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James couldn't pinpoint when it happened. Wasn't sure of the exact moment. He just remembered flashes. Memories. Moments.
It started when Sirius was fourteen.
A case could be made that none of them were normal when they were fourteen, but Sirius was worse than the rest of them.
At fourteen, Sirius had kissed both boys and girls. He had felt up girls and stuck his hand down boy's pants. At fourteen he was no longer a virgin. He had dabbled in drugs and the whole of the marauders by then were no strangers to alcohol.
At fourteen Sirius stood in the rain outside of James' house with a cigarette in his mouth.
He went through the various packs in blind taste tests that James kept score of before settling on Camel as his brand.
Remus once tried to talk Sirius out of it, saying it was a bad habit, that it would kill him someday.
James just remembers the bemused look on Sirius face as he blew out an acrid cloud of blue white smoke, his lips curling at the corners.
"As far as I can tell Moony, everything is bad for me in life."
It was a morbid thought, but reasonable at the time. Sirius' life contrasted darkly to the rest of theirs in ways that James was sure they would never truly understand. No matter how hard they tried.
It wasn't peer pressure. Or social anxiety. Or anything of the sort that made him start.
It was Sirius.
It was wanting to share something with Sirius.
Not that they didn't share other things, like a dorm room, or the bathroom, or the map, or pranks, or muggle t-shirts.
But the cigarettes seemed different. More sacred. More intimate.
He would watch Sirius smoke sometimes.
Sirius would perch himself on the bookshelf by the window, wrapped up in a jumper or a flannel shirt, his black hair askew.
It was something about the movements, the motions, the way Sirius breathed it in.
His eyes would soften, his face would relax. His chin tilted up, ever so slightly. His adam's apple moving slowly in his long pale neck. His lips, dry and cracked, enveloping that little toxic tube and breathing it in. His cheeks, hallowed and thin as he sucked the life of out the cigarette. James would watch as the blue white smoke floated away. Curling from his nostrils and his lips against the black sky. Blown out the window, into the cool night air.
James remembers his first time, when the party was over and the sun had set and he and Sirius were alone up on the astronomy tower in the cold. Remembers the small flame from Sirius' cheap gas station lighter, remembers the way his voice shook when he asked for a cigarette. The way Sirius looked at him, not surprised but not excited either. Just calm and expecting. He smiled when James breathed it in that first time and coughed, smiled and laughed and blew a smoke ring in his face. It wasn't pleasant, James remembers. The taste was toxic and it burned in his mouth, his lungs, but he could see why Sirius did it. Could see the appeal. The addiction of them.
When they were sixteen Sirius came around, beaten and bruised and unable to forgive himself for the Prank.
He sat on James' window sill and chain smoked his way through a whole pack before the tears welled up in his eyes.
That summer they locked themselves in the shed in the backyard and watched old muggle movies. Built nests of pillows and blankets and worked their ways through their cigarettes as they started at the silver screen. How to marry a millionaire. Breakfast at Tiffany's. Casablanca.
Marilyn Monroe, leaning against the door frame with a cigarette in her perfect mouth. The scene burned itself into James' memory.
He remembers watching Sirius out of the corner of his eye. Seeing how he sucked on his cigarette and lost himself in the movie, the bulge in his pants, the glazed look in his eye.
He always did have a thing for bottle blonds with red lips.
They went to the beach that summer too, rode their bikes all the way down the highway to get there. James remembers watching Sirius strip down to his swim trunks, running into the ocean, laughing wildly. The first time he had truly laughed all summer.
They lay on their beach towels in the sand after, James with his books, Sirius with his cigarettes.
His stripped back, covered in scars glistened with water droplets as he propped himself up on his elbows. Cigarette dangling from his long fingers while he watched James read his Quidditch plays.
It became their thing. Their ritual. Their late night treat.
Sitting in the dark with their cigarettes, talking about anything and everything. Sometimes they would laugh, uncontrollably, for what seemed like hours. Sometimes they would cry, Sirius' gray eyes leaking clear tears while James sobbed into his shoulder.
Sometimes there was nothing at all. Just this vast, comforting silence that fell like a heavy blanket around their shoulders.
James remembers when Lily broke his heart, for the last time. Remembers Sirius nearly breaking down his door to get into his apartment.
Sirius physically picked him up off the floor and sat him roughly down on the couch. He had never been good with emotions and locked himself in the kitchen while James curled in on himself, sobbing with a box of tissues.
Eventually Sirius emerged with tea that consisted of more sugar and milk than tea and a brand new pack of cigarettes.
He sank to the floor in front of James, his hands, with his long thin fingers rested on James' knees and he asked him what to do.
"What do you want me to do James?" His voice as soft as it would go.
"Do you want me to find her? Bring her back to you? Do you want me to hurt her? Hurt someone else?"
He looked so lost there. Like a dog, with nowhere to go. Lost and confused and hurting because James was hurting.
"What do you want me to do?"
He had asked him, voice shaking.
And James couldn't answer, tears were dripping down his face, wetting his shirt and sweatpants. Snot was running from his nose and he couldn't answer.
"Just…give me a cigarette." He whispered finally, "Give me a cigarette and stay."
"Okay." Sirius nodded, just glad to have something to do.
He opened the new pack and pulled out one for James and one for himself. They sat there, side by side on James' couch, Sirius pulling out his custom zippo lighter with the grim scratched on it and lit James' first, before his own.
His hands shook, James remembers that, how his own hands had shook then, lifting that cigarette to his lips.
"Just stay here. With me."
He had said. Pleaded. Begged.
Sirius blew out a cloud of that familiar caustic smoke, watching the twisting, curling tendrils and nodded.
"Okay."
His eyes were closed, his chin tilted up, the cigarette held gently between his fingers and he was everything James had ever needed in that moment.
"Okay."
He and Lily never managed to work it out after that.
They tried, but it just kept falling apart. He remembers the time Sirius nearly killed her, remembers how his cigarette had fallen to the ground, sparks dancing on the sidewalk as he wrapped his hands around her neck.
James had ripped Sirius away from her then, shoving him back on the pavement hard and Sirius had just lay there, staring up at him with blood oozing from his shredded skin. His cigarette smoking in a puddle next to him.
He always was violent. They always were violent.
James remembers all these things.
He does, so vividly that it feels like just yesterday that they happened. Just yesterday that he and Sirius were smoking those cigarettes.
He doesn't remember the turn though, can't remember the precise moment when he fell for Sirius. When things changed between them.
Or if they had ever changed.
The moonlight filters through the cheap plastic blinds on the window and falls in jagged lines across Sirius' naked back. The scars are still there, though they have faded over time.
In the dark, his profile is vividly sharp, smoke curling from his lips as he lifts the cigarette to his mouth. James can't take his eyes off him.
He's hot and sweaty but the air outside of the blankets is freezing cold so he stays curled up in bed while Sirius rummages around the room, pulling on some boxers one handed, kicking a pile of dirty clothes around, looking for something. The smoke seems to follow him around the room, little white clouds marking his place in the world.
At one point Sirius catches him looking and turns, face tired and drawn, but with a softness that comes with the cigarettes.
He smiles at him, this little smile where the corners of his mouth twitch ever so slightly and his lips seem to relax.
He's standing there, in the doorway, the light from the hallway illuminating him with that smile on his face and that cigarette in his hand and James laughs.
"You're like the female version of Marilyn." He says and Sirius gets it almost immediately and laughs, low and rumbling and gentle.
He leans against the door frame, hair falling in his eyes in a shaggy mess and watches James as James watches him.
"Do you want some tea?" He asks finally, letting out a breath of smoke with a smile.
James shakes his head, his own hair is an artful mess and he needs a haircut desperately.
"No, just…stay here, get me a cigarette would you?"
Rolling his eyes Sirius grabs the pack sitting on his dresser and crawls back into bed, handing James a cigarette.
They lay there in the dark, skin touching, smoke curling around them, eyes locked, voices low.
"These'll probably kill us, you know that right?"
Sirius smirked and leaned over, dry lips capturing James' for a brief moment.
"There's so much going on right now that could kill us that I'd be glad to die from cigarettes."
It was still a morbid thought, just as it had been years ago, a lifetime ago when Remus had first lecture Sirius about it. But it was also true.
James smiled and laughed, a real, genuine laugh and lifted his cigarette to his mouth, sucking in a deep breath, watching as the smoke left his mouth. Blue white against the dark shadows of the room and Sirius' tangled black hair and heavy lidded eyes.
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