Part Truths
They draw close, the two of them, a little too close even for a booth that's a little too small, and he knows that they shouldn't be alone together.
They brush against each other all too often, his knuckles against her wrist, her knee against his thigh, and there are no quick apologies, no polite shiftings of limbs. It's too unstudied to be unintentional, too unconscious to be anything but deliberate.
He wonders what she told James this time, wonders if it was a rounder lie than the calculated half-shrug he gave on the way out of their flat. He and Lily have taken to meeting like this, in dark pubs on darker evenings, and he knows James would paint it as something that it's not.
But he doesn't want to lie, so he deals in vague gestures and ambiguous words. And he convinces himself that all those part-truths only add up to a fraction of a fiction, and he's never lied to his best friend.
That's not right, though, because just then, she knocks back the last of her drink and smiles at him over the top of her glass, and he remembers telling James, sometime in their fourth year, that he didn't see what was so special about her.
And that was as round a lie as he's ever told, because the truth is he's always seen what's special about Lily Evans, seen it in vivid greens and reds and heard it in the soft lilt of her voice and felt it in his chest when she looks right at him.
And – he takes a long swig of his own drink – he sees it now.
What he can't fathom, though, is why she hasn't told, why she hasn't mentioned off-hand that she's going to meet Sirius, and no, it's not what it seems.
Because it's impossible that she shares his blacker thought, the one he's tried to ignore, that there's a hazy realm of potential somewhere at the bottom of their glasses, one that'll disappear as soon it's brought into the light. It's impossible that she, too, has been sustaining herself on the terrible promise of blurred imaginings made clear.
But then her elbow brushes his, and he finds that though she's looking away, there's a warm flush across her cheekbones. And he knows it's not so impossible, really.
He thinks they're better than this, knows she does too. Better than dark pubs and part-truths and brushed fingertips. Better than a hundred little betrayals and the smudged possibility of a bigger one.
But he wonders if it's all vanity disguised as nobility. Maybe they only want to think that they're better. Because if they're not, if they're not loyal Sirius and steady Lily, then they're just Sirius and Lily, and that's not nearly enough to survive on.
Because they've always lived on adjectives and self-image, the two of them, defined themselves by their descriptors. It's probably got something to do with being too lonely too young, this thing they do, taking other people's first impressions and clinging rather than correcting.
They mold themselves to fit, and if they broke the mold, became anything more than the cocky, careless, loyal boy and the confident, caring, steady girl, they'd probably disappear through the cracks.
He thinks it's sad, really, but he rather likes that they've got something no one else would understand. He likes that they're fucked up in the same way.
She meets his eyes, tucks flyaway copper strands behind her ear. "It's getting late," she says, and he feels something between relief and disappointment, the former because she's taken it out of his hands, whatever this is, and the latter because, well…
He'd hoped she wouldn't.
"Come back to mine?" she asks then. She smiles nervously and adds, "You know if you don't have a cup of tea you'll have a wicked hangover tomorrow."
He's not nearly drunk enough to get a hangover, and he thinks she knows it, but he lets his lips tilt into their usual smirk and says, "You always knew me too well, Evans." He realizes he's called her by her schoolgirl nickname, the one he used to use, before she belonged to someone else and long before that belonging was tangible as the ring he found in James's sock drawer two nights ago.
Her smile widens at the familiarity of it, though, and she stands, shrugs into her coat. He pays the tab and follows her out into the crisp December air, trying to convince himself that his palm at the small of her back is to keep her from slipping.
He knows they're playing with fire, and they're going to set themselves alight. But he'd be lying if he said he hasn't dreamed about the heat.
They'd come dangerously close to the edge, once.
It was their sixth year, and he was coarser then, she remembers, a little more insecure and so a little more cutting. His sharper margins weren't smoothed over yet. She was laid low those first few months, her heart hurting where a summer of Sev's pleading apologies and half-meant promises had stripped away at its surface.
At sixteen, they had all the bitter yearning of adulthood, the two of them, and all the fearless fierceness of youth. Maybe that's why it happened.
She came upon him at the top of the Astronomy Tower, one night. He was staring out over the dark grounds, his legs hanging out between the rails, but he turned when he heard her at the top step, took a drag on the cigarette dangling between his fingers.
"Go on, then," he said, the smoke filtering out between his lips. "Give me a detention."
He turned back, indifferent, and she felt a flash of annoyance, because Sev had waited for her after dinner again, and she'd come up here to be alone, not to catch rule breakers and certainly not to be sloppily deconstructed by someone who thought he had her all figured out.
So she sank down beside him and caught his wrist in her hand. He met her eyes, startled, and she held his gaze as she plucked the cigarette from his fingertips and brought it to her lips. She took a long draw.
"You don't know me at all, Black," she said, just managing to suppress the cough that scratched up her throat.
She raised her eyebrows at him, challenging, and when his expression shifted to amused interest, she suddenly understood why girls were always tripping over themselves to impress him. There was something dangerous about his good looks, something lethal about the casualness with which he carried them.
"Apparently not," he said, smiling, and the flicker of something in his eyes made her wonder if he knew what she was thinking. He took the cigarette back, tapped it. Little flecks of ash fell off the end, and she watched them twirl away on the breeze.
They talked until three thirty, high above the ground with their legs dangling over the edge, and after that they always seemed to find each other in the lonelier hours of the night.
It didn't take her long to discern that something had happened between him and the others. A rift had formed that left him ignored in halls and alone in classrooms and trying to pretend that he didn't give a damn when he did, and she didn't press.
She knew he'd tell her when he wanted to, or more likely when he needed to, because in those first few weeks, they were less about will and more about necessity, about trying to fill the empty spaces where friends had once laughed and listened and cared.
And try they did.
But when he finally told her what he'd done, she found that it didn't make her as angry as it should. She couldn't muster hatred, nor even the righteous indignation of that sunny spring day last year, because she'd had Sev then, and now all she had were brutal realizations. That the bricks didn't matter if the house wouldn't stand. That the parts didn't matter if the whole was cracked.
And this time, the whole of it was that Sev had broken her heart, and Sirius had lingered among the pieces.
And maybe that was selfish, but she realized then that there was nothing selfish about the two of them, really. Somewhere along the line, quiet nights and quieter moments had translated their lonely desperation into something else, something she wasn't sure she could describe.
Something frightening in its ineffability.
And one night at the start of December they were out on the pitch, and her eyes were on the murky, starless sky, and his were on her.
"Evans," he murmured, and the two syllables had nothing of the arrogant childishness of the past, had nothing of childishness at all, really, and nothing of arrogance either, but only a low uncertainty.
When she turned, he was closer than he'd been, and her lips formed a halting question just as it began to rain.
He swore, pulled her up, pulled her running through the downpour, and at the top of the steps, pulled her close.
One palm found the small of her back, the other the curve of her neck, and her heart was running riot and her breath was running ragged, and she would have shut her eyes against the onslaught of sensations if she hadn't felt a sudden desperation to memorize everything about him, there in the shadow of the castle. The dark mess of hair across his forehead and the dark dampness of rain across his shoulders and, gods, the dark intensity of his eyes, which were filled with all the urgency of sixteen.
"Sirius," a voice said, a moment before his lips found hers, and he froze, turned to see the figure standing in the hall behind. He let her go, stepped slowly away, and Remus took them in, an unfathomable expression on his face. "James and I," he said finally, "we want to talk to you about what happened."
The next day, Sirius found her between classes. "We can't," he said, not looking at her. "James likes you."
It held with the resolve of contrition.
She wonders, as they stand close on her doorstep, what Remus must think.
He's always been so observant, and he must have seen how Sirius looked at her as she tilted her chin up, angled herself away, finally said yes to James, must see how he looks at her now and suspect his gaze is a shadow of some darker sin.
They're too obvious, his eyes on her.
Her flat is dark when she lets them inside, and startlingly still. He's never come over alone, has never had reason to, and now that it's just the two of them, the space feels inexplicably strange. She can hear her heart thrumming in her chest, and she can hear him breathing.
She wonders what she'd do if he reached for her, right now, in the closeness of the dark, wonders what he'd do if she reached for him. She has no idea, and after one last, taut moment, she lights the lamps and steps away, as much to put distance between them as to put on the kettle.
"It's milk and two sugars, right?" she asks, and she realizes her voice is too loud, too forcibly bright.
"No sugar," he answers. He leans against the end of the counter, where the cheap linoleum marks the boundary between entry and kitchen, and adds, "I'll never sleep otherwise."
"You're a nightmare when you haven't slept," she observes.
He laughs softly. "I know."
She sets out mugs, milk, tea, and then there's nothing left to do, so she turns slowly to face him. She focuses her gaze on his fingers, which are drumming a quick rhythm against the surface, finds she can't meet his eyes, doesn't know why.
The kettle starts to whistle, and as she retrieves it, she thinks that lately, she hasn't known a lot of things to do with Sirius. She doesn't know why she suggested he stay, the night he came to the pub to tell her James was sorry, he had to work late, doesn't know why she never mentioned they had drinks, why she hasn't since.
Doesn't know why she's asked him here now.
After all, she's happy with James. They're a good fit, perfect, really, and now they've grown up, they fight only rarely, injure even less. It's easy for them to be in love. There's a simplicity to it, and a safety, too, because he's never had his heart broken, can't fathom its resilience, and so he's cautious with hers.
But, she thinks, maybe that's the problem.
Maybe she's never wanted love to anesthetize.
Because when she's with Sirius, she feels everything. It's in her bloodstream, this thing between them, and every beat of her heart presses guilt to her throat and longing to her fingertips, so that when their wrists finally brush, it's both damnation and deliverance.
And maybe, in some deep part of herself, she's always wanted those extremes, wanted a love that's an infinite madness, as immeasurable as it is ungovernable. A love that strips down to sin and sinew, to the ugly, gory bits of being human, then rushes up to ravishment and rapture, to passion that's nearly perfection. A love that's an exquisite sort of torment.
Or maybe…
Her fingers still where they're mixing in milk, the liquid swirls slowly to stillness with them.
Maybe it's simpler, and what she thought was ineffable is really the clearest thing of all. Maybe she's a little in love with him, and has been since they were sixteen.
She doesn't realize her hands are trembling until he's stayed them with his own. Her heart quickens, because his palms are warm and coarse against her knuckles, and he's drawn close, so close that when she finally meets his eyes, she can make out the darker flecks amid the gray.
He reaches up, brushes his thumb across her cheekbone. "Lily," he says, half awe and half uncertainty, and she knows that he's about to kiss her.
And that's when she realizes that it's both, what she feels for him, unendurable and enduring, but it hardly matters.
Because in the end, though it's Sirius she's a little in love with, it's Sirius who left two years ago, left and left her with sodden possibilities and his own regret. It's Sirius who threw her away, and James who never will.
Her palms find his chest, splay flat across the thin fabric of his shirt, and she feels him exhale, a shuddering breath, beneath her fingertips. She presses him away.
"We can't," she whispers, and she's not looking at him.
He knows he should step back, withdraw to the counter behind, or to the doorstep beyond, but he feels a sudden desperation to memorize everything about her, here in the shadow of his embrace. He knows they'll never be this close again.
She's saying words about faith and friendship and fidelity, and he knows they're true, but he can't help thinking that she shouldn't be with James, never should've been at all. James only loves what he thinks he knows of her, and he knows her whole but doesn't know her wholly, doesn't know all her painful creases, her hairline cracks, all the places where she bends but doesn't break.
Didn't know her when Snape broke her heart, the firmness in her jaw and the weakness in her voice, her tears on her sleeve and her cheek on his chest, doesn't know her now she's broken his.
And there it is, the truth of it among the lies: he fell for Lily Evans a long time ago.
But he gave her up then, when she needed him, knows he can do it again, now she doesn't. So he catches her gaze, smiles softly, presses a last kiss to her hair.
And lets himself hit the ground.
"It's all right, Lil. I should go," he says, and does.
They've always defined themselves by their adjectives, the two of them, and that cold winter night, they're both James's. James's best friend, James's girlfriend, James's Sirius, James's Lily.
And never each other's.
Author's Note: Re-titled and updated, 6/2/2013