A/N: This is supposed to have a total of 4 chapters, but the last time I wrote a fic, it was a one-shot that turned into a six-shot, so I've got no idea whether my estimate is actually accurate.
xx
"Conceited," James mutters. "I'll show her conceited."
"Dude, you're still hung up on this?" says Peter, rolling his eyes. "It's not like she was ever going to go out with you. She hasn't been able to stand you since the first time she laid eyes on you."
They're in the common room, just the two of them sitting together, since Sirius and Remus are up in the dormitory doing whatever it is they do when they carve out time to be alone in there. Snogging, probably. James never asks, and they never tell him—Remus because he's a prude, Sirius because he knows better.
He doesn't tell Peter what he's really thinking because they're surrounded on all sides, it seems, by girls: girls laughing, girls gossiping, girls sticking out their tongues in concentration as they Transfigure tortoises into teapots or cut each other's hair. One of them—Sydney Ballard from fourth year—accidentally catches James's eye, and she blushes and whispers something to Raina Crowe when James flashes her a raunchy grin.
"And you wonder why Evans doesn't want to go for you," Peter snickers.
James flips him off, scanning the crowd for Evans's red hair—but she doesn't appear to be anywhere in here. "Where is she tonight, anyway? I thought Mary said she was going to keep Evans busy tonight to get her mind off of Snape."
"Oh, you missed it when you were blowing off steam as Prongs. Evans and Snape had another argument outside the common room."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. She didn't shout at him or anything, but Evans told him they're done for good. According to Mary, she was crying in the dormitory all evening before she came down to talk to him, and she went straight back up there as soon as they were done."
"She's mental—as if Snivellus is worth that kind of investment."
"Well, Evans has never had her head on straight where it comes to him," says Peter sagely, and then he curses when he drips ink all over his History of Magic notes.
If James were a better person, he'd feel sort of bad for her—maybe check in with her the next time he saw her, even if she'd probably bite his head off for it. But James is a wanker and a liar, and he doesn't really give two shits whether Evans is upstairs crying or not, so he just grunts in agreement and asks whether Peter thinks it's safe for them to go back up to the dormitory yet.
They end up giving it another twenty minutes just to be safe. Upstairs, they pause outside the door; James bangs on it while declaring loudly, "Pete and I are coming in. Are you two decent in there?"
There's a pause, then the sound of stifled giggles, then a series of rustling noises. "All good," comes Sirius's voice back to them, and James pushes his way inside.
With Peter there as a buffer, it's easy for James to bury himself in them and forget all the reasons he's such a mess lately. Remus goes to bed first, around ten—he tends to conk out early whenever there's a full moon coming up. After that, there's a fifty-fifty chance Peter is going to lie down next and leave James and Sirius to stare at each other with nothing to say. James doesn't know what scares him more: the thought of being alone with Sirius or the thought of never being alone with Sirius again.
His fear, or maybe his wish, comes true when Peter turns in at two in the morning. Everything's normal at first, but then Peter starts to snore, and the temperature in the room ratchets up a few degrees, James is sure of it. "James…"
It's the first time James has heard Sirius use his real name in private since James—since they—"You should get some sleep," he tells Sirius rigidly.
"But—we have to talk about this. You kiss me, and I'm dating Remus, and then you ask Evans out the next morning? You're not acting like yourself, and now you've been dodging me all day."
"I have not been dodging you all day. I've been with you all day."
"Yeah, but only when Moony and Wormtail were around. I miss you. I just—"
"You just don't feel the same way," James fills in for him. "You know what, man? It's fine. I overstepped, and I shouldn't have. It's like you said—you're with Moony."
Sirius purses his lips like he's lost. James resists the urge to dive after him.
"Have you told him?" he asks instead.
"No," Sirius admits quietly.
"Are you going to tell him?"
"I… don't know. I don't want to make things weird between him and you. I just want things to be…"
Yeah. Yeah, James just wants things to be, too. But he doesn't have the luxury of pretending like they are, and now, neither does Sirius.
He sort of wants to shut the hangings on his bed so he doesn't have to talk to Sirius any longer, but if he does, he'll just drive himself mental listening to Sirius breathe. "I'm going downstairs," he announces instead. "See you tomorrow."
"James, wait—"
James does not wait. He gathers his wand and his dignity and stalks out of the room.
Downstairs, the only other person still in the common room is—"Evans? Thought you were a buzzkill and went to bed at, like, eleven every night."
She doesn't turn away from the fire. She sniffles. "Leave me alone."
"It's a free common room." When he plunks down in the armchair next to hers, she doesn't flinch, but he can tell that her cheeks are wet—they're glinting in the dying firelight. "Look, I'm sorry about—"
"Don't. Don't say it. The last thing I need right now is you pretending to care about either of us."
And that's fair—he doesn't really care about Evans, and he certainly doesn't care about Snape—but his mother still taught him better than to leave somebody crying alone, even if that somebody isn't his friend. "I'm sorry I asked you out. That was—insensitive of me."
Evans finally looks at him, eyebrows furrowed, wiping slick off her cheek with the sleeve of her pajamas. "James Potter is apologizing to me? I never."
"Shut up."
"No, you shut up," she mutters, and James snorts.
He's not planning on saying it—really, he's not, but he thinks he might crack up if he doesn't say it to someone. Remus is out, obviously. He could tell Peter, but he likes the way Peter looks at him—he doesn't want to see that look vanish if Peter realizes James is a cheating sod who doesn't give a damn about Remus's feelings. Besides, if he tells Evans, who's she going to turn around and tell it to? She's only got one friend. Actually—correction—if Mary is right about what she told Peter, Evans hasn't got any friends.
"I kissed Sirius last night."
Evans opens her eyes wider. "You—did what now?"
"Last night. Pete and Remus were sleeping, and we were sitting on his bed daring each other to eat Acid Pops, and I just—laid one on him like he hasn't been with Remus since October."
"You—are you in love with him? I just—all you do is hit on girls. I never thought…"
He snorts again. "Thinking you know me—that's your first mistake. You don't know me, Evans, and I don't know you, either. There's nobody else here to put on a front for. We may as well not pretend otherwise with each other."
She hesitates. "You didn't answer my question."
James groans. "Yeah. I'm in love with him. Is that really what you want to hear? I'm in love with my best mate, and he's in love with someone else."
Whistling, Evans says, "I'm really sorry, Potter. I know from experience that—"
"Don't tell me you and Snape have the same problem," he grunts.
She chuckles a little, then sobers. "No, but I do care about Severus, and he does care about the Dark Arts more than he cares about me. I've been lying to myself for a long time about it, but I'm certain of it now."
James isn't sure what to say to that; it's not like he can imagine any of his three best mates ever going over to the Dark side. She spares him the need to think of a reply, however, when she adds, "It's stupid because—he's in love with me."
"What?"
"Severus. He's in love with me. I've known it for a while now. If he loves me so much, it's supposed to be easy for him to pick me over his stupid Slytherin friends and their bullshit prejudices. I just…"
"You shouldn't weigh it in your head like that," James mumbles. "You'll go mad if you start making comparisons about how he ranks you."
He's not really talking about Evans and Snape, and he thinks she knows that from the look in her eyes, but she doesn't call him on it. "Bet he'd hate me talking to you right now," she remarks.
"Yeah, why are you talking to me, anyway? Thought you thought I was an arrogant toerag."
She quirks a half smile. "That was twelve hours ago. Severus was still my best friend when I said that."
"So, what, you're consorting with me just to spite him? I feel so used."
"Well, you started it when you asked me out just to avoid your feelings for Black. That's what that was, right? You kissed him, he didn't leave Lupin, so you asked me out instead?"
"Something like that," James murmurs, his mind a million leagues away. "You don't sound like my ulterior motives really bother you much."
"They don't. I mean, you're the most self-important tosser I've ever met, but at least now I know where you're coming from. It's not so bad if we're both using each other."
"Oh, is that what we're going to do? Use each other? I didn't realize you'd be up for that."
He's fully expecting her to make some snarky retort or other, but she just looks at him with a hollowness in her eyes that makes him feel—unsettled. "We could say we did," she muses. "It would probably really, really piss him off."
"I know it's tempting to tell people you got a piece of this, but I only bang and tell if there's actual—you know—banging."
She shrugs. "We could do that, too. It's not like it matters anymore, does it? I'm going to die alone anyway; I may as well know what I'm missing."
James doesn't think it's until this very moment that he fully appreciates the depths to which Evans is screwed up about Snape. She must be in a dark place if she'd seriously consider—
James can't stop tasting Sirius's mouth under his lips, and he could use something to cleanse him of it—but Evans hates him, and with good reason. He's been an utter prick to her best mate for the last five years, and if she has any self-respect…
"You don't mean that, Evans," he says haltingly. "You can do better than me, come on."
"Well, if I can do better than somebody who doesn't love me enough, then so can you."
"Says the girl who turned me down for a date today."
"Says the boy who turned me down for sex today." Evans rolls her eyes.
Slowly, fully expecting her to shove him away, he raises his hand to her cheeks and thumbs away what few tears remain there—but she just sits and lets him, her eyes pained. "Why can't we be friends, Evans?"
"Are you kidding me?"
"No, I mean it. You're not mates with him anymore. We've got no reason not to like each other, and the next two years are going to be a lot less difficult if we can learn to get along."
"But we can't," Evans whispers. "Us being friends would go against everything I stand for—everything I've said to or about you for the last five years. Just because he can't be in my life anymore doesn't mean I condone the way you treat him, whether or not I keep standing up for him."
And—if he's being honest with himself, that's fair. He doesn't like the way she's looking at him, so he breaks the moment by saying, "Yeah, I guess I still think you're uptight even when you're not defending him."
She snickers and ducks her head. "Will you sit with me for a while? We can go back to not being friends in the morning; I just—don't want to be alone any longer. I'm going to be doing a lot of that from now on, I'll bet."
"Yeah, sure," he says. It takes him a whole two minutes of sitting there watching Evans practice her Locomotion Charms before he screws up the courage to add, "You're not going to be alone forever. There are plenty of people in this castle who like you. Remus likes you, and so does Sirius, even if he's—got a funny way of showing it. You just have to let them."
The fire has burned out fully by now, but he can still feel her eyes on him. He swallows.
xx
Sirius looks crazed when he shows up on James's doorstep with his broomstick in one hand and his trunk in the other. It's two in the morning; Mum and Dad are sound asleep by now; it's dumb luck that James woke up and heard Sirius call him on the mirror when Sirius left Grimmauld Place twenty minutes ago. "Come on in," says James, not bothering to keep his voice down: this manor is big enough and his parents' bedroom sufficiently far away that they're not going to be able to hear him from here. "You can take any bedroom you like. I'll talk to Mum and Dad about you staying with us first thing tomorrow, okay?"
"Can I just bunk with you tonight?" Sirius asks quickly. "I mean, is that okay? I just—I don't want to be alone, not after…"
"I—yeah. Yeah, of course," says James, knowing better than to ask exactly what happened that was so bad Sirius ran away from home. After all, Sirius has never liked to talk about the way his mum treats him. He puts up with a shit ton of abuse every summer: it has to have been a spectacular blowout to exceed Sirius's tolerance enough to provoke—this.
James's bedroom feels a lot smaller with Sirius in it. By the time they reach it, James is fully awake; he's intending to lie down and stay up in the dark so Sirius can get some rest, but inside, Sirius just sits down in the middle of James's bed with his knees drawn up to his chest and starts to rock back and forth while staring blankly ahead. Tentatively, James nestles in close and puts a hand on Sirius's shoulder. Sirius allows it.
"I'm sorry about your family, but I'm glad you're here," James hedges. "I, uh, would've thought you'd have gone to Moony first."
Sirius shakes his head. "He would have wanted to take me in, but you know how overprotective his parents are. They never would have stood for taking in somebody as unstable as me around their son."
"You're not unstable, Padfoot."
"Really? Have you met me? Anyway, he's my boyfriend, but you're still my best mate. I still…"
James's breath hitches. "Still? I thought I made everything weird. I—kind of thought I ruined us."
Sirius snorts. "It's going to take a lot more than a crush on me for you to ruin everything. There's nobody I'd rather come to with this."
James doesn't understand why Sirius is in love with Remus if James is the one he trusts to take him in, but he doesn't push it. No good is ever going to come out of setting himself up as Remus's competition. Instead, he just asks, "Do I get to keep you all summer, or are you going to go back at some point?"
"I… I don't think I can go back. I hope that's okay. Your parents—"
"Love you," says James firmly, "and will be happy to have you here. I'm just glad I get to see more of you with the way your mum and dad usually keep you on lockdown every summer."
"It's going to be weird getting to have an actual social life in August. I'm so used to spending it holed up with…"
James frowns when Sirius trails off. Did something happen between Sirius and Regulus?—is that part of why Sirius has run away? But James knows better than to push it. "It'll be great," he promises. "We'll get to see Wormtail and Moony both every week, if not more, and the girls come around a lot of the time, too. Mary's been dragging Lily along everywhere, and—"
"Oh, Evans is Lily now?" says Sirius. James thinks he's going for a jokey tone, but Sirius doesn't quite pull it off.
"Don't get me wrong, she still hates me. She just—I think she sees me as more of a human being now that…"
"She's not in Snape's orbit anymore?" Sirius fills in.
Well, that, and now that Lily knows that James is in love with Sirius—that he's got insecurities underneath the show he puts on for everybody else's benefit—not that James is going to tell Sirius about that particular bonding moment he shared with her. "Something like that," he says instead, fidgeting with the sheet underneath them.
"I think it's good you're spending time with her," Sirius says now. "She's obviously good for you, and this way, you can…"
"Get over you faster?" James supplies.
"You know I didn't mean it like that, Prongs."
"Doesn't mean you don't think I need to."
Sirius relaxes his legs, letting his knees fall onto the bed; James's hand drops along with them into Sirius's lap. Sirius grabs it and interlocks their fingers. "I need you to understand that the only thing that upsets me is that you're upset. I don't like knowing the way seeing me and Moony together must make you feel."
"It's fine," says James uncomfortably. "You're two of my best mates. I'd rather things be like this than risk losing either of you."
If he knows what's good for him, he should really let go of Sirius's hand. Instead, he rolls over to balance his weight on his hip and lets his forehead rest against Sirius's shoulder and just—breathes.
xx
James doesn't like the way Lily keeps looking at him. Specifically, he doesn't like the way Lily keeps looking at him and Sirius.
When they stop messing around in Honeydukes and grab a big table at The Three Broomsticks, James sits next to her, purportedly so he can flirt with her but actually so he can whisper to her when everybody else is distracted, "You've got to stop acting so weird. Remus and Sirius are going to figure out that you know more than you're supposed to."
"I'm not acting weird," she mutters back, rolling her eyes.
"You are absolutely acting weird. I know you can't see the way you keep looking at us, but I can, and I'm telling you, it's fishy."
"James, quit sexually harassing Lily and look at the menu before Madam Rosmerta comes back over here to take our orders," says Remus dully. Sirius and Peter snicker.
He drops it—it's not like they can get into a full conversation about this with Remus and Sirius both sitting right across from them—but he manages to get Lily away from the others after lunch, when Sirius drags Remus into Zonko's and Peter goes with Mary into Dervish and Banges. "I'm honestly a little surprised you haven't ripped my head off already," he admits to her as they're walking up High Street, their arms full of handle bags. "I've seen you every week—socially—for over two months now. I would have thought that would be torture for you."
She shrugs and blushes. James resists the urge to tease her for it. "I'm not saying you're my favorite person in the world, but you're more tolerable now that I know you're…"
"Not a cocky prick all the time?"
"Oh, you're still a cocky prick all the time," Lily assures him. "I was actually going to say now that I know you're gay."
It's James's turn to flush. "I'm not gay. I'm—I don't know what I am, but I like girls, too."
"Really? I was assuming you act the way you do around girls because you're trying to deflect public notice away from how you feel about Sirius."
"Nah—well, maybe a little, but mostly I just like the attention. Makes me feel like…"
Less of a failure, he's thinking, but he doesn't say so. James's insecurities are none of Evans's bloody business, anyway.
"How's it going living with him, anyway? With Sirius, I mean," Lily asks.
"Good. Better than good. We already live together at Hogwarts, obviously, so it's—a natural extension of that."
"It's not weird between you two ever since…?"
"Of course it's weird," says James, "but only on my end. He's acting totally normal. I think I'm acting totally normal, but what the hell do I know? Maybe he can read it all over my face every day and is just pretending he can't for my ego."
"Yeah, that's about where I'm at with Severus, too," Lily muses.
James frowns. "You've seen him this summer?"
"We're neighbors—it would be impossible to avoid him altogether. I've been giving him the cold shoulder as much as I can, but every time I see him, I'm terrified he can tell that I still…"
"Care about him?" James murmurs.
Lily scowls at him. "I don't need your sympathy for this. I know you don't give a shit about my friendship with him."
"And I know you don't give a shit about my friendship with Sirius, but I still let you talk to me about him."
She closes her eyes for a moment. "Right. Sorry. I keep forgetting I don't have to hate you anymore."
"Do you hate me still?" James pries.
She opens her mouth, closes it. "I…"
And suddenly—so much so that the impact of it stuns him—James realizes that he really, really hopes Lily Evans doesn't hate him. It's unexpected, and he shoves it down where he doesn't have to deal with it and changes the subject as quickly as he can.
xx
Whatever he told Lily, Sirius staying with the Potters is not a natural extension of him living with James during the school year—because this time, Peter and Remus aren't around to act as buffers. Every night, James and Sirius sit in their bedroom and talk until two in the morning; Mum and Dad squeeze in an extra twin bed for Sirius, but he usually foregoes it until it's time to actually sleep and instead plops down on James's bed while they're up talking. Whenever their knees brush, James gets chills. Gooseflesh becomes his default state of existence.
It's kind of amazing how much time James can while away just from talking to Sirius. That goes for Remus and Peter, too, during the school year. He's around the three of them constantly, and yet they somehow find hours' worth of conversation topics to cover every single day they're together. It's sort of amazing how much time they can spend gossiping, reliving childhood memories, and sharing their hopes and worries for the future. When they start running out of shit to talk about, they rehash old subjects or else find something to do, like playing Exploding Snap or planning pranks or practicing their Defense or Transfiguration, that will give them fuel for new stuff to address.
Every time Sirius smiles at him—just for him—James feels like something huge and heavy has knocked all the wind out of him and flattened him to the ground. Every time he remembers that Sirius picked him to move in with—not Peter, not even Remus, but him—James feels staggered. It's everything he wants: Sirius all to himself without having to share.
Oh, it's not like he's unreasonable with Sirius's company: they see other Gryffindors for long days a few times a week, and James would never dream of tearing Sirius away from the rest of the world. Still, he feels a little greedy, and moreover, he feels like he can finally get away with it. He sees Sirius for hours, just the two of them, on long nights alone in the bedroom; it's going to be hard to give that up when they get back to Hogwarts, even if he does miss Remus and Peter, even if it will mean not constantly having parental supervision over everything he does.
And then—the night of August thirtieth, there's a full moon.
It's obviously not the first full moon of the summer, but it is the first full moon James spends that summer in Remus's company. It's not exciting: it's not like they're roaming the Forbidden Forest like they usually do. Remus's parents are out of town for a long weekend, basically, and entrust Remus to lock himself up in the basement; he invites over James, Sirius, and Peter to keep him a little more human in their company, even if there's no good place nearby outdoors where they can take Remus out for a run.
If you think it wouldn't be bloody exhausting to keep Moony company all night when he's on the other side of a cage, then think again. It takes a good hour of Padfoot pawing at him to get Moony to calm down before Padfoot can start swiping playfully at him, Wormtail slipping through the bars and nesting himself in Moony's fur. There's not much for Prongs to do—he's too big to fit in the cage Remus transforms in when he's at home—but he does what he can to keep Moony calm from outside the bars, pawing anxiously at the ground every time Remus seems like his control might be slipping away.
Around three in the morning, in a moment of lucidity, Moony comes right up against the metal and lays his paws on top of Prongs's hooves. He stares into Prongs's eyes like he knows him, and Prongs thinks maybe he does—maybe that's Remus in there who's looking. He feels a rush of guilt for wanting what's Remus's when Remus never did a damn thing to deserve that kind of disloyalty—to deserve resentment.
When James and Sirius Floo back to the Potters' manor around five A.M. after patching Remus up, James is exhausted, so much so that his inhibitions slip away a little bit. In the bedroom, Sirius doesn't lie down in his bed—instead, after James climbs into his own, Sirius sprawls out next to him. His head is up against James's shoulder, and his arm is squashed against James's waist, and James can barely contain himself.
"You feel so good," he slurs. "Never stop touching me."
Sirius doesn't reply or stiffen or react in any way but to lie there in silence. James twists his neck to look at him; his eyes are open, and he's staring blankly at the ceiling.
"Sorry. I probably shouldn't have said that."
"'S okay. I won't hold it against you."
"I just love you. You mean everything to me," James babbles. He swings an inelegant arm under Sirius's neck and pulls him in close.
Willingly, Sirius rolls onto his side up against James, but even as he goes, he mutters, "Prongs, we can't… I can't… it's not like that for me. You know this."
"Who says it can't be? What's Moony got that I haven't? I'm your best mate. I'm the one who took you in. I—"
"I didn't think you were going to use me living here as ammunition against me," says Sirius, frowning.
"What? I don't mean—that's not—"
"It's just—a feeling, okay? It's a feeling I get when I look at him. It's not about friendship. It's not even really about loyalty."
"And you don't get that feeling when you look at me."
Sirius doesn't answer for a very long moment, and then he minutely shakes his head from side to side. "I'm sorry. I wish it weren't… I wish we could just be…"
"Yeah," James sighs. "Yeah, me, too."
"I have to tell Moony," Sirius continues, and James runs hot. "It feels like I've been lying to him all summer by not telling him that I'm living with somebody who… even if we are friends. And you and I are friends, Prongs, but—he's my boyfriend."
"You're not going to write to him tonight, are you? Can I just—keep you here with me long enough that I can—?"
Long enough that he can make it last, James is thinking—long enough that he can stretch out this night so far that he doesn't have to ever face Remus in the morning. "Yeah," says Sirius, "sure," but it doesn't work, of course: James is asleep within five minutes, and when he wakes up, the space where Sirius's body used to be is cold.