Details/Notes: I don't quite like how I wrote this, I don't think the style fits perfectly nor do I think I managed to keep the line between author and character completely intact. That's often how I feel when I cut myself off from writing longer stories -- this would be quite long, if I were more happy with it.
A World of Thought:
In which Sirius ponders, and also refuses to, in completely the wrong order.
Sirius isn't thinking about it.
Not even --
He --
He shouldn't be thinking about it.
For the past seven years -- since Hogwarts -- he hasn't needed to think about anything beyond skipping detentions, and pranks, and end of the year exams he never paid any attention to anyway.
It was his place to not think, because only one of them could ever have existential crises, and Remus deserved that place much more than he did.
Sirius, after all, only had to deal with his family.
It wasn't like he didn't choose to do it, never mind that falling was so easy once he met James, it's just that now he was starting to think that it's done him more harm than good -- at least in today's world.
He wants --
Part of him wants to gain back that measure of fear he had when he was a child, and that he so desperately lost to the beckoning of his Gryffindor bravery. Fear makes things more real, more solid, and maybe then he wouldn't be faced with this clotting confusion knowing his best friend was going into hiding.
It was -- he shouldn't feel like laughing -- it was always something that happened to other people.
It didn't happen to him. It didn't happen to Lily and James.
At Hogwarts saying that, saying it in the right tone and at the right time, would be enough to make it go away. Just like James' bouts of anger at anything and everything he perceived as unfair, or Remus' lycanthropy, or his own family. There was always a solution lurking just under the surface.
Even if that solution was ignorance.
Now, ignorance is what's getting members of the Order killed on a regular basis.
It's been months now, and they still aren't sure who the spy is.
James is saying, "We can't afford to wait any longer. It's putting Lily and Harry in too much danger."
His fingernail catches and tears on the grove he's been scraping it along on James' kitchen table, but he doesn't look up, just stares at the ragged edges.
"Shit," he says.
Sirius should know, exactly, what James is thinking. That means everything is right with the world, that means things are normal, that means he's going to be okay.
He can't even tell if James is looking at him.
"Sirius you. You --"
"I know."
He does, intellectually, because even if he isn't used to thinking Sirius was still one of Hogwarts' top students.
People can and will change, and James isn't a kid anymore.
He's a father and a husband, and even though Sirius is still his best friend (that will never change) it means something different now than it did when they were both seventeen.
"When?" he asks, mostly because he can, and to fill the silence of his lack of thought.
He knows James is looking at him now, twitching with restlessness and staring at Sirius as if to reassure himself that he's still there.
Sirius hasn't stopped hiding behind the veil of his hair.
"It has to be soon. It just -- it feels wrong around here, you know?" James' hands slide down the legs of his trousers, his fingers twitch, his adam's apple bobs.
James is a collection of movements, pieced together seemingly without thought, and ever-realigning. He's energy, he's life.
He's been Sirius' life for almost a decade now.
"I know," he says, again, and feels very, very small, and also very stupid. He's ten years old and being forced into formal robes again. "Who knows?"
If he just keeps asking questions.
He wishes Remus was here, for one wild, impractical second before it fades away into that murky no-man's-land of not thinking about how he and Peter aren't to be trusted anymore. Sirius wonders how much higher he would be on that list if James hadn't thought to latch ontohim that first night in the dormitory.
It would be Remus, or it would be Peter, or it would be some nameless somebody.
That universe, Sirius has always thought, is much too easily shifted.
He also wonders, too much, what would be happening to him now if he had followed his family a little bit closer. If fear had won out over hate.
James doesn't help him.
"It's only you, and only -- Sirius," his hand is under Sirius' chin, pulling his face up to meet those sparking hazel eyes.
Hazel is a dangerous colour, because it's not really a colour at all, merely another drop of movement crawling over James's skin.
"-- we need a Secret Keeper."
"Of course," and he only says it right there, like that, because of the tension it releases in James' shoulders.
He shouldn't be thinking about any of this, because that hasn't been his job in years, but staring into James eyes with flashes of so many things igniting behind his own eyes, Sirius can't stop himself.
Isn't he just a bit too obvious?
End.
End Notes: Thank you for reading, and please take the time to review. Any words at all are appreciated.