Title: Performance Anxiety
Author: Mad Maudlin
Category: Humor
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: James/Lily, Peter/Bridesmaid
Summary: Sirius does his duty as best man, and then some.

A/N: This is for Tarie, who posed a James/Lily challenge that I unfortunately didn't have time to answer. Since she was feeling a bit of performance anxiety herself about the Harry/Ron FQF, I thought writing her this might cheer her up.

For the record, I imagined that James and Lily would have a wedding ceremony that was adapted so all Lily's Muggle friends and family could participate without having to expose them to the wizarding world outright. Just in case you were wondering why there's microphones and Coke at a wizard wedding.

Performance Anxiety
by Mad Maudlin
for Tarie (since I'm too late for the ficathon)

Sirius Black bounded up onto the little stage of the reception hall, overshot and tumbled off the other side. He bounced back up with remarkable alacrity and anchored himself on the...whazzacallit...the mykofoam pole...sort of thing. "Hello!" he shouted, then jumped as his voice bounced back at him, amplified a dozen times. Better than a Sonorus charm, that. He pointed the bulbous end of the makofoam at his mouth and tried again. "Er...Hello!"

There was spontaneous applause from a few corners of the room, but most of the guests were as deep in their drinks as Sirius or deeper. It was a bit late in the reception for the best man speech, but he'd been rather occupied with...ah...preparing the honeymoon carriage for the bride and groom, and then by partaking of the open bar. He'd never had some of these Muggle drinks before, and he found that while they didn't pack the same immediate punch as, say, a bottle Ogden's finest, they were certainly more than adequate for getting dead drunk.

He waved jauntily to Remus, who was seated in a corner with the same glass of wine he'd been nursing most of the night; prickly prat didn't know how to have fun. Evans's father had planted himself at the bar rather early in the evening, her sister had skived off early and Peter was apparently trying to bag himself a bridesmaid. "It's wonderful to see everyone here," he told the mygropone, "to be here together, celebrating the married of out dear friend Jamie and his bird...er...bride...yeah. Together. It's spabsolutely iffing."

Grinning at his own eloquence, Sirius located the bride and groom, hoping for encouragement. Evans looked like she'd been eating a lemon, or perhaps her sister—yeah, that's where the old stick went, bitch was bitter enough. Or sour. Were lemons bitter or sour...? Oh, right, the guests. The groom. He waved to James, but James didn't respond; he was staring at his plate with a funny sort of contorted expression. Had he even drunk anything tonight? "Potter!" Sirius barked. "Are you drunk yet?"

"Get on with the speech!" James said. He wasn't laughing. Why wasn't James laughing?

Sirius composed himself, used the bykrothome post to steer the world back arights, and tried again. "Everyone," he said, "I'd like to propose a toast. Drinks!" He waved over one of the few waiters who hadn't yet abandoned the proceedings and snagged a glass off his tray. "To Jamie, because he is my friend, and to Evans, because she is fit, and she was willing to marry the stupid bastard. And to their marriage, may it be long, and happy, and...stuff...and..." He felt he needed to end this on a high note. "And now Prongs can get lucky every night of the week! Huzzah!"

He reached out, tried to toast, and fell off the stage, taking the micorobone with him. He heard laughter and applause, so he assumed his toast was well received, and set about remembering how his limbs worked. Hands pulled him before he got very far; he had to blink a few times before he recognized Remus and Peter, dragging him off to the side of the room. "Hey. Leggo."

"Hardly," Remus said. He had the same lemony sort of look as Evans. Sirius wondered who had screwed up. He liked watching Remus get angry so long as it wasn't him.

They deposited him in the cloakroom, on a nice plushy chair. A good chair to sleep in, Sirius decided. He could quite a kip. He settled in and was just preparing to fall asleep when he heard Remus say, "Stand back, he's not going to like this."

"Like what?" Sirius asked, before somebody jammed some kind of bottle in his mouth and poured. The liquid tasted like peppermints, rather pleasant, really, and he made the mistake of swallowing the first mouthful or so.

The potion hit him between the eyes like a rampaging elephant. His stomach clenched, his skull buzzed, his eyeballs throbbed and he could've sworn he felt his liver explode. He fell to the ground and lay for a few moments in agony as the effects of the sobriety potion receded. When he looked up, Remus was smiling a bit grimly, and Peter was hovering at the side of the comfy chair as if he were preparing to dive for cover.

"That," Sirius managed to get out, "is a terrible thing to spring on a man."

"Desperate times call for desperate measures," Remus said blandly.

Peter added quickly, "It wasn't my idea, you know."

Sirius wanted to glare, but his eyes hurt too much to do it properly. "I'm going to be sick."

"No, you're going to apologize to James and Lily first," Remus said gently.

"What for?"

"Do you remember the last five minutes?"

Sirius sat up and rubbed his temples. Realization struck, and it was worse than the potion. "Oh, shit."

"Yes."

"Oh, shit."

"I thought it was rather funny," Peter said, but when Remus and Sirius both glared at him, he scooted behind the chair.

After a few moments of working up the will, Sirius shook his head. "They're going to kill me."

"Yes, I expect they will," Remus said. "But look on the bright side, Lily's father is even drunker than you were."

"How's that a bright side?"

"It means he probably won't kill you."

Sirius groaned, and tried to get his feet under him. "C'mon, Moony, let's go kiss and make up with Mrs. Prongs."

"Oh, no." Remus helped Sirius up, but then stepped away, leaving him to wobble along on his own. "I'm not the one who fucked up here. You're doing this yourself."

"Mooooneeeeee..." Sirius wailed, but there was no heart in it; he's learned that look in Remus's eyes by now. He'd been pushed to his considerable limits, and was not going to be pushed any further. Sirius sighed. "All right. I'll apologize. For the record, I'd like to be cremated and have my ashes scattered in the locker room of the Holyhead Harpies."

"That's the lecherous bastard I know." Remus patted him on the shoulder and pushed him gently in the direction of the banquet hall.

"Good luck with your bridesmaid, Peter," Sirius said to the chair. "Remember me fondly after I die."

Remus pushed him a little less gently. "Go."

"Right."

Sirius ended up skulking about the edges of the room for a while, though, waiting for Evans to lose the murderous gleam in her eye. He considered getting himself a drink to bolster his nerve, but that would really just end up starting the whole process over again. The bartender was a Muggle and had never heard of Butterbeer, so Sirius stuck with some fizzy concoction called Kokukolah that made his nose itch like fury.

Watching the happy couple, though, he started noticing something odd. James had been a nervous wreck in the hours before the ceremony, but after he actually had the ring on his finger he'd been grinning so widely it looks like his ears might come off. Now, however, the grin had faded, and though he wasn't climbing the walls as he had that morning, he had the same wild look in his eye, like a cornered animal. Evans—well, Lily, he supposed, he ought to get used to calling her that—still looked happy when she didn't look like she planning Sirius' execution, patting James on the hand and whispering in his ear. What was the matter with Prongs?

Sirius braced himself, downed the rest of his fizzy drink, and marched up to the table. Evans glared like murder as soon as she caught sight of him, so before she could draw her wand (if she'd found a place to hide it in that dress of hers) Sirius dropped to his knees. "I humbly beseech your forgiveness upon my unworthy soul," he said. "I have superceded all previous standards of prattiness and throw myself upon your tender mercies."

There was a long period of silence; nervous, Sirius peeked up. Evans was smirking dangerously. "Upon our mercies, do you?"

"Indeed."

"Hmmm..." Sirius started to sweat in his Muggle fancy clothes. "What do you think, James? What's appropriate punishment for this miscreant?"

"Huh—?" Sirius and Evans both frowned and the distracted look on James's face. "Oh, um. Forty lashes with a wet noodle," the groom said without much feeling.

Evans reached out and squeezed his hand. "James? Are you okay?"

"Oh, fine, I'm fine—" But he suddenly stood up, so fast he nearly upset his chair. "I just—I need—er—Sirius, can I talk to you alone?"

Oh, shit, James is going to kill me, Sirius thought. And here he'd been worried about Evans. "Er—sure, mate, anything you say."

"Fabulous." James leaned over and kissed Evans' cheek. "This'll only take a minute, I promise."

"All right." She smiled at her husband, but not at Sirius. "You owe us, Black. You owe us several."

Sirius let James drag him into the men's lavatory, and then straight back out when it appeared that Peter had in fact gotten his bridesmaid. They eventually found a quite space in the back, next to the wreckage of the truly massive five-flavored wedding cake. Sirius was about to start apologizing profusely to James when the shorter man spun around and seized him by the lapels of his jacket. "I'm sorry!" Sirius squealed.

"What? No—" James shook his head. "Padfoot, you've got to help me."

Sirius studied his friend as his panic receded. Face pale, eyes wide, palms sweaty—"You're not going to be sick, are you?"

"No!" James released Sirius' jacket and began to pace. "No, I'm not, I—I have no idea what to do."

"About what?"

"About Lily! About the honeymoon!" His voice dropped desperately low. "About tonight."

Sirius thought this over very carefully. "Prongs," he said evenly, "as I've said before, I do not read your mind. What about Evans and the honeymoon?"

James paced a few more rounds, then stepped very close to Sirius, and spoke in a whisper, "I don't know if I'll be able to...to fulfill my husbandly duties."

"In English, please?"

James growled. "Do I have to spell it out for you?"

"Apparently."

Sirius watched his friend hem and haw for a minute, apparently unable to spit out whatever the hell was bothering him. Finally he said, "Look, Padfoot, I don't want this—" and he cocked his elbow, holding his hand and fingers out stiffly at an angle, "—to end up like this."

Sirius watched James relax his hand and finger until they pointed slackly towards the floor. Oh. "Oh."

"Yes."

Sirius licked his lips, glad to be sober for this particular conversation. "James," he said carefully, "I know you're not a virgin."

"I'm not."

"But Evans...?"

James sighed. "Lily and I haven't gone past the first hoop."

"The first hoop?" Sirius's eyes bulged out. "I thought—you mean—all those times you said you and Evans were studying—?"

"We were in the library," James said morosely. "Usually."

Sirius shook his head. "Merlin's wrinkly old balls, Prongs, and here I was jealous—but what's that got to do with your—er, duties?"

"Because—look, what if it's not what she's expecting it to be? What if I disappoint her? What if...what if I'm a crap lover and she regrets marry me?"

The poor bastard really did look terrified, Sirius thought. Trust James to get this worked up about something so silly. "Prongs, first, you need to sit down or you'll hyperventilate."

James sat.

"Now..." Sirius groped for words. What the hell do you say to your best mate in a situation like this? "Look, it's not like Evans has much basis for comparison..."

"But what if—"

"Shh!" Sirius thought desperately. "Look. Okay. Prongs, look."

"Looking," James said, with and expression of sheer desperation.

Sirius was at a loss for a moment, so he temporized. "Look. So, you're...you're married now. You and Evans. Death do us part and all. Right?"

"Right."

"So that means...that means you're going to be shagging her for a good long while, doesn't it?"

James blinked. "Well, of course, Sirius, but what—"

"Don't interrupt me," Sirius said, finally getting an idea. "Right. So you and Evans are going to be together for the rest of your lives. Death part you and all. Think about that."

"Think about what?"

Sirius leaned in and spoke very softly. "You are going to be able to shag Evans every day for the rest of your life. Every. Damned. Day. Possible more than once a day. For the rest. Of. Your. Life."

"So?"

"So," Sirius said with a small smile, "so what if you don't, er, get the job done tonight? 'S no big deal. You're going to have another chance to get it right tomorrow...and the next day...and the next."

James's eyes were now as big as saucers. "Oh."

"Yes." Sirius straightened and clapped his friend warmly on the shoulder. "If you haven't got to at least the second hoop by now, I don't think Evans is going to demand a divorce when you can't make it straight to the third. Trust me."

James was quiet for a long, long time, but when he finally met Sirius' eyes again that ear-popping smile was back in place. "Thanks, Padfoot. I owe you one."

"Actually, after the toast I think we're about even. But you're welcome." Sirius hoisted him out the chair and gave him a brief, brotherly hug. "Now go make sure your wife doesn't gut me."

"Okay."

"Oh, and Prongs?"

James paused.

"If all else fails..." Sirius glanced around, then whispered in his friend's ear. "There's a box of chocolates in the carriage. Trying the little round ones."

"The—?"

"Trust me."

James grinned, wrung Sirius' hand once more, and marched back to his seat next to Lily with a spring in his step.