Chapter Text
James, despite the "this is what a feminist looks like" t-shirt that he bought to impress girls, is a traditionalist at heart, which means Sirius has been waiting five years for him to sack up and ask her out already. He’s that kind of guy, the one who has to make the first move. He has a Pinterest board full of moonlit parks and five-star restaurants and beaches at dawn, places he can see himself proposing to a woman someday, even though he’s had exactly three girlfriends for a grand total of two weeks in his entire life. She finally loses her patience in their junior year, when James decides the time spent waiting for Remus and Peter to get through the lunch line is best spent telling her at length about a Facebook group made for the boys of their class to “claim” prom dates so that they’re not going for the same girls. It’s a boring story full of infighting among people whose names she can barely even match to faces, but James tells it with the same excitement with which he does everything, waving his hands around and talking through a full mouth.
“Who’s picked me then?” Sirius interrupts, to keep James from reading a comment thread of “promposal” ideas. He stops, mercifully, halfway through Amos Diggory’s grammatically-challenged description of the unforeseen difficulties of renting a fleet of hot air balloons.
“Do you even care? You’ve turned down every guy who’s asked you out before now, so I didn’t think prom would be any different.”
Sirius has always considered her unapproachability to be one of her better qualities; unlike James, she never gets approached by students who need tutoring, or teachers who need errands run. People don’t even ask her for directions on the street. It’s something in the way she carries herself, she thinks, or the look in her eyes. She has never considered that James, impossibly confident and comfortable inserting himself into her personal space, might be affected by whatever vibe it is she’s putting out.
“I would say yes, if it were the right guy.” She feels her cheeks heating up a bit as she says it, sure that he can read between the lines.
“Oh!” James smiles, and Sirius’ face heats up further, until she’s sure she must be as red as a traffic light. “Well, last I checked, not that I’ve been watching super carefully or anything, it was about a twelve-way war. I don’t want to spoil the surprise, but Gideon Prewett has some pretty big plans, and he’s already put down a couple deposits, so I think he’ll win out.”
“What about you? Who are you asking?” Sirius tries to keep your voice flat, the hope scrubbed out of it, though she isn’t sure she succeeds.
“I’m not sure. Lily Evans, maybe. She’s cute.”
Sirius squints at him across the table, considering and quickly discarding the possibility that he’s just trying to maintain the surprise factor. James has never been capable of deception, because he has never needed to be. His parents know exactly how many drinks he’s had at every party he’s ever been to, and that he took exactly one bite of a weed brownie at a music festival he dragged Sirius to, and that he’s currently a virgin but hopefully not for long. She can see, in the steady way he maintains eye contact, that he means it, that he’s thinking about asking Lily, and she is, very suddenly, sick of it. She’s caught him staring at her more than once just since they started talking, and he always looks furious when she gets asked out in front of him, and it all feels so stupid, the way they’ve been dancing around saying what needs to be said. She smiles a little, leans in, conscious of the people around them the way she usually isn’t with him, and says, voice low, “Why don’t you just ask me?”
James chuckles. “Yeah, that would be a lot easier, wouldn’t it?” There’s a split second where Sirius could laugh along, pretend that it was a joke, but she misses her window stewing in nauseated horror, and James’ smile fades. “Oh. Wow. Sirius—”
“Forget it,” she says, trying to keep her voice steady through the pain of a loss she never prepared herself for. She doesn’t have much in her life that she can count on, and so James has been it, for as long as she’s had him, and she can barely stand to look at him now that she’s lost even that. “It was stupid. Just pretend I never said anything.”
“I just had no idea you felt that way. I’m sorry if I did anything to—to mislead you or get your hopes up or something, but I’m just a little blindsided right now.” James looks at her the way someone might look at a car crash, which is to say, with a sort of voyeuristic pity. It isn’t so different, she realizes, from the way he always looks at her, and she seeks refuge in the anger that is at least slightly better than misery.
“You get to look at my eyes about half as often as you look at my tits, or you get to act like I’m stupid for thinking you could be into me, but you don’t get to do both.”
James jerks back as if she’s hit him, catching himself just before he falls off of the bench. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I—”
Sirius laughs, aiming for cruel and falling just short. “I don’t care about that. Look where you want, but I just don’t see why—” She stops, swallowing hard against the lump in her throat. “I don’t see why you’re acting like you’re not attracted to me when you obviously are. It’s stupid.”
“I just don’t want this to change things between us.” James reaches across the table and grabs her hand before she can move it to her lap, holding it tight between both of his. He looks her in the eyes as if to prove a point, and says, “Your friendship is so important to me, Sirius. You’re obviously beautiful, and amazing, and absolutely anyone would be lucky to have you.”
“Except you. I get it.”
“Don’t be angry. That isn’t fair.” James makes the face he always makes when she disappoints him, the longsuffering one that has always felt the slightest bit performative, even when they don’t have an audience. The wide, wondering eyes and turned-down mouth that say aren’t I a saint? The truth is that he puts up with more than anyone else would, and so she tries not to mind a bit of condescension now and again.
“I’m not angry,” Sirius says, which isn’t quite true, though she wishes it were. “I just feel—stupid, and embarrassed, and a little sad, okay? I’m sorry my emotions aren’t as neat and tidy as you’d like them to be.” This is very true, though she wishes desperately that it weren’t. She pulls away, James' nails catching briefly on the skin of her wrist. “I don’t need you to coddle me. Despite what you seem to think, I am not a complete child, all right? I don’t need you to literally handhold me; I just need some space.”
Remus and Peter have finally succeeded in getting their warm milk and cold pizza, approaching the table just as she stands up to leave. She only resists the urge to smack Peter’s tray out of his hand because she doesn’t want to prove James’ point for him, what he won’t say but which she suspects is the crux of the matter: he doesn’t mind having a crazy girl for a best friend, but he certainly doesn’t want to date one.
James doesn’t follow her, but Sirius chooses the girls’ bathroom as her refuge anyway, just to be safe. She sets herself up on the window ledge, pulls her legs close to her body so that nothing’s visible from the door, and then holds herself very, very still and focuses on taking slow, even breaths, determined not to cry. James is in history with her, and math, and English, all AP classes she signed up for back when she assumed his presence would always be a positive, and two weeks out from a hearing in truancy court, she’ll have no choice but to face him within the hour.
Sirius leans her head against the window, hot from the afternoon sun. She’s the most important person in James’ life now, but she isn’t stupid; for someone who already knows where he wants to get his MBA, James is shockingly naïve about the actual progression of life. He’s going to be a young professional, and make young professional friends, and shape himself a life that she won’t fit into, unless she can force her way in, make herself someone who can’t be left behind so easily. James thinks that whatever’s broken inside of her can be fixed by sticking printouts from self-help websites through the slats of her locker with sweet notes scrawled across the top—You can get through this! :) I believe in you! :) I’ll always be here for you! :)
She’s saved all of them, stuck in the same carefully-cut hole in her mattress where she keeps a bottle of vodka, but she knows already that whatever’s wrong with her isn’t so easily fixed. Someday, James is going to figure out what’s been obvious to everyone else for years, and not soon after that, he’s going to get sick of carrying dead weight and getting nothing in return.
Just as she’s on the verge of losing control, the door slams open and in walks Lily Evans, student government treasurer and all-around insufferable goody two shoes. Sirius has never before seen her with so much as a hair out of place, but now her ponytail, ordinarily high on the crown of her head, has been tugged halfway out and droops at the nape of her neck. As Sirius watches, she yanks the elastic the rest of the way out and throws it on the floor. Her hands clench at either side of the porcelain sink while she stares at herself in the mirror, taking measured breaths that Sirius knows all too well.
“Excuse me, but do you think your nervous breakdown is going to take very long?” Sirius asks. She ought to be sympathetic, and knows it, but generosity has never come easily to her, particularly on her worst days, of which there are more than she would like.
Lily jumps at the sound of her voice, eyes wide and just a bit red, but she recovers quickly, moving further into the room so that they’re looking each other in the eye. “I don’t know, Black, but you’ve been having yours for about two years now, so why don’t you tell me?”
Sirius laughs, entertained despite herself. “Damn, where have you been hiding that personality?”
“Fuck you.” Lily turns away, but rejection from the only person she never expected has left Sirius wanting to fight, so she gets to her feet and follows, hoping she looks further from tears than Lily does.
“What are you so upset about? Did they discontinue your favorite brand of highlighters? Are you not getting perfect attendance this year?”
“Look, Black, ordinarily I’d be happy to stand in this bathroom and trade barbs with you until you went crying to your boyfriend, but I’m actually not having the best day, so could you just find somewhere else to smoke your shitty clove cigarettes or cut class or whatever illicit thing you’re hiding out in here to do?”
“I was here first,” Sirius says, feeling as she does the childishness of it, the slight whine in her voice. “You’re not the only one allowed to have a bad day, you know.”
“Oh no! Was Potter’s ‘promposal’ not lavish enough? Did he get you the wrong type of flowers?” Lily rolls her eyes and drops the cloying, faux-sympathetic tone she’s been using. “Some of us have real problems.”
“Well, what’s so bad in your picturesque fucking life? Did the walking grease ball you call a best friend finally make a move, and now you have to figure out whether you can possibly put your mouth on that?” Lily stiffens, her fists clenched at her sides. Even disheveled and furious and standing too close for comfort to an unidentified puddle, she looks sweet, like the kind of girl who meets her friends’ parents when she’s invited over for dinner and not because she needs a place to stay after a particularly bad fight at home, the kind of girl who will get into all but one of the colleges she applies to and make the practical choice, the kind of girl James probably wants. Sirius hates her, in that moment, more than she has ever hated anyone, more even than she hates her parents, and so she goes in for the kill, laughing as she does. “Oh, wow, I’m right, aren’t I? I have to tell you, Evans, you’re not all that pretty, and with the exception of the last five minutes, you have the personality of a wet paper bag, but you can do better, if only because literally everyone in the world can.”
Lily shuts her eyes and takes a breath, letting it out slowly, and then another. When she looks at Sirius again, she smiles, just a little, the mask apparently back in place. “I’m very sorry,” she says, seeming to mean it, “I really am, about whatever it is in your past that made you such a complete and utter nightmare to be around, so I’m just going to be the bigger person, all right? Congratulations, you get to brood alone in a bathroom. What a big win.”
Lily storms out before Sirius can come up with a rejoinder better than, “You certainly are the bigger person,” and then she’s alone, just like she wanted, but Lily’s words, which hit closer to home than she would like, have left her feeling empty. She wedges herself back into her hiding spot and, finally, lets herself cry.