Chapter Sixteen: This Alive, This Visceral, This Vulnerable, This Mortal
James may be livid with Sirius for inadvertently ensuring that the whole school, starting with Evans, knows James finds Evans attractive, but from the way he acts in public, you'd never know it. He's all jokes, waggling his eyebrows at anybody who asks him about his "feelings" for Evans and remarking shit like, "Yeah, she's gorgeous, but it's a pity about her personality—total tight-arse. But nobody's perfect, am I right?"
Evans is totally furious about James's treatment of the rumors, getting in his face more than once about things like objectification and sexism. "You tell me you want us to get along—you tell Black you like me—and then, when it blows back on you, you turn around and paint me like some caricature of a mad—"
"I didn't call you mad," says James with a smirk. "I called you a tight-arse and stuck-up, and I said you had a stick up your arse."
"That last one was Peter, mate," Sirius sniggers. "Give credit where credit's due."
"Right. And what did I call her again?"
"You called her holier-than-thou. Keep up, why don't you?"
He feels a little guilty for feeding into James's insults right after he'd actually been making an effort to be nicer to Evans—to get her to see him as more of an ally, even though he knew they were never going to be friends—but it's higher on his priority list to make things right with James, or at least to act like things are right with James when they're around other people. This isn't the first time Sirius has noticed that James's public and private personas can be radically different. He got a glimpse of it their first night in the dormitory, when the James who up to that point had been so confident admitted to being afraid of coming to Hogwarts, and he's seen it periodically since then—James acting wholly insecure about something around the Marauders, only to brush whatever's bothering him right off as soon as they leave the dormitory.
This time, of course, the thing making James feel insecure is something Sirius did, and that's a new feeling—so it's all Sirius can do to play along with James's public cockiness, if only to help James save face and try to redeem himself a little. James still won't make eye contact with him, unless it's to glare at him, when they're alone with Moony and Peter, but when they're around others, he grins at Sirius like they're in on it together—like Sirius gets to stay on the inside.
He doesn't dare ask James why he's being so nice to Sirius out in the rest of the castle, doesn't want to draw attention to what Sirius suspects James is feeling—the same craving for companionship that Sirius himself lives with every moment of every day. Sirius sure as hell knows that he doesn't want to admit this weakness to James, and he's positive he'd only embarrass James further by bringing it up.
He gets so caught up in egging James on that Alice actually takes it upon herself to intervene. They've just gotten into it with Evans as they're all walking out of Transfiguration, and Alice says, "Potter, Black, can I have a word with you both?" in a clipped voice that means business.
She takes them aside in an empty classroom. Sirius mostly just feels vaguely guilty, but James, who doesn't have a free next period, sounds thoroughly annoyed when he says, "Vector is going to dock points if I'm late for Arithmancy again, Abbott."
"Yeah? I'd have docked you myself just now if I were a prefect. You both need to lay off Lily before you give her a breakdown or something. I mean it."
"Why do you care, anyway?" James tosses out. "If you don't have a problem with us hexing Snivellus every week—"
"You shouldn't be doing that, either, but with his tendency toward Dark Magic and calling Mary a Mudblood every other day, I'm a lot more fussed about Lily. She's our friend."
Sirius laughs out loud at that. "You're kidding, right? She's made it extremely clear that she does not and never will see any of us as her friends."
Glaring at him, Alice says, "Maybe she's not terribly friendly, but can you blame her? The four of you—"
"—Are dicks," Sirius agrees, "but the four of you girls aren't, and she's rude as hell to all of you, too."
"None of us girls are…"
He wonders what's going through Alice's head right this second. She's someone who tends to pride herself on her rule-abiding and her propriety, and nobody ever really dares confront her with criticism for the way she treats people like Snape and Evans. But she can be arrogant—competitive—exclusive. Does she acknowledge that about herself? How hard is it for her to recognize that Evans might have legitimate reasons for not liking the way Alice and the other girls treat her?
"She made it clear what the terms were for us to become her friends, and we made it clear that we weren't willing to meet those terms," says Alice finally. "But she's still my roommate, and I can't just watch you do this to her. She has a point—you're treating her like she's subhuman, just to cover your own arse, James, and—"
"Evans can take care of herself," James insists. "She'd just get offended if we tried to do her any favors."
"Will you just—?" She takes a deep breath. "Look, you don't live with her, okay? She's never home, and when she has to come up, she's always alone. She has one friend in this whole castle, and he's not in her house, which means except for twice a week in Potions, she's stuck watching the rest of us be best friends without her for six hours every weekday during classes. Everyone who isn't a Slytherin hates her because of her best friend, and everyone who is a Slytherin hates her because she's Muggle-born. Besides Snape, she's got no one, and with the way he treats other Muggle-borns, she's got to be…"
"Yeah," says Sirius thickly. "Yeah, she's starting to doubt him."
James flashes him a pissed-off glare, and Sirius shrugs helplessly.
"James, mate, listen—it's been a couple weeks by now, right? People are going to get tired of it and move on soon anyway—we may as well speed it along a little. Tell them this whole ordeal has made you reconnect with your inner homosexuality or something. I bet Peter would be happy to go along with it if you asked him to."
Sirius exchanges a quick glance with Alice and then looks back to James, waiting, hoping he hasn't ruined everything—and—
"Yeah, that could work. I'll tell everybody they need to drop it, or else Pete's going to get jealous and kick me out of his bed. Hey, do you think Remus would be all right with it if we worked some foursome jokes in there?"
xx
He misses James like hell, but he doesn't want to overcrowd him before he's cooled off enough to want to be close again, so Sirius starts spending a lot more time researching Animagi in the library with Moony while Peter and James are busy parading their "relationship" around the castle for laughs. He considers taking advantage of the time to see more of the girls, too—but he's kind of been avoiding Alice ever since she called him and James out, and he's not thrilled with Marlene or especially Mary for spreading around what he told Evans about James. So in practice, this mostly just means spending a lot of time with Em in the kitchens or out on the grounds, kicking snow at each other and throwing snowballs at first years.
They're out walking one night, with nobody around to see them since it's so frigging cold out, when Em stops, raises an eyebrow, and pulls Sirius by the hand closer to the edge of the lake. "What are you doing, exactly?" he asks, chuckling.
"Diffindo," she says, pointing her wand at the lake's surface. The ice breaks, revealing a deceptively calm surface of water underneath it.
"Em, what are you—?"
"I'll bet you ten Galleons I can tread water in the cold longer than you."
"You're insane. It's got to be freezing under there."
"I know. Want to find out just how freezing?"
"But—we're not wearing swimsuits."
She rolls her eyes. "So? Underwear gives you the same coverage as a bathing suit, and anyway, we'll be under the water. It's not like we're going to be ogling each other in there."
When she starts stripping down, Sirius pointedly looks down at the ground and shrugs out of his robes. Don't look, he tells himself. Don't look, don't look, don't—
He looks.
She's right—he's being stupid—it's exactly the same coverage as a bathing suit, and yet something about the implications of seeing Emmeline in her underwear makes Sirius feel like he's intruding on something very private and very much not allowed. She's wearing a pair of solid orange knickers that clash horribly with her red bra that's got little white stars on it—modest and straightedged, without any lace or other details. Her stomach is flat, her waist curving inward, but she's got cellulite on her hips and thighs that Sirius never would have guessed would be there from the way she looks when she's wearing robes. He'd already thought her skin to be noticeably pale, but she somehow manages to be even paler on her torso and legs.
Emmeline steps up to the very edge of the water, turns around, and rolls her eyes again. "Honestly, Sirius, haven't you ever seen a girl go swimming before? Now get in here—I'm not giving myself a disadvantage by going in before you."
He shucks off his cloak and robes. He has no idea whether he feels more or less embarrassed than before when Em rakes her eyes down him as he steps up to join her. At least it's not just him who's noticing things—but it's not like he was emotionally prepared for Emmeline Vance to see him shirtless today, and if he'd have known they were going to do this, he probably would have worn boxers instead of his tighty-whities.
He's already got goosebumps from the February air, and they're not even in the water yet. "On three, then?" says Em way too perkily. "One—two—"
When he splashes out into the water, he immediately regrets every life choice he ever made that brought him here, to this moment. "You're bloody insane, Vance!" yells Sirius as they're wading far enough out that they can tread water. It hurts to pull his arms apart in order to skim the water and stay afloat—though, of course, it already hurt just to be in the water in the first place.
"Oh, shut up and live a little!" Emmeline laughs. "Doesn't it feel good to feel so alive?"
"I'm going to murder you for this!" Sirius roars, but by now, he's laughing, too. Every movement of his arms and legs makes new waves rush against his skin, and every new wave feels even more frigid than the last. His teeth are chattering, and he's so cold that he forgets to think about Em and her bare, pale skin and her red bra with the stars—and she's right about another thing: he doesn't know if he's ever felt this alive, this visceral, this vulnerable, this mortal.
She wins the competition, and he brings her up to his dormitory to fish ten Galleons out of his bag for her. When they get up to the dormitory, Moony just raises his eyebrows, but James snorts, "Well, now you've gone and done it: you've brought up a girl. You've besmirched the sanctity of the blokes' dorm, you know that?"
"Oh, shut it, Potter," says Emmeline cheerfully.
Peter adds, "What were you two doing that your hair is all wet, anyway?"
"Swimming," says Sirius with a smirk.
"Swimming? You're going to catch pneumonia, you moron," says James.
Physically, he feels like shit—his extremities are going numb, and he's pretty sure his wet briefs iced over a little before they retreated into the warmth of the castle—but on the inside, he feels warm. He fishes out ten Galleons and hands them to Em. "Thank you," she trills, and she spins on her heels and flounces out of the dormitory.
And then—it's just the Marauders, and the mirth leaves James's eyes. When Sirius remembers what their life is like now—he'd managed to forget in the heat (ha) of the moment—the cold catches right up to him.
But the chill between himself and James can't last forever, and Sirius is researching in the library again on the next full moon when James tracks him down. "Moony told us you were still down here on his way to meet Madam Pomfrey," he says, shrugging into the seat next to Sirius at the table. "Come upstairs with me. Bring books. Pete's just grabbing some snacks from the kitchen so that we have something to munch on while we look."
He looks resigned, and Sirius swallows hard. "You're not still mad?"
"Of course I'm still mad. You messed up big time, dude. But I just… without you…"
James shuts his eyes, and Sirius thinks he knows exactly what James is feeling. "I missed you, too," he admits. "When we're not… I just don't know what to do with myself. I've been a mess, James."
And he has been. He hasn't necessarily acknowledged it to himself until now, but Sirius feels like he's been holding his breath this last month, his lungs burning, praying he doesn't run out of air before James comes back to him behind closed doors. He's clung to every last glance or comment James has tossed his way in front of the rest of the castle, but it hasn't been enough, and Sirius has spent far too many nights drowning in the library until Madam Pince kicked him out because he was afraid to go up to the dormitory—to have to face the way that James has been looking at him when they're in there.
"Yeah, I know," says James quietly. "It hasn't been easy for me, either. I never knew what it was like to have a brother until I came to Hogwarts, and now that I do…"
"Let's never fight again, okay? I'll do whatever you want me to do to make it up to you. I swear. I—"
"Look, I'm not going to lie and say I'm not mad—but I don't know what to do, all right? When you're there, I just want to punch you out, but when you're not, it's… lonely."
"I really wasn't trying to hurt you," Sirius mutters. "It really did just slip out, and I had no idea that anybody else was listening in who was going to go and tell other people about it."
"I know. I'll get over it eventually. I need some time to be mad at you first, but—can't you just come home so that I can be mad at you there? It's a lot worse to be mad without you even being around. There's nobody to take it out on, and all it does is make me feel pissed and empty."
"You can hex me as much as you like, if that helps," he offers. "And I can do all your homework for a month. You're on your own in Ancient Runes and Arithmancy, though; I don't think any of us wants to see what happens if I try and do coursework for classes I'm not even enrolled—"
He's shocked into silence when James flings his arms around him and squeezes. "God damn you, Sirius Black," he says in a muffled voice that gets lost somewhere in Sirius's shoulder. "Just—damn it."
"What are we going to do?" mumbles Sirius, clutching James's back.
"Nothing. I'll just deal with it, I guess. I can handle being angry for a while, can't I? I'll just—think of it like it's an experiment."
To James's credit, he turns it around without a hint of passive-aggressiveness. Sirius would have no idea he was still pissed if it weren't for James having come right out and said so already. It's a relief to have his best mate back, and he concentrates on how good it feels to breathe again without allowing himself to contemplate how screwed he's going to be if and when he really loses any of his friends.
A/N: Not sure yet what to do for the next chapter, and I won't be writing it until late tonight, so feel free to let me know if there are any particular themes or relationships you want to see!