Disclaimer: All characters, situations, etc. etc. etc. belong to JKR and... those other people. Heh.
o.o.o.o
Sirius lay on the floor, a dozing baby Harry curled up and resting on his chest. Pale, serious grey eyes were fixed on the top of that head of unruly black fuzz. In the hall, the Potters' grandfather clock was ticking away the minutes, inescapably reminding him of the time. A knot was slowly forming in his chest, getting larger with every minute that slipped by.
He should have stayed home, he knew he should have.
Lily shifted on the couch, hugging herself and sighing again, and Sirius remembered why he hadn't stayed home. He'd had to come, of course, because it was James out there, and Lily still here, and little Harry. It was Lily and James.
"Is he all right?" Lily asked, not Sirius but something neither of them could see, something that hung in the room, felt like a shroud and kept them from breathing normally. There was no answer, and they both wished there could have been.
"He'll be fine," Sirius whispered, though he knew that his saying it didn't make it any more likely to come true. "He always is."
Lily looked at Harry, the miniature little James wrapped in Sirius's arms, and her eyes went glassier. "Albus has never asked him... He's always... This time is..." She couldn't complete her thought, no matter how she tried to frame it. Sirius didn't blame her. He couldn't say it out loud, either.
Sirius raised his head, just slightly because he didn't want to disturb Harry, but enough that he could look Lily in the eye over the baby's head. "James will be fine. He'd never leave you and Harry alone, Lil."
Lil smiled almost wistfully. "Harry and I have you," she said, solemnly. There was a whisper of a long-ago promise in her voice, mixed with the anxiety over her husband's well-being. "We'll always have you, won't we, Sirius?"
Sirius dropped his head back to the floor, breaking eye contact. His heart was beating a little faster even than before, his breath didn't want to come right. They never talked about that, never acknowledged it, never spoke like this.
She'd crossed them into forbidden territory.
"Lily..."
There was no-one so close to Sirius as the Potters. James was his best friend, his very best friend, the owner of the life that Sirius treasured above all others, the person for whom Sirius would let himself go to Hell, if it was necessary. Little Harry was as much a son as Sirius ever expected to have, the only child he could ever dream of loving as he did. And Lily...
Sirius had never known quite where to put Lily.
He'd never bothered much with girls. He'd had the Marauders, and he'd been too busy living his life to worry about relationships and sex. He'd never needed that sort of thing to be happy, had never found it odd that he wasn't interested enough to do anything but look admiringly at pretty females. Lily was different, because he'd always known she existed, always paid attention, always knew when she was around because James just didn't know how to be subtle. Lily was the only female he really cared about, now that James's mum was dead. He had no idea what was normal, except Lily.
But sometimes he felt things for Lily that he didn't think he was supposed to feel about his best mate's wife.
"Lily..."
The beautiful redheaded woman smiled, pretending she didn't hear the slightly pleading note in his voice. She looked away from her son and his second-best-father. She knew she wasn't supposed to bring that up, knew it hurt Sirius to think about it because he was never quite sure where loyalty ended and betrayal began. She'd needed to just then, though.
She'd needed to remind herself that even if she lost James -- the James she loved and cherished as much as Sirius did -- she would have someone almost as good. Different, but almost as good, on a completely different scale of measurement.
She's needed to say that, because she was scared. She didn't know why Dumbledore had chosen James, only James, for this mission of his, she hadn't even been told what it was, but the startlingly mortal expression on James's face as he left had been enough to convince her that she ought to be terrified. She was.
Then Sirius had come over and she had been been so relieved to realize that they weren't both gone -- how could she have bourn that? -- that she'd only been scared. At least she had something, something she could count on, and the person who evinced it so clearly, spread on her living room rug.
"Sirius," she whispered, the neutrality of her voice calming, soothing his almost-traitorous heart.
Few things Lily was sure of, in her war-torn life where surety could get you dead. One was the love of her husband, one was the love for her husband, and one was the conviction that their son deserved a better world to grow up it. Another... was Sirius.
Sirius would love anything James did. Sirius would do anything James wanted him to. Sirius would go anywhere James said, see only as James wanted him to see, because he trusted James, as he trusted nothing else. Sirius, who owed the continuation of his own goodness to his best friend, would never abandon anything of James's... even his wife and child.
And that made it bearable -- not all right, but bearable -- if James didn't come back.