When Sirius awoke the next morning, he had to resist the urge to flop back down into bed and sleep off the rest of the day. He felt awful. His eyes were crusted shut, his face slightly swollen, and – despite sleeping like the dead – exhaustion overtook his body. He'd cried last night, and not for the first time. He let out a groan.
"Everything alright in there, Padfoot?" James' voice called from the other side of his four-poster curtain.
"Yeah," he replied, "just not ready to be up yet." He fell back against his pillows and contemplated the day to come. He needed to write something. He wasn't sure what, yet, but he knew he needed to write it. It shouldn't be too hard; His friends were long used to him secretly bending over a notebook and scribbling things that they weren't privy to. Still, he always had a hard time with it while James was around. Paranoia prevented him from relaxing when the boy could so easily look over his shoulder. He resisted another groan and roughly shoved the heel of his hands into the caverns of his eye socks. He left them there until he saw stars. He just wanted to go back to bed.
Eventually, however, he found the strength to drag himself out of bed and walked blindly toward the showers. Perhaps the water would wake him up a little bit. Groggy, and staring at his feet, he walked through the bathroom door only to collide roughly with a figure standing just inside. His knees gave and he clipped his elbow on the counter as fell ass-first to the ground.
"Bloody hell" He swore, grabbing his elbow and rubbing it in the hopes that the shooting numbness and screaming nerves would go away. A laugh brought his eyes up to the person he'd run into.
"You weren't kidding about not being awake, were you?" A towel-cladded James reached out a hand to pull Sirius out of his sitting position on the floor. The latter felt his cheeks flush, despite having seen James in a towel on many previous occasions. The blush was intensified by embarrassment at being knocked down by the collision. "It's okay," James told him, seeming to sense this, "my knees don't work in the morning either."
"Yeah," Sirius replied quietly, "but you're not the one who feel down." He kept his eyes on the floor, not trusting the lower endowment of his body to such a vision, though he figured James would chalk a boner up to morning wood anyway.
"You alright, mate?" Sirius sighed and took a tighter grip on his towel.
"I'm fine. Like I said, just tired." James didn't seem to believe it, but didn't press either.
"Well we'd best hurry up then or we're going to miss breakfast. Can't even imagine how you'd live through that." It was meant as a joke, and Sirius knew it, but it didn't sit right. Feeling newly more depressed, he brushed past his friend and stepped into one of the four shower stalls in the room. The warm water just made him sleepy, so a moment before he stepped out he turned the temperature ice cold and forced himself to stand there for a solid 3 minutes.
Feeling awake, but not any happier, Sirius stepped from the shower, wet and shivering, and took a deep breath before opening the door into the dormitory. It was colder in there, and he knew it. Courage gathered, he shoved the door open and in single fluid motion crossed the room, shed his towel and pulled his uniform on over his still partially-wet body. The fabric of his shirt clung irritatingly to his back and he cursed himself for his inability to perform a drying charm properly in the way that Remus could. He took solace in the fact that James wasn't so great at it either, but he sucked at charms in general. He decided he'd try a drying charm tomorrow; he'd need to know how to do them eventually anyway.
After purposely avoiding the mirror for the rest of the morning, he followed James and Remus down the staircase, into the common room, and out into the hallways of the castle. They were relatively empty, which confirmed Sirius's suspicion that they were running late. He didn't say anything as they made their trek toward the Great Hall. Both James and Remus seemed to notice this, much to his annoyance.
"I'm bloody fine!" He snapped, the third time one of them had inquired about his silence. "I'm in a quiet mood and I'm ruddy well aloud to have one!" Neither of his friends made any further inquiries, but passed each other a significant look which only did more to increase his agitation. By the time they reached the Great Hall, Sirius was both depressed and annoyed. Remus looked at him strangely across the table the entire time they were eating.
This made Sirius uncomfortable, because after James' comment in the bathroom that morning, he disliked the idea of being watched as he ate, and he slowly lost the desire to eat anything at all. He put his piece of toast on his plate and pushed it away from him. This, of course, caused Remus to watch him with an even more calculating expression and the only thing that eventually prevented Sirius from snapping at him for it was his fear that it would draw attention from James.
He waiting impatiently for breakfast to be over, and stalked moodily to class when it finally ended. He shoved Snape violently on his way into the Charms room, and this cheered him for moment. He smirked as James shoved him, too, glad to see that Lily hadn't yet stopped him from having fun. Remus glared at them both in a disapproving manner and set further from them from usual, as if embarrassed to associate himself with the two of them.
Professor Flitwick entered the room roughly 5 minutes after the class was scheduled to begin, and from his usual pile of books, squeakily apologized for his tardiness.
"I was unfortunately caught up this morning by an overactive tea-kettle. It seems someone," He glanced suspiciously about the room, "Charmed it to screech the national anthem while spraying tea all over my blasted office." There was a wave of laughter and Sirius glanced over at James for a sign that it might have been him. James seemed as bewildered as anyone else. It must have been a Slytherin. "However," Flitwick continued, "however irritating and inconvenient the incident may have been, the charmwork involved was astounding. Therefore, I will be awarding 5 points to whichever house belongs to the perpetrator, so long as the assailant leaves a note on my desk identifying themselves before the end of the day. Now, let us begin."
There was a buzz of under-breath talk at the news that someone might actually be awarded for pulling a prank on a teacher.
"Who do you think it was?" James whispered to Sirius, who shivered at the touch of his breath on his ear. Sirius shrugged.
"Someone who's good at charms, obviously. It was probably a Ravenclaw." James shrugged and turned back to the front of the room. Sirius waited until the excitement had died down a little before pulling his notebook from his bag. He glanced at James, unsure about writing. James hated charms, and wasn't likely to pay attention to this class for long. However, he did pride himself on getting good marks and not being good at it might also make him pay closer attention. It all depended on how studious James seemed to be feeling on that particular day.
Sirius was in luck, however, when a few minutes later he realized that today was a study day, and James seemed to be operating on a resolution to do better in the subject. He wondered briefly if he shouldn't do the same, but ultimately decided that he could get help from Remus and even James later on. He dipped his quill in his inkpot, which today was dark, blood red.
18th September, 1977
I cried again last night, and I know I promised myself that I wouldn't do that anymore. But I should be cut some slack because James made some pass about me being jealous over Evans and it stuck just the right cord to get me crying again. I think it's getting worse. James doesn't seem to be any closer to getting Evans interested and yet at the same time just hearing him go on about it day after day is taking too much of a toll on me.
Even worse, I think that Moony is starting to suspect that there's something wrong with me. He keeps looking at me weird but refuses to tell me why when I ask him about it. Like this morning, he wouldn't stop bloody staring at me as I ate, and then I wasn't even hungry anymore. I don't know how long I can keep this up. James as good as called me a pig this morning, and I bloody ran right into him in the bathroom and fell right on my arse.
I'm starting to be depressed and sad and agitated all the bloody time and it's all because of James fucking Potter. Well, no, it's not. It's my own damn fault for being a sodding pillow-bitter in the first place. James doesn't even know I'm gay and I'm starting to consider telling him and Remus. I'm worried about how they'll take it, though. I'm losing my head already and I don't think I could handle losing my best friends as well. That's why James can never know how I feel about him.
Fuck. Look at how bloody pathetic I've gotten to be. I'm all worked up now, fixing to cry, because of a fucking journal entry. See what I mean? This can't be normal. I'm not far off from a suicide risk, I swear to you. And however cavalier that comment may sound I'm not exactly kidding. It crossed my mind last night while I was laying there. And don't go laughing at me; I'm not some stupid school-boy getting dramatic over a crush. James is all I have, okay? Him and Moony. And he saved my bloody life, you know. I'm in love with him. And if I lose him because I come out too soon, or because Evans swoops in and steals him away, I won't be able to take that. I feel him distancing already over that stupid cunt! I want him back! I need him and I can't even tell him how much.
I'm going to have to go now, because if I keep this rant up right now I'll either hit something, or start crying, and I'm in class so I'll talk to you later.
Sirius.
Sirius slammed the book closed, a little too loudly, and James' head snapped over to look at him. He saw the look of distress written across his face. Knowing better than to try asking what was wrong again, he placed a comforting hand on his shoulder instead. The curly headed boy had to physically brace himself from this impact to keep collapsing. He wanted to cry, and an inner part of him was absolutely disgusted with himself for wanting it. He wanted to cry and sob and collapse right into James' chest and keep his face buried there forever. But he couldn't.
The final 20 minutes of class was torture for Sirius. James didn't remove his hand from his shoulder until the bell rang and by that point his resolve was nearly gone. He refused to open his mouth and was afraid to even make eye-contact with either of his friends by the time they were filing out of the Charms classroom and into the corridor. He wanted to finish his rant, but he didn't know when he'd have to time to do it alone. As he slowly followed his friends down the hallway toward the dungeons, Sirius heard a familiar voice.
"Look, Potter," Lily sounded resigned as she spoke, "I don't know why you've been so bloody adamant about it, but fine. Whatever. We will make one study date for this Saturday, and that's it. All of my friends have been suggesting that if I give in you might leave me alone, so, fine."
Sirius stopped breathing. Someone grabbed his shoulder again, but this time it was Remus, who was watching him concernedly.
"Really?!" James was saying. "That's great, Evans! Thank you! I'll see you on Saturday!" Lily rolled her eyes and walked off, flanked by two giggling friends. Sirius still wasn't breathing, and Remus slapped him hard on the back. He drew in a gasp and pretended to have just been spacing out so that Remus wouldn't suspect him of being upset by the scene ahead of them. James approached them both, grinning, and walked the rest of the way to the dungeons with a successful strut.
Sirius, on the other hand, wasn't sure he would even make it to the dungeons at all.
I know this ship isn't over popular (sad, isn't it?), but I absolute love feedback. So if those of you who ARE reading this would be so kind as to REVIEW, those things do have a tendency to make my entire day. Thank you!
xForeversEndx
