Chapter Text
When James comes back after Quidditch practice, Sirius is the only one in their dorm room, sitting at the windowsill and smoking a cigarette while editing his Transfiguration homework.
James closes the door behind himself and takes a deep breath, doorknob still in hand. Now is the perfect moment. They are alone, there is no one to interrupt.
He's a Gryffindor, he can do it.
“How was practice?” Sirius asks before James can say anything, cigarette dangling from the corner of his lips as he scribbles something down onto the parchment on his knees.
“Good.” James finally lets go of the doorknob. He walks over to the window, leaving his broom by his bed as he passes it. “I thought of a new script, too.”
Sirius sighs and tips his head back, letting it fall against the frame of the window. He takes another deep drag from his cigarette, then puts it out on the rough stone of the windowsill before flicking the butt out of the slightly open window. It's cold out there, but Sirius doesn't seem to be bothered. “Okay, let's hear it.”
James tangles his fingers in the fabric of the curtains, just to have something to hold onto. “Would you do me the honour of accompanying me to Hogsmeade this weekend?” The words come out a bit rushed, a bit slurred, but they are there in the right order. “No Remus, no Peter. Just you and me.”
James sees the exact moment Sirius realises he has heard those words before, that they are his own, echoed back at him. “We could hold hands and …” James trails off, his mind going blank at the way Sirius looks at him. His whole well-memorised script is gone in the blink of an eye, the words that replayed over and over in his head for days.
“I forgot the exact wording of the rest,” he admits with an awkward little chuckle, his hand going for his hair, tugging at the roots. “But there was something about kissing.”
“Was there?” Sirius swings his legs down from the windowsill and gets up and James doesn't know what to do, how to act, how to move, how to breathe.
Fingertips brush along James' skin and tilt his chin up so he has to meet Sirius' eyes again. “Does it have to be in that order? Hogsmeade first?” Sirius asks and James blinks at him like a deer caught in the beam of a wand.
“I... no...,” he stammers, but the rest of whatever he's trying to say gets swallowed by a pair of soft lips on his own. Sirius is kissing him with a startling tenderness that makes James' knees go weak. He lets go of the curtain, just so he can reach for Sirius instead, tangling his fingers in the front of his shirt to pull him closer, to pull them closer towards each other.
A sigh escapes James, a soft, little sound, when their lips finally part again after what feels like an eternity and not enough time at all. He blinks his eyes open, staring at the boy he just kissed, his best friend, his everything.
“We're still going to Hogsmeade,” Sirius says and James can't help but laugh. He drops his forehead to Sirius' collarbone, feeling giddy and a little drunk.
“Of course we will,” James mumbles, hiding his grin in the fabric of Sirius' shirt. “It's in the script.”