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There wasn't anything wrong with Sirius, but James could tell that there was something a little off about him. Well, no, not off either. Maybe it was more accurate to say he was a touch weird. Actually, was there a way of thinking off or wrong or weird without it being negative? Because that's how James thought of his best mate. There wasn't anything out and out wrong or terrible, but part of him didn't match up with the rest of their peers.
At first, James just thought he was rude. He found it funny, especially since the way Sirius told people to sod off was incredibly entertaining. But then he noticed that it wasn't solely Sirius being irritable or that he found a large number of people annoying. It was to shift a certain kind of attention away from himself. That in itself had given James a loop around the block before he figured it out, because insulting people or being insensitive didn't avert attention from him. If anything, it made more people look at him. That had thrown him off from the truth for a while, but he figured it out in the end.
Sirius didn't feel things the way other people did.
James wasn't sure he even felt all the same emotions that other people did. Embarrassment and humiliation didn't seem to register with Sirius at all, and even though he laughed with James a lot, he was never the one to laugh first. He only laughed when James did it first, like he needed the cue that it was time for it.
He did a little of poking, and a lot of observing after he figured that first part out. There was more to it, he knew that much. He would ask outright if he thought Sirius knew 1. that it was happening at all and 2. that James wouldn't judge him for it, would only try his best to help.
James was eleven, starry-eyed, and completely sure of his ability to change his best friend's life with determination alone.
And he was right.
Him and Sirius talked. They talked, and they talked, and they talked. Sirius asked him about humour and how he could tell when something was funny. James explained happiness and a feeling of contentment, because why would he teach Sirius about sad things? Sirius hadn't known what happiness was, so James was going to let him feel it for as long as he could.
Things went well like that, for years. Sirius laughed on his own, made jokes with James, told him that he loved him when he figured out what that felt like-- James had blushed and stuttered his way through a similar confession; he only stopped speaking when Sirius laughed and kissed him, then kissed him again for good measure, because Sirius had been smiling too wide and James had been too stunned to really participate the first time.
And then Sirius had to leave his family home in the middle of summer between school years.
"You're okay, I've got you," James whispered, but he was shaking even with his arms wrapped as tightly as they could around Sirius. "You're safe now." He pulled back a little to look at Sirius's face even though he didn't want to put any space between them.
He was mostly healed now, only one bandage over a busted lip from a curse. His expression was worryingly blank.
"How do you feel?"
"I don't know."
"'I don't know' like numb?"
Sirius shook his head.
"Okay," James said slowly. He didn't know what to do. He was terrified for Sirius, and he wanted to make it better, but how did he make something like this better? He couldn't make Sirius's parents love him and treat him right-- if he could, he would've done it ages ago. "Try to think about it."
Sirius was silent for a minute, and James watched him.
He felt helpless to do anything but watch for some small sign of what was going on in his best mate's head and heart. He wanted to know what was going on with Sirius all the time, but right now was especially severe. If he knew how he was feeling, maybe he could help. He wanted to crawl into Sirius's chest and curl up there for as long as it took for both of them to feel better.
It meant that he could see the moment where Sirius started to get angry, the little curl to his lip, the frustrated rage that sparked in his eyes. "I don't know," he bit out.
"That's okay," James said immediately, putting a hand on Sirius's wrist.
As expected, it had an instant effect of calming him, even though it wasn't complete. He looked down at James's hand and the fight left him, but he was still upset. "What kind of person doesn't know how they're feeling?" It was self-deprecating, impotent to the ability to change.
"The kind of person that's my best mate," James said. He gave Sirius's wrist a squeeze.
"Maybe they shouldn't be," Sirius muttered.
"Don't joke," he snapped, grip tensing without meaning to.
"Who's joking?" Sirius replied, a touch flat and therefore very worrying.
James was scared that he dared utter the words, and it was hard to breathe. "Don't do that, either. You're my best mate, and nothing's going to change that. Even if you tried to kill me, it wouldn't change it."
"I wouldn't try to kill you," he denied immediately, and James's chest eased the pressure.
It wasn't perfect, but it was better than nothing. "You wouldn't be able to get rid of me, either. No matter what, you're stuck with me. And it doesn't mean anything that you can't parse out what you're feeling right now. It would be confusing to anyone, and you've got it harder than most when it comes to emotions. You haven't done anything wrong, and this rot's complicated. You knew your parents were shite, but you still thought they cared about you. Maybe they do, but not enough to love you the way you should. It hurts, but you feel like you should've been able to see it coming. You think that things could be worse, but it still hurts. You have me and my parents here for you, so you think us loving you should be plenty, but you want your own parents to love you too." He gave a small shrug. At some point, his hand had moved to hold Sirius's own. He didn't remember doing that, but he didn't move his hand away. He gave Sirius's fingers a squeeze. "Like I said, complicated. Full of emotional contradictions, and that was me guessing. I'm sure whatever you're feeling is even more complicated, so of course it's going to be difficult to figure out. You've got time to work through it."
Sirius turned his hand over and squeezed James's hand when he twitched as if to pull away; he wanted James close, close enough to touch at all times. "What if I don't want to work through it?"
That didn't sound healthy to James, but he couldn't figure out the right way to say it.
"What if I just want to do what we've been doing? Focusing on being happy and all the ways to feel good?"
"We're not going to stop that, but do you really want to be angry all the time? You know better than I do that your gut reaction is anger."
Sirius paused, and James had to bite back an apology. "You're right. I don't want to be angry all the time, but when I try to figure out how I feel right now, it- it just happens." There was a hint of anger back in his voice, but they both knew that it would be short lived. It reared its head because of how strongly he felt, but that was the extent of it.
"We'll take it slow," James promised. "I probably shouldn't have tried it tonight." In fact, he was sure that he shouldn't have tried it, but in that moment when he'd asked, he hadn't been able to stop himself. It had seemed like not only a good idea, but the best idea. It had been what was best for Sirius, and that meant that James hadn't been able to stop himself from doing it.
"It's fine, you had no way of knowing," Sirius said, trying to comfort James even if he didn't realise that's what he was doing.
"What are you thinking?" James asked over a game of Snap.
"That I'm sad I don't technically have a home anymore," Sirius said. He kept his tone casual, but the way he pointedly looked at the cards instead of meeting James's eyes let him know that Sirius knew how vulnerable and open he was being by admitting that. Not only feeling it, but saying it to James.
"I get that," James said, and it was to Sirius, so he didn't stumble over his words to explain that he knew his understanding of the situation wasn't the same as Sirius living through it.
"I know that your parents are treating me like a second son and all that, but it's still... they're not obliged to, y'know?"
James had to fight down the desire to assure Sirius that his parents would never, in a million years, kick Sirius out. They would let him live here until the day they died, no matter what. Saying that they thought of him like a second son was in no way an exaggeration, and there was nothing they wouldn't forgive James, which meant there was nothing they wouldn't forgive Sirius. "Yeah," he said instead of anything flying through his head. He added a card.
"I guess my own parents weren't obliged to either since they kicked me out, but I didn't see it coming, y'know? It surprised me. It..." Sirius cleared his throat and cast his eyes to the side, unease in every inch of his shoulders. He straightened a moment later and very obviously put it out of his mind. "Let's just enjoy the game." He added another card and the deck exploded.
James laughed at him, and Sirius dramatically whinged about how the smell of smoke would take months to get out of these clothes.
Sirius didn't like sleeping alone at night anymore. He used to crawl into James's bed at night without an explanation, and James had only ever asked for one once when he was eleven. After that, he let it happen without comment. He'd been surprised when Sirius offered one over the summer, but he took it as a good sign. He was figuring out his emotions better every week, but to say that James was shocked at where that ended was an understatement.
"We can stop doing this if you want," Sirius said one night, laying across from James so early in the night neither of them had had a chance to go to sleep yet.
"Why would I want to stop?" James frowned.
"Because I..." Sirius's eyes trailed over his face and down to his lips, then stopped.
James licked his lips and tried not to get his hopes too high. If he was wrong- but no, how could he be? With Sirius looking at him like that, how could he possibly be wrong? "What are you feeling?"
"I'm not exactly sure what to call it," Sirius whispered, eyes not moving a millimeter.
"Then what do you want? Right now, if you could have anything in the world, what would you want?"
The answer was immediate and heartfelt. "You."
It was all James needed to hear.