James,
Something came up at home, and I'm not going to be able to make it on Boxing Day. Have a happy Christmas, and I'll see you in the new year.
Peter
xx
He's being selfish and shitty, Peter tells himself as he seals off the letter and sends it on its way with Mum and Dad's owl. If he knew all along that he didn't want to see his friends over the holiday, he should have at least been up front about that instead of waiting until Christmas Eve to cancel in a letter. But can you really blame him? After everything he's been through in the last year, can you really hold that against him?
He just—he doesn't want to spend his holiday on duty, taking care of everybody's feelings except his own like he always does—like they always expect. Peter is the dependable one, the selfless one, and he gets sick of it sometimes. And yeah, he knows he ought to work on his conflict resolution skills—be direct with his friends about how they make him feel instead of letting it all build up inside him—but he can only stand so much. He can only change so fast, and they're changing faster than he can keep up. James and Sirius are friends again, and Sirius and Remus will probably get there on Boxing Day, and Peter's still stuck on the part where the boy he loves doesn't want him.
James doesn't want him.
At least, he doesn't want Peter to do anything but listen to him whine about Sirius and Lily and Remus. God, what he wouldn't give for James to do some of that whining to other people about Peter—to love not Sirius, not Lily, but Peter. Maybe that's part of what cancelling last minute is about, you know? Maybe Peter wants to be the one to hurt James this time. Maybe Peter wants to create some drama between himself and his friends for a change, if only so that he can stop living on the outskirts of it, never important enough to be involved. There's even a part of him that wants to come clean and bitch them all out aloud the way he constantly does in his head—but he's too weak, too pathetic, for that.
Peter's not the kind of person who'd ever kill you with his own hands or even his own wand. Peter's the kind of person who'd rat you out to somebody bigger, badder, dirtier, to do it for him—who'd make himself a sandwich and wait by the fireplace for his scapegoat to come and announce that the deed is done.
Honestly, he should be impressed with himself that he even bothered to cancel at all instead of just—failing to show up come Boxing Day, leaving his friends to wonder why he's missing or whether he's ever going to show up. After all, Peter doesn't do well with confrontation, and the dread of receiving James's response to his letter sets in pretty much the second he sends it off. Then again, maybe it would have caused him even more anxiety to bail on Boxing Day without cancelling first: if he had, he probably would have spent the whole day waiting for the other shoe to drop and somebody to pester him about why he never showed.
In any case, the whole thing really puts a damper on Peter's Christmas Eve. He keeps flinching every time there's an unexpected noise, believing it's his parents' owl returned with admonishments from James. It gets to the point by lunchtime that Mum outright asks him what's wrong—whether something's happened that's got him on edge.
"Nothing happened," says Peter softly as he stabs at his vegetables. "Thanks for asking, though."
It's not exactly a lie. It's not like anything happened to Peter today that made him feel so grumpy and jaded and tired. It's just… more of the same old shit.
By four o'clock, when James still hasn't written Peter back and Peter's heart is finally starting to unclench, he gets James's reply—but not in the letter he's expecting. No: Peter's upstairs in his bedroom when he hears a whooshing in the fireplace, a tumbling noise, and then, unmistakably, James's voice. "Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Pettigrew. How are you both?"
Crap. Peter tries to keep his eyes fixed on the book he's reading, but his gaze lands in the same spot and doesn't move as he can't help but strain to listen to the voices downstairs. It's only moments before James bounds up the stairs and around the corner to knock on Peter's door.
"Peter? Your parents said you were up here. Can I come in?"
There's no point pretending like he's not here. Where else is he going to go? "Yeah, sure," he says, and his voice sounds sulky and snide.
James opens the door, but he doesn't say anything else, at least not right away. He stands there dumbly for a second, panting a little from taking the stairs so fast, and then steps into the room, turning around to pull the door closed behind him with a soft thud. When he turns back to Peter, he's frowning.
"I got your letter," James tells him.
"Yeah."
"Something came up at home, huh?"
"Uh huh."
Peter's lying through his teeth, and he knows that James knows it: whether Peter has plans on Boxing Day was one of the first things James asked Peter's parents downstairs. James doesn't call him out on this, though, at least not directly. "You know, you've been really slippery the last few weeks. It feels like you're always there but are never really with us. Are you going to come right out and tell me what's going on, or am I going to have to sit here hammering the point home until you give it up?"
A fleeting, irrational spark of glee hits Peter when he realizes that James is worried about Peter—that James went out of his way to Floo here so that he could listen to Peter talk about how he feels for a change. It makes Peter's fingertips tingle, at least until he remembers that he doesn't remember why he loves James so much, not anymore.
"James, are you still in love with Sirius?"
The question slips out unbidden, but it's out there now, and Peter's going to have to follow through. James is looking at him strangely. "What does that have to do with—?"
"Just answer the question."
James wavers. "I don't think so. I wasn't sure for a long time, but ever since he did what he did last month…"
"What about in sixth year, before you and Lily got together? When you were in love with him then, did you know why?"
"I… no. No, I guess I didn't know why I was in still in love with him after he made it clear that he wasn't leaving Remus."
"Gets confusing, doesn't it?" says Peter in a confidential sort of voice. "I mean, what even really is love, when you think about it? It can't be the feeling you get from people who make you happy, not if you can be in love with somebody whose rejection is making you miserable every second of the—"
"Is there a point to this?" James interjects. "We're not here to talk about me. We're here to talk about you."
"I am talking about me. You just can't see it—none of you can—because you all assume I'm…"
James's eyebrows furrow. He hasn't figured it out, not yet. "Smarter than us? I mean, of course you are. Come on. We've all been jealous of you for months. Who could you possibly be in—?"
"I wasn't going to say smarter," sighs Peter. "I…"
He takes a breath. If he does this—if he says this—if he takes them to this place—
"I was going to say straight. You can't see it because you all think I'm a bloody hetero, but I'm not—not even a little bit."
He can practically see the gears churning in James's brain. "But you—but we all thought—"
"Straight until proven guilty, right? I mean, that's the world we live in, isn't it? Nobody's queer if they haven't outed themselves as queer, are they?"
"No." James backs himself into the wall; it looks like he's collapsing against it. "No way. I'm not saying—I'm saying, there's no way that the Wormtail I know would have kept something like this from us when you saw how scared we all were to come out to each other—to you."
"Did you ever think that maybe I was scared, too?" Peter laughs humorlessly. "I mean, didn't it ever occur to you that I might have the biggest bloody reason of all to hide something like that?"
"What? How could you possibly be scared of our reactions? You knew already that I'm bi—that Remus and Sirius are gay. What's so scary about coming out to other queer people?"
"Well, for starters, it throws a wrench in it if you're in love with the queer person you're avoiding coming out to."
James's whole body is heating up—Peter can see the color flooding his cheeks, his neck, his ears. "You're not—you don't—you couldn't—"
"I could," admits Peter. "I could, and I did, and I'm… you and I… and I've had to watch you falling for Padfoot and falling for Lily and pretty much, let's be real here, falling for everyone you laid eyes on except for me because Peter's not gay, is he? Peter's not even attractive. No way could Peter ever have desires because he's only ever been here to be the dependable one, the one everybody else dumps their trauma on and expects to carry it all, and that's only after the bloody months it took any of you to trust me enough to share what was going on, after I had to piece it together myself after overhearing bits and pieces of conversations that—"
It shocks him a little how good it feels to get it all out there, finally. He's going to regret this conversation later—he can already feel it—but every stupid, terrible, self-indulgent impulse that's ever piled into Peter's mind is coming out, and he can't curb any of it now that he's started. All the resentment he's built up the last few years—all the rage—all the hate—
"—And you know what, James? You know what the worst part is? I focus on how pissed I am at you and everybody else who thinks they bloody know me because it's easier to hate other people than it is to hate myself, but I know—I've known this whole time—that I'm the one I ought to be hating because I'm the stupid one who had the audacity to fall for James Potter the golden boy, James Potter the king, when you only ever kept me around to stroke your ego—"
In the time since the flood started pouring out of him, Peter's seen a lot of emotions cross James's face—shock, horror, sympathy, guilt—but it's not until now that anger makes its way onto the list. No, not anger, Peter realizes when James speaks: indignation. "No. That's not fair. You don't get to accuse me of not valuing our friendship. I would die for you—I would kill for you—my own girlfriend could only dream that I'd tell her some of the things I've shared with you—"
"But never before you shared any of them with Sirius or Remus, right? Because I'm the afterthought. I'm always last on the list—"
"Because you're better than any of us," James hisses, "and I was too selfish and ashamed of my own goddamn failings to want to admit to you how much less than you I am—but I guess I shouldn't have worried about that, huh? I guess you're not the person we—I—thought you were."
"No," snaps Peter. "I guess I'm not."
They glare at each other. The adrenaline is starting to wear off now, and the utter horror Peter feels at himself is starting to set in—but it's too late to do anything about it, not now that he's burnt the most important bridge in his whole bloody life, and whose fault is that? It's like he told James: it's Peter's fault. Everything is always Peter's fault, isn't it? Even when he can't help it, it's his stupid…
xx
When James leaves in a fury, Peter really thinks that he's just put the nail in the coffin of his relationship with his best friend. He spends most of the rest of the evening lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, shooting up sparks with his wand just to watch them burn as silent tears leak down his face. Mum comes up to check on him a few minutes after James leaves, but he bitches her out so callously that she leaves and doesn't come back. This isn't a surprise: Peter's cut from the same cloth, the kind that avoids conflict until it boils over, and Mum's not ready to boil over, not yet.
He doesn't think he's ever let loose on any of his Hogwarts friends like that. He doesn't think he's let loose on anyone like that in at least a few years.
His mind is already spinning tales of how painful the next six months at Hogwarts are going to be when he goes back to school without any friends. He's obviously lost James, and he's going to lose Sirius, Remus, and even Lily when James tells them what an awful person Peter has turned out to secretly be, and then where will Peter be? He'll have to start avoiding the dormitory at night—sitting alone in classes and in the Great Hall—spending all his time somewhere there's no chance he'll run into any of them, which honestly rules out most places in the castle except for, like, Moaning Myrtle's bathroom.
So Peter's thoroughly taken aback when nine o'clock rolls around and he hears somebody Floo into the living room again. It can't possibly be James, not with the way they left things—but it's James's voice Peter hears coming from downstairs, and when his bedroom door opens, it's James's face he sees on the other side of it. "I know you're probably still pissed," says James weakly, "but I couldn't just leave it like that. Sirius told me not to come, to give you space to cool off, but I don't… I didn't…"
"It's okay." Peter's voice sounds weirdly hoarse; he supposes he has been crying, but it's not like he's been sobbing audibly or anything. "So you and Sirius made up?"
"Yeah, we're… I think we're good. I hope we're good. I don't know. It feels like it could fall apart at any second, the instant one of us says or does the wrong thing, but we're friends for now. He feels really bad about… everything."
"Right."
There's an awkward pause. "Peter, whatever I said or did that made you feel like I don't care about you—"
"I don't think you don't care about me," Peter mutters. "I just think you… you take me for granted."
"You know, you're probably right." Peter looks up at this. James is still hovering in the doorway, face flushed, looking a little winded. "I never thought you could feel that way about me just because I didn't feel that way about you, but that wasn't fair of me, and it wasn't fair of any of us to unload on you without checking in and really asking how you were doing. Sirius feels the same way."
"So you told him what happened?"
James snorts. "How could I not? I had, like, a full-on breakdown when I got back to the house. He had to spend about an hour talking me down."
"Look," says Peter, "for what it's worth, I should have talked to you a lot sooner and a lot more civilly than I did about any of this. I know that. I know I need to do better. I just…"
It feels utterly surreal to be sitting in his childhood bedroom talking to James about Peter's feelings for him. It's even stranger that they're not yelling at each other this time.
James closes the door, comes over, sits down next to Peter. Peter notices how careful James is not to touch him. "I'm sorry I couldn't see it, and I'm sorry I got mad. I guess I have a thing or two to learn about how to handle situations like that."
"Yeah. Me, too."
"Are we still friends? I mean, I want to still be friends, but I understand if you need some space, like I needed with Sirius last year."
It's not the first thing James has said tonight to confirm in so few words that he doesn't reciprocate Peter's feelings. Peter wouldn't call this a surprise, but he'd be lying if he said it doesn't still sting.
"I don't know when or if I can get through it," he tells James now. "I don't really remember what it feels like not to love you like… that."
James smiles sadly. "I'm not worth it, you know. I can be pretty awful sometimes. I'm not going to lecture you about how it would be smart to pick somebody else because I know it doesn't work that way, but—"
"Yeah. It really doesn't."
Finally, James touches him—pats him on the knee a couple of times. It doesn't feel good anymore. It doesn't really feel like anything. "I won't tell Lily or Remus about this if you don't want me to. I'll swear Sirius to secrecy, too. I don't want you to have to feel embarrassed or…"
"I should tell Remus myself," says Peter heavily, "but I don't want Lily to know. I don't want her to think that all this time…"
"Yeah," says James. "Yeah, okay. She won't find out. I promise."
Peter doesn't really have anything else to say to James, but he doesn't want to be alone with his thoughts anymore, either. "Will you stay for a while?" he asks stupidly. "Will you just… just keep me company until it's time to sleep?"
"Yeah," says James, "I can do that," and Peter remembers again why he loves James and hates himself.