A/N Wow, 2 stories in one night! I'm on a roll! Anyways, I started reading some of this pairing today, not for the first time, and was inspired to write this little piece that may or may not make sense. I don't know what's so intriguing about this couple. I guess because it's so taboo, but that's what makes it so... delicious. Everybody wants what they can't have.

"Well," he begins and he knows whatever he says won't even begin to summarize things, "there's this girl."

And she looks at him, green eyes wide, as though he's just shined a light in her face. "Who?" The word is soft as an echo, floating around until he can just feel it in his entire being, and he worries that she'll notice him trembling.

The word "you" rises up from his core like water vapor but fortunately he's able to catch it before he says anything that could shatter their porcelain friendship. And for a moment, he wonders if that would be a bad thing. But he remembers all too quickly about the jet haired boy who'd left the room only moments ago, and he knows that it would be worse than bad- it'd be torture.

So instead, with perhaps a little too much hesitancy that he's suspicious she's suspicious, he manages to breathe out, "You don't know her," and though they both know that's a lie (although she doesn't know it's as big a lie as it is, not yet) she just nods her head a little. He imagines the gleam in her eye to be disappointment, and he looks away too quickly.

"Okay," she says softly, finally, and he knows that she understands simply just by the way he had said "there's this girl" that "this girl" didn't love him back, and she was content to leave it at that. And she finally says, "I'm sorry," and later at night, when Sirius is lying awake in bed, weary at the prospect of living another day filled with lies to the people he loves most, he'll twist the words to be an apology that she can't be with him, that she loves James, that she's perfect and beautiful and so easy to love, and though it doesn't help him fall asleep any easier, the words make him the slimmest bit stronger.

And the next day, when he finds himself kissing some meaningless girl and running his fingers through her hair and imagining that the blond locks were red and that the dull brown eyes were the green that were always alight with knowing. And as he murmurs "Lily" and he feels the girl touching his mouth recoil he knows that a casual "I'm sorry" isn't going to be enough.

And he's learning that nothing is going to be enough. Nothing except her.

A/N So review please!

xx

Ali