They didn’t talk about it, but they did start talking in general again, making it clear to everyone that they weren’t fighting anymore. They didn’t talk about the way Sirius would slip into Remus’ bed in the night, either, though soon they both accepted that it would not stop.
They certainly didn’t talk about the way Sirius’ feet would cease their soft pit-pat some nights when he was crossing the room, though Remus noticed and knew he was stopping to look at James’ bed. They didn’t talk about it and they didn’t have to-Remus accepted that if it came down to it, between the two of them, if Sirius ever realized…well, there wasn’t even a choice.
--
James awoke confused, predominately because he awoke to the doorbell, and it was night. Not night, early darkness-night, in the middle of. Specifically four A.M., and James’ breath tasted badly like morning.
“Who the bloody hell is calling?” James’ father was not yelling, but muttering worriedly under his breath, as he walked past James’ room. James spared a fleeting thought for how real this new war business must be, that James’ father thought a knock at the door at four in the morning was something worrying enough to mollify his normal anger upon waking. James would have spared more than a passing thought for it, actually, had his father not called him downstairs.
Of all the people James didn’t except to see at four in the morning on his doorstep, Sirius Black was-actually, come to that, Sirius Black was one of the few people James knew who was audacious enough to ring his doorbell at this hour. But it was summer, and Sirius’ parents never let him out in the summer, and-
“Oh,” James said, beginning to guess at why Sirius looked so sick and miserable.
‘Quite,” said James’ father, who had turned back towards the stairs. “I’ll just leave you to it, then, shall I? See you in the morning, James. Sirius, I expect we’ll figure something out.” He left, and both boys heard the faint click of his bedroom door shutting.
“Prongs,” Sirius said, after a long moment, “hullo.”
James raised an eyebrow at that but said, “Hullo,” amicably enough. Then he looked at Sirius closely and added, “You’re rather damp, aren’t you?”
Sirius nodded and waved an expansive hand at the nearest window. “Raining,” he said, punctuating this with a shiver. “Should have taken the Knight Bus, but I was-“
“-angry?” James finished, and grinned. Sirius shook his soggy head, and James was upset at the way his almost-smile flickered and died. This was like that thing with Moony and they’d finally got past that, and James had missed Sirius in a rather intensely embarrassing way when he’d been all closed off and morose. “Well, bugger that,” James said, with feeling, and frowned at Sirius, who nodded.
James kept frowning, and eventually pulled off his shirt and tossed it to Sirius, who looked at him oddly. “Put that on, yours is wet, I have trousers too somewhere. Stay here,” he said, feeling strangely even more in control than usual, and went into the kitchen. After a few moments he returned, wearing a new shirt, and he had not only trousers but a bottle of Firewhiskey and a tall glass. Sirius did smile then, a real smile, however brief, raising an eyebrow in a half-hearted attempt at normalcy.
“I have developed a serious problem in the months we have been away from school,” James said solemnly, pouring a large drink. “Longing for Peter’s snores has driven me to truly shocking vice. You must drink,” he handed the glass to Sirius, who took it gratefully, “if only to save me from myself.”
“You’re raving, Potter,” Sirius mumbled, but took a long draught from the glass. He coughed once (he always did, grimacing; he was so much better with beer) and handed it back to James. “I ran away,” he said, after a minute.
“I rather figured you had,” James said, sipping the drink nonchalantly.
Sirius’ expression was caught between irritation and relief. “Aren’t you even going to ask me why?” he snapped, snatching the glass of Firewhisky and spilling it all over his already soaked trousers. “Fucking hell!”
“Oh, no,” James said, feigning horror. “Now you’ll have to change!” When Sirius didn’t reply, just snatched the dry trousers and whipped round towards the washroom, James decided he might need a new tactic.
He grabbed Sirius roughly by the arm, squeezed once, and said, “Why, then” so that it was neither a question nor a statement, but something far and away removed.
And Sirius smiled at him through the stormclouds on his face, and went to the bathroom, and came back with James’ trousers on. “Because I hate them,” he said, and then, groaning and collapsing onto the couch, “and also I fucking hate them, and I can’t stay because I’ll probably kill them.”
James nodded sagely. “Very few things are worth Azkaban, though,” he mentioned, pouring another drink.
“Cheers,” Sirius said. He drank again, and they sat in relative silence for a few moments, and then James (who could not stand it) tackled Sirius and sat on him.
“Bloody hell!”
“Yeah, quite.”
“Why the fuck did you do that?”
“Tell me what really happened, then.”
“Cunt.”
“Shirtlifter!”
“I’m not the one tackling vulnerable boys in my living room.”
“I’m not the one liking it.”
“…That doesn’t even make sense, Prongs.”
“Yeah, well.” James enjoyed this banter, was glad that Sirius was still Sirius enough to engage, but he wanted the truth and he would get it. “Tell me what happened or I shall tickle you.”
“You wouldn’t!” Sirius’ eyes were wide with mock-horror, but they were also pooled with something that might, James thought, be gratitude.
“Oh, I would.”
“Get off, then. Get off and I’ll tell you.” James, recognizing the honesty in this, crawled over to the end of the couch, and Sirius said “They’re supporting him” in a hollow and dead voice. “They’re supporting him, Voldemort, think he’s got ‘the right idea’ about it, about-fuck all, I don’t know, but the bloodcleaning and purity and that-they kept saying it, all summer, saying how they don’t know why I’m such a blood-traitor, and I was only staying for Regulus and he said it tonight, said blood-traitor and I thought to hell with this, him, all of it, then.”
James didn’t know why-maybe it was the emptiness of Sirius’ voice, or the cold sadness in his eyes, or maybe it was just a physical, an animal thing-but he reached out, slowly, putting one hand on the nape of Sirius’ neck and the other on the small of his back. And then before Sirius had time to protest James was pulling him close, holding him, and Sirius was trying to pull away and mumbling that he wasn’t a girl, Prongs, get off, but without any real effort. James realized after a moment that Sirius had stopped talking, and that his own shoulder was becoming rapidly and suspiciously wet, and that Sirius’ back was heaving up and down, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to say anything-he wasn’t even filled with the great panic that had overtaken him when Henrietta Chuff, grief-stricken at the death of her toad, had thrown herself weeping into his wholly unsuspecting arms. James knew Sirius was crying and all he felt was sorry, sorry and worried and being there. Perhaps (horror of all unspeakable horrors) he was growing up.
Soon Sirius pulled away, ducking his head to hide his face, flushed with shame, mumbling a mixture of apologies and “honestly, Prongs, I’m not a girl, hugging, you ponce,” in a shaky, choked kind of voice. James, who knew better than to ever mention again what had just happened, looked away to pour another glass of Firewhiskey.
“So,” he said, after allowing enough time for Sirius to compose himself, “so what you are telling me is you walked away from power and a shitload of money without even a spare pair of pants?
“Well,” Sirius said, the timber of his laughter laced with only a slight tremor, “I figured I could owl Evans, if I really needed knickers that badly,” and James looked at him for a long minute and then launched at him, laughing.
--
Lily Evans was as beautiful as she was passionate, and she was perfectly suited for James. Sirius knew that anyone else would have bored him quickly, that someone with his intelligence and drive needed to be with a challenge, and Evans was nothing if not a challenge.
Ah, that wasn’t true. Evans was one thing is not a challenge, one thing if not anything else-she was a bitch. A hugely hateful awful bitch, and Sirius wished venomously that she would die so he could Oblivate James and make her never have happened.
It might have been better if she had given some kind of warning that she was just going to up and end her six year campaign of hatred. For no reason! None at all! Fits and starts, and James had just wandered into Transfiguration one day with this glazed look on his face like he’d been hexed (and he had, Sirius thought darkly) and then it’d been Lily Evans all the damned time.
It wasn’t even that James was having sex and he, Sirius, wasn’t. Sirius was having plenty of sex-Remus was very accommodating, and some days Sirius thought that maybe he loved him. Most days, though, Sirius wondered how the hell it was that James hadn’t noticed it, why hadn’t James noticed it, he should have noticed it, and even Marauding wasn’t as fun now because James wasn’t quite as much focused on pack.
And the worst bit-the absolute worst bit-was that the smile on James’ face when she was around was open and warm and thrilled, and Sirius loved her a little bit for putting it there. He hated all of her, hated what she was doing to his friends, his family, but she made James so happy that he had to love her a little, he had to, fucking glorified bitch though she was.
--
Peter hated James by turns-a bit, passionately, and also not at all. It was hard, watching Lily’s wide green eyes take him in, watching Sirius brood and throw things, watching Remus watch Sirius with something between resignation and loss. It was hard and it was-raw, maybe, and James was the most human of them all so he couldn’t smell the tension and notice that he’d violated the pack.
Remus was a ponce, a fairy, a shirtlifter; like when he’d noticed the werewolf business, Peter saw this before James but after Sirius. Peter had the creeping feeling that Sirius had known about it for years, and known about it intimately for months, and that maybe Sirius was a ponce too, only in a more generally sex-driven way. Actually the word for Sirius was primordial, and urges for Sirius were just things to be acted up, and so it didn’t make sense to give him a label, because he’d only set it on fire.
Peter wasn’t smart, but he knew enough to stay out of things.
James’ seventeen year old fumblings were things Sirius couldn’t stay out of-Peter had noticed. Always Sirius was walking in, needing a new tie or a different book, while James had Evans eagle spread on her back and cursing that damn Black with her fiery temper. Once, Sirius had made a comment about carpets and drapes, and James had stood up and punched him with Lily all over his hand.
Peter thought maybe it was telling that Sirius laughed, and didn’t wash his face.
“I don’t understand,” he said, Sirius did, frustrated one night in the common room, “I don’t understand what he sees in her, hell, we’re better than she is, I’m stronger and brighter and who needs a girlfriend, he had a best friend, obsessive bastard doesn’t know what he’s doing,” and Remus looked ready to kill someone.
Peter wasn’t smart, but…he empathized.
---
Remus went flat hunting with Sirius out of something akin to bizarre affection, trailing behind him through slightly run-down midsize apartments in East London. Lily and James had bought a place already (sad, very sad, that Remus wouldn’t have helped with the flat-hunt if he hadn’t known Sirius wouldn’t be moving in with James), and Peter was staying with his parents for a bit, and Remus…well, it was only January. He had time to figure something out.
Unsurprisingly, after 7 hours and 12 flats, Sirius had found nothing he liked. “I’ll just know, Moony, I’ll just know it when I see it, it will call to me, I shall feel it in my very bones,” he kept saying, waving his arms magnanimously and jumping up and down. Also unsurprisingly, Sirius had spent all 7 hours flirting with and mocking their elderly realtor by turns. Least surprisingly of all, this tendency had begun to wear on the poor woman after hour four.
“This is the last of them, Mr. Black,” she said, her voice dead and her eyes broken. Her name was Barbara, and Remus wished in a halfhearted way that he could apologize by proxy. He’d been nothing but courteous all day, of course, but as was often the case, he’d been tarred with Sirius’ wide and blackened brush.
“Barbara, my darling, though this may be our last flat, my heart beats true for you! Leave me not, sweet swan of my affections!” Barbara gave him a look full of bottomless loathing, to which Sirius batted his eyelashes. Remus sighed-there was no escaping it. Sirius was entirely insufferable.
“Quite, Mr. Black,” Barbara said, dryly, obviously in full agreement with this opinion. She looked at Remus with disapproval and handed him the key to the flat. “I’ve another client. The wards will forcibly remove you if you stay more than two hours or damage the property. Please remember that this a Muggle neighborhood; do try not to do anything shocking. I expect that key returned. Good day, Mr. Lupin. Mr. Black.” She Disapparated with an air of extreme relief, and Sirius laughed and snatched the key.
“Right awful old baggage, wasn’t she?” he said, his tone as derisive as it was conversational. Remus never failed to wonder how he managed to do that, that thing where he was both scornful and pleasant. “I thought she’d never leave.”
“Well, she couldn’t actually leave,” Remus said, hoping his voice communicated the importance of logic and reason, “because she was, you know, hired, by you, to show us about-”
“Yeah, yeah, let’s have a look, Moony!” And Sirius unlocked the door and shoved it open, revealing, to Remus’s chagrin, a flat that was in a state of disturbing disrepair. The paint around the windowsills was chipped and peeling and the walls were water-stained and the hardwood floors were warped, leaving eddies and bumps that would be easy to trip over on drunken evenings--
“I love it!” Sirius’ affinity for things broken and maligned was actually a bit worrying, Remus thought. “Look, there’s a window, a huge window, and a guest room and the kitchen-don’t you love it, Moony?”
And Remus thought no, Sirius, no, we’ve seen better, you could do better, you’ve even got the money to do better, against all logic and reasoning, Remus thought how can you possibly see anything in this shattered wreck of a flat, and Remus said “I love it if you do, Sirius,” in a tone of resigned affection.
And then Sirius pushed him against the nearest wall (which, Remus noted, made an ominous sound of protest) and said “Great, good, because we couldn’t live here if you hated it,” and his kiss was so infectious and bright that Remus almost didn’t notice the pronoun.
Then his brain caught up with his body and he broke the kiss and said “We?” in a panicked, breathless voice-sad, very sad, that Remus assumed he had somehow missed some part of the plan, that he had been hunting for James and Sirius’ flat all along, and hated Sirius for doing this to him with a brilliant brutal passion...
...until Sirius looked at him with that carefully cultivated disdain and said “Yes, you git, we, as in you and me,” and Remus was happy, horrifyingly sickeningly happy.
“What,” he said, communicating none of his thrill and all of his confusion. Sirius frowned at him.
“Well, I mean, I haven’t asked you or anything,” (Sirius said this waving a hand as though the asking did not matter , and even in his euphoria Remus took a moment to be irritated) “but I figured-it’s just what should happen, what with us being, you know, what we are, and James and Evans buying their flat,” (Sirius said this with a scowl flitting over his aristocratic features, and even in his euphoria Remus took a moment to absolutely loathe James) “and anyway. You will, yeah?”
Remus wanted to say no, just to wipe that stupid grin off Sirius’ face, that grin he loved so well and wanted to never see again. He wanted to say no, to run, to distance himself from this madness, he didn’t want to live in Sirius’ den, be Sirius’ pack forever-but he did, he did want that, wanted it so much that he could see it smell it taste it dream it and so he kissed Sirius, hard, meaning yes, you shite, you absolute bastard, yes.
--
James asked Sirius to be his best man before he asked Lily to marry him, on a Wednesday evening outside a bar in Surrey. He knew-well. He knew better than to ask Sirius after he asked Lily, and he had the faint suspicion Lily wasn’t quite worth marrying if Sirius said no.
James was rather certain Sirius would say no, and he didn’t know where that left him except caught between two extremes, like always. It was very easy, James had discovered, to love Lily, very easy to get tangled in the cool jade of her eyes and forget about everything for a while. It was harder to like her, but James knew how to do that too, because Sirius had taught him. It was the same intensity, the same flaming uncontrollable pride, the same burn, except that Sirius was male and more up front about it, and Lily was female and kinder.
Sirius was drunk by the time James asked him, according to plan-Sirius punched just as hard when he was pissed, but his aim was significantly worse. James had written a script and practiced it when Lily wasn’t home, and felt pathetic about it. He felt pathetic about the whole thing, actually, but Sirius’ approval was…important, for reasons he didn’t know exactly how to explain.
“Padfoot,” he started, and then threw the script out the proverbial window and said, “I won’t marry her if you don’t want me to, Pads, but I want to, I want to marry her very much and in a choking can’t-imagine-it kind of way, so be my best man or I’ll kill you and then not marry her and then be lonely and missing the both of you forever and ever, you complete bastard.” This was probably not the best way to do things, and James was too busy closing his eyes against the punch he knew was coming to look at Sirius, who kissed him violently and on the mouth.
“I-what?” James mentioned, confused but not really inclined to do anything about it, and Sirius pulled away from him with wild eyes and beer on his chin.
“You’re such a fucker,” Sirius said, and kissed him again.
James ignored this for a moment, his eyes wide and shocked, and said “What are you doing, Padfoot, what are you-” talking hard and fast against Sirius’ persistant mouth. “Prat-bastard-can I still-why-“ and Sirius pulled away again and stared at him.
“You can marry her, she’s lovely and I hate her mostly but you’re in love with her, you cunt, you-and so it’s fine and do what you will, marry her make her have babies I don’t care just shut up now, Prongs, for the love of God shut up shut up,” and Sirius was kissing him again, mumbling shut up against his lips in a passionate and also insane way. It was-a lot like not kissing Lily, and very familiar and not familiar at all, and James liked it more than he wanted to.
“So you’ll do it, then,” James said, much later, leaning against the door of his flat with bruised lips, and Sirius punched him and said yes and kissed him furiously again, so that was alright.
fin.