It is exactly three forty-seven in the morning when the Potters get the most unexpected of knocks on their door.
The house elf gets there first - Widgie, dear soul, and Sirius has always liked her - knows Sirius by sight, by now. He'd been over enough times, after all. Had enough pictures littered about James' room of the Marauders for her to pick out faces by now. She was terribly bright, and Sirius sat at the front porch, vaguely wondering just why he couldn't have a cool house elf like Widgie, why he was left with a grumpy old mumbler like Kreacher.
By the time they'd been woken and had made their way downstairs to see what Widgie was fumbling about, there were one hundred and thirty pounds of sopping wet Black in their living room, dripping all over the carpet and beaming the biggest smile of his life.
"Hello, other family!" he chirrups, jovially.
"James?" his mother prompted.
James, still not awake, probably grunted out a question-sounding noise, to which Sirius threw his arms into the air, excitedly dripping more water. Thunder crackled outside, with flicks of lightning between, howling winds and the works, and the source of the horrible amounts of wet were explained very shortly. Sirius' appearance, however, was not.
"Honey, you're not supposed to be here until next week," Mrs. Potter kindly reminds him.
"Change of plans?" Sirius replies, grinning sheepishly. "I thought I'd surprise you guys."
"At... the crack of dawn. Not even." James' father has incredibly strong genes. He has scraggly jet black hair (dotted with gray, now, but Sirius had seen pictures), a strong jaw, and wiry glasses that he's just removed to rub at his eyes, probably confusedly.
Sirius beams. "Yeah, why not? Better time than ever. I find myself temporarily without a home and yadda yadda, so I figured I'd try here! I've always liked it better."
"Pardon?" asks James' mother.
"Is there something to eat?" Sirius rebutes, brightly.
It takes an incredibly well-adorned sandwich, a handful of Snickerdoodles, a glass of milk, and Mr. Potter's very best Stern Voice to finally coax out the answer - or at least bits of an answer, as Sirius tended to dodge around emotions like he did homework: like the plague. Gotten into a fight with the parents, mother had wigged, Sirius had taken off, and one Knight Bus ride later, he was there.
"You could have taken the Floo," his mum reminds, weakly. "You might not have gotten so wet."
Sirius looks up from under the towels they've provided, apart from a few attempted drying spells, terrycloth hanging over his head like some kind of strange hood. He grins cheekily and unbothered.
With the promise they're going to talk about it at length in the morning, everyone goes their separate ways, paired off. The parents into their own room, and the two boys into James'. James snorts a little; not because he's surprised, but more because he knows just how much sleep his parents are going to be getting, and what is going to be the topic of the night: Do We Keep the Puppy?
"You look like shit," James kindly reminds Sirius as they enter the room, Sirius strips off the towels. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fucking freezing," Sirius grins again, arms folded tight as he shivers his way through his syllables.
It's not that it can take an idiot to tell when Sirius is upset, because it doesn't. It takes more than that. It takes a lot more. Like nearly six years of friendship more. The only way someone could tell Sirius was off was if they had some kind of secret line tapped into his mind, like James seemed to have. Like they had their own telephone between each other's skulls so they could transmit pervy images back and forth. But even with the phone line. He knows just how well the bloke can hide anything. He knows it takes a crowbar and ten yards of fishing line to drag it out of him, kicking and screaming.
Sirius steals a blanket and bundles himself up, wiggling all over the place, the excited puppy Padfoot is, starting to toe through the duffel bag he's brought along with him. James asks exactly four more times throughout the course of their conversation if he's okay. Sirius has varying rebuttals, either changing the subject or parrying a question right back. James decides it's all right to go in search of more blankets to put him up in the room for the night.
Yes, he's fully aware their house has two other guest bedrooms, fully made-up and ready.
Yes, he's also fully aware that there is no way in hell that Sirius is staying in one of those tonight.
When he returns, Sirius is in his boxers - new, dry boxers, a purpose which is kind of defeated by the tendrils of wet still dripping downward from his hair, shaggy and tangled and still hanging all over the place like spaghetti. He has the contents of the duffel bag strewn across James' desk, haphazardly - undies, shirts, a robe, some ties, socks and the like. His wand is forgotten on the floor, there's a few overturned textbooks littered beside, and Sirius is watching the emptied bag by his feet, like he expects it to start moving. He looks up at James; his smile is very slow, and very tragic.
"I just realized I didn't pack any pajamas."
It's only then, when Sirius fitfully folds his arms, when he ducks his head a little and observes this mess strewn all over the room, that James realizes what he sees is what he gets. This so-called heap he was just sneering over is, currently, the entire contents of a one Sirius Black's life, and when Sirius stops moving entirely, James forgets about blankets, drops things onto the floor and crosses the room to grab the guy into a giant, blistering hug.
Sirius clings back like he's drowning, then, all that rain water and cold creeping in, and when his nails dig into James' shirt and he starts shaking again, James starts hearing some kind of foreign sound, heart-wrenching and, at the same time, horrifying.
Because Sirius Black doesn't cry. Sirius Black is the notorious tough guy, and nothing gets to him. Things get bottled up, shoved into boxes, locked away and swept under rugs. So to have him laying himself out, right there, grabbing onto James like he might sink into the floorboards if he lets go... it's bloody terrifying.
"I didn't know where else to go," Sirius gets out, into his shoulder, gravelly and barked out like a sob, "I didn't have anywhere else to go," and he's vaguely aware he's probably getting James' shirt all snotty. James apparently doesn't care, because he leans back, to look Sirius in the eyes and tell him that he made the right choice, that this has always been his home, and of course he's allowed here, whenever he wants, as long as he wants.
When they kiss, it's strangely chaste, and careful, like they're afraid one of them might break.
James' and Sirius' friendship had never been just a friendship, because it wasn't that easily definable. Because they were something entirely more - they weren't just ifriends/i, but then it wasn't like they were boyfriends, or fuck buddies, or in love. It wasn't even like they were brothers, unfamiliar territory for both of them - James for being an only child, Sirius for having an entirely skewed reality of just what the word 'family' meant. Their friendship wasn't a friendship because James was Sirius' entire other half. Like they'd been handcuffed together sometime around the end of first year, and neither of them had the heart to think about just what happened when they had to start taking those off.
It's not that they haven't fooled around before. Because they have. Random spin-the-bottle kisses, turned into drunken gropefests, turned into curious teenage boys fooling about at random intervals, and they wondered when the lines between them had started smudging that little bit. Started wondering if they'd ever really had lines around their friendship, and if it just was what it was.
What this was, ended up being... well. It definitely escalated, and rather quickly. A kiss turned into hands, everywhere. Turned into James' shirt off and the two were onto the bed, Sirius' thigh between James' own, his hips fucking against James. Everything was quick and harried and very urgent, without much thought behind it - just the sound of rustling and movement and ragged breathing, and Sirius' sharp sort of gasp when they're finally over the edge. So much for clean boxers.
Sirius' hair drips a few offending drops onto James' shoulders. Sirius grins.
This is apparently labeled, now, as something they have done, but never have to talk about. Without a word, a mutual agreement. James shoves him off and laughs, thinks about things that are very much not the Black estate to address him with. "You're getting everything wet, and no longer in the fun, naughty way," he accuses. Sirius shakes his head like a drenched puppy, rubs it all over James' shoulder, and once James grumbles something out about blankets, or possibly muffins, by the time Sirius is back with one of the the comforters - the nice dry one, not the one Sirius got all sopping earlier, bundling up in it - James is already snoozing. Sirius sticks his glasses up on the bedside table and falls all over him, with only a tired snuffle of protest.
"Glad we're mates, James," Sirius mumbles into his shoulder, and traces lines on his skin.
James snores in return.
But it's enough. They've always been enough.