Disclaimer: The characters, settings and situations depicted herein are the creative and legal property of JKR.

Warning: Angst. Implied self-prescriped medicinal over-consumption of an alcoholic beverage. Implied smoking.

Author's Notes: Written mostly because I was feeling rather bratty, and wanted to.

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There were few things as painful as visiting his beloved's home, but it was Sirius's weekly duty, and also his bittersweet reward, so every Tuesday evening he grimly set his jaw and went to see Lily and James. They were happy together, perfectly matched and heartbreakingly in love with each other. Any presence but their own almost seemed an injustice, but Sirius's was expected, required, and completely unavoidable, even if watching them was hurtful to him.

At least since Harry'd been born, he had something to distract him.

He never truly stayed long, finding it too painful to be all but overlooked by the person he loved and cooed over by the spouse, and had developed quite an adept hand at fishing excuses and previous engagements out of thin air, under the least hint that his presence had become even slightly unwelcome. He got so good at it, even, that occasionally even he wouldn't realize that his imagined errand wasn't real until he was halfway through completing it.

And it wasn't as if, half the time, he didn't really have a reason to leave. He kept himself remarkably busy even for a man who despised doing nothing; all so he didn't have time to spend thinking. Thinking was not, he had deduced after the activity resulted in the hundredth whooping hangover of previously unparalleled proportions, a good thing.

At least since he'd fallen so hopelessly in love, it wasn't.

Holidays were, of course, the worst of it. He was always extended an invitation, which he knew his conscience would not let him accept. And he always turned it down, despite desperately wanting to take them up on it, as the only thing awaiting him back at his flat was the ever-increasing collection of half-empty Firewhiskey bottles and barely touched packets of cigarettes.

He'd wondered, once, during a particularly dreadful command performance, what they would do if he actually took them up on their sham of an invitation. One of them, of course, would probably be over the moon with delight, but the other, the important one... might never forgive him.

At least not in this lifetime.

And of all those dreaded, horrid holidays -- of Easter, and Hallowe'en, and St Patrick's Day, and all those others he tried not to keep track of -- Christmas was by far the worst. Around the end of December, it seemed the whole world was obsessed with love and family and delight, and to someone like Sirius, who had none of those in his life, it was an absolute nightmare.

Unfortunately Christmas this year, he had just recently learned, fell distressingly close to a Tuesday. It was, in fact, a Thursday, which meant he was visiting Lily and James when their house was all done up in quaint Yuletide cheer, their faces aglow with warmth and affection and delicious excitement, and he had to make merry and pretend he might actually be doing something with himself this year, even though he had a sinking certainty that he wouldn't. But he nodded and teased and made like he actually had a real life outside of them.

At least when faced with the Potters, such little white lies rolled off his tongue with an ease that at other times he envied of himself.

This time, his excuse was nothing more complicated than a simple, hastily concocted, "I've several choices; I haven't yet decided," said through a parting of his lips that was only a grotesque imitation of a smile. But it was the truth, after a fashion -- would it be the whiskey, or the cigarettes, or whiskey and cigarettes? Or just an early-to-bed, followed by staring at the cracks in the ceiling of his darkened bedroom until the world finally had mercy and dawn threatened?

As usual, no polite refusal was proof against such ample kindness, and, as always, he was pressed one-sidedly to accept. "Oh, do come by!" Lily urged him, beaming as she usually did when she was standing somewhere holding Harry, with her husband's arm around them both. She glanced up at James, and then back to Sirius, adding, "You're really more than welcome, you know that."

At least before he'd finally started paying attention, he'd known that.

"You always are," added James, though to Sirius's highly tuned ear there was a bit of reluctance to the assertion. As there always was when James backed up his wife's invitations.

So Sirius forced a smile, agreed with them that yes, he knew, and promised Lily that if he had a chance, he would definitely drop in. But all the while his chest was seizing up, his heart turning into a cold, heavy lump in the middle of it, and he knew without a doubt that he would be spending Christmas alone again this year.

At least before they became Lily-and-James, the solitude had been his imagination.