Look, the thing you have to understand is that James isn't gay or anything. It just takes a lot of work to seduce girls for long enough to get them into bed, and then how long can that even last before you get fed up with them acting like—well—girls and have to break it off? As far as James is concerned, it isn't worth the energy. With Sirius, on the other hand, it's easy. They've been best mates since first year, so the trust is already there. More importantly, they know exactly what they want from each other, and they both want the same thing: not to be in a dry spell.

So they bang sometimes. Correction: they banged sometimes. That, of course, all grinds to a halt when Sirius has to go and send Snape down the Whomping Willow on a full moon.

James isn't actually planning to stop. After all, he helped Sirius out of this mess—swore to him that he'd take care of it, that he was on Sirius's side—and he did take care of it, didn't he? He saved Snape. With a little bit of blackmail, he even managed to convince Snape not to press charges against Sirius for what he did.

He took care of it, and he still stands by Sirius through all of it. Sirius isn't a bad person; he's just—misguided. Can you blame him when you look at the family he comes from? He just—he screws up sometimes and needs somebody to steer him right again.

That's all it is. Really. But days pass, and James… can't even touch Sirius.

At first, he can easily write it off. It's not like they were shagging every night or anything before the Snape incident; they've always tried to respect the fact that they've got two additional roommates whom James and Sirius definitely don't want to catch them going at it in the middle of the night (or, sometimes, the middle of the day). But Sirius makes no effort to get James alone, so James doesn't, either, telling himself it's just that they haven't had the opportunity—until they end up alone in the dormitory with privacy guaranteed for two hours, and he can't bring himself to go there.

They don't talk about it: Sirius doesn't ask, and James doesn't raise it, either. He owes Sirius an explanation—he knows that. Sirius is probably drowning in guilt right now, thinking he repulses James after what he did, and he doesn't deserve to feel that way, not even if…

Is it true? Does Sirius repulse James ever since what happened? He can't tell. All he knows is that Sirius is right there half a meter away, and James's hands are planted firmly in his own lap, and he can't bear to move them any closer—shudders when he imagines leaning in and kissing Sirius.

Another week passes—two weeks—three—and nothing happens between them, and they don't talk about it. It's fine, really. They're not gay, anyway, so it's not like James misses being together like that with Sirius; he'll just have to go without for a while the way most people do when they don't have a bang buddy to oblige them. Doesn't the fact that he hasn't been interested in Sirius that way lately just prove what James has been saying all along—that he's straight, that he's fine, that he doesn't need it?

Except—James hasn't gone without for longer than a week since last summer, and he's starting to get antsy.

Sure, he tries to take care of it on his own, but being with Sirius has spoiled him, and it isn't the same. Besides, it's hard to even do that nowadays without images of Sirius filling his brain, and those same images keep making James feel sick to his stomach when the pop up. After almost a month of this, James's nerves are shot, and he's constantly on edge. Sirius doesn't say anything, but James is pretty sure he's noticed—they spend enough time together that he must have noticed. Unsurprisingly, Peter doesn't say anything, either, but Remus, at least, has got no reservations about calling James out on his bullshit.

He takes James aside after one particularly brutal attack on Snape in the corridors involving, among other spells, a Leg-Locker Curse and a Bat-Bogey Hex. "What's your problem, Moony?" barks James, but he already knows what Remus is going to say.

"I should be asking you the same thing," Remus says quite levelly. "You've been jumping at shadows and yelling at everyone for weeks now. I'm not the happiest person in the world with Sirius right now, either, but—"

"Who says I'm not happy with Sirius?"

"Prongs, come on. I'm not that thick."

James tries not to panic. Remus doesn't know about his deal with Sirius, and if James is going to come clean—does James want to come clean? It's not like they've done anything wrong, but he feels a little sick inside when he pictures the look on Remus's face if he finds out that James is less than straight—but he's not less than straight. He's straight as an arrow. He and Sirius just help each other out, that's all.

He casts a wary look around the corridor. Sirius and Peter have gone ahead to Charms without them at Remus's request, but Snape's still on the ground, and onlookers are still watching avidly. "Can we go somewhere to talk about this?"

So Remus rolls his eyes and takes James by the arm and pulls him into the nearest empty classroom. Inside, Remus folds his arms and stares James down. "If you need to cuss Padfoot out, just do it soon, won't you? Quit making the rest of us suffer right along with him."

"It's not that." Remus raises his eyebrows, but James insists, "No, for real, it isn't. I just… um… I can't get laid."

This is obviously not what Remus was expecting James to say. "You say that like you've been having sex all this time."

"I…"

"James, who have you been having sex with?"

James deflates. "It's not a big deal. We just help each other out, that's all—or we did. I haven't been able to since, um… since the Snape thing."

It clicks. Remus's jaw drops. "You and Sirius?"

"Keep your voice down," whispers James, even though they're alone in the classroom and Remus isn't talking all that loudly. "We're not gay. We're not. See, this is exactly why we didn't want you and Wormtail to know—"

"James, I'm not judging you," says Remus. He looks more stunned than anything, but there's a crinkle in his eyes that James doesn't like, not one bit. "As long as you haven't, like, done it with him in my bed or something—"

"No way. And we've only ever done it when we had the room to ourselves."

"Okay. Then we're good."

This proclamation does nothing to ease the tension inside him. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. Just—are you sure that's all this is about? Being celibate? I mean, there's clearly something going on if what happened is making you cut him off from that, and if you're pissed at him—"

"I'm not pissed at him." James says this too quickly and then realizes his mistake. "I—right. Um—I know you're pissed at him, and that's fair. I just mean—I did what I had to do to protect him, to protect both of you, and I don't regret that, and I'm not bitter about it. I did what I had to. That's all I meant."

Everything's coming out all wrong, and James doesn't even want to think about what Remus is taking away from it—pity? Resentment? He says he's not judging James, but James knows all too well how easy it is to say one thing and believe another. He can't read Remus's face. He can't read it.

"All right," says Remus. "All right. But if you're so fine about everything, then why break things off with him?"

And James just—crumples. "I can't touch him anymore, Remus. I try when we're alone, and I can't. I can't even…"

Remus ducks his head. "I'm not sleeping with him, but yeah. I know what you mean."

And that's when the idea comes to James, and it's a brilliant one, a terrible one, a doomed one, but James is a sucker for doom, isn't he, hanging round with a Black and a werewolf and a rat who bullies people before those people can bully him back, and didn't Peter—didn't all his friends learn that from James? James the instigator, James the ringleader, James who the whole school keeps whispering saved snivelling Snape from himself last month—James is just a person. He's just a person, and he hates himself more than you ever could, and he doesn't deserve any of the glory he gets—never has—but people give it to him anyway, and he doesn't know how to stop asking, so he asks, "Hey, you think Pete would have a go with me if I asked him?"

If he couldn't read Remus's face before, he certainly can't now. "You're kidding me, right? James, you can't do that to him. I don't know if he'd go for it, but if he did… it would mean a lot more to him than it would to you, and he wouldn't appreciate being treated like Sirius's replacement. Peter worships you. You know that."

James does know that, and he also knows that Remus is right, but now that the idea's occurred to him, he can't get it out of his brain. He finds himself side-eyeing Peter all through Charms, sizing up whether James could bring himself to actually do it—to actually ask. Sure, Peter's a lot less attractive than Sirius is, but that shouldn't matter, should it?—not if what James and Sirius do has really got nothing to do with anything so banal as attraction. As far as James knows, Peter hasn't got any experience in the shagging department, but that would only really matter in the beginning—he could learn. James could teach him. He… yeah. James could kind of get behind the idea of teaching him.

Peter's sitting one desk over with Remus, and James is working with Sirius, like usual. He keeps having to dodge glares from Remus and confused looks from Sirius, who eventually mutters, "What's your deal today? I didn't think anything Moony could say to you would have this much of an impact."

"What?"

"Moony. You two keep looking at each other."

Right—given that Remus is the one who dragged James away to lecture him half an hour ago, Sirius probably thinks that Remus is the one James can't pull his brain away from. James doesn't bother correcting him. It's not like he can tell Sirius what it is that he's considering doing.

It occurs to him that it feels sort of like he's cheating on Sirius or something by thinking about banging somebody else. He shoves this thought out of his mind the instant it crops up.