Chapter 4: The Growth of Communication

Cressida awakens to the sharp movement of Sirius who snaps awake at something. He holds his snout into the air, sniffing eagerly. She watches him in a moment of concern but it dribbles away as the scent of bacon floods the room. Who is making bacon?

Shoving the blankets away, Cressida follows behind Sirius who transforms back into a man to open the bedroom door. "I don't remember giving you a key," he calls out in the main room.

Cressida peeks out of her bedroom, relaxing once more at the sight of James cooking at their stovetop. "I did," she tells Sirius. "Though this wasn't the purpose, I'm not going to argue."

James only glances at them over his shoulder, smiling with tightly pressed lips. Her smile weakens slightly. He must have gotten her message and decided to come over himself. Sirius heads straight to the island bench they use as a dining table, watching eagerly at the sizzling stovetop. Cressida makes her way to James' side, wrapping a loose arm around his back. "How did it go?" he asks quietly.

"As always," she sighs. "Dead end, but at least we can cross it off." James gives her another tight smile that makes the gears in her head turn with anxiety. "Is something wrong?"

He shakes his head, lifting the frying pan from the stovetop. "Everything's fine." Holding the hot pan to the side, he leans down, pressing a kiss to her forehead. He moves to the other side of the kitchen, plating their breakfast. Cressida only exchanges a quick glance with Sirius who shoots his eyes off to the side with inward curved lips.

With three ready plates, Sirius takes his to the lounge, turning on the television but James and Cressida sit at the bench. He hungrily digs into his bacon and eggs, but Cressida can only stomach a few bites. Rather than beating around the point, she leans close to his ear, "Why are you so sour today?"

James looks up from his plate, but only keeps his eyes forward as he gives a small shrug of his shoulders. "We'll talk about it later." Cressida's insides twist and tighten, recalling exactly what those words meant last time he said them. What has she done this time? His fork clatters against his plate. "Please eat," he says. "I know you don't eat a lot when you're gone."

"I can't, I'm sorry. Thank you though." The stress fills her enough. Sliding from the stool, she hands her plate to Sirius who gives her a stern eye but takes it nevertheless. Opening their fridge, she peers in to see almost nothing and a carton of milk with barely a sip left. "I'm going to the shops." Tearing a strip of paper off the notepad, she clicks a pen and starts the scribble down items to pick up.

"You're not seriously going now, are you?" James bellows, his arms resting palms up along the bench. Cressida gives him a baffled look.

"We need food."

"Can't Sirius go get it?" he demands.

Cressida rolls her eyes, watching Sirius stand up from the lounge. "Sit down!" Eyes turning back to James, she says firmly, "No, it's my job to do those chores since he pays for it all. And right now, I don't feel like staying here, waiting for you to get the guts to tell me what you want to talk about. So yes, I'm seriously going right now." Sirius, still looking the other way, sits back down.

James leaps from his chair, his waist running along the bench as he darts around it. "Let me come at least. I came here to spend time with you."

"Well maybe you should come back tomorrow," she cries, pinching her own hip. "If you're upset at me, then fine, but don't come here just to tell me that you'll talk later. Come to me when you're ready to talk."

James pulls his bottom lip back with his tongue, running a hand through his thick hair. "I'm sorry, it just came on me when I got here. I didn't have time to think things over." His voice is significantly softer than hers. "I love you."

"Okay," Sirius drawls out, rising again from the lounge. He strides up between them, plucking the paper from her fingers. "Think of this as you doing me a favour so I don't have to be in the middle of this." He waves over his shoulder, shutting the apartment door behind him.

Left in silence, James braces his elbows on the bench, burying his head in his hands. "I'm sorry, I just didn't know how to handle it but I didn't want to leave."

Cressida takes a long draw of air, leaning onto the bench next to him. "Are you going to tell me now that he's not here to listen?"

James lifts his head, hands clasped and dropping down. Like her, he takes a few long breaths before he gathers himself enough to start talking. "I'm so sorry. I'm really glad you're home and safe. I came over here because I missed you and didn't want to wait for you to come over."

"I'm not asking you to apologise for feeling something, I just want to talk about it so I'm not waiting around feeling like I'm going to vomit until you do," she says in one breath.

James bounces his leg, tilting his head with a downturned expression. "I just know I'm going to sound like a dick. Which is why I wanted to think about it before I said anything."

In a meek attempt to lighten the room, she scrunches her nose. "Is it my outfit?" she wonders mockingly. Glancing down at her Disney pyjamas consisting of a pair of shorts and singlet, she stretches the singlet downwards. It has mickey mouse ears. James laughs silently, shaking his head.

"No, it's very cute. The bottoms are very short though." Cressida only hums in agreement. They are short, but it's Summer and she brought them on a good sale. James moves off the bench and Cressida turns around to follow him but he comes to stand in front of her, arms circling her waist. She smirks, holding a girlish giggle as his hand travel up the back of her thigh, showing her just how much they don't cover as James enjoys himself. "And this is where I'm going to sound like a dick."

Her smile morphs. "So it is what I'm wearing?"

"It's you and Sirius," he spits out in answer, his shoulders dropping. Cressida gulps, opening her mouth to ask what he means but her tongue is too dry. James blinks, turning his head off to the side. "I know, I sound like a jealous arsehole. And I probably am, but I can't help feeling that way. I came over, knowing you wouldn't be up yet so I went into your room to lie with you for a few hours but you already had Sirius in there with you, cuddled up like a couple."

Cressida nods once, long and slow and she tries to understand what exactly he's implying. "James… It's Sirius."

"I know!" he cries, hands moving from her waist to the bench, his knuckles turning a whiter shade. "And if was some guy that I wasn't close with I could handle just being jealous and angry, and I would have said something ages ago. But it is Sirius, and that makes it a lot harder, because I know he's gay, and I know you love me, but I constantly see you too being intimate and it's fucking hard!"

Her brows pinch with a bowed head, replaying a few scenes over in her head. They weren't intimate to her, but perhaps her idea of intimacy is strictly romantic. What was James seeing at those moments that she wasn't?

"I had to hear him claim you as his," he continues in a hiss. "I can't just tell him to back the fuck off, cause it's Padfoot and I know how close you are. Godric, I love the both of you, but I'm in love with you and it's like having to watch you be with another man. And a lot of the time, it feels like he's more important to you than I am. I want to marry you, Cress. I want to be your husband. But I watch you two together, and I think he's genuinely in love with you."

Cressida's eyes are flushed with hot tears, her nose stinging. "I…I…" Tears fall onto either cheek. It feels worse than when he was angry at her for not talking to him because she knew what she was doing then. A part of her expected it to come. But she hadn't even put thought into how James was feeling about her friendship with Sirius. She always just assumed their brotherhood and trust made their situation perfectly acceptable.

"Fuck," he whispers. "Please don't cry. It's not your fault, I can deal with it on my own. I just need to… get over myself. This is why I wanted to talk about it later."

"No, no," she whimpers hastily. She feels like utter shit. "I-I didn't even think that you felt that way. Merlin, I should have realised." He hinted at it multiple times and she brushed him aside. "I'm so sorry. You don't need to apologise for feeling that way. Have you talked to Sirius about this?"

James sighs, the muscles of his shoulders rounding. He moves his hands off the bench and back around her middle. "Not properly," he admits. "Only about the being his thing. I was more pissed about you being treated like a child's doll."

Cressida buries her head into his neck, the length of her arms crossed along the landscape of his back. "I love you. I love you so much and I don't want to lose you."

"Merlin, Cress. You're not going to lose me." He chuckles softly into her ear, fingers threading through her loose hair. "I don't want to be the jealous boyfriend who tells you that you can't hug your friends, but I need to know that there's a line that only I get to cross. Imagine if Lily and I were really close, and we lived together, slept in the same bed, cuddled every day."

Cressida pulls her head back with a playful glare, but the boiling inside her stomach is ever so real. James smiles at her reaction.

"Exactly. That's what I feel." He leans closer, arms dropping to the back of her thighs, and he hoists her onto the counter. "We'll talk about it properly, and I'll talk to Sirius as well. I'm not keen on being upset with either of you, alright?"

Cressida tips her head back with a nod, wishing the tears would retreat back into her eyes. The fear of losing him became all too real once more and she knows that if she were the one to face the Boggart in the Prefects' bathroom, whatever it would conjure, would elicit a feeling similar to this. "Thank you for telling me. It was a bit of a wake-up call but I'd rather we talk about it now than leave it until you can't deal with it anymore."

"And thank you for understanding. It's not something I'm proud to feel but I'm very much in love with you and I don't like seeing you in the arms of another man while dressed in pants that make my mind go crazy."

"Quite reasonable," she murmurs with a gentle smile. She knows James. She knows that he's not the type to say something about her and Sirius unless it was genuinely bothering him. And she will always respect the way he feels. He's not asking her to cut Sirius off, he's asking her to create boundaries that she just hadn't thought to do before. "Just don't try and get back at me by doing the same thing."

"Hmm," he hums, his glasses tilting crookedly as he scrunches his nose. "I already have a cuddle session with Remus coming up."

Despite her still simmering anxiousness, she laughs loudly forward to wrap her arms around his neck. "For the record, you didn't sound like a dick. Or a douchebag." He lets out a genuine exhale of relief. "If you threw a fit, then yeah, you definitely would have. But we had a proper conversation and I'm proud of us."

James kisses her deeply, nearly pulling her from the bench.

"To add to the record," she murmurs in her break for air, "I don't do this with Sirius either."

He leans back enough that their foreheads and nose still touch but there's a small gap between their mouths. "I'm glad we cleared the air. But I'm not sure whether I'm glad or not you have panties on right now." Cressida laughs, dropping her head down to his neck, feeling the warmth of his hands contrasting the coldness of the bench on her bare skin. "How long will Sirius be shopping for?"

"Considering he doesn't even know where they are, I'd guess a while."

Ok, original story now at 25,000 words. I was planning on taking a break from fanfiction HOWEVER...Avatar the Last Airbender... I have a writing style that I used to use more so in A Tale of Time (The Hobbit - Complete if you would like to check that out) that I would love to fall back into and expand on. It's a bit more descriptive and flowery with more mature characters which I love reading. I wouldn't be able to publish everyday but I feel like I would be able to benefit from that as the writing will be better since I compromise with time on this one.

In saying that - I am almost finished writing this story. I originally planned for it to be like 100,000-120,000 words and I think I overdid my goal by a tiny bit. Once I do finish, I'll just update the story in complete adding around 80,000 words.

Anywho - thank you so much for those peeps - ya'll know who you are. It's amazing and kept me motivated to post on here. I never really liked this platform before since it's very 'technical' looking but I do enjoy it now and look forward to reading your guys thoughts. I'm a bit annoyed at Cressida myself so I understand if you guys are too but I hope she at least makes a roundabout by the end of the story.