3. Lily

Lily Evans was almost completely lacking in the two most basic social functions of small-talk and tact, but there you go.

"You big stupid- mutt-! -You have been avoiding me."

She also struggled to find words when she was emotional, most often resulting in mild verbal abuse, but the way she would eventually splutter her on-the-spot choices with wide-eyed conviction always made it impossible to take offense.

Sirius couldn't help but smile.

She had shown up, pounding like a steelworker on his door at nine AM, holding a box of Clairvoyant's Creme Crumpets under one arm like she thought that would smooth over the blasphemy of the hour. They both knew that Sirius would be initially irritated with her presumption that bringing him a treat would allow her to act like a stampeding bicorn- bursting into his house at the crack of dawn to accuse him of being cross with her- and they both also knew that, in the end, the Crumpets would do the trick just fine.

He was in fact avoiding her, and he found himself feeling bare in her unexpected presence.

"No'm not-," he said matter-of-factly through a strategically timed mouthful of crumpet.

She looked at him fiercely across his own dining room table, and there was a clear mixture of rejection, confusion, and anger in her green eyes. Sirius could only look at them for a second before looking away, on the pre-tense of inspecting the box of Clairvoyant's. He was guilty at the thought of having put a small kind of hurt in her eyes, but it also gave him a rushing sort of thrill to know that he could put it there. It was some small, sorry confirmation that she cared for him too.

"Why," he asked sternly, much like a Professor -he was hoping to snap her into 'Lily-the-obedient-student-mode'; distract her from her determination to get to the bottom of the 'strain' on their friendship as of late-, "do they call them Clairvoyant's? Is it because you have to be blind to not see that they are the Creme Crumpets of choice? Or is it because they make you see?"

He widened his eyes with the last word, gazing up at her with mysticism.

She glared at him.

"Sirius, I'm not joking! I'm-"

"My dear. The matters of the Third Eye are never a joke," he hissed in an apt impression of batty old Professor Vail. Then he cocked an eyebrow, "C'mon. For ten points to Gryffindor. Which is it."

She was looking at him like he was an absolute idiot, and he felt something inside of him cowering like an awkward teenager. He looked down at the scuffed table, refusing to meet her eyes, feeling panic rising slowly in his chest. They were past the age where he could joke his way out of participating in real conversations and have it be charming, and they both knew it. He didn't know what to do.

"Sirius," she said again, but her voice had softened like she knew he felt trapped, and was taking pity on him. The very tone of it when she spoke like that made him crack inside, and he wished she would just stay angry. "Please talk to me."

A warm touch was laid on his hand, and he felt suddenly dizzy with the adrenaline fueled head-rush it sent throbbing through his temples. A shuddering pleasure seemed to flow through his arm and down his chest at the contact, and his jeans were actually growing uncomfortably tight. At a touch of the hand. It had taken him a considerable amount of focus and inner pep-talking to get himself half this... ready to perform, with the witch he had brought home two nights ago.

He let out a silent shaky breath, feeling abruptly filled with frustration that he could be sitting here like this, and on the other side of that touch, she was sitting there feeling like she was doing nothing more out of the ordinary than nudging a distracted friend back to attention.

He didn't know how she could be so oblivious.

It was another pitfall of being a Black, no doubt. So engrained was his pride, so skilled was his secrecy, he could sit next to his closest friends with an inner war raging, and the most anyone might think was that perhaps Sirius seemed a bit peckish.

"Sirius. What is going on with you?!" Her voice was raised; an edge of desperation dancing around in its inflections. He felt the satisfaction and he didn't care. With a sudden wave of recklessness and resentment towards her for her own ignorance, he looked up at her with everything he had.

He let it fill the air between them, let it catch in her own eyes- let the years of lust and torment and heart-wrenching longing be written on his face for the smartest witch he had ever known to read.

I fucking love you. And that is what's going on with me.

He let it say.

And then he raised his eyebrows cooly, feeling it all vanish like a neatly cast spell.

"My father died whilst you were away."

It wasn't a lie. He hadn't known if he was going to tell anyone, but here was the perfect out. He didn't even feel guilty for using it as an excuse. Dad would be proud of this sort of manipulation. Sirius thought wryly. Would have liked to see his son living out the Black legacy at last.

"Oh." Lily's eyes were round, as was her mouth. She looked shocked and mortified to have been acting so selfishly. And she looked deeply hurt for him. As your closest friend should.

Sirius smiled grimly and studied her eyes.

She was the smartest woman he knew, and her eyes held the smallest ounce of mis-trust. She had felt, if only for that instant, the truth. She knew him. Better in some ways than even James did. She must know on some level- however afraid she was to admit it to herself- what the strange wall that sometimes existed between them really was. She was a woman, and she knew him. She was wiser than James (and even Remus) in the realms of emotion, and did not simply write off moods and guards as fixed mathematics of one's personality. She must know there was a reason.

He searched her eyes, feeling the silent conversation they were having- the standoff. She must know how manipulative, how twisted, how pathetic he could be, despite his best efforts.

The purity of her soul always seemed to take seat in her eyes, mocking and soothing him in equal doses. He saw nothing but care as she looked at him now... but there was that note of confusion. She wasn't sure what she had seen, in the rare candor of his face. He studied her, urged her not to forget.

Did she know?