Sirius Black loved James Potter. There was no denying it. Anyone who spent more than 2 minutes in their company could see it plainly. James had been the first person who had ever shown him what unconditional love was, and they had fallen so platonically head over heels for each other so quickly that Sirius sometimes felt like he was still reeling from it, even to this day.
James was the other side of his coin. Where Sirius was dark humour and chaotic bursts of energy, James was bright laughter and steady enthusiasm. Where Sirius could be melancoly and brooding, James could be needy and self-depricating. But never at the same time. The two balanced each other perfectly, and although Sirius was very deeply in love with Remus Lupin, he would definitely say that James was his soul-mate, the missing half that made him whole.
Yes, Sirius Black loved James Potter. But right now, Sirius Black was seriously considering murdering James Potter.
'Remus!' James hissed through the curtains for the second time in 10 seconds, and Sirius almost whimpered when the wonderful, warm bulk against his back shifted. No, no I'm not ready to give this up yet. But he held in the sound and laid as still as possible, feigning sleep as Remus sat up behind him.
'Yeah, hold on,' Remus whispered back, and Sirius could have sworn that he felt the boy's gaze skim over his form before the mattress dipped and shifted as Remus slipped out of the bed. He listened as the tall boy murmured, 'What's up, Prongs?'
'Have you seen Sirius?' James asked, softly enough that Sirius realised it must be early, and therefore Peter must still be asleep. Lucky sod. But James sounded worried as he went on, 'I can't find him in the tower, and it's so unlike him to get up early and -'
'Actually,' Remus interrupted, and Sirius smiled at the hint of mischief in his voice. 'I have seen him this morning.'
'Oh.' Silence, then James said, 'Oh!' and Sirius didn't even need to see the dark-skinned boy to know that he was shifting from foot to foot, rubbing at the back of his neck with one hand and using his constant motion to distract Remus while he thought of something to say. 'Right. OK. So, um, are you -'
'It's complicated,' Remus said quietly, and Sirius' heart plummeted. Complicated wasn't even the word for ... for whatever this was. There was another pause, then Remus added, 'But we're working on it.'
'Ah. Good. Good, I'm glad. Because honestly, Moony,' James dropped his voice, but Sirius could hear the words easily in the still dormroom. 'I've been so worried about him. And you. You've both been killing yourselves over this, and I just ...' James huffed a great sigh, and Sirius could picture how the sincere sorrow would be shining in those big brown eyes as he blinked up at Remus from behind his glasses. 'I'm just glad you're finally together again.'
'We were never together in the first place,' Remus said, a little too stiffly, and Sirius couldn't help but cringe into his pillow. He was right, they never had been officially together. But it had always felt so natural to him, the way they'd been around each other, that it had almost felt like ...
'No, I know,' James blurted, then lowered his voice again when a loud snuffle came from the direction of Peter's bed. 'I know, mate, I didn't mean - well, I did, but what I should have said was - um, I'll just ... shut up now.'
'Probably not a bad idea,' Remus said, and the smirk Sirius could clearly hear in his tone helped to ease a bit of the tension that had been building in him throughout the overheard conversation. James gave a wry chuckle.
'Think I'll go down to breakfast, then,' the boy murmured cheerfully. 'Try and figure out how to stop putting my foot in my mouth, maybe.' Remus laughed softly, and Sirius listened to James' boucing step as he headed for the door. Before it opened though, he heard him stop. 'Remus?'
'Yeah?'
'Please go easy on him, OK? I know what he did was stupid, bordering on insane, really. But he knows that, too. You didn't see how hard he beat himself up for it over the summer. It doesn't make what he did right, but ... I just hope you can take that into consideration.'
'Alright,' Remus said simply, his tone carefully level, and Sirius heard James hesitate before he finally left, having apparently decided to drop the matter. After a moment, Remus sighed deeply, then the mattress shifted again, the curtains twitched back into place, and Sirius felt the dull tingle of Remus' magic as he cast a silencing spell around them. He almost jumped into the air when Remus said from beside him, 'I know you're awake.'
'How -'
'Your heartbeat,' Remus said, his voice gentle as he laid down again. Sirius turned over to find Remus lying on his back, staring at the bed canopy above them. Remus murmured, 'You hear all of that?'
'Yes,' Sirius whispered. If Remus had known he'd been awake for some of the conversation, he didn't really see any point in pretending he'd been asleep at all. And he wanted to start as he meant to go on - openness and honesty between them, at all times. Remus seemed to have the same idea.
'I'm sorry if what I said sounded harsh,' Remus said, turning his face towards Sirius. He could see the apprehension in those amber eyes as they flicked over his face, reading his expression. 'But I ... well, I want for us to be clear about this. All of us.'
'Right,' Sirius said, though none of this was very clear to him at all. Remus appeared to read his thoughts, and he let out a quiet snort.
'Yeah, bit of a mess, really, isn't it?' he said, a small smile tugging at his scarred lips. Sirius found his gaze stuck on Remus' mouth, the way it moved, and he longed to close the distance between them, to take his first real taste of Remus. But he'd been told that he wasn't allowed last night, and he would respect that boundary until Remus told him that it was OK. Instead, he decided to keep talking.
'Huge fucking mess,' he muttured, lifting his gaze to Remus' eyes. The smile left Remus' face at whatever he saw in Sirius' face. Sirius took a deep breath. 'I have no right to do this, but I need to ask something of you.'
'OK?' Remus' tone was a little amused. 'Why don't you tell me what it is first? Then we'll decide if you didn't have the right to ask for it.'
'I think part of our problem, um, before,' Sirius began stiltedly, pushing through to avoid the wave of blackness that threatened to wash over him at the mere mention of the incident, 'was that we just didn't communicate properly. Last night we both said that we've loved each other for a long time, but over all those years neither of us thought to ask the other how they felt, and I just don't want to end up there again. So I would like to be able to ask what you're thinking, and I would need you to be honest with me when I ask. Even if I ask it a lot. Even if you think that I won't like the answer.'
Remus considered him for a moment before he blew out a long breath. 'Yeah, OK, that doesn't sound too unreasonable. But only if I get to ask the same of you.'
'I'll do whatever it takes to gain your trust again,' Sirius breathed, and Remus smiled gently at him. Sirius fiddled with the edge of the pillow for a moment, then blurted, 'What were you thinking when James said it's good that we're together again?'
'Hitting me with a hard one right out of the gate there, Pads,' Remus groaned, and he turned to look at the canopy again. 'Gimme a sec to work out how to say it, yeah?'
Sirius nodded, holding his breath as he watched Remus' face. The boy's tanned forehead creased into a frown, the frown he usually got when he was considering a difficult homework question or trying to work past a barrier for a prank. He chewed nervously at his lower lip, and Sirius squashed down the urge to reach up and tug that lip from between his teeth. He just waited, and by the time Remus spoke, he was light-headed from a lack of oxygen.
'At first I thought it was an absurd thing to say,' Remus murmured, and Sirius sucked in a breath. Remus glanced at him, but Sirius nodded for him to go on. 'I thought it was so strange, for him to have seen, ah, what happened, to have seen it like it was a break-up. But then ...' Remus rolled over suddenly onto his side, and Sirius forgot to breathe again at the intensity in his eyes. 'But then I thought about it some more, and I realised that he wasn't really wrong.'
'He wasn't?' Sirius whispered.
'No,' Remus said. 'When I think about it, it really does feel like that's what happened. We were both heartbroken, our friends chose sides or had to share out their time, and the only person I really wanted to talk to about all of this was, well, you. But I couldn't. Am I making sense?' Sirius just nodded blankly, and Remus continued. 'And that made me think about how, if it felt like a break-up, then maybe there was always something more to us, you know? Like the sleeping thing.'
'The sleeping thing?' Gods, he sounded so fucking dumb, just repeating Remus' words back to him like this. But Remus was talking to him, just talking and talking and talking, and he had spent long enough not hearing that lovely voice. Had spent many nights with his chest splitting in two when he considered that he might never hear that voice directed at him again. He wanted Remus to just talk forever, and if he could achieve that by contributing as little as possible, then so be it.
'Yeah,' Remus said. 'When I think about it, I would never consider sleeping next to someone the way you and I do. Not even James, or Pete. I know you sometimes sleep in with James, too, but -'
'I don't sleep with James how you and I sleep.' Sirius couldn't help interrupting - it felt important that Remus knew the difference. 'When I sleep in with James, we top-and-tail.'
'Oh,' Remus said, and Sirius watched something connect behind his eyes. Almost as though he was adding a new piece into a jigsaw in his mind. He was quiet for a while, and Sirius was starting to regret putting him off track, when Remus focused on him again. 'Anyway, it's not just the sleeping thing. Did you notice that we used to touch each other? Like, all of the fucking time.' Sirius simply shook his head this time, and Remus breathed, 'Neither did I. Until I stopped touching you. And it was like my skin was on fire. At first I couldn't figure out why, until I touched you again last night. And my body just ... stopped aching.'
Sirius blinked at him, turning this over in his head. He thought back over their friendship, all the way to first year. The signs had been there, even that early on. He could distinctly recall the first time they had touched in a way that was ... different.
They had been in the crowded common room with everyone returning from the Christmas break, and the whole place had been loud and chaotic. Early in the night, when they were stood talking with Marlene, Remus had shifted closer and subtly brushed his forefinger against Sirius' pinky. A motion that Sirius had known instinctively meant that Remus was trying to let him know he'd needed a break from the others. He had instantly whisked the boy upstairs and sat with him until he felt less overwhelmed.
Things had only progressed from there. It seemed that wherever he looked in his memories, Sirius could find evidence of himself being hyperaware of Remus at all times. From knowing exactly where he was in a room, to making sure that he made himself as available as possible, so that even a passing touch from the taller boy, on his wrist or his back or his shoulder, would tell him everything that Remus couldn't say.
And when he thought about his own behaviour, he was surprised to realise that he had been just as tactile. He had forever been throwing himself into Remus' lap, or sitting at his feet to rest his head against his thigh, even leaning into his side when they walked together. Sirius could have dismissed all of this as doing these things for Remus' benefit, to ground him or support him if he was limping. But he understood now that from the moment that contact had stopped, he had been absolutely starving for it.
And all of the touches, from the subtle to the very unsubtle, were all things that would have felt weird if they had been with anyone else. Even James. From the very beginning, he'd known there was something out of the ordinary about touching Remus the way he did, the way he needed to. But he'd egotistically put it down to pride at being the only one that really understood what Remus needed, even when it was something that he couldn't ask for.
'Pads?' Remus said, and Sirius realised that he had just been staring at the other boy in silence for a while. 'You alright? Where'd you go?'
'Sorry,' Sirius murmured. 'Was just thinking.' Remus pointedly raised one eyebrow, and Sirius huffed, uncomfortable with sharing his thoughts, but went on, 'Just thinking about all the touching. Doesn't seem like the sort of thing you do with someone who's just a mate, does it?'
'No, it doesn't,' Remus said carefully, and Sirius could see from the far-away look in his eyes that he was already onto the next thing.
He prompted, 'So there's the sleeping thing, and the touching thing. Anything else?'
'The rowing.' Ah, yes. The rowing. No-one in Gryffindor tower rowed like Sirius and Remus when they really got into it over something. In fact, Sirius had vivid memories of the whole bloody Common Room clearing out quick-sharp on more than one occasion when the two had gone toe-to-toe.
It wasn't constant, by all means. But they definitely went through patches of it, and there were times when even the smallest, stupidest thing would set them off. Sirius thought about all of the occasions that they'd been at each other's throats, sometimes so intensely that even James had been afraid to step between them. The worst occasions being -
'Oh,' Sirius said, more things falling neatly into place. The rowing had always been at its worst when fueled by jealousy. He'd always been overprotective of Remus, and had carefully filed his hatred of new (particularly male) friends under the umbrella of not wanting Remus to get hurt by them.
And while he'd known on some level that Remus was at his testiest whenever Sirius had had a new girlfriend, he'd naively put this down to his inate ability to get into relationships at all. He'd never once considered that it wasn't Sirius that Remus was jealous of in those circumstances.
'Yeah,' Remus said. He was starting to sound tired now, and Sirius wasn't surprised. He felt exhausted when he considered all the time they'd wasted dancing around each other. But Remus was smirking again when he said, 'Rowing with other people has never felt like it does with you. It was exhilerating, at times. Probably because it was always so charged with emotion. Felt like I could get out all my built-up frustrations, you know?'
Sirius couldn't help raising an eyebrow as he asked drily, 'Does that mean you want me to row with you more often, then?'
'Christ, please, no,' Remus groaned, and Sirius couldn't help but chuckle. Remus rolled his eyes, then added, 'I'm actually hoping that the rowing will reduce, now that we're -' He stopped himself, chewing his lip again as his brows drew together.
'Re?' Sirius whispered, not sure if it was alright to be asking this, but not sure that he could live with not knowing the answer. 'What, um ... What exactly are we now?'
Remus looked at him for at least a minute, and Sirius felt like his head was going to burst from the waiting, but then Remus said quietly, 'Can I get back to you on that?'
Sirius' heart fell right through his stomach. Stupid question, he thought bitterly. Shouldn't have asked, it was unfair to -
'Look at me, Pads.' Sirius opened his eyes, mildly surprised to find that they'd closed of their own volition. Remus' gaze was cautious, but there was a tenderness there that made every inch of Sirius' skin prickle. 'You asked me for honesty, and that's the best I can do. I'm still not really sure myself where things sit, and I'm not ready to call this a relationship right now. Still too much for me to work out.' Sirius nodded glumly, but Remus continued, 'So I guess we're ... Trying? At least for now?'
Sirius turned this over in his mind, and the promise behind the words made the lump that had formed in his throat ease enough for him to say, 'Trying. I like that more than 'complicated'.'
'Me too, actually,' Remus murmured, the corner of his mouth twitching again, and oh, Sirius wanted to press his own lips right there, just in that crease, right next to the slight dimple that only showed itself when Remus was thinking about something wicked that made his usual smirk all the more sharp and delicious. Sirius swallowed hard and made himself roll onto his back, so that he was further away from the temptation to just reach out and take.
'When I think about it,' he said finally, when the silence that had settled around them became comfortable enough that he was at risk of falling asleep again. 'I'm not really surprised by what James said. That people probably assumed we were already in a relationship.'
'No?'
'Not really. The way I act around you ...' Sirius chewed his lip, shaping the words in his mind. 'The more I think about it, the more I realise that I've been loving you very loudly, for a very long time. Loudly enough for everyone to see it.' He turned his head, and smiled softly at the tears gathering in Remus' eyes. 'Everyone but us two oblivious bastards, apparently.'
Remus didn't answer, just reached out his hand and wound his fingers through Sirius'. He pulled their fingers to his mouth and brushed his lips over them in a way that made Sirius' heart flutter. And in that moment, to started to allow himself to believe that everthing was going to be alright.
They had a hell of a road before them, and he had so, so much to do to make things right. But he would do it. Whatever Moony threw his way, he would face it head on, and thank him for it every time. Because this boy, this beautiful, soulful boy, was worth it. He would pluck every damned star from the sky, if Remus asked him to.
'Think it's about time you got to hear it too, Remus,' he croaked, his voice thick with his building tears. 'I love you.'
'I love you,' Remus responded, and Sirius felt the broken bond between them healing. One thread at a time.
