James,

Christmas holiday is two days away, and I still don't know what to expect when I see you at King's Cross Station. As far as Lily and your mum and dad have told me, the plan is still for you to come home for break and bring Remus and Peter to visit on Boxing Day, so I'm guessing I'll see you there? But I don't know what you're expecting out of me when you get here when you won't even return a single one of my letters these days.

I know it's stupid, but I keep poring over the class notes Lily sends me from you. I stare at your handwriting and try to soak up as much as I can of you from it because it's the closest I can get to you these days. I'll look at how sloppy your printing is or what the words-to-doodles ratio is on any given day and try to chart how closely you were paying attention to the professor—wonder where your mind was drifting. You're my best friend, and I miss you. I miss you.

I've been writing you stupid-ass, rambling letters almost every day, you know, but I stash most of them away without sending them so that I can redraft new and less sincere ones to actually send you. But Christmas holiday is two days away, and I'm going to go crazy if I can't do something to break the ice before you come home, so here I am, mailing out my rambles. Write me back. Please.

Sirius

xx

This isn't the first time James has read this letter since it arrived, and it's not the second time, either. Try the twentieth, maybe the thirtieth, and then you'd be in the ballpark. Either way, the thing still punches him just as hard in the gut on this read-through as it did when he first scanned it in the Great Hall, feeling entirely too exposed even in front of Lily and Peter and Remus, let alone the rest of the student body sitting around them. Sirius misses him. Sirius still considers him to be his best friend. Sirius wants him back so badly that he tries to decipher hidden messages from James's handwriting.

It's not like this is new information, exactly. Sirius has been writing to him consistently since his suspension—usually nothing anywhere near this personal, but consistently, and with consistent requests to Floo face-to-face. It's always stood to reason that Sirius wouldn't have done it if he hadn't wanted to fix things between them—if he hadn't still cared. James always figured he cared. It's just—it's one thing to know something logically and quite another to see the evidence right in front of him in Sirius's own words.

James can't believe how close Christmas is—how much time he's wasted.

"That letter isn't going to change no matter how many times you look at it," says Lily gently. "The only way you're going to get any more words out of him is if you write him and he writes you back—or I guess when you see him when you get home."

"He'll be there with my parents at King's Cross tonight," says James. His own voice sounds foreign and hoarse, "and I have no idea what I'm going to say to him."

"You'll figure it out." She sounds a lot more sure of this than he is.

"Sorry. I shouldn't be… sorry."

Lily's smile fades. "James, I never meant for you to think that I don't want to hear about your problems with Sirius."

"I know, but I… just… you haven't said anything about Snape since you said what you said about it, and…"

They're interrupted when the compartment door bangs open to reveal Remus and Peter, who both look about as anxious as James feels. Remus being anxious makes sense—he's about to come face-to-face with Sirius for the first time since the two of them broke up—but James has long since given up on figuring out what Peter's deal is. There are only so many times that James can ask before it starts to feel pointless.

Lily seems to sense it, too, because she says, "Not you two, too? Listen, this is still the same Sirius we've all known for years, and I promise you all that he wants to do whatever he needs to do to make things right again."

"Maybe with you lot," Remus mumbles, "but none of you cheated on him with his brother."

There's a tense silence, and then James declares, "I can't take this anymore. We can't just sit around dreading what's going to happen tonight. Anybody got a deck of Exploding Snap on them?"

The hours crawl by. Mary and Ramona pop in to say hello after lunch, and James tries to be his usual, confident self for them, he does, but he can't help staring morosely out the window and letting their words wash over him without hearing them. Night has fallen and they're about twenty minutes from the station, James estimates, before Remus leans in and mutters, "Are you ready for this?"

"No," James mutters back. He glances at Ramona and Mary, but it looks like Lily and Peter are keeping them occupied. "I'll write you as soon as I can and tell you how it goes with him. We'll stick together on Boxing Day, okay?"

"Yeah, but you're spending a lot more time with him this holiday than just Boxing Day."

James frowns. "Nothing's going on between me and Sirius. You know that."

Remus adds quickly, "I know. Sorry. That's not how I meant it. I just meant—who's going to be there to stick with you when you need it all that time?"

James doesn't answer. He doesn't like the way Mary is starting to look at them.

When the train finally pulls into the station, his heart is thundering right out of his chest. "Oh, hey," says Ramona, "Sirius has been with your parents all this time, right? How's it going to feel seeing him again after he…?—well, you know what he did."

She exchanges a knowing look with Mary, then glances back at James, eyebrows raised. He wants to hex that look right off their faces, but he doesn't, mostly because he knows Lily wouldn't want him to.

On the platform, he doesn't see his parents: Sirius is standing alone at the back of the crowd. He sees Sirius before Sirius sees him, and he watches Sirius's eyes scan the crowd, his mouth in an anxious O and his eyebrows narrowed. "James," says Lily carefully, "where are your mum and dad? Why aren't they with Sirius?"

"I'm out of here," Remus breathes. "See you on Boxing Day."

"Have a good holiday," Lily tells him, or James thinks she tells him, anyway: he's not really listening.

"Will you both go say hi to him with me?" asks James, but when he turns around to look to Lily and Peter for their answers, Lily's the only person left standing with him. "Where did Peter go?"

"Do us all a favor and find out what's going on with him on Boxing Day, will you?" Lily says. She kisses James on the cheek. "Come on. I'll go say hi with you before I catch up with my parents."

When James looks back at Sirius, Sirius's eyes have finally landed on him. He waves and smiles, but it looks forced, contorted, to James. "Here goes," says James under his breath, and then he waves and smiles back, hoping that not too much tension is bleeding through onto his face.

By the time he and Lily get to Sirius behind the crowd, the forced smile has slipped off Sirius's face. "Hey, James—Lily. It's really, really good to see you both."

"Hi, Sirius," says Lily swiftly. She reaches forward to give Sirius a quick hug, laughing, and adds, "It's nice to be able to actually, you know, touch you without the rest of my body being stuck inside Hogwarts when I see you."

"It almost feels weird to see more than just your disembodied head in my fireplace," snorts Sirius. "I was starting to forget how short you really are."

"Watch who you're calling 'short,'" Lily says, grinning.

There's a horrible, uncomfortable pause when Sirius's eyes slide from Lily onto James. Then James says, "Hey," very quietly.

"Hey, you," Sirius says back just as quietly. "I, uh… I really missed you."

"I know," James whispers. "You said so in your last letter."

"You read that? I was starting to think…"

James's gaze slides to his feet. "I read them all. I wrote you every week, you know, just like you said you were writing more than what you sent me. I just… couldn't bring myself to mail most of it."

There's another awful pause, and then Lily clears her throat. James startles a little—he'd almost forgotten she was there. "I should go. My parents will be wondering why I haven't gone and found them yet. Write me as often as you like, okay? Both of you."

"Thanks, Lily." He tears his eyes away from Sirius. "Thank you for everything. I…"

"It's okay." She squeezes his hand. "Take care of each other for me."

"Yeah."

She's gone in a second, leaving James to look anywhere but into Sirius's eyes. "I'm sorry if you feel like I ambushed you here," Sirius says, "I mean, coming to get you without your mum and dad. I was hoping it would make it less awkward to air everything out one-on-one before adding more people into the mix."

"Right." James swallows. This feels exactly like it felt to talk to Sirius at the beginning of last year's Christmas holiday, when the two of them were pretty much alone together in Gryffindor Tower after months of dodging each other—and yet this is nothing like that because that version of Sirius had never kissed James after getting cheated on. Last year, James had no right to have shut Sirius out like he had. This year, on the other hand…

"James, are we going to be okay?"

He forces himself to look into Sirius's face. "Yeah. Let's just, uh—we should hash things out before going him to my parents. Is there someplace where we can get dinner?"

"Are you kidding me? I grew up, like, ten minutes from here, and I spent all of my summers after first year learning my way around Muggle London as much as I could get away with. I never leave the house without Muggle money anymore, not outside of Hogwarts, anyway. I'll take you to my favorite restaurant."

Sirius's favorite restaurant turns out to be a slightly seedy pub with dim lights and deafening ambient conversation. James can see why he likes it so much, how it probably felt like an escape to get away from Mrs. Black and go someplace with noise where Sirius could shout and slurp and be—free, basically. They order a pizza and ginger beer, which Sirius says is nonalcoholic despite its name. James has never had either before; the beer is a little too sweet for his tastes, but he likes the pizza enough that they order a second personal-size one to split.

They don't talk about it until the second pizza is half eaten already. They don't talk about much of anything, really, at least up to that point, but it's loud enough in the pub that James can get away with pretending to people-watch without there being any silence between them. He's just starting to feel settled again by the time Sirius says, "You said we should hash things out first, but we're not actually doing any hashing here."

"I know I did. Sorry. I just—don't know what there is to say. You're not into me like that, and I'm with Lily now, so…"

"It's more than that," says Sirius softly. "There's more, and you know it. Prongs, I am so sorry, and if I made things harder for you—"

"Harder? Harder?" James is laughing without humor. "I've got Lily feeling like all I do is burden her with my issues with you. Wormtail will barely even talk to any of us—"

"What's Wormtail got to do with it?"

"I don't know. I don't know. He hasn't told you what his problem is, has he?"

Sirius bows his head. "He stopped replying to my letters weeks ago, so I just… stopped sending them eventually. I don't know why. I want to know why, but I don't."

"I'm just saying, the last couple of months have been… and I needed you there with me. I needed my person to get me through it when I was bloody falling apart, but you couldn't be that person anymore, not when you caused half of it in the first place. So I asked too much of Lily and Peter and probably Remus, and…"

"Yeah, Lily told me that you and Remus are friends again. That's good."

He sounds like he means it, which makes James snort. "Doesn't it bother you imagining all the shit he and I probably have to say about you?"

Sirius looks down at his glass, in which he's swirling his straw around and around. "It wouldn't even if I thought you were, but something tells me you two haven't talked much about me."

He's right, of course, but James is too proud to admit this. "I just don't know how we go back. I don't know how I'm ever going to feel again like you and I…"

"For what it's worth, I know I really stepped in it with you and with Remus. I'd take everything back if I could."

"Well, you can't," says James sharply. "It happened. I can't forget that it happened."

"And I'm not asking you to, but—"

"We should go," James decides. "I'm going to try and flag down our server."

Getting back home is tricky: they can't exactly Disapparate for home in the middle of Muggle London. They end up ducking into the nearest wizarding establishment, which turns out to be St. Mungo's, to Floo home from there. It's a twenty-five-minute walk to get from the pub to the hospital, and James feels every second of it in his bones.

It gets easier when they get to the house. Sirius was wrong, going to get James from the station alone; it goes better as soon as Mum and Dad around as a buffer to keep James from having to talk directly to Sirius. The plan is to stay up as late as he can with Mum and Dad so that he can pass straight out from there, but it's only ten o'clock when they both head to bed, leaving James to avoid Sirius's eyes for the millionth time tonight after kissing his parents goodnight.

They usually share a room here: Mum swapped out James's queen bed for two twin ones a week after Sirius moved in. James turns on his heel and makes for the stairs without looking at Sirius.

"I can crash on the couch if you want me to," Sirius tries to say.

"It's fine. I'm just—I'm going to bed."

"Okay. I'll just… I'll hang down here until I'm ready to go out."

James is still in his robes when he climbs into his bed and resolutely turns to face the wall. It turns out that you can kill a lot of time just lying in bed staring at nothing, occupied only by your own thoughts—enough time that it's almost midnight by the time James feels himself starting to cry.

He stuffs his fist in his mouth as he shakes, but the damage is done. He hears footsteps pounding up the staircase, and then the bedroom door flies open.

James doesn't look up, and Sirius doesn't speak. After a long, treacherous moment, Sirius silently pads over to James's bed and sits on the edge of it. When James doesn't protest, it only takes Sirius a few seconds to lay his hand on James's side and start to rub it back and forth.

There's nothing romantic about it, no promise underneath it, except maybe that Sirius doesn't want to leave him alone like this. James wishes he would—leave James alone, that is—but he doesn't voice this. He pretends Sirius's hand is anybody else's hand and allows it.