James despises secrets. He feels that he has a right to know everything he wishes to know. That he chooses to remain ignorant about some things... Well. It's his decision. He still has control.
Lily flaunts her power over him. Secrets glimmer in her eyes, perch at the corners of her smile, and if he could just reach and capture that smile, that glinting... something... If he could just trap her in his arms, her dancing, flying, sparkling laugh... Plunder it from her mouth, her body... If only... If only... She teases him and that infuriates him.
He covets her secrets. He wants them so badly it keeps him up at night; curtains pulled closed, staring into the darkness, yanking off and thinking of ways to attain her. His obsession disgusts him, but he can only imagine a single cure. If it even is possible to possess that... that glimmer. Even if he had her pinned beneath him, completely at his mercy, he suspects she would still be laughing, eluding him.
As much as he wants to slake his need for Lily, he wants to reduce Severus Snape into insignificance. The greasy Syltherin is nothing but an accumulation of things hinted at but never said. Silent and dark and creeping through the filth of his own shame. He had his slinking, shrinking, unobtrusive habits before James ever laid eyes on him; it was up to James to take offense at the Darkness that clings to Severus like a smog. The horror, the power, the endless possibilities... It's all there, lurking in Severus's black eyes, nothing but fleeting shadows and shapes.
James doesn't want to know what goes in Severus's mind. He doesn't want to understand Severus at all. By belittling Severus, steadily crushing him... James tries to deny the fact that the Darkness he despises could be powerful enough to destroy him.
Then... There is Sirius.
Sirius and James have no secrets.
There are things, many things, that they don't acknowledge. Their world is limited to school and daydreams and girls and quidditch. And Sirius's family, Sirius's mood swings, James's need to be in control... These things are present between them, known of, but never spoken out loud. Their friendship balances on the unspoken foundations of leader and subordinate, weak and strong, and shared goals with dissimilar origins.
James says nothing about Sirius and Remus and the... connection, almost palpable, that glues them to each other, gaze to gaze, soul to soul. Possessing and possessed. They have their own dynamic, present but subtly shifting since the very first moment that Sirius and James walked into what they thought was an empty compartment, walked into the story of a sleepy, shy, delicate-looking boy. James was wary, but Sirius was excited, fascinated, enthralled.
James says nothing, but he sees very well.
Remus. Has. Secrets.
Werewolf barely begins to encompass the lies that dwell within those passive eyes.