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A Sirius Talk


The boys spent a majority of the next day playing with their new-found toy. They took it in turns to leap from the rail, spreading their arms wide out and doing different fancy twists and turns as they fell toward the lake from the train bridge, the wind mussing up their hair. Even Sirius didn’t give a ruddy damn what his hair looked like as a result, the fun of it was too much. It took quite a time for the boys to get Peter to cross onto the bridge, his eyes squeezed tightly shut, shaking head to foot. He had to watch Remus go twice at it before he would even think of it, and James and Sirius had to push him up onto the railing because he couldn’t climb it too good. He stood there, clutching the column and trembling for a bit before James finally climbed up beside him, “Will it help if we go together?” he asked, and Peter nodded and together they’d taken the jump, Sirius and Remus both using the arresto momentum to stop the fall with plenty of room to spare at the bottom. Peter’s had screamed so loud that James thought he might go deaf from it, the cry echoing off the stone bridge and the cliffsides until they’d been arrested nearly at the bottom and Peter had stared at the water’s surface there below him, undulating and dark, and he’d laughed. After the first time, it was nearly impossible to get him to stop - he was addicted to the rush, jumping just as wildly as Sirius, whose leaps were always quite exaggerated.

It was foolish, positively the stupidest thing that they ever could’ve spent a day doing, and if any of their parents (save for maybe Orion and Walburga) had any idea that they were doing it, they would’ve never been allowed out of their rooms again (on the contrary, Sirius was willing to bet Orion would’ve been cheering for Sirius to splat on the rocks). However, when they’d finally tired of it and they crawled out of the water the final time to lay on the sandy shore in their boxers and undershirts, there wasn’t a thing in the world that any of them would’ve traded the memories for.

“Great wasn’t it?” panted Sirius, grinning as he twisted his neck to look about at the other three.

“It was rather fun,” admitted Remus, who had been reluctant to go along with the idea.

James smiled with a sigh and closed his eyes contentedly.

“I’m really glad I did it,” Peter said.

“You were bloody brave!” Sirius agreed, “I’m really impressed.”

Peter shrugged, “It was just - once you’d done it once… it wasn’t as scary. It was sort of like flying. Like a bird, of course, not like with a broom.”

“It was incredible,” agreed James.

Sirius grinned, feeling even happier now that they’d all agreed the experience was grand. The adrenaline in his veins felt spectacular. It was exactly the sort of rush he’d needed to free up the stress that had been building up inside of himself. He finally felt balanced again.

They lay in the sunlight for some time like that, just letting it bake their clothes dry and turn their skin toasty brown. Peter sat up late in the afternoon and Remus looked over, “Oh blimey, you’re burned as a crisp,” he said.

“Burned?” Peter looked down and sure enough his pasty white skin was pink and already starting to redden. “Oh no.”

Remus said, “I think there’s a spell in one of our books to help with it…” He sat up, too, and gathered his clothes from the pile at the edge of the trees where they’d all left their things. “C’mon, I’ll find it.” Peter followed suit, grabbing up his stuff, too. “Are you lot coming?” Remus asked when he noticed James and Sirius hadn’t moved at all.

“We’ll catch you up,” Sirius replied, too content to be laying on the beach to even dream of moving just yet.

“Alright. We’ll get the fire started back at the tent…” Remus said and the two of them tucked off into the trees.

James waited a few moments in silence, then rolled over and craned his neck to be sure Remus and Peter had gone, then he turned and looked at Sirius. “Alright. So….” he raised an eyebrow at Sirius. “Have you, er, remembered anything from the other night that you might want to, perhaps, talk about? Now that we’re alone?”

Sirius kept his eyes closed, didn’t move a muscle for a moment. Then he pursed his lips and took a deep breath, “I dunno.”

“Were you for real, what you said about Rey?”

Sirius answered, “I dunno.”

“Sirius, this is serious stuff. This is a serious talk.”

“Every talk I have is a Sirius talk.”

“Stop it. I’m not joking.”

Sirius opened his eyes and looked at James and the look on his face was so imploring, so persistent that he knew there wasn’t anyway he was going to be escaping talking about this right here, right now. He crossed his legs and looked down at his hands, picking at the hem on the leg of his shorts. “I dunno what it was, James, I really don’t. I don’t know what any of the feelings I’ve been having are lately. There’s just a lot going on in me, and I dunno how to say what I’m feeling. I dunno the words.”

James nodded, “Yeah, well, you got a lot going on in general in your life, you’re bound to have a ton going on inside, too…” he paused, then he asked, “But… but do you seriously have a thing for… for Remus?”

Sirius ran his hands through his hair, both at once, clutching his skull a moment. “I dunno, James! I really don’t! I feel… I feel dirty when I think about him like that. Like I’m thinking of something I ought not to be.”

“Because he’s a boy?”

“Yes. And because he’s my friend.”

James thought for a moment, “Sirius, all that stuff we talked about before, when we thought Remus was gay, and we agreed that it didn’t really matter and wouldn’t change how we thought about him? That all applies to you, too, you know. I don’t give a damn if you are gay - so long as you don’t go slobbering at me with your snogging dreams, I’ll be cool with it.”

“You don’t want to snog with me, Potter?” Sirius asked.

“Sorry, but no.”

Sirius grinned.

“But if you want to snog Rey… well, if Rey wants to snog you, too, then… I dunno, I don’t see why that’s such a bad thing.”

“You don’t?”

James shook his head, “No. ‘Course not. You guys are both great, my best mates, and if snogging each other makes you lot happy then -- blimey, snog away. Shag if you need to. I don’t care.”

Sirius laughed, turning red, “Bloody hell, Potter.”

James smirked.

Sirius leaned back against the sand again, staring up at the sky that was turning orange along the edges of the blue. “I don’t know what I want.”

“Well,” James said, “I reckon you know what you want before you do anything. If you snog him and then change your mind, it’ll break his heart. You can’t just kiss Remus like you’d kiss Marlene or Meg or one of the girls around the castle, you know, the ones who like kissing and know there’s no commitment and all that. You kiss Remus and you better mean it because it’ll mean something to him.”

Sirius thought about this, “Yeah. I know.”

“He looks at you the way my dad looks at my mum sometimes,” James said.

Sirius looked over, “What?”

“Just… the way he looks at you. Like he’s paying attention even when there’s nothing to see.”

Sirius sat back up and hugged his knees, processing this information, and finally he said, “I just wish that… that maybe things were a bit easier… that it wasn’t so… frowned upon.”

“It’s stupid that it is,” James said. “Nobody intelligent is going to judge you for it.”

“Well, the majority of the planet isn’t intelligent, James.”

James shrugged, “Does the majority matter?”

Sirius shrugged back.

“What matters is what you think. What Remus thinks. Everyone else, even Peter and me… they don’t matter. It’s you two.” James took off his glasses and inspected them, wiping them with the hem of his undershirt. “Just make sure you know before you do anything rash.”

Sirius nodded.

“It’ll be bloody awkward if I have to beat you up for breaking his heart, mate,” James added, smirking.

“I’d have to beat my own bloody self up, hell with you doing it!” Sirius chuckled.

They were quiet for a long time, just watching as the sky turned orangey-pink, then pinky-purple and finally the dark, rich blue of night, the stars pricking the spanse of it. James was hugging his knees, his chin on his crossed arms, Sirius leaning back, bracing himself up with his palms in the sand. A troop of bats swarmed from under the bridge, sweeping across the water, low to the surface, before lifting off into the sky.

Sirius suddenly murmured, “This weekend should last forever.”

James looked over, turning so his cheek pressed against his arms, his glasses cocked just a bit.

“Don’t you think?” Sirius asked.

James smiled, “Maybe it will.”

“Maybe,” Sirius answered.

There was a crack at the edge of the trees and Sirius and James both turned back to look. Remus stood at the edge of the trees. “Messers Wormtail and Moony would like to know if you lot are coming back to the camp, ever, or if they should consume dinner without Messers Padfoot and…” he paused, realizing James didn’t have a nickname yet.

“Prongs,” Sirius said. “Messer Prongs.” James’s eyes sparkled.

“Alright, then,” Remus said, “Will Messers Padfoot and Prongs be coming to eat or what?”

Sirius grinned, “I could go for a roast sandwich. How about you, Prongsy?”

James nodded, “Oh definitely. And I do think it’s about time that we break out those cakes!”

“YES!” shouted Sirius. “CAKE IS MANDATORY! BRING ON THE CAKE! GOBS AND GOBS OF CAKE!”

Remus looked at James with a raised eyebrow as Sirius ran past into the trees toward the camp. “Really? You think that one needs more sugar in his system?”

James smirked.