summer came early

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/46615108.

Rating: Explicit
Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Category: Multi
Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Relationship: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin, Sirius Black/James Potter, Remus
Lupin/James Potter, Sirius Black/Remus Lupin/James Potter, Marlene
McKinnon/Dorcas Meadowes, Mary Macdonald/Lily Evans Potter, Alice
Longbottom/Frank Longbottom
Character: Remus Lupin, James Potter, Sirius Black, Lily Evans Potter, Dorcas
Meadowes, Marlene McKinnon, Frank Longbottom, Alice Longbottom,
Peter Pettigrew, Sybill Trelawney, Gideon Prewett (Harry Potter)
Additional Tags: Slow Burn, like really slow burn, Friends to Lovers, but its complicated,
long lost friendship, Clubbing, Reunions, Polyamory, (VERY eventually),
sirius blacks eight thousand leather jackets, remus lupins ten thousand
sweaters, james potters utter lack of fashion sense, Drinking,
Recreational Drug Use, they smoke weed dont lose ur shit, Nonbinary
Character, Nonbinary Dorcas Meadowes, sirius "fuck gender" black,
Alternate Universe - Muggle, set in chicago!!, james and lily are exes
but theyre besties!!, Road Rage
Language: English
Stats: Published: 2023-04-20 Updated: 2023-05-03 Words: 23,908 Chapters:
3/15

summer came early

by vajazzly

Summary

“You’re married,” James repeats, quieter this time, and Sirius meets his eyes, and for one
long, terrible, incredible moment, he knows they’re thinking the exact same thing. It’s what
they do.

You got married and I wasn’t there.

or

Eight years ago James's best friend disappeared, Sirius ran away from home, and Remus
made his first real friend. Unbeknownst to to them they've been living in the same city for
years, and when James and Sirius finally collide questions immediately arise. Why did
Sirius disappear? What happened the summer after their sophomore year?

Why is his husband so fucking hot?

 !!!Fuck JKR's transphobic ass this is a trans only zone!!!

Notes

See the end of the work for notes

 reunion episode!

It is way too cold for James to be standing outside in nothing but a tank top and flannel, but by God
he’s almost to the front of the line and he is not giving up now.

Chicago in March is like this - deceptively pleasant, at times, until the wind blows in and cuts
through every layer of clothing and hope you ever had of being warm, and oh, it might snow later,
and oh, what’s that, a blizzard? At least it’s not snowing, or even raining. That’s what James tells
himself. He might be cold, but he could be colder.

“You’re such a baby,” Alice coos, grinning up at him.

“I am strong,” James replies, willing himself to stop shivering. “I am a tree. Trees don’t get cold.”

Alice, who is from Minnesota and is therefore perfectly content to stand about in nothing but a tiny
dress and cropped denim jacket, raises an eyebrow. “Uh-huh.”

“Are you saying trees don’t have feelings, James?” Frank asks, throwing a (warm) arm over
James’s shoulder, which James takes as an invitation to snuggle up to him.

“Wait, do trees get cold?”

“Well -”

“IDs?” the bouncer, who has about six different colors in their hair and a very unimpressed look on
their face, asks. This results in a bit of a shuffle, as James will not be detangling himself from
Frank until they’re firmly inside and Frank is in possession of everyone’s wallets, since he’s never
lost anything in his life, but they do manage it, and after shoving a few bills at the bouncer for the
cover they’re finally, finally inside.

James sighs at the warmth, letting Frank go and shaking out his numb fingers. It’s loud, music
thrumming in his ears even at the entrance, and absolutely packed with people, the air growing
warmer and sweatier as they make their way towards the bar. House music may not be James’s
thing, exactly, but the steady beat has him bobbing his head by the time they’ve managed to shove
their way to stand at the bar.
“Shots?” Alice shouts over the music, peering over James’s shoulder. They always shove him
towards the bar, when they go out like this - skinny enough to fit into small spaces, tall enough to
catch the bartender’s eye - but as the drunk bridesmaid next to him knocks an elbow directly into
his ribs, he starts to rethink his acceptance of the role.

“Sure!” he calls back, turning to try and catch the bartender’s eye. “Tequila?”

“Please,” Frank says. He’s had a long week at work, supposedly. James can relate.

The bartender comes over eventually, pointedly ignoring the horde of bridesmaids trying to get his
attention, and when he smiles at James his mind goes temporarily blank. The man is hot , tall with
dark curly hair and warm brown eyes, a long, sexy scar cutting through his eyebrow and across his
nose. “What can I get you?” he asks, raising a thick eyebrow, and his voice - it’s deep. James
mentally takes back every complaint he’s ever had about being the designated drinks-orderer.

James manages to regain his senses enough to order and slide his card over, watching with helpless
fascination as the bartender fills the little glasses and slides pieces of lime on the rims, movements
smooth and practiced. Alice nudges him from behind, and when he turns, she’s wiggling her
eyebrows, eyes shifting between him and the bartender.

“Oh, shut up,” James huffs, ignoring Frank’s laughter.

They take their shots, the bartender turning towards the bridesmaids with resignation, and James
tries his best to forget about it - he’s working, after all, and it’s not like there’s a shortage of hot
singles in a club on a Saturday night. He pointedly avoids looking at the way Frank and Alice wrap
themselves up in each other as they find a place on the dance floor and instead focuses on just
letting loose.

The music is surprisingly good, better than the usual fare of popular songs remixed half to death,
and James makes a mental note to try and find out who the DJ is - if he’s going to live in the
birthplace of house music he might as well learn something about it, after all. He finds a spot near
enough to Frank and Alice, sandwiched between them and a large group of twinks, and loses
himself in it for a while - the strobe lights, the light shake of the floor with the beat, the crowds of
dancing people wearing all sorts of outfits and makeup and hairstyles.

He’s not quite drunk enough for this.

“Shots?” he asks into Frank’s ear, but both him and Alice shake their heads, and James takes his
wallet back from Frank with a shrug and shoulders his way back to the bar. They each had two
shots earlier, but Frank isn’t much of a drinker and Alice probably weighs about half what he does,
so this isn’t unusual for their little Saturday night excursions, but the blush that overtakes James’s
face when the bartender spots him and smiles is.

“Tequila?” the bartender shouts over the music, and James grins and nods, holding out two fingers.
He watches as he lifts a shaker, arms flexing obscenely, laughing at something one of the other
staff says. He has a tattoo on the back of his arm, a shaky, lopsided crescent moon. He pours
something pink into a couple of glasses, and fuck, now James kind of wishes he ordered something
better, because it doesn’t take long for his shots to be poured and the bartender to set them in front
of him with a smile.

“I like your tattoo!” James shouts over the music, tapping his own arm where the crescent moon is
on the bartender’s, and his eyes light up, laughing.

“Thanks!” he shouts back. “I like your glasses!”

James laughs, surprised - his glasses ? - and takes the shots, sticking the lime in his mouth before
he can taste them. “Come here often?” He asks, teasing, because the bartender is still standing
there, and he could’ve sworn he saw eyes on his lips after that last shot.

“Oh, once in a while,” he replies, all humor, and then someone’s shouting for him at the end of the
bar, those fucking bridesmaids. He narrows his eyes, just a tad, contemplating. “What do you think,
time to start watering down their drinks?”

James turns, takes in the group, all with smudged makeup and half-ruined outfits, stumbling
against each other. “I don’t think they’d notice, so yes.”

The bartender glances at him, a sharp grin, and then he’s gone.

James takes this as his cue to let someone else in, and he steps back, turning to go dance. He spies
Frank dancing alone and sees one of the twinks giving him the eye so he makes his way over,
sidling up to his friend and taking the spot next to him.

“Alice?” he shouts, glancing around.

“Bathroom!” Frank says back, rolling his eyes, and James mirrors him. Why the lines outside
women’s bathrooms at clubs are always so long will remain a mystery to him.

Dancing is better now that he’s properly tipsy, limbs loose and the music getting properly into his
head, and he’s giddy with it by the time Alice finds them again. Surprisingly, Frank and Alice
manage to keep their hands off each other for a while, and it’s nice, the little circle they form,
bobbing and shuffling in the little space they’ve carved out in the crowd. Alice convinced Frank to
let her put a little makeup on him tonight, a shimmery, dark blue eyeshadow to match hers, and
James thinks he might ask her to teach him to do it sometime because they both look fantastic . He
feels a bit plain next to them in his simple outfit and bare face, and maybe a little too covered up in
his flannel.

Alice demands more shots after they’ve danced for another hour or so. Frank shakes his head,
obviously caught up in the music, so they push through the thickening crowd together, settling at
the bar.

“You’re staring,” Alice says in his ear flatly, and James shoots her a look, because, okay, so he’s
staring. The bartender is leaning over the counter to talk to someone, shirt riding up to expose a
sliver of hairy stomach.

“Sue me!” He calls back, because honestly , he has eyes.

“He’s fucking hot!” she says, lips against his ear, a bit too loud. “Talk to him!”

“I’m trying!”

They have to wait for a bit, a wave of people who all seem to want cocktails far too complicated
for any sane person to order at a club like this keeping the bartender busy, but James made sure to
take a spot in the hot bartender’s section, and he’s standing in front of him soon enough.

“Did they notice?” James asks, grinning, and the bartender laughs.

“Gave ‘em straight water, not a word!”

“They’ll be thanking you in the morning!”

The bartender laughs again, and James orders more shots - he was going to get some sort of
cocktail, but he doesn’t want to make the poor man do any more of that, and it’s cheaper anyway -
and turns to Alice, who’s grinning up at him.

“Sounds like you already talked to him!”

“He’s nice!”

“You should ask him when-”

James turns back to the bar before she can finish that sentence, cheeks hot, gratefully accepting the
shots when they’re set in front of him, two for Alice and two for him.

“Don’t make me cut you off!” the bartender says, teasing, eyeing the four shots lined up in front of
him.

“Of course not, then what reason would I have to come chat?” James replies, matching his tone,
falling into the rhythm.

“You’d find one,” he says, eyebrow raised, cocky, and James feels hot all over.

Hot Bartender Guy, as James has taken to calling him, sweeps off to take more orders without
another word, and James thanks whatever higher power is watching over him that he already has
alcohol lined up in front of him. Alice looks delighted , but is easily distracted by the shots, and
James drags her off through the crowd before she can comment.

He needs to find some sort of distraction, because as hot and flirtatious as the bartender may or
may not be, he’s at work, and James isn’t stupid or delusional or willing to be “that creepy guy who
came in last week and wouldn’t stop staring, can you please take his order for me”. Nonetheless,
he does glance back, and he swears he catches those dark eyes following him before the crowd
closes in.
“I’m gonna split for a bit!” he shouts once he’s brought Alice back to Frank, and they both nod
absently, Frank taking James’s wallet and keys back and wrapping his arms around Alice’s waist,
and yeah, James definitely doesn’t want to be around for all that. He dodges and shoves his way
through the crowd until he manages to find a bit of space for himself, letting his eyes slide shut and
the music wash over him.

Alice was the one who insisted they start having these little nights out, back before they even
graduated, fed up with his and Frank’s endless studying and job-applying and general tendency to
hole themselves up in their apartment and never come out that developed in their last year. Now
that they’re a few years out from college and live on different ends of the city it’s become a good
excuse to see each other, but more and more recently it’s become a game of shoving James towards
the first person who catches his eye because apparently it’s a couple’s duty to set their single
friends up as often and insistently as possible. He’s not complaining. Well, maybe he is a little bit,
because Frank has very questionable taste in anyone that isn’t Alice and Alice seems to think blind
dates are a viable option, but it’s a fun game all the same.

Bathroom, his hazy brain manages to think after a while.

The bright yellow lighting of the bathroom is jarring after so long in the dark, but there isn’t even a
line, miraculously. James studies the stickers and words scrawled on the wall as he does his
business, half-listening to the two guys gossipping next to him - oh my god, he cheated on him?
How dare he! - and steps to the sink to wash his hands.

When he looks in the mirror, his eyes immediately find the ones already looking from behind, and
he blinks. The bartender from earlier stares at him in the reflection.

“Told you you’d find a reason,” he says, and oh Lord, the music is muffled in here and James can
hear the rough scratch in his voice now that he isn't shouting to be heard. James turns around and
meets his eyes, leaning against the sink.

“Isn’t there a staff bathroom?” He asks, quirking an eyebrow. The bartender tilts his head. “Seems
more like you found me, is all.”

That grin again. The man’s eyes shift downwards, trailing, then stop at his chest, and he moves in a
bit closer. James’s breath hitches. “These are nice,” the bartender says, and then he’s lifting a hand
to brush his finger over James’s nipple, and he has to swallow a little sound.

“Hurt like a bitch to get done,” he says, and his voice sounds a bit breathy even to him. Suddenly,
he’s very glad he decided to wear a tank top, even more glad it’s tight enough to see the piercings
through.

“Mm, I bet.” He swipes his finger over it again, a bit harder this time, and James can’t control the
little whimper that falls out of his mouth this time. “Sensitive.”

And then he steps back, eyes heavy, and fucking leaves.

It takes James a moment to process, and it’s unfortunately the snort from the guy washing his
hands next to him that breaks him out of it, but he scrambles to follow, bursting out of the door and
whipping his head around. His eyes find the bar, the tall head of curls behind it, but the bartender is
oblivious, leaning forward so someone can shout their order in his ear, nothing amiss.

James - James needs a second. Several seconds. His chest tingles where the bartender touched it
and his stomach is hot, jeans a bit tight, head spinning, and the guy is just - he’s just - standing
there!

James takes a breath, steadies himself. Forget about it , he tells himself. He’s at work! Forget
about it!

So he dives back into the crowd, pushing even further into the thick of it, letting the bodies around
him push and pull until he can barely breathe. The music has switched up a bit into something
faster, heavier, and James closes his eyes and lets the pounding bass drown everything else out.

It works, after a while, and he only takes a moment’s break to coax Frank and Alice into taking
another shot (from a different bartender this time, because he doesn’t think he could look the hot
one in the eye) with him before diving back in. They’ve been to all sorts of clubs and music venues
and Alice even sometimes drags him to the basement punk shows she loves so much, but this place
is one they haven’t been to before despite its popularity, and James finds he likes it, taking a
moment to glance around at the posters and art all over the walls and the photobooth nestled in the
corner. Then the music changes a bit and he’s sucked back in.

An hour, maybe two later - he’s lost track of time completely - he’s managed to find someone to
dance with, a woman with heavy eyeliner and choppy hair and huge boots that make him have to
tilt his head upwards to look her in the eyes, and he’s about to ask if he can buy her a drink or
something because he’s definitely into that, when he, briefly, looks over her shoulder, and
everything stops.
Long, black hair. Light eyes. Straight nose. Pale skin. A grin that splits the lower half of his face in
two, wide and mischievous, revealing long canines and a slight gap between his front teeth. A
tattoo in the shape of a constellation just below his collarbone, visible above the hem of his top.

“You okay?” The woman asks him, and James starts, looking up at her, and whatever she sees
there must be alarming, because her brows furrow. “Do you need-”

“Sorry!” James says, and then he darts around her, pushes into the crowd, eyes desperately
searching. He thinks he might push past Frank, too, but he doesn’t look back, shoving through - he
can’t think, can’t stop, he can barely hear the music over the hammering of his heart, can barely
feel the elbows and shoulders and knees knocking into him - and then.

And then, there he is.

Just a few people between them, Sirius Black doesn’t see him. He’s talking to someone, cup in
hand, laughing and bouncing with the beat because he can’t ever be still, James knows, and he
looks so happy that James has to suck in a breath. It’s him. Happy. Alive. No questions, no doubts,
he knows that smile and that tattoo and that wavy hair, that restless energy, the way that head
throws back in a laugh.

Time catches up to him.

“Sirius!” James shouts to be heard over the music, still rooted to the floor, and of course Sirius
would be where the crowd is thickest, right in front of the DJ stand, music so close and so loud he
can feel it through his shoes. Sirius frowns, turns his head. Doesn’t see him. “ Sirius!”

And there it is. Their eyes meet, and Sirius’s go huge . His grin drops, jaw falls open. They’re both
frozen, staring at each other, and for one moment, the path between their eyes is clear and James
sees it - the shock, the disbelief, the impossibility of a Sirius caught completely off guard with no
idea how to react.

Someone tall crosses between them and he hears Sirius call his name, and James tries to shove
past, to get through, but there are so many bodies and couples and it’s so dark and -

A body slams into his, arms wrapping around him, a thick head of hair directly in James’s open
mouth, and he doesn’t have to look down to know who it is. He knows the shape of him, the smell,
the exact texture of his hair, the way he hugs with his arms thrown over James’s shoulders and all
his bodyweight thrown forward so hard James stumbles back a step - would know it in his sleep,
on his deathbed, six feet under. He sags into it, wraps his arms around that familiar body, buries
his face into his hair. Wills himself not to cry.

Sirius breaks away first, eyes wide and lined with smudged makeup, slightly wild. His hands cup
James’s face and James grins, shakily, his heart still hammering, his hands starting to tremble.

“James?” Sirius says, almost too quiet to hear over the music. “Holy fucking shit!”

“Holy fucking shit!” James echoes, and then his grin is reflected, and he’s pulling Sirius in for
another crushing hug. His brain is going a mile a minute, Sirius is here Sirius is okay Sirius is here
Sirius is okay repeating over and over. He feels like he just did a mountain of cocaine.

“What the fuck?” Sirius laughs when they finally pull back, still holding on to each other, trying to
resist the push and pull of the crowd around them. The strobe lights turn their faces red, green,
purple, blue, pink. This might be a dream. “How are you here?”

“How are you here?” James asks, unable to do anything but echo, his eyes flickering over Sirius’s
face, cataloging every mole and smear of makeup and the tiny scar on his chin and the row of
earrings in each ear, the rings in his nostril and bottom lip, the wonder in his eyes as they meet
James’s again.

“Come on!” Sirius shouts, and then he’s dragging him by the arm, hand warm and slightly sweaty
and real and James can do nothing but stumble after him, dazed, reeling. He isn’t paying attention
to where they’re going until they burst out the door into the cold air, the smell of car exhaust and
cigarette smoke filling his nose, the bouncer from earlier and one of the groups of smokers
shooting them a look.

Sirius drags him to the side of the building, away from the line and the crowd, an alley stretching
behind him, and turns, laughing a little, staring. Doesn’t let go of James’s arm, instead adjusting so
he’s holding his hand, thumb rubbing over his knuckles. Runs the other hand through his hair -
long, so long it almost reaches his waist like he always said he wanted, shiny and wavy and soft
and -

“What are you doing here?” Sirius asks, disbelief and wonder in his tone.

“I live here!” James answers, unable to school the grin on his face even if he wanted to. “In
Chicago, have for ages, I - what are you doing here?”

Sirius laughs. “ I live here!”

“No! No fucking way!”

“Since I was eighteen!”

“I moved here for college!” James laughs, because, because, all this time, all this resignation,
thinking Sirius was… was gone, was… and all that time, he was just a few miles away. He inhales.
Blinks. “You’ve been here the whole time,” he breathes.

James knows Sirius sees something on his face, hears something in his tone, because he sees a
curtain fall shut in Sirius’s gaze. Something shuttering. He wants to reach in, tug it open, dive into
Sirius’s brain and pluck it apart until he can see every individual piece and put it back together
again, and the familiarity of that thought, the way he suddenly feels sixteen and scared again,
makes his breath stutter in his throat.

“When did you get so tall ?” Sirius says, hand dropping James’s, a step back to let his eyes rake up
and down, grin still on and eyes still bright. “And jacked?”

James laughs, pushes all the nagging thoughts aside, lets himself bask. Sirius Black is standing in
front of him, alive and well.

“When did you get so cool?” he responds, taking in the velvet bell-bottoms and heeled boots and
flowy top with the buttons undone, the familiar constellation tattoo now accompanied by several
more, though the shirt still covers most of them. “I mean, your hair !”

“Excuse you, I’ve always been cool!”

“Yeah, except you haven’t always dressed like Freddy fuckin’ Mercury! Honestly, Sirius!”

And Sirius laughs, free and light, tumbling out of him like bowling balls on hardwood floor, and
James stares, and laughs too, and lets the relief and joy of his best friend, here in the flesh, sharing
a laugh with him like nothing bad has ever happened to them wash over him. Here, in an alley in,
of all places, Chicago, with the streetlights and faint sound of music from the door to the club and
the smell of cigarettes and piss and rats, just on the right side of tipsy. He arranges it in his brain,
seals the memory.

“Are you hungry?” Sirius asks.

“Oh, god, starving,” James replies, because it’s nearly three in the morning and he nibbled through
a pathetic dinner and he feels wild and shaky and unsettled, and just like his mom always said, it’s
hard to have emotions when your stomach’s empty.

“C’mon, then!” Sirius grabs his arm again, drags him out of the mouth of the alley and starts down
the street, but James has to dig his heels in, giggling.

“Wait! Frank, my friend, he has my wallet!”

Sirius pauses, smacks his head with his hand. “Shit, Moony has mine!”

Moony? James thinks. Odd name.

“Wallets first,” James nods, turning them back towards the bouncer, who seems to be arguing with
a group of clearly underage people in matching pink wigs. “Meet back out here in five?”

The classic divide and conquer, the method to their pranking madness. Sirius grins up at him.
“Meet back here in five.”

The stamp on James’s hand is almost completely faded where Sirius rubbed his hand earlier, but
Sirius seems to know the bouncer - Sybill, apparently - and they get back in without a hitch. James
wasn’t even aware he was cold, but the warmth of the club reminds him, his fingers and ears
tingling and a shiver running through him.

Sirius squeezes his hand and lets go, making a beeline for the bar, so James turns and scans the
crowd. He finds Alice and Frank quickly - Frank is huge, after all, tall and broad, and they’ve
found a quieter area to dance closely and whisper in each other’s ears and generally be disgustingly
wrapped up in each other without getting knocked about. James isn’t jealous, not like that, but they
really do take PDA to new and exciting levels, and well, so he’s chronically single.
“Frank!” He calls once he’s in earshot, dodging some very drunk men waving their limbs about in
what is definitely not a way that could be described as dancing. Frank turns, and Alice peeks
around him, cheeks flushed and a red mark on her neck. James resists the urge to roll his eyes. “I
need my wallet!”

“More drinks?”

“Nah, I’m leaving - saw an old friend -” Alice gasps, wiggles her eyebrows. “Not like that! ”

“Booo!” Alice says, sticking her tongue out. “What happened to James’s Hot Girl Summer?”

“It’s only March!” he calls back, holding out his hand and fixing Frank with a look. He rolls his
eyes and pulls James’s wallet out, passing it over along with his keys.

“Text me when you get home! Love you!” Alice hugs him briefly, then Frank.

“Love you too! I will!”

He pushes back through the crowd, eyes scanning, and he finds Sirius at the bar with a leather
jacket on and his wallet on the bar in front of him. He’s leaning forward, talking to - oh shit, that’s
the hot bartender! He’s smiling softly, eyes fixed on Sirius, who’s clearly talking about something
because his arms are waving about, ignoring the growing crowd of annoyed clubbers forming
around him, and then -

Then, the hot bartender gives Sirius a peck on the lips, smiles, fishes a set of keys out of his pocket
and slides it over to Sirius before he turns to take someone’s order, and Sirius slips those keys into
his pocket.

Nope! James thinks, takes all the heated glances and flirty comments from the last couple of hours
and shoves them down into a box, slamming the lid and locking it. Absolutely not!

He manages to make it outside first, and he gets a few steadying breaths of cold air in before he’s
joined by Sirius, enough that once he comes stumbling out of the door James barely has to pretend
he hasn’t been flirting with Sirius’s… Sirius’s whatever for half the night, because he hasn’t! He
lets people touch his nipples all the time! Why, he hardly remembers meeting that man at all!

“McDonalds?” James asks as Sirius fumbles in his pockets, eventually producing a pack of
cigarettes and a lighter and stuffing one in his mouth. James shakes his head when offered.

“Golden Nugget?” Sirius counters, taking a long drag.

James shrugs. “Never been.”

“James!” Sirius gasps, clutching a hand over his heart. “Never?!”

“Nah, what is it?”

“C’mon, we’re going,” is all Sirius says in response, turning to charge down the street and leaving
James no choice but to follow. He’s aware he’s cold now, the wind cutting through his flannel, but
Sirius has always walked way too fast and the pace is helping to keep the blood flowing. Sirius
leads them a few blocks before turning into a building that James belatedly realizes is an L station,
and he fumbles with his wallet for his Ventra card for a moment while Sirius taps his foot
impatiently, pointing to the screen that tells them the train will be there in 2 minutes.

They have to run up the stairs, breathless and laughing, to make it, but they slip through the doors
just as they’re about to shut, tumbling into the nearest seats, legs tangled and heads knocking
together as they laugh.

“Should’ve just hopped the turnstile,” Sirius giggles, leaning his head on James’s shoulder.

James mock-gasps. “Who do you take me for? Who am I to deny the CTA the money it takes to
maintain such a beautiful system?” He waves his arm about at the train. There’s a large puddle of
piss on the two seats across from them, swishing back and forth with the train’s movement, and he
can barely hear himself talk over the screeching of the wheels. Sirius snorts. He’s still smoking his
cigarette, but there are only two other occupants in their train car, one fast asleep and the other
muttering to himself as he lifts brown-bagged liquor to his lips. Somehow, James doesn’t think
they mind.

“Anyway, how long are we riding?” James asks, settling into the seat and leaning his head on
Sirius’s. It aches, the familiarity of this, the way Sirius still fits perfectly against him, warm against
the chill.

“Just a few stops,” Sirius says, muffled. “Bit of a walk from there, I can get us an Uber?”

James wants to protest, but he’s still fucking cold. “Mm, sure.”

Sirius takes out his phone, adjusting a bit, and there’s a few minutes of silence as the doors slide
closed at one stop and they speed off towards another, only broken by the sounds of the train and
the drunk man, who is now speaking angrily into his phone. James sees their reflection in the
window, and his heart stutters, because - there they are. Not a photo from eight, ten, twelve years
ago, not a memory, or a dream - him and Sirius, pressed close, Sirius on the left and James on the
right, exactly where they should be.

What happened to you? James thinks, and it almost makes him cry. Where have you been?

“Booked!” Sirius chirps, and James shaked himself out of it internally, shooting a smile
downwards. Sirius returns it. “You said you moved here for college, right? How have you never
been to Golden Nugget?”

“I dunno, I mean, I went to Northwestern, so I wasn’t really in the city until two years ago,” James
admits. “And McDonalds has never failed me!”

“Bro, you’re missing out,” Sirius shakes his head. “Fucking Evanston! God.”

“I don’t live there anymore! ”

Sirius’s response is interrupted by their stop, and they stumble out, the last round of shots finally
catching up to James and turning his legs to jelly. Sirius doesn’t seem much better off, giggling
helplessly and stumbling a bit as they head towards the escalator.

“When the fuck did we go underground?” James wonders aloud, leaning against the handrail and
looking up at Sirius, who demanded to stand one step up from James and “be taller for once, god
damn it, I thought we were in the short people club together!”
“Dunno, kinda weird, right? This line’s underground in the Loop, too,” Sirius shrugs. “Oh shit, our
Uber’s here.”

It takes a bit of re-orienting, which is mostly Sirius turning in circles until he points in one
direction and says “that way”, but they do manage to find their Uber, and from there it’s a quick
ride. The driver is playing something soft and indie and Sirius has cuddled up to him again, and it’s
a fight to keep his eyes open, the late night finally catching up to him. By the time they’re dropped
off in front of a bright building with a huge sign in front of it James has to shake himself into full
consciousness, but Sirius is wide awake, grin still on and bouncing as he leads them in.

“Oh shit,” James says once they’re seated, flipping through the huge menu.

“Right?”

“Fuck, dude. Where has this been all my life?”

“And it’s 24 hours!” Sirius shuffles through his pockets and lays his phone, wallet, keys, and
cigarettes on the table before he takes his jacket off, and James smiles to himself.

( “I have to, the pockets don’t have zippers and shit’s always falling out of them!” Sirius whines,
removing the new leather jacket and tossing it over a chair. “Remember when I lost my student
ID?”

James laughs, shoving Sirius’s shoulder. “Beauty is pain, huh?” )

It’s not the same jacket Sirius bought at 14, rebellious and discovering thrift stores for the first
time, this one black instead of brown and longer, more well-fitted. It’s worn, like the old one, but
better quality, without the logo on the front clearly stating it used to be part of some company
uniform - James likes it. Wonders where the old one is.

“Pancakes and a cup of coffee, please,” he tells the waitress with a smile, and Sirius orders the
same with a side of hashbrowns, and then they turn, stare at each other.

It’s odd, under the fluorescent lighting, sat across from him with a full view. Sirius isn’t so
different from himself at sixteen, but now James can see the way his jaw has widened, nose a bit
longer, face clear of the pimples along his hairline that used to drive him up the wall. There’s a bit
of a five o’clock shadow on his jaw and upper lip. He looks older, yes, has grown into his heavy
brow and sharp nose, but also, somehow, younger - free, James hopes.

“You look good,” Sirius tells him, some of the previous manic energy seeping out of him. “I miss
your hair, though.”

James reaches up, cringing. He has an office job now, wears “business casual” five days a week,
and part of that transformation, for him, has meant keeping his hair short so he doesn’t have to
wake up early to try and tame it every day.

“You do, too,” he says, because Sirius would hate that explanation. “Like, really, you look
incredible.”

Sirius grins. “Aw, you charmer.”

There’s a silence, where James is quite sure neither of them know what to say, where to go next.
The questions, the big ones, burn at the back of his throat, threatening to spill right out, but - but
well, despite everything hanging between them, James knows Sirius. Knows he needs to have more
tact than blurting out why the fuck did you leave and why haven’t I heard from you in eight years
and i miss you, don’t you miss me and breaking down sobbing in the middle of the diner.

“Well, catch me up,” Sirius finally breaks the silence after the waitress comes over to drop off their
coffees, and James takes a very long sip.

“Okay.” Sirius smiles, settles in. James thinks for a moment. “Okay! So, graduated from Hogwarts,
obviously - Lily was valedictorian, I came in tenth, just above Snivellus,” (Sirius gives a little clap
at this, and James grins. He forgot how easy it is to tell Sirius everything.) “and went to
Northwestern, which was a riot, by the way, I didn’t join a frat but I puked in a lot of their
bathrooms over the years, lots of fun. I met Frank and Alice there - I was out with them tonight,
actually - well, Frank first, he started dating Alice around third year and they’re the best, but totally
disgusting - anyway, yeah, graduated a couple years ago and got a job in the city really quickly, so
I stayed here! Didn’t really expect to like it as much as I do, to be honest, but it’s way cheaper than
California, and the public transit’s better too, so I guess I’m staying.”

“What kinda job?”

“Ah, finance. It’s really boring.”

Sirius bangs his forehead against the table, groaning, and James laughs, cheeks pink. “James, no!
Not fucking finance!”

“It’s not my fault I like math!”

“Fine, but finance?” Sirius looks up at him, face scrunched. “That’s disgusting, James.”

“I knoooow,” James rests his forehead on the table, mirroring Sirius, shoulders shaking. “I disgust
myself sometimes. But it pays so good…”

The waitress comes by with their food, then, and they eat in silence for a while. The pancakes are
fucking fantastic, and he shovels them in, halfway through his stack before Sirius speaks up again.

“So,” he says, eyes dancing and mouth crooked upwards as he takes a sip of coffee. “What about
Lily, then?”

“Oh,” James blinks, because that’s something he hasn’t thought about in a while. “Oh, yeah, we
dated for like, two years? Yeah, junior and senior year, but we broke up after graduation. Still
friends though! She just moved to the city for work, actually.”

“Damn!” Sirius sighs. “I really thought she was the one for you, y’know? How’d that happen?”

James squirms a bit, takes another bite of pancake. “Oh, y’know. She was going to Smith, I was
going to Northwestern, just didn’t make any sense.”

Sirius squints at him, and James can tell that Sirius can tell that that isn’t the whole story, but
thankfully, he doesn’t press.

“That sucks,” he says, but James just shrugs.

“I dunno, I think we’re better off as friends. Like, she’s fantastic, and I was totally gone for her, but
there’s more to life than your highschool sweetheart, I think. Also, I think she’s more into women
these days - she said she hasn’t dated a man since me and probably never will, so.”

“You broke her heart that bad?” Sirius’s eyes bulge a bit. “God, what did you do?”

“Nah, not like that, I think she just really likes women? Which, like. Fair.”

Sirius snorts. “In that case, that’s kind of a flex, don’t you think? Like, you’re on the level of
women when it comes to romance. Think about that.”

James has never thought about it like that. “Damn, how am I single?”

Sirius giggles, and James does too, and James almost doesn’t ask, doesn’t want to ruin the moment,
but he’s been burning with the question ever since he saw Sirius and the bartender, and it’s better
than any other question he’s got right now.

“What about you?”

“Hm?”

“Still single?”

The small smile and slight flush are enough of an answer to that, but Sirius explains anyway. “Oh,
no, I’m actually, uh…” sheepishly, he holds up his left hand, and there, on his ring finger - a single
silver band. James short circuits.

“You’re married ?”

The only other person in the diner, a middle aged man in construction wear, glares at him, and
James covers his face with his hands.

“Yeah,” Sirius says, and god, he sounds giddy. “To Moony - you probably met him, actually, the
bartender? Super tall, curly hair?” James nods, and he doesn’t trust his face to not be doing some
ridiculous shit right now, so he only slides his fingers down a bit so he can look at Sirius. “Yeah,
we got married, like, right after we moved out here, James, he’s the best. Like, okay, you met him,
he’s hot, and he’s also a total nerd about literature and a great cook, and he’s got all these amazing
sweaters I can steal, and he’s really sweet but also mean, y’know? Kind of like Lily, actually, now
that I think about it, except not that competitive.”

“You’re married ,” James repeats, quieter this time, and Sirius meets his eyes, and for one long,
terrible, incredible moment, he knows they’re thinking the exact same thing. It’s what they do.

You got married and I wasn’t there.

(“Of course you’ll be my best man! Who else, dumbass?”

“Not Reg?”

“Are you kidding? He’d turn my bachelor party into a book club meeting!”)

“Um,” Sirius averts his gaze, smile dropping just a bit, and James can’t bear it.

“I’m happy for you, dude. He’s… he’s good for you, yeah?”

And the wide grin is back, familiar, and James thinks he’d do anything in the world to keep it
there. “He is, James, he’s like - like, are soulmates real? I dunno, but if they are, he’s it .”

And James feels warm. Warm, because even if he’s confused, and more than a little hurt, and still
in shock, the knowledge that someone has been there, taking care of Sirius and loving him and
making him smile like that, makes every moment he spent crying and wondering and afraid fade
into the background. Unimportant. Sirius is here, and he didn’t have James, but he did have
someone. It’s enough.

“How’d you meet?” He asks, and the expression flickers.

“Oh, uh,” Sirius lifts his fork, picks at what’s left of his hashbrowns. “In New York, junior year.”
“Well fuck, I take back what I said about high school sweethearts,” James jokes, and Sirius looks
up at him again.

“I mean, you’re kinda right? Like, there definitely are more people out there, and we got married
super young, and like…” Sirius shrugs. “We see other people.”

Ah, James thinks, so he isn’t going to have to beat Sirius’s beautiful, sweet, caring husband over
the head with a baseball bat the next time he sees him. That’s a relief.

“Who woulda thunk it?” he says instead. “You, married at eighteen, me, single at twenty four.”

“You being single is a travesty, we have to fix that,” Sirius says, leaning forward. “Did you just go
through a breakup or something? In the talking stage at least?”

James lets his eyes shift to the side, cheeks hot. “Uh, no? I dated a bit in college, nothing serious,
but I’ve been kinda… living the bachelor life? Alice says I need to have a hot girl summer this
year.”

“Well, Alice is right, but I’m still surprised - you’re an all-or-nothing kinda guy! What, are you
pining after someone again?”

“No! God, nothing like that, just…” and he shrugs, because. Because, well, Sirius wasn’t there
when he and Lily broke up, and he doesn’t know how to explain that for all he’s glad that they did,
and it was the right thing to do, it changed him. Changed how he looked at relationships, the way
he used to throw himself head-first into love without thinking, the way he used to put all of his
affection and plans for the future and time into one person. How it was romantic, but it wasn’t
always healthy - that’s what his mom told him, eighteen and sobbing into her shoulder - and how
he had to learn to live with himself , learn to be alone and be content, to care for himself the way he
cared for other people.

He doesn’t say that, because Sirius wasn’t there, and he just can’t.

So instead, he says, “It’s nice, being single, y’know, I live alone and everything!”

“Uh-huh,” Sirius squints at him. “You, living alone?”

“Hey! It’s nice, I can keep the kitchen as gross as I want,” Sirius snorts. “And! And, I walk around
naked all the time .”

“Mm,” Sirius says, a small smirk on his face.

“Who do you live with, then?”

“Just Moony! We had a couple roommates when we first moved here - Marlene and Dorcas,
they’re great - but we’ve had our own place for like. Four years?” Sirius’s expression is warm. “It’s
nice, but I miss ‘em sometimes, even if they’re over all the time.”

“Can’t relate,” James shrugs. His college roommates were a string of bad luck, swinging between
downright disgusting and completely anal, and after he saw his new salary he vowed to live alone
for at least the next five years. “College roommates? Bad.”

“Aw, no, Dorcas told me all about that, she’s an SAIC grad - Moony managed to avoid the dorms
by the skin of his teeth, thank God, since he started late.”

“You didn’t go to college, then?” He’s not surprised, exactly, more curious - Sirius was always
waffling about whether he wanted to go, back in the day, avoiding guidance counselors like the
plague but frantically researching different programs in spurts when he got an idea in his head.

“Nah,” again, Sirius looks down, the smile slipping. “Didn’t really - it just didn’t happen.”

“Eh, you would’ve hated it anyway,” James tries to laugh it off, desperate to keep whatever good
energy they’ve managed to create between them alive. “I bet you hated junior year in high school, I
almost died from the stress.”

Sirius stiffens, the smile disappearing completely, and oh, James doesn’t know how, but he’s
fucked up. Sirius has that look in his eyes, like when someone would say “oh, like those Blacks?”,
flat and empty, and James’s stomach twists, because he’s never made Sirius look like that.

“Sorry,” Sirius frowns. “Yeah, it sucked, ha - my GPA never recovered. Hey, anyway, how’re Effy
and Monty?”
“Oh, uh -” and suddenly, James can feel his own smile slipping, too. “Mom’s good, she retired so
she’s getting really into gardening and volunteer work!” There’s a pause. “Um, Dad died a couple
years ago.”

Sirius’s head snaps up, his eyes widening. “What?” he asks softly.

“Yeah, um -” James looks down, picking up his fork to push what remains of his pancakes around
on his plate. “He got really sick around my senior year in high school, so we knew it was coming,
but…”

“James,” Sirius breathes, and he can’t stand to look Sirius in the eye, to see the concern and hurt
and grief there, a reflection of his own.

“Mom’s doing okay, though,” James pushes through, taking a breath and attempting a smile. “You
know her, can’t keep her down! She just won this big battle with the HOA about native plant
gardening, actually, you’d think she solved world hunger with the way she talks about it.”

“I’m so sorry,” Sirius says, voice small, and James swallows around the lump in his throat.

“It’s-” and he has to stop himself, because he won’t lie, and it’s not okay and never will be. “It is
what it is. He was older, had a good life, all that.”

“Still,” Sirius says. “I - that’s just not fair. Monty dying.” James can hear the lump in his throat, the
way his voice pitches up. He doesn’t look up from his plate.

You know what’s not fucking fair? James’s brain screams. My fucking dad died and you weren’t
there!

Instead, he says, “No, it’s not.”

There’s a long pause, and he hears a few sniffles from Sirius’s direction, hears his breath hitch a
few times. He can’t watch Sirius deal with it in real time, almost three years after the fact, not after
he had to claw his way through the last year of his degree with the grief choking him and no one to
share it with, not after seeing the empty chair at his graduation ceremony or coming home to a
house that felt so empty he cried for two days or all the times he picked up the phone to call his dad
and realized he couldn’t.

“We went to India to see all the cousins that year, though,” James says once he’s gotten the sense
that Sirius has pulled himself together. He raises his eyes to meet Sirius’s and forces himself to
maintain it, despite the red rims around his eyes and the new smudges in his eyeliner. “Oh my god,
my cousin Kian - I think you met him when you came to mine for winter break freshman year, the
short one? - anyway, we got to go to his wedding while we were there, it was amazing, and you’ll
never believe this - his wife is Emmeline fucking Vance!”

Sirius blinks, adjusts to the tone shift, then grins, still weak. “What, like, Emmeline from archery
club?”

“The very same!”

Sirius gapes. “What? In India ?”

“Yeah, I had no idea either!” James shakes his head, remembering how shocked he was.
“Apparently they met at Mom’s holiday party one year and hit it off, kept in touch, and she ended
up getting a job there, I guess. They’re still going strong!”

Sirius rubs at his eyes, but the smile is back, and for now, that’s enough. “What the fuck?” He
laughs, disbelieving.

“Right? Oh, and, like, all my cousins have kids now, it’s actually kind of disturbing. Like, the last
time I was there I was like, eight, and now there are all these tiny children running around calling
me Uncle - I’ve never felt so old in my entire life.”

“God, I heard that Narcissa has a kid now, with Lucius,” Sirius rolls his eyes, and James tries to
quell his shock at Sirius willingly bringing up any of his family members. “Get this, she named
him Draco .”

That startles a laugh out of James, because Jesus. “No, please say she didn’t.”

“Oh, she did! Draco fucking Malfoy, can you believe that?”
“That poor child. I mean, at least it’s not, like, Lucius Jr.?”

Sirius chokes on a sip of coffee, dribbling a bit down the front of his shirt, and then they’re
laughing, uncontrollable and free. The mix of caffeine and alcohol in James’s system is creating a
very strange mood, and Sirius is only adding fuel to the fire, and he only laughs harder when he
catches the waitress’s eye and she shoots him the nastiest death glare this side of the Rockies.
Sirius is doubled over in his seat, desperately trying to clean himself up with napkins and failing
miserably, shoulders shaking and laughs becoming full-on wheezes, and it’s so late it’s nearly
dawn and nothing is okay but for the first time in - in well, a long time, James feels like it is.

“Fuck,” Sirius huffs out once they’ve both calmed down, his head thunking against the back of his
seat. He taps his phone, absently checking, and his eyes suddenly go huge. “Fuck! I have a shift at
nine!

It’s well past five.

“ What! ” James exclaims, staring at Sirius, “Sirius!”

“It’s okay, it’s okay! I wasn’t planning on sleeping anyway!”

“Dude!”

“I can work hungover!”

“You’re still drunk! ”

Sirius groans and leans his head on the table. “It’ll be fine.”

“Where do you even work? It’s Sunday,” James asks, trying to catch the waitress’s eye so they can
get the check.

“Restaurant in Fulton Market, I have to work brunch,” Sirius mumbles into the table, and James
cringes.

“God, I’m sorry, brunch is the worst.”

“You were a server?”

“Mhm, worked weekends in college for beer money, mostly,” he responds, taking advantage of
Sirius’s head being buried in his arms to quietly slide his card to the waitress. She gives him the
stink eye and walks away.

“Bet you were good at it.”

“Nah, I was always dropping shit, I got fired after a few months,” James sighs. “I’m really lucky I
got to go to college and everything man, I got fired from the coffee shop too, and the receptionist
job.”

“Oh my god,” Sirius snickers, lifting his head, and frowns when the waitress comes by with the
receipt. “Fuck, why didn’t you say anything, I was gonna pay!”

“Nah,” James replies, looking up from where he’s putting in the (generous) tip with a grin. “My
treat, for showing me this place.”

Sirius grumbles under his breath, takes a few bills out of his wallet and refuses to put them back -
“I already wrote in a card tip!” “These are my cash tips, I’m paying it forward!” - and stacks their
plates, pushing all their dishes to the end of the table. There’s a silence where they both just look at
each other, similar to earlier, an unfamiliar awkwardness.

“Here,” Sirius says, picking up his phone and tapping at it, sliding it over the table to James. “Put
in your number, I don’t want to lose track of you again.”

How did you lose track of me? James thinks, even as he picks up the phone, enters his name and
number, slides it back over the table and feels the buzz in his pocket that must be a text from Sirius.
You know that number.
They stand, leave the diner. James takes out his phone, not willing to bet on the battery lasting long
enough for him to figure out his way home by public transit, calls an Uber, and Sirius does the
same. It’s still pitch dark outside, not yet dawn, but it feels like a new day anyway - a new day, a
new text from a new number - ‘ ello Jamesy, old chap! - in his phone, a new version of his old best
friend standing next to him.

“I missed you,” comes tumbling out of James’s mouth before he can stop it. He sounds choked.
Sirius blinks up at him, softens. Draws James in for a hug, arms around the middle this time.

“I missed you too,” he says into James’s shoulder. And then they stay like that for a long time,
until Sirius’s Uber comes and they have to break apart, hiding their wet eyes behind laughter and
promises to see each other soon.

Later, when James is showered and he’s drunk four glasses of water and settled down into bed, he
opens his messages. First, he responds to Alice’s text from hours ago, letting her know he got home
alright, too, and then he texts his mom back to tell her that he definitely does not want a bread
maker for his birthday, but thank you, and then he texts Frank to tell him that yes, he did bring
condoms, but no, he did not use them, and then, only then, does he open the single text from an
unfamiliar number, area code New York. ‘ ello Jamesy, old chap!

He taps on the number, taps create new contact. Enters Sirius, with a star emoji next to it. Stares
down at the new contact, unfamiliar number, same name that was there for seven years until
finally, in a fit of anger after he sent a text and received one back from someone named Linda, he
deleted it.

Then, and only then, does he let himself really cry.

 birthday boy
Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes

“You look a mess,” Lily tells him unforgivingly, eyeing him up and down as she takes a sip of her
grapefruit juice.

“Wow, thanks,” James snipes back, no heat in it. “It’s ten in the morning on a Saturday, this is
what you get.”

“Oh, lighten up, what happened to the James that used to wake up at five every day to run?”

“He’s dead.” (He’s not, actually, he just doesn’t exist on Saturdays. Saturdays are sacred.)

Lily laughs, turning back to the stove. Her apartment isn’t too far from his, a happy accident, and
it’s become a bit of a thing for them to have breakfast on weekends every once in a while at one of
their places. James was thrilled when she called to tell him she was moving to Chicago for work
three months ago, especially after maintaining a long-distance friendship for so long once they both
privately got over the breakup. Life after college has gotten a bit too lonely for his liking.

“James?”

“Yeah?”

“If you were messaging with someone incredibly, and I mean incredibly hot, and good at sexting,
on Tinder, but she told you she had a foot fetish, would you still go through with it?”

“Uh.”

“Right?”

“Like, how much of a foot fetish?”

“She asked for feet pics.”

“Oh, I’d send feet pics for sure.” Lily turns to glare at him. “What! It’s not bad, for a requested pic!
You can’t even blackmail someone with it!”

Lily considers. “That’s not a bad point.”

James’s phone buzzes, and he picks it up. Party starts at 9!! Dont bring anything! reads the text
from Sirius, and James quietly sighs, because here’s the thing.

Texting with Sirius is weird.

The afternoon after that chaotic night at the club, hungover and puffy-faced and still incredibly
confused, James had allowed himself to think back on their conversation at the diner and come to
the conclusion that it was, objectively, really fucking strange. He only sometimes allowed himself
to picture what it would be like to see Sirius again, less and less as the years went on, but every
scenario he ever envisioned more or less involved him shaking his friend by the shoulders until
everything came pouring out of him like it always did, and in the light of day he realized that he’d
been, well, played . He walked out of a conversation with Sirius Black with only his number and
the knowledge that he was alive and married.

The texting hasn’t been going much better. Sirius has been sending him pictures of dogs in his
neighborhood, even a few memes, and they’ve made some small talk, but there’s been nothing in
the past week to indicate that they’re doing anything but pretending that the last eight years simply
don’t exist, and James is left with far more questions than answers. The invitation to Moony’s
birthday party tonight, while not unwelcome, also brings with it a host of other, more embarrassing
problems.

“Jesus, what crawled up your ass and died?” Lily interrupts his thoughts, setting a plate of eggs and
toast in front of him and taking the other seat at her small dining table.

“Oh, nothing,” he dismisses, setting his phone down. “Work stuff. Alright, so, verdict on the feet
pics?”

Lily scrunches up her face, taking a bite of her eggs. “I dunno, it’s like, do I really want someone
out there, hot as she may be, jerking off to my feet?”
“Hm, maybe not. There’s other fish in the sea.”

“Oh yeah? You seeing anyone?”

“Nope. Someone touched my nipple the other day and I almost came.” James regrets saying it
almost as soon as he does, cringing, and Lily laughs so hard grapefruit juice comes out of her nose.

“Why are your twenties so tragic?” Lily laughs. “All I want to do all day is lounge around and
drink wine and eat pussy, and instead I have to listen to Tabitha from HR lecture me about proper
workplace attire and debate if feet pics are worth sending.”

“Sounds like you need a sugar mommy.”

“Oh, fuck, you’re so right! Hey, is your mom free?”

“Lily!” James gasps. James isn’t sure if his mom will ever start dating again, but has started to
privately come around to the idea - she was a bit younger than his dad, after all, and a wonderful
lady - but a sugar mommy? “No!”

“C’mon, you know you get your looks from her!”

“Right, and maybe I should go to Missouri and sweep Petunia off her feet, see how you feel.”

“She hates you!”

“Well, unfortunately the feeling’s mutual, but could you imagine?”

“I quite literally could not. She called me the other day to tell me that I’m going to hell because I
posted a bikini pic.”

James shudders. “I didn’t think she even knew how to use Instagram.”
“Yup, she’s trying to become one of those Christian mommy influencers now,” Lily rolls her eyes.
“She’s terrible at it.”

“I still can’t believe she named that child Dudley. Like, it’s bad enough they’re gonna make him go
to Evangelical Megachurch Hell every Sunday, they couldn’t throw him one bone?”

“God, I know. I tried to make her see reason on that one, but it has Vernon all over it.”

“Bastard.”

James chugs his orange juice - he’s not quite hungover, but he had to beg Frank and Alice to move
their night out to Friday this week and he hasn’t had coffee yet - and sighs, looking out the
window. Lily has a nice view, her kitchen at the corner of the building and all the way up on the
third floor, the neighborhood below them all quaint shops and restaurants and ancient brick three-
flats. A train rumbles along the L tracks down the street, just barely audible.

“What’s going on with you?” Lily asks casually, and he turns back, cocking his head. “You’re
quieter than usual.”

And here’s the thing. James wants to tell her, really does, because Sirius was her friend too and she
deserves to know, but every time he tries nothing comes out, because what can he even say? She’ll
have questions, and he won’t have answers, and he knows it’d break her heart as much as it did his,
to know that he was around this whole time and apparently just not interested. And, more than
anything else, he nearly starts crying every time he thinks about it too hard. No, it’s just easier to…
to wait.

“Just work, mostly,” he says, guilty for the lie. “There’s rumors of a merger so everyone’s really on
edge, just a bunch of corporate bullshit.”

“Ugh,” Lily rolls her eyes. “Yeah, my boss keeps trying to convince me to move around my
vacation in June for some project, and it’s like, hey lady? Do you think I want to spend half my
vacation days sitting in Missouri at a three year old’s birthday party? Of course not, but I have a
family! A life! Boundaries!”

“Oh, fuck that,” James frowns. “Wait, you’re going to see them?”
Lily sighs. “Yeah, as much as I hate Vernon, the kid needs some sane influence on his life,
y’know? I worry.”

“Aw, you’re such a good aunt.”

“Oh, shut up, Mom and Dad are a lot better about going to see them, they’re a little weirded out
too. Mom says Petunia’s, like, completely obsessive about Dudley. Barely gets him out of the
house for weeks at a time because she’s so paranoid, shit like that.”

“Oh, yikes.”

“Yeah, I’m gonna try and sneak him away to go to a park or something at least, maybe try to talk to
Vernon about it. Anyway, in a completely non-sugar-mommy way, how’s your mom?”

“She’s good! Really throwing herself into gardening since she bested the HOA, and she wants to
get into bird watching now? Apparently there’s a whole local group for it.”

“God, that’s adorable.”

They chat a bit more, wasting a couple of hours complaining about work and family and their
White Lotus season 3 dream cast - James is desperate for a Joel Kim Booster role, Lily for Lisa
Kudrow - before James excuses himself around noon to walk back to his apartment. The weather
has dipped firmly back into freezing territory, a dusting of snow lingering from yesterday, but he
brought his coat and it’s pleasantly sunny, the street bustling.

He really does try not to feel guilty about lying to Lily. Logically, he knows that seeing Sirius was
as much a shock to him as it was to James, and he has no idea where he stands with getting back in
contact with Lily or Peter or any of their old friends, but Lily, in the years since their breakup, has
become something of a pillar for James, and he’s become one for her too. His dad’s death and
Dudley’s birth, along with Petunia’s subsequent breakdown, coincided almost perfectly, and
they’ve leaned on each other a lot over the past few years in regards to their family problems.
Hiding something this big from her just feels downright unnatural.

He texts Sirius back to confirm he’ll be there once he gets home, pushing the guilt aside and
allowing himself to feel a bit excited. They’re having a party at their place, a “small thing, just
friends” according to Sirius, though he has a sneaking suspicion that won’t be the case. He had to
be assured more than once that Moony (Remus, apparently, though Sirius never calls him that)
actually hates gifts and to not bring one under any circumstances, which he still feels a bit strange
about, but now that he’s seen Sirius once he’s practically exploding with the need to see him again,
and he’s more than a little touched that Sirius is inviting him back into his life so easily.

He doesn’t let himself think about The Nipple Incident. As far as he’s concerned, it never
happened.

He passes the rest of the day busying himself with chores and facetiming Peter, who’s doing well
at his new software engineering job in Seattle and is getting really into fermenting, for some
reason. He even gets to chat with Patty, his sweet elderly neighbor, on his way down to the laundry
room. It’s a good day. Productive.

That is, until the sun falls, and suddenly James is nervous.

Frank picks up on the third ring, and James waits patiently for him to groan and grumble and set
his phone up so he can talk while he’s cooking, eventually setting it on the counter and giving
James a great view of his toned arms stirring something in a pan.

“So, what’s up? Changed your mind about tonight?”

“Nah, hey, do you have a new workout routine? Your triceps look incredible.”

Frank ducks down to smirk at him. “Just say the word, James, Crossfit is the best.”

James has never and will never want to do Crossfit. “Nevermind. Okay, I need your advice.” He
flips the camera around to point at his bed, two outfits laid down over the comforter. “Which one?”

“Are you trying to get laid?”

James can feel his face heating up. “No! Definitely not!”

“The one on the left then. What is this for, anyway?”

“Just a birthday party, that old friend I saw the other day invited me.”

“That’s nice. From Northwestern?”

“Oh, nah, high school actually. Listen, I gotta go, are we still on for brunch tomorrow?”

“Mhm. See ya.”

James lets out a sigh once the call ends, shoving the other clothes back into his dresser and putting
on the outfit Frank picked. It’s comfy, just a sweatshirt and jeans, plain and worn like most of his
clothes that aren’t for work. At times like these sometimes he wishes he had a more developed
taste in fashion. He isn’t quite at the level of some of his coworkers, who live in khakis and vests
that even James can tell are horrendous, but he has the sense that his relative stylishness at the
office comes more from age than any difference in taste, and isn’t that a horrifying thought.

He leaves a bit after 10, forgoing his car (which doesn’t see much action beyond his weekly
grocery trip and the occasional weekend camping trip anyway) for the bus, since he’s not sure how
much drinking he’ll be doing. The drinking culture in Chicago shocked him at first when he turned
21 and started venturing into the city and its nightlife more, a lot more accustomed to the laid-back
stoners of the West coast, and he’s had to work to find a balance between having a social life and
not waking up hungover every day like most of his younger (and almost all of his older) coworkers
seem to. But it is a weekend, he reflects as he waits, fingers turning numb, for his second bus, and
they’re celebrating. He may barely know the guy, but they’re celebrating.

Sirius and Moony live in a narrow brick three-flat nestled between another almost identical
building and a Chinese restaurant on the corner. Their apartment isn’t too far from his, just a
couple of neighborhoods between them, but James hasn’t been to this part of town much and he
tried to take note of the various shops and restaurants he passed on the walk from the bus stop to
their place. Most of them were closed except for a late-night restaurant advertising “Jibaritos”,
whatever those are, and a smoke shop, but it seems like a cool area, cozy and lively, and James can
clearly see Sirius’s life here.

There are figures backlit by warm lighting in the front window of their second-floor apartment
when he looks up, and when he lets himself in the front door per Sirius’s instructions and starts up
the stairs the sound of music and laughter get louder. James’s stomach is tying itself in knots by
the time he makes it to their front door and knocks loudly.

It’s Moony who answers the door, because of fucking course it is.
They blink at each other for a moment. Remus looks different, outside of the club, no glitter on his
cheek and curls fluffier, dressed in an enormous wool sweater and corduroy pants. Softer. His
eyebrows lift, droopy eyes widening a bit, clearly very confused.

“Aren’t you the guy with the nipple piercings?” He asks, and James almost chokes on his own spit,
a flush creeping up his neck. Remus leans against the doorway, looking him up and down.

“Um, I’m James?” James says, immediately aware of how stupid he sounds and how profoundly
awkward this is. He had desperately hoped that the guy wouldn’t even remember him. “Sirius’s
friend?”

Moony’s eyes light up, smiling, softer than the cheeky grin at the club. “Oh, shit!” He eyes James
up and down again, less suspicious and more curious now, and James fights the urge to fidget. He
feels like he’s being assessed. “Huh. Yeah, come on in, I’m Remus.”

“Thanks, it’s nice to meet you. Hey, happy birthday!” He toes his shoes off at the entrance, kicking
them into the pile next to the door. If Moony finds this as awkward as he does he isn’t showing it,
relaxed and casual, and James wonders how much he knows about his and Sirius’s relationship. If
Sirius ever thought about him enough to tell his husband about all of the juvenile pranks and late-
night conversations and winter breaks spent together in California.

“Thanks, man. Sirius is in the kitchen, I’ll show you.”

The living room is crowded with people but not too much of a squeeze thanks to its size, an
enviable feature of many three-flats that James sorely misses from college when he and Frank
shared one with an unfortunately disgusting man named Gilderoy. “I like the music,” he says, at a
loss, bobbing his head to the Talking Heads as Remus weaves through the living room crowd and
leads them down the hallway.

“Oh good, they’re my favorite,” Remus says, shooting a smile backwards. James almost laughs -
Sirius’s favorite has always been Bowie. It seems fitting.

“James!” Sirius shouts as soon as they emerge into the kitchen, abandoning the beer pong game he
seems to have been in the middle of to launch himself into James, who catches him with a laugh.
“It’s past eleven, you dick!”
“I lost track of time!” He says, a blatant lie. He’s never been on time in his life.

“Moons, this is James from school! James James!”

You talked about me? James thinks.

“Yeah, I figured. It’s good to meet you, Sirius has told me a lot about you and Peter.”

“Pete! I forgot to ask, how is our little Wormy?”

“Oh, he’s good, living over in Seattle now,” James replies absently, trying to fit the knowledge that
Sirius has talked about them, apparently a lot, into his brain. “He broke up with Gina recently
though, which is tough.”

Sirius’s eyes bulge. “They were still together? Until recently?”

“Yeah, she broke up with him, too, he’s still kind of a mess about it.”

“Well, he’s better off, she was fucking boring,” Sirius rolls his eyes, and James has to bite his
tongue. He thinks the last thing Peter and Sirius talked about might have been a fight about her.

“I’m gonna go find Mary,” Moony says, pressing a quick kiss to Sirius’s hair. “She’s still freaking
out about her thesis, I need to talk her off the ledge.”

“Tell her that she is very loved and smart and her thesis is brilliant from me!”

“Mhm. James, there’s beer in the fridge if you want it, the kitchen is the alcohol zone.”

James turns to Sirius once Remus walks off, one eyebrow raised. “Alcohol zone?”

“Oh yeah! Moony and a few of our friends don’t drink, so we try to keep it in separate areas when
we host parties so no one feels, y’know, pressured or uncomfortable or anything.”

“Sirius! Are we finishing this game or what?” The ginger man on the other side of the beer pong
table says.

“Shit, yes, we are!” Sirius grins and tosses a ping-pong ball from one hand to the other. “Excuse
me for a moment, James.”

He takes that as his cue to fish a beer from the fridge, a few half-empty cases shoved into the
bottom shelf beneath a crammed mess of tupperwares and ingredients. There’s a bottle opener
magnet on the door, a souvenir from Michigan, and James takes in the rest of the magnets (mostly
souvenirs from all over the midwest and the south, one from Puerto Rico) and sticky notes and
photos as he cracks his beer open. Most of the photos are of Sirius and Remus, and one in
particular catches his eye - Remus in a suit, Sirius in a poofy wedding dress, their arms around each
other and Remus pressing a kiss to Sirius’s cheek. James’s breath stutters.

“Suck on that!” Sirius shouts from behind him, and James turns to find the ginger man from earlier
glaring while chugging from a red solo cup, Sirius cackling across from him. “You can’t defeat the
master!”

The few people that have gathered around the table to watch roll their eyes, and James walks over
to pat the loser on the back sympathetically. “Next time, do pool, Sirius is terrible at it.”

“I am not!” Sirius squawks, jaw dropping. “Lies! Slander!”

“You don’t even understand the rules!”

“They’re complicated!”

The ginger guy laughs, swaying a bit in place. “Hey, do I know you?” He asks, squinting at James.
“I don’t think I know you.”

“I’m James!”
“Gideon.”

“Gid here is my work husband,” Sirius says, picking up one of the full cups from his side of the
table and draining it. “ And the weed guy.”

“I am,” Gideon interrupts himself with a loud belch, “a man of many talents.”

Sirius leaves them to go find someone, so James, who is still nursing his beer, talks to Gideon. He
turns out to be possibly even more into soccer than James is, but is unfortunately a Liverpool fan.
A few more people file into the kitchen for drinks and he meets a couple of Gideon and Sirius’s
other coworkers as well, who seem to have no qualms about digging through the cupboards and
stealing a full bottle of rum from beneath the kitchen sink. After sharing a couple of shots with
them James isn’t exactly complaining either.

“Wait, so you’re one of Sirius’s friends, right?” Gideon asks. “How’ve we not met?”

“Oh, yeah, we met in school, we just got back in touch recently,” James shrugs.

“Like, high school?”

“Middle school, actually, we went to the same boarding school until Sirius, uh, transferred after
sophomore year.”

Gideon blinks. “Sirius went to boarding school?”

“Catholic boarding school, yep.”

“God, that explains so much, there’s no one crazier than ex-Catholics.”

“I see that, and raise you: ex-Mormons.”

“Well - that’s - okay, you got me there.”

Done drinking for the moment, James lets Gideon lead him back to the living room, admiring the
paintings and posters on the walls as they shuffle through the crowded hallway. The paintings are
beautiful, oil originals all done by what looks to be the same artist, and when they enter the living
room James notices another one, an enormous landscape with two figures in the distance on either
side of a lake, hung over one of the couches.

James manages to find Sirius in the crowd, standing to the side and talking to someone with long
locs and intricately patterned clothes. He waves James over, eyes bright and hair newly tied back in
a braid, and James comes.

“This is James!” Sirius says once he’s in earshot, gesturing to him, and the person next to him
smiles, extending a hand.

“I’m Dorcas,” they say, and James takes their hand.

“Nice to meet you! You guys used to live together, right?”

“Oh yes, years ago, now,” Dorcas says, waving a hand. “Now he just bothers me at all hours of the
day via text.”

“Wow, way to make a guy feel special,” Sirius rolls his eyes.

“I’m stealing James and Dorcas,” says a voice behind him, and a moment later Remus’s hands
clamp onto both their arms. James starts, glancing up at Remus in confusion, but he’s looking at
Sirius with a grin. “Set up Mario Kart?”

Sirius pouts as they’re dragged away and back down the hall towards the kitchen, and when James
shoots Dorcas a questioning look they just shrug, letting Remus lead them through the kitchen and
out the back door to the porch.

“Dorky!” A tall woman with short, choppy blonde hair springs to her feet, almost knocking one of
the patio chairs over in the process. There’s a grinder, an ashtray, and a bong on the table in front
of her, and James has a very good idea of what’s going on, suddenly.
“Sorry, I didn’t ask, do you smoke?” Remus asks, taking one of the chairs as Dorcas and the
blonde embrace rather dramatically.

“Yeah!” James replies easily, sitting in the seat next to him. “My neighbors own a weed farm back
out in California, I miss it every day.”

Remus snorts, picking up the grinder and giving it a few twists. He has lovely hands, all knobbly
and long, and James - James needs to stop looking. Anything else. Anything but this.

“Marlene, James,” Dorcas thankfully interrupts his thoughts, waving their arm between them.
“Great, we all know each other.”

“Oh, so this is James!” Marlene leans forward in her seat, scanning him. She has more piercings
than James can count and a lot of black eyeliner on, and he thinks she’d probably get along well
with Alice. “Famous Jamous!”

“I’m famous?”

“Uh, if you’ve talked to Sirius in the last week, yes! He mentioned you before a few times but now
I can’t get him to shut up about you,” Marlene snorts, snatching the grinder from Remus to pack a
bowl. James fixes an easy smile on his face, but his brain is a mess of questions, now faced with
the three people it seems Sirius is closest to.

Marlene lights the bowl, taking a hit and passing it to Dorcas, and James catches Remus giving him
an unreadable look. “He’s really excited to see you again, y’know,” he tells James softly, and his
chest hurts.

“I am too!” He looks away, fidgety under Remus’s gaze, and lets Dorcas pass him the bong and
lighter, taking a long hit to steady himself. It makes him cough a bit, and Marlene passes him a
water bottle - so he hasn’t been smoking much recently, sue him. Chicago weed is expensive if
you’re used to getting freebies from your neighbor’s daughter.

They pass the bong around a few more times, Marlene refreshing the bowl when it comes back
around to her, and he learns that Marlene is the artist behind the paintings in the apartment and
Dorcas designed their own outfit, both Art Institute graduates a few years older than himself.
Dorcas owns a clothing brand that recently started doing well - James thinks their outfit is
incredible, and tells them as much - and Marlene does freelance illustration along with selling her
paintings.

“The painting above the couch, the really big one? It’s gorgeous,” James says, and Marlene cocks
her head to one side, studying him.

“I did it for Sirius when we all moved out of the old apartment,” she tells him. “It’s you and him,
did you know?”

James goes still. His limbs feel loose and heavy and he can feel his eyelids drooping, the weed
slowing his thoughts down, so it takes him a moment to process, but then it hits him and he
breathes in sharply. Two figures, a lake between them.

“Oh,” he breathes, and Remus is looking at him with that unreadable gaze again, and he feels a bit
put on the spot with both his and Marlene’s eyes on him. Dorcas, thankfully, is busy taking a hit.

“I wanted it to be something personal,” Marlene explains, resting her chin on her fist. “I find it hard
to paint, specifically, without an emotional motivation - it always comes out feeling flat. That’s
why I do portraits of friends so much, it’s like a love letter to them, y’know?” James nods mutely,
thoughts a tangled mess. He remembers a painting of Remus on the wall in the hallway, laughing
with his arms crossed in front of him, eyes looking straight at the viewer. “He never really talks
about his life before he met Moony here, except to mention you, but when I asked about you he
said y’all hadn’t talked in years, and I was so surprised - sometimes with the way he talked it
seemed like he’d just seen you yesterday! So I was thinking about the way friendships can fade
over the years, but you’ll still think about them and miss them and love them, and that’s what came
out.”

Remus turns to Marlene. “I didn’t know that.”

She shrugs. “I never said. I thought Sirius might not want it if he knew - when he said you two
didn’t talk anymore he seemed… well. I assume it’s complicated.”

James shrugs helplessly, trying to swallow the lump that’s formed in his throat. He wants to drag
Sirius in front of the painting and make him see, make him understand that it’s them and that he
was the one that put the lake there, was the one with a canoe this whole time while James was left
on the opposite shore with stones tied to his feet and a gag over his mouth. He passes the bong on
to Remus without pausing when Dorcas hands it to him, movements automatic.
“That’s a bit underhanded, babe,” Dorcas says, smirking at Marlene. “Would you tell him now?”

Marlene’s still staring at James, her startlingly blue eyes piercing. James feels a bit exposed, a
subject of study, and wonders what he would look like if Marlene were to paint him now - how
would she turn the confusion and hurt that must be all over his face into something beautiful?
“Would you?” She asks him.

“I -” he flexes his fingers. He doesn’t know these people, not really, but he knows they can see all
of the complicated feelings playing out on his face, unable to hide behind a smile with the weed
slowing him down and bringing everything to the surface - distantly, he wonders if that was
intentional. “I don’t know. He, um. Never said goodbye.” He looks down at his hands, eyebrows
furrowing together. “I don’t really know where we stand, or where we go from here, I guess? Like,
I still feel like that painting.”

“Do you want to?” Remus asks. He’s so much quieter here, more thoughtful, that it’s difficult for
James to reconcile him with the confident, flirty bartender he met last week. It’s like he has an alter
ego. “Close the gap?”

Dorcas cuts in before James can even begin to form an answer to that, eyes narrowed and
thoughtful. “What do you mean he didn’t say goodbye? Did you part on bad terms, or something?”

“No, he just -” James takes a long breath, blinking rapidly. “After we went home for summer
break, after sophomore year in high school, he stopped replying to his phone and I literally never
heard from again. I tried to get in touch with his friends in New York but they said he disappeared
too, and the school just said he withdrew, and I had no idea how to find him. Last week was the
first time I’d seen him since then.”

Marlene and Dorcas look surprised, sharing a look with their eyebrows raised and questions in their
eyes, but Remus doesn’t. James knows Remus has the most information out of all of them - they’re
married, after all, and Sirius said he met him when he was still in high school - but he can’t ask,
can’t hear this secondhand, and he thinks that Remus probably wouldn’t tell him even if he did.
He’s not sure he’s ready to know at all. He’s gotten so used to it, the not-knowing, that all of this is
a bit terrifying, especially because it’s Sirius, and James knows that whatever he hears will
probably shatter him, even if it ended with him safe and happy and loved and just a few
insignificant miles away.

He can’t help the curiosity about Remus, though, and his mind wanders to that, trying to pull
himself back from the brink of crying in front of these almost-strangers and baring all the ugly
parts of himself for them to see. He isn’t much like the boys Sirius used to fumble around with back
when they were teenagers, confident where they were often twitchy and insecure and quiet where
they were often loud (and, in James’s opinion, quite annoying). Some of that is probably a simple
product of environment, since the options for a gay man weren’t exactly huge at their strict
Catholic school, but Sirius always went for the ones who weren’t looking for anything serious
anyway, closeted or in outright denial, and James always privately hated them and the careless way
they would treat his friend. Remus, on the other hand, is undeniably a man in love. Sirius talks
about him like he’s the actual moon and James has seen Remus’s casual affection now,
understands the efforts the guy has made tonight to make him feel comfortable here despite their
less than ideal first meeting, and even beyond his initial attraction he desperately wants to know
him. He cringes when Remus catches him staring, averting his eyes.

“You haven’t asked him about it?” Marlene asks, breaking the brief silence. James shakes his head,
and she sighs.

“And I’m sure he’s just avoiding it, the prick,” Dorcas grumbles, rolling their eyes.

James laughs, a bit wet, but the others join him, and he feels a little better, with it out in the open
like this. He had Lily and Peter and his parents to share his worry when Sirius first disappeared, but
it’s always been hard for him to talk about even with them, and it’s faded into the background in
the last few years with all of them moving on with their lives and dealing with new problems. He
thinks the last time he talked about it might have been at his dad’s funeral, when he quietly
admitted to Lily that the only person he wanted to see was Sirius, just for a moment, just to cry into
his shoulder, and she held him through a fresh batch of sobs. It’s not a pleasant memory, and he
hasn’t managed to speak of Sirius again until now.

“I don’t want to scare him off,” he admits, a revelation to him as he says it, a sudden understanding
of the fear beneath all of the relief. “It’s been a long time. He - it’s not the same as when we were
kids and he told me everything.”

“You won’t,” Remus says firmly, catching James’s eye and holding it, all sincerity. “He doesn’t
want to let you go again either, y’know? You have to trust that.”

“Yeah, you should hear the way he talks about you,” Marlene nods. “Like you’re the best thing
since sliced bread, honestly, it’s kind of annoying.”

Then why did he let me go at all? James thinks, readjusted enough now to the feeling of being high
that it doesn’t just come tumbling out of his mouth, though it’s a near thing. What’s that lake then?

“Maybe not,” he concedes, looking down and fiddling with his cuticles. His nails always feel weird
when he’s stoned. Sirius always said his knees felt like they were about to bend backwards like a
bird’s when they smoked together, huddled in the furthest corner in his parents’ backyard or
behind the greenhouse at school. “I just wish he’d come to me about it. I don’t even know where to
start, really, we didn’t keep things from each other like this when we were younger, ever.”

Marlene and Dorcas are both looking at him with sympathy in their eyes, and Remus seems almost
analytical, like he’s trying to solve a puzzle, and James knows how ridiculous he sounds, that he
finds it absurd that Sirius wouldn’t spill whatever trauma and hurt and regret and whatever else
there might be from the last eight years right at James’s feet without him even having to ask. It
doesn’t change it. Sirius climbed into his bed their first week at school, eleven and bug-eyed and
baby-faced with tears on his cheeks, and in the five years after that night James was his confidant
for everything from his first kiss to the explosive fight with his parents when they were thirteen
that left him with a broken wrist and a bruised cheek to the realization that he was gay. It’s
unbearable to think that the last eight years have warped that so much that they can let it hang
between them, only peeking around it for glimpses of the other. It’s unthinkable.

“You need to talk to him,” Dorcas tells him, straightforward but not harsh. “He’s not used to
spilling his guts like that, and you’re not children anymore.”

And, okay, that stings, but they’re not exactly wrong . James knows he’s been playing along a bit
too well with Sirius, pure instinct driving him just like when they would get themselves into
trouble back in school, and he nods. “Yeah. I will.” He lifts his eyes, offering them a smile. “Thank
you for, y’know, listening. I feel kind of pathetic right now, I can’t lie.”

Remus snorts, giving him a pat on the back, and Dorcas rolls their eyes. Marlene grins. “Aw, you
are pathetic, but it’s cute,” she says, teasing, and James laughs, hanging his head. “You have a
great pouty face.”

Remus reaches over and pinches James’s cheek, reminiscent of how the hordes of aunties back in
California used to when he was a kid. “Look at those puppy dog eyes,” he croons, and James feels
his face heat up.

Luckily, he’s interrupted by a shockingly beautiful woman with a massive afro wrenching the door
open, glaring straight at Remus. “What the fuck are y’all still doing out here? The cake’s been
ready for ages!”

“Sorry Mary!” Remus says cheerfully, releasing James’s face. “Lost track of time.”

“Okay, you stoner piece of shit,” Mary replies, but she’s smiling. “Come on before your husband
goes ballistic on us.”
They go back into the apartment after Remus finishes the last bowl in one heroic go, and Mary
covers Remus’s eyes with her hands while they file past the ridiculous cake on the kitchen counter,
forcing him to stoop comically. He pointedly avoids looking at the painting above the couch while
he mingles in the living room, letting Marlene introduce him to a few other friends (there must be
at least fifty people here, and with them all in the living room instead of scattered throughout the
apartment it’s become a squeeze). They’re all around the same age and loudly queer, and he thinks
he recognizes a few of them as staff from the club, including the bouncer.

Someone shuts off the lights and the music and Sirius emerges a moment later, the cake in his
hands full of candles, and he leads them in a loud and horribly off-key round of “happy birthday”
which Remus looks appropriately mortified about; someone has put a birthday hat on his head, and
James feels suddenly guilty for stealing so much time on his birthday complaining about his own
problems and failing miserably in getting to know him better. All his resolve to learn more about
Sirius and Remus seems to dissolve when actually in either of their presence and faced with voicing
the big questions burning him from the inside out. He remembers what Dorcas told him, averting
his eyes while Sirius and Remus kiss passionately over the cake to whoops and wolf-whistles from
the crowd, and tries to hang on to that advice, tucking it away in his brain.

He doesn’t see much of either Remus or Sirius after that, as they’ve taken to making out
shamelessly on one of the couches, and instead finds himself engaged in a Mario Kart battle with
Gideon, Mary, Marlene, and one of Sirius’s coworkers who James can’t remember the name of for
the life of him. Marlene is a beast and soundly destroys all of them for a few rounds until Mary
gives up and goes to find one of her classmates, but James has managed to glean from her that she
met Remus at UChicago, where they’re both English majors, though Mary is a grad student and
Remus is finishing his bachelor’s. The stuffed bookshelves that line two entire walls of the living
room make a little more sense now.

The party starts to thin out about an hour after that, and James is exhausted, remembering with a
start that he’s supposed to be meeting Frank for brunch tomorrow. He says his goodbyes to
Marlene and Dorcas and accepts a crushing hug from Marlene - she’s strong , arms thick with
muscle, and James hopes he sees her again, if just to get her workout routine. Gideon’s already left
so he makes his way over to Sirius and Remus, who have thankfully broken apart to talk to
someone, though their legs remain tangled.

“I think I’m gonna head out,” he says with a smile. “Happy birthday, Remus.”

“Thanks,” Remus smiles back, his eyes bright pink and so droopy they’re almost shut. “Get home
safe, stay warm.”

“I’ll walk you out!” Sirius springs to his feet, pecking Remus apologetically on the mouth when he
groans in protest. “Be right back, Moony.”

It takes James a full minute to find his shoes in the pile by the door, and Sirius has to go to his
bedroom to retrieve a pair of lime green Crocs with an assortment of jibbitz James definitely needs
to get a better look at, but they manage to slip out the door without fanfare, the stairwell jarringly
quiet with the door closed and far too bright.

“I barely got to see you tonight,” Sirius pouts, leading him down the stairs with a hand on the wall
to steady himself. “Did you have fun with Moony and Dorky and Marls?”

Sirius always comes up with the most ridiculous nicknames, outright refusing to use people’s
proper names. James was always Prongs, and it aches when he realizes Sirius hasn’t called him
that, doubling when he realizes he can’t remember the last time he thought of Sirius as Padfoot. It
seems too intimate for whatever’s between them now, too much of an acknowledgement of their
shared history, a piece of who they were that James doesn’t know if they still are .

“Yeah! Dorcas and Marlene are incredible, I was looking at the paintings,” he cringes, but Sirius
doesn’t see, “And Dorcas’s clothes are insane! I’ve never seen anything like them.”

“Right?” Sirius turns to grin at him, pausing at the landing for James to catch up. “I model for
them sometimes, I’ll send you the website - I have a bunch of their stuff too but I try not to wear it
when I’m drinking so I don’t mess it up.”

James snorts, taking in the smear of pink frosting on his worn Queen t-shirt. “Smart man.”

Sirius hugs him and James melts, closing his eyes and leaning his head on Sirius’s shoulder.
Despite all the confusing emotions that have been building in the past week it feels so right to have
Sirius in his arms, smelling like the same shampoo he’s used since he was fourteen and warm, that
he can’t find it in himself to be pissed off or afraid or whatever it is he feels towards Sirius these
days. He has a bit of pink frosting on his sweatshirt when they break apart, and James laughs.

“Text me!” Sirius says just as James’s phone buzzes to let him know his Uber’s here, making a
face when James opens the door and lets the cold air in. “Let’s go thrifting or something next
weekend!”

“Definitely!” James replies, swooping in at the last second for another brief hug, and then he shuts
the door behind him as quietly as he can - the downstairs neighbors have probably had enough
 disturbances for one night - and jogs across the street to his Uber. It’s snowing lightly and he slips
on the icy asphalt, just barely saving himself from eating shit, and he swears he can hear Sirius
cackling from the doorway.

He checks his phone on the ride back, scrolling through the new texting threads with Marlene and
Dorcas and resisting the urge to bang his head against the back of the seat when he realizes he
didn’t get Remus’s number. He’s an enigma to James, completely at home at the club with the
pounding music and drunken crowds shouting at him for hours on end but so quiet tonight, despite
seeming even more at ease. He didn’t react much to seeing James, either, which is a relief but also
admittedly kind of strange and a bit mortifying, leaving him alone in his panic over The Nipple
Incident, and he wonders if Remus told Sirius about it, or plans to - the thought of that almost
makes him nauseous. How is he supposed to explain that yes, he finds Sirius’s lawfully wedded
husband incredibly attractive, and also let him fondle his nipples in a public restroom? James
groans out loud.

He doesn’t even think Sirius knows he likes men.

He puts himself to bed that night with a newfound resolve to sit Sirius down for a proper talk, all
cards on the table, next week. He’s had it, officially. No more complicated messes in his head, no
more secrets or cut-off sentences or burying feelings. He’s going to get his best friend back, and
he’s going to do it right.

Chapter End Notes

allllrighty im not entirely happy with this chapter but im putting it up anyway cause im
tired of thinking about it!!! james was really wanting to be a pathetic sadboy when i
wrote this and im just desperately tugging his arm trying to make him happier and its
not working lmaooo

the girlies appear!! dorcas marlene and mary are gonna come in more later in the story
but lily is very important to jamess part and i just love her soooo so so much <3 i just
love the jily enemies to friends to lovers to exes to friends pipeline theyre besties and i
just love the image of 17 year old james sitting at family dinner across from petunia
trying not to be an asshole HAHA

ahhh god. sirius and james are so fucked up about each other. james just not knowing
what to do when sirius wont talk to him... well see it more next part with siriuss pov
but thats very much a mutual feeling and theyre both STRUGGLING!! at the moment!

ill (hopefully) see yall next wednesday! the update day might have to change at some
point and i might have to skip a week or two here and there but the plan is to keep
consistent updates <3
 buyer's remorse
Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes

He wakes up the next morning grateful he smoked more than drank, almost feeling normal after a
glass of water and a shower despite the limited hours of sleep under his belt. Frank’s early riser
tendencies aren’t limited to weekdays like James, so he has to be at the restaurant by ten, and at the
last moment he decides to throw on one of his better outfits, a pair of overalls with colorful patches
on the knees and a tight green t-shirt. Peter gave him the overalls years ago, found at some Seattle
thrift store and too long for him, and he always feels more stylish than he probably has any right to
in them, especially after throwing on his plain black puffer jacket that clashes horribly. Sirius
would have a fit.

The freeway is almost empty as he drives, his Sunday morning playlist full of soft, quiet songs
filling his car, so he steps on the gas, already late. The snow from last night coats everything in an
inch or so of white, glittering in the weak morning sunlight. He’s come to appreciate Chicago
winters as much as he hates them, and the novelty of snow still hasn’t quite worn off after a
childhood of having to travel to see it and an adolescence spent building snowmen on the school
grounds after class, still raising his mood every time even when he shows up to work with wet
shoes or a new bruise from slipping on the ice.

Frank’s already waiting at a table with coffee when he stumbles into the restaurant, rolling his eyes
at James’s excuses about parking as he sheds his coat and plops into the seat across from him.

“I know you didn’t leave the house before 9:59, jackass,” Frank grumbles.

“I will have you know I left at 9:55 and no later.”

“Truly a miracle! Everyone, rejoice!”

He orders coffee from the clearly hungover waiter, who looks like a strong breeze would knock
him flat on the ground. James cringes when he turns and bumps directly into one of his coworkers,
mimosa spilling all over his shirt, and resolves to leave him a good tip.

“How was the party?” Frank asks, flipping open the menu and scanning the options.

“Good! I’m not even hungover. How’d the curry turn out?”
“Meh, not my best work, but Alice didn’t complain. I think she’s just happy one of us is finally
learning to cook.”

“I can send you some of my mom’s recipes, if you want? She keeps sending them to me, still thinks
I’m too skinny.”

“Ooo, please! I haven’t forgotten about that time she visited, she’s like magic in the kitchen.”

James hasn’t forgotten that visit either, primarily because she sat Gilderoy down and gave him a
thorough dressing-down about his cleaning habits that left him both terrified and humiliated and
Frank and James more than a little vindicated. He shares a look with Frank, who smirks.

“What happened with that hot bartender the other night, did you get his number? Alice is under the
impression it was love at first sight.”

James’s face heats up, and he buries it in his arms with a long, drawn out groan. “It was his
birthday party last night.”

When he looks up Frank’s jaw is on the floor, his eyes bright, and James groans again. “Frank, no!
It’s actually so complicated - look, remember when I left with that old friend?” Frank nods. “Okay,
so it turns out that friend is literally married to the bartender, but it’s, like, an open marriage,
which is a huge fucking relief because the bartender sort of fondled my nipple in the bathroom?”

Frank just stares at him, mouth open, coffee raised halfway to his mouth.

“And I don’t know if he told the old friend about it! Like, I put the pieces together last week, but
the hot bartender guy didn’t know I was his husband’s friend until I showed up and he was like
“Aren’t you the nipple guy?” which is so humiliating, and then we just kind of pretended like it
didn’t happen, which was kind of weird, and he’s still hot which is a problem because he’s
married!”

“Didn’t you say it was an open marriage?” Frank finally asks after taking a sip of coffee. James
nods. “You’re telling me you had the opportunity to have a birthday threesome and you didn’t take
it?”
“Frank! I can’t-”

The waiter chooses that moment to come by and take their orders, and James makes sure to be as
polite and succinct as possible, glaring at Frank when the waiter turns to him. He’s just in a black
tank top now, the other shirt presumably ruined, and James feels a stab of sympathy - he once
spilled half a gallon of ketchup on himself fifteen minutes into a shift, and his manager did not let
him run home to change, resulting in five hours of walking around smelling and feeling like shit
and next to nothing in tips.

“Frank, the old friend is Sirius,” he hisses once the waiter leaves, running his hands through his
hair. “The one who disappeared?”

Frank’s eyes widen. “Oh shit.”

“Yeah, oh shit! So that’s all complicated and whatever, and meanwhile I’m over here trying not to
pop a boner every time his husband so much as looks at me!”

Frank squints at him, leaning his elbows on the table and folding his hands together the way he
always does when he’s thinking about something. “So, what, you think Sirius would have a
problem with it?”

“I mean, probably! Like, it’s one thing for your husband to have sex with other people and another
for your estranged best friend to want to lick his arms, right? Like, there’s so many weird feelings
going on right now I can’t keep all of them straight, I don’t think Sirius even knows I’m into dudes
unless his husband told him, and it’s weird! It’s weird, right?”

Frank considers for a moment, his head bobbing from side-to-side. “I mean, it’s kind of weird, but
also, you can’t really help it? It sounds like the bartender husband guy is into you too, so isn’t that,
like…” he shrugs. “Between him and Sirius?”

“I mean, yeah, but I still cannot have sex with him,” James says, suddenly determined. “Frank, you
have to tell me I can’t have sex with him.”

Frank sighs and looks him in the eye. “James Potter, you cannot have sex with the hot bartender
husband guy of your dreams.”
“Stop encouraging me!”

“I just told you you can’t have sex with him!”

“You know what you did!”

Frank rolls his eyes. “Fine, I still think you should lick his arms and suck his dick and do whatever
you want to do to him and tell me all about it because he was very hot.”

The waiter standing next to their table, food in hand, raises his eyebrows, trying and failing to hide
a smirk. James might just float away from embarrassment and live in the clouds with all the birds
and water vapor and let the lack of oxygen melt his brain until he never has to think of anything
ever again, particularly this conversation. He says thank you in a very small voice and does not
look him in the eye.

“I can’t think about this anymore,” he whines around a mouthful of chilaquiles.

“Well, good, because I have news.” Frank reaches into his pocket and produces a tiny black box,
setting it on the table with a small, nervous smile. James stares.

“Aw, you shouldn’t have,” he jokes while his brain whirrs, taking in the velvet box before flipping
it open to find a silver ring with a single black stone glittering in the center. He sucks in a breath,
because it’s perfect. “Holy shit, Frank!”

“I had to tell someone,” he admits, fiddling with a sugar packet and grinning like an absolute idiot.
“I’ve had the ring for like a year now but it didn’t feel like the right moment, y’know, when I was
still job hunting and we had to move and everything, but,” his smile gets impossibly wider, cheeks
pink, and James hasn’t seen him this giddy in ages , “well, we’re going to Hungary to see her
family in two months, and it seems like the right time, doesn’t it?”

“Frank!” James is the one with his jaw on the floor now, glancing between him and the ring,
speechless. “Holy shit!”

“I know!”
“You’re getting engaged!”

Frank splutters. “Well, she hasn’t said yes! That’s a very important part of it!”

James rolls his eyes. “Frank, you’ve had multiple extensive discussions about your opinions on
marriage and your plans for the future, she’s dying to marry you. Seriously, she might explode
when you get down on one knee, please proceed with caution.”

Frank laughs, taking a bite of his food, eyes glittering. “I wanna spend my entire life with her,” he
mumbles, and James is in serious danger of crying. Oh, he’s gonna be a mess at their wedding.

“Don’t make me cry at brunch,” he says, getting a last glimpse of the ring before Frank shuts the
box and stuffs it back in his pocket, dopey smile still in place. “Seriously, I’m so happy for you
guys it’s disgusting. Not as disgusting as you two, but like, close.”

“I never thought I’d get married,” Frank sighs, looking out the window. “Thought I’d be a slut
forever, now look at me.”

“Now look at you! Committed! Mature! In love!”

Frank giggles, and James feels like he’s been dunked in a warm bath, heart full to bursting and
catching some of Frank’s giddiness. He was the one to introduce them back in college, already
friends with Frank and assigned to a class project with Alice, and they fell in love absurdly quickly
and have been dating for over four years now. With Sirius gone, Peter all the way in Seattle and
Lily halfway across the country until recently they’ve been his closest friends for years. He has the
sudden thought that he doesn’t know if he’s supposed to be a bridesmaid or a groomsman, but
quickly pushes it aside - that’s a problem for the future.

“We’ve been talking about kids too,” Frank says, clearly on a roll. “I mean, probably not for a few
years yet, but I think we’re gonna do it? Be parents?”

“Holy shit!”

“Yeah, right? Me, a dad?”

“You’d be the best dad. I’ll get you the mug and everything.”

“I want at least four in different colors! This isn’t amateur hour!”

James giggles, staring at Frank, who is so disgustingly happy it’s practically shining out of his ass.
The only people he knows who are married are a few of his older coworkers and Sirius, and it feels
like a distinctly adult thing to do, declaring eternal love for another person in front of all your
friends and family and God, supposedly. Frank’s the same age as him, Alice barely a year older,
and it strikes him that this is a thing now, people his age settling down and talking about kids and
futures together like they weren’t chugging Four Loko and calling their parents to ask how taxes
work a few short years ago. It’s strange, but nice, an abstract future starting to play out in real time.

“Four best dad mugs, got it,” James nods, making a mental list. “And your wedding present, should
it be a blender or an Instapot?”

Frank cackles. “No, no, make it one of those fancy rice cookers! Y’know, the Japanese ones that
play a little tune when the rice is done, one of those.”

“Oh, so noted! I’ll throw in a Live Laugh Love sign too, really seal the deal.”

They talk more about the proposal, which makes Frank so nervous his knee starts bobbing hard
enough to shake the table, but James doesn’t think he has anything to worry about - Alice has been
complaining that he’s taking too long to pop the question for months, and she’ll probably see it
coming from a mile away, just how she likes it. Frank doesn’t tease him any more about his little
situation, for which James is eternally grateful. It was nice to spill the lighter side to this whole
debacle to someone, but next to Frank’s plan it feels more than a little juvenile, and he’s still so
embarrassed about the whole thing he thinks one more comment would send him hurtling into the
stratosphere. He misses when he had no shame. It was nice.

“You have to tell me as soon as you ask,” he says when they get the check, fixing Frank with a
stern look. “I’m not joking, screw international call fees, ring me up immediately .”

“I will,” Frank promises, and the stupid grin is back. “You can’t say anything to Alice, though!
She’s already suspicious, I want it to be a surprise!”

“Of course not, but she won’t be surprised, man. It’s an overseas trip to the homeland, she probably
already has the nail appointment set up.”
“Yeah, it’s a bit obvious, isn’t it?”

“Oh, extremely, she’ll love it.”

They part ways and James leaves feeling like he’s the one who’s getting proposed to, practically
skipping back to his car and belting along to Beyonce the entire drive to the grocery store. The sun
is shining, the birds are singing, and a Frank and Alice wedding is suddenly on the horizon - for
everything that’s complicated in his life right now, some things are still so simple, and James
spends the rest of the day grateful for those few things.

—--------------------------------

Saturdays are starting to become their thing , James muses as he pulls up to Sirius’s work and
shoots him a text a week after the birthday party. It’s the middle of the afternoon, so he’ll still be
able to make it out with Frank and Alice tonight, and it’s warmer than it was last week, snow all
gone and a few buds starting to sprout on the trees. Sirius texted him a screenshot of his work
schedule a few days ago and it nearly sent James into a spiral, the sudden knowledge of not only
Sirius’s home and friends but his plans, short-term though they may be, suddenly overwhelming.
He has a plan mapped out for talking to Sirius, and in the light of day with both of them sober, he
fully intends to follow through.

“Let me iiiin!” Says a voice, and James whips his head around to find Sirius peering through the
window, jiggling the handle. “Let me iiiiiiiin!”

James unlocks the door and Sirius flops into the passenger seat with a loud huff. “James, this lady
literally would not stop sending her food back,” he groans, ripping out the hair tie keeping his bun
in place and shaking it out. “I thought the chef was actually going to kill me.”

“Steak?” James asks, grimacing when Sirius nods. “I will never understand people who order steak
at brunch. It’s noon! Get an omelet!”

“Right?” Sirius makes a grabby hand and James passes him his phone so he can put in the
directions. “She wanted it well done, too, like a psychopath.”

“Eugh.”
Sirius obviously changed after his shift, dressed in ripped black jeans and a sweater that must
belong to Remus, enormous and soft looking, with a stuffed black backpack at his feet. He looks
different in the daylight with no makeup on. It’s almost like when he met Remus last week - he’s
softer, not as put together, hair a mess from being up all morning and grumpy, and James smiles to
himself - it’s cute.

“Okay, we’re going to this place Dorky used to work at first but there’s a few other good vintage
stores nearby so we can just park and walk,” Sirius says, setting the phone on its stand on the
console. “There’s some really good Mexican food around there too!”

“Tacos,” James says dreamily, peeling out of his (illegal) parking spot and squinting at the
directions as he maneuvers them through the narrow downtown streets to the freeway. Sirius is
fiddling with the radio, finally settling on a station doing a 90’s rap throwback hour and bobbing
his head to the beat.

“Mhm, and shopping!” Sirius tugs on his sleeve, nose scrunched up. “Has your taste in clothes
changed at all?”

James glances down at his outfit, suddenly wishing he wore the overalls instead - he’s just got a
plain red hoodie and black Dickies on today, and even with Sirius relatively dressed-down he
knows he looks downright boring in comparison. “Okay, you know what, I - well, the thing is - I -
no. It has not.”

Sirius groans. “You look like a tween skater.”

“I do not!” James gasps, shooting Sirius a look. “Take that back!”

“All you need is the Thrasher shirt over the hoodie!”

James pretends to gag and Sirius laughs, turning up the volume when California Love comes on
and belting out the chorus. James makes a valiant attempt to rap the first verse but forgets the lyrics
halfway through and gives up, focusing instead on making the freeway exit despite some suburban
white mom absolutely intent on cutting him off. He swears and grumbles and resists the urge to flip
her off, barely making it into the right lane in time.

“You and your road rage,” Sirius grins and James does flip him off.
“Fuck off, she was clearly trying to antagonize me!”

“She was texting.”

“That’s worse! Did you see that van, she probably has a whole little league soccer team in there.”

“I got her license plate, we could report her for kidnapping,” Sirius muses, and it feels so good to
have someone that matches his petty, vindictive energy in the passenger seat instead of Frank’s
calm assurances and his mom’s panicked handle-grabbing he could cry. “Or, like, grand theft
auto?”

“No, kidnapping for sure, I almost missed that exit.”

“Too true, Jamesy, she’s gotta pay in blood.”

They end up in a neighborhood that’s shockingly residential for how close it is to downtown, not
an office building in sight, just rows of three-flats and tiny shops and restaurants and the L tracks
hanging overhead. Finding parking takes a lot of driving in circles but his car is small and his dad
spent a whole week drilling him on parallel parking back in high school so he manages it, Sirius
whooping when he pulls in seamlessly.

“Potter family driving school, baby,” he preens.

“You Californians and your cars,” Sirius rolls his eyes, sifting through his backpack and shoving
his wallet into his pocket. “Killing the environment one parallel park at a time.”

“Oh, like you don’t jerk off to your motorcycle magazines every night,” James scoffs. It’s chilly
when they get out but the air is still, fluffy clouds hanging over their heads, and James leaves his
jacket in the car. “Did you ever learn to ride?”

“Oh, fuck!” Sirius turns on him, eyes wide. “You haven’t met my baby yet!”
“Your baby?”

“Yeah, I haven’t decided on a name yet - I bought her off craigslist last year and I’m trying to get
her up and running again, look.” He scrolls through his phone, leaning against the car. “There she
is!”

“She” looks mostly like a pile of rusted metal with wheels, clearly not taken care of, but when he
squints James can see a few newer parts thrown in, places where everything is in its place where it
probably wasn’t before. “Damn, she’s a beaut.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Sirius says, straightening up and leading them down the street. “I want her up and
running by the end of the year but I’ve already eaten through a lot of the budget. She’s high
maintenance.”

“You know how to drive her?”

Sirius purses his lips. “I drove a Vespa once?”

“Oh, can’t be that different.”

“That’s what I’m saying! Moony’s all like, ‘no, you have to learn before she’s done’ and ‘you
almost crashed the Vespa twice in ten minutes’ and ‘you’ll die before you even get to the
freeway’, and I’m like, yeah, that’s the fun part? Duh?”

“What, crashing and dying?”

“Nah, everyone thinking that’s gonna happen, and it doesn’t,” Sirius insists. “I’m gonna die at a
hundred in my sleep with a stomach full of whiskey and steak and everyone’s gonna wonder how
the motorcycle guy outlived all of ‘em. It’ll be epic.”

James doesn’t doubt that for a second. A psychic at a farmer’s market back in San Francisco told
him he’d die at twenty one back in high school, but he’s well past that now, and figures that means
he’ll live until he’s nice and old no matter what he does. Sirius always seemed like the type to die
young - that’s a thought James makes sure not to linger on - but living into old age just to spite
everyone else fits him better.
“I want to die really dramatically,” James muses, glancing around as they turn onto a busier street
full of shops and murals. “Like, old, but dramatic. Make the national news.”

Sirius considers. “I see it. Blaze of glory, nursing home style.”

“Yeah, yeah, like I might have bad knees but I still saved the cat from the burning building,
sacrificing myself in the process.”

“Then later they find out you’re the one who set the fire and trapped your arch nemesis inside!”

“Who’s my arch nemesis in this scenario?”

“I dunno, Bezos?”

“No, no, it has to be something better, like, personal…”

“Oh! I’ve got it, Riddle!”

James shudders at the reminder of their sophomore chemistry teacher, a balding, blatantly racist
man who had it out for James and Sirius the second they walked into his lab. He didn’t like Lily
either, come to think of it, giving her the first detention of her school career for “talking back”
when she tried to ask about homework - yeah, he was a piece of work.

“Oh, good one. Definitely has to be in a church though.”

“Kinky.”

James shoves Sirius’s shoulder, cackling when he almost runs into an old lady tugging a grocery
cart behind her. Sirius shoves him back once he regains his footing, nearly making him stumble
into traffic, and the resulting slap-fight only ends when Sirius breaks away to tug open a door and
gesture for James to enter.
“Such a gentleman,” he teases, but once he steps in and looks around he finds himself at a loss for
words.

The shop is big. The walls are filled with old posters and signs and mirrors in all shapes and sizes,
furniture and racks of clothes filling the rest of the space. He peers down at the table next to the
entrance and finds a large bowl filled with stickers and some flyers for local events, and as he
wanders further into the room he finds he can’t decide where to start, overwhelmed by the sheer
amount of stuff. His version of clothes shopping usually involves internet scrolling and quick stops
at brightly-lit, clearly laid out corporate stores; this is another beast entirely.

“Pretty great, right?” Sirius says with a grin, stepping around him to sift through a rack of old t-
shirts. “Decent prices for vintage, too, and the owner is a riot.”

“Mhm,” James replies, still overwhelmed, and picks a rack of jeans to start with. Jeans are safe.

He manages to find a pair in his size, baggy and soft with wear, and from there he continues to
wander with newfound confidence. The price and quality of the clothes range widely, and he
avoids the rack of “designer” pieces like the plague, but sifting through the racks is calming, and
by the time he finds Sirius again he has a good few items tossed over one arm to try on.

“Nice,” he says, taking in the long, flowy purple skirt Sirius is holding up, and he turns with a grin.

“Right? C’mere, do you think I could get this stain out?”

“Probably?”

“Good enough.” He tosses the skirt onto the heaping pile on his arm. “Okay, let’s see what you
got.”

He shoves James into a tiny fitting room with a single dirty mirror and a stool, stickers and flyers
and graffiti covering the rest of the walls. The jeans fit well when he puts them on, though he has
to roll up the cuffs a bit, and he slips on one of the t-shirts he picked up as well before unlocking
the fitting room door to show Sirius. He thinks both are pretty cute. Sirius, on the other hand,
squints, raising a hand to wave it in a so-so kind of motion.

“What? What’s wrong with it?” James looks down at himself, but there are no obvious stains or
holes in either.

“You’re telling me you don’t have that exact shirt hanging in your closet?” Sirius challenges,
eyeing him up and down critically. “And those jeans do nothing for you.”

“They’re comfortable!”

“Turn around?” James complies, exasperated. “Yeah, your ass deserves better. Next!”

The next couple of options are not received any better, barring a guaranteed enthusiastic yes on an
old Led Zeppelin shirt, and by the time he emerges in his own clothes with only that shirt in hand
Sirius has dumped his pile on one of the chairs by the fitting room and is furiously tearing through
the racks.

“What’s your pant size?”

“Sirius -”

Sirius turns to him, pouting. “Pleeeease?”

James tells him his size and lets Sirius continue. He knows he doesn’t have the best eye for style,
sure, but when he sees Sirius considering a pair of lime green bell-bottoms that would barely fit
around his thighs he has to put his foot down - he’s not a Ken doll! No matter what Sirius says, he
is more than that!

He retreats back into the fitting room fifteen minutes later with a new pile double the size of his
own, resigned. The first thing he tries on are a pair of shorts that barely reach the middle of his
thighs that he tentatively pairs with a colorful button down, leaving it open, but he only makes it a
step out of the fitting room before he stops.

“I feel like the seam on the ass is about to rip.”

“Good, that means you can actually see it!”

“No, like - my balls feel restricted. I’m drawing the line.”

Sirius huffs but relents, and the next pair of pants are better, Carhartts splattered with paint and
what might be motor oil that fit without being constricting; both he and Sirius agree that they’re a
keeper, though the shirt Sirius paired with it he automatically vetoes on account of the obvious pit
stains. He cycles through a couple more outfits - how Sirius found so much in so little time he may
never know - feeling increasingly like a child being dressed up by his mom, but it’s fun. Sirius has
a good eye for what fits him and clearly made an effort to not push too hard, for the most part
choosing things he could actually see himself wearing, and by the time he turns to the last set of
items he has a small pile on the stool of things he wants to keep.

The last outfit is a bit more adventurous, and he has to shimmy to fit the tight brown pants over his
thighs, though once he does they fit surprisingly well, not suffocating but still hugging his thighs
and waist. They’re flared at the bottom and would undoubtedly look better with a pair of boots
rather than his flat Converse, but when he puts on the equally tight dark red button down and
tentatively tucks it in he can’t argue with what he sees in the mirror. His ass looks incredible when
he twists and the shirt emphasizes his shoulders and waist, and for a brief moment it’s like he’s
looking at some men’s fashion magazine from the 70’s - all he needs is the handlebar mustache.

“I’m a fucking genius,” Sirius grins when he opens the door, eyes flicking up and down. “C’mon,
turn around - yes! Oh, that color looks so good on you.”

“I look like you,” James points out with a raised eyebrow, remembering the similar outfit Sirius
wore at the club weeks ago.

“Are you kidding? Brown does nothing for me, you on the other hand…” Sirius purses his lips and
nods.

“What about your jacket?” Sirius cocks his head. “The leather one you got when we were in
school?”

Sirius’s face falls, just a bit, and James almost winces. “Oh, I lost that ages ago,” he says, fiddling
with his rings and suddenly unable to look James in the eye. “Besides, there’s no shortage of
leather jackets at thrift stores, black suits me much better!”

Sirius grins and winks and James groans - that joke is as old as their friendship, almost as bad as
the ones about his first name - but agrees to keep the outfit along with a few other pieces. Sirius’s
pile is almost twice the size of his but he promises to be quick when he dives into the fitting room
himself, though James makes sure to settle into the armchair near the fitting room with a couple of
fraying copies of National Geographic from the 60s.

Sirius’s choices are far more varied and flamboyant than his own, including a flapper dress James
vehemently approves and a leather top that fits awkwardly, clearly meant to accommodate a larger
chest than Sirius possesses, which is vetoed. It’s fascinating, for James - Sirius seems to have no
boundaries when it comes to gender and clothing, stepping out in slacks one minute and a miniskirt
the next, mixing and matching feminine and masculine and blurring the lines until it’s just him.
James hasn’t ever really given much thought to dressing in a more feminine way beyond the few
times Lily sat him down with an eyeliner pencil and a glint in her eye, content in his masculinity,
but Sirius is something else. Always has been, really. Back at school his eyeliner and occasional
uniform swaps with the girls used to piss the teachers and priests off to no end, and this seems a
natural progression, free from judgemental eyes and detentions.

“Okay, done,” Sirius huffs, exiting the fitting room with about half the clothes he entered with, pile
now more manageable. Despite their attempts to be efficient they’ve managed to burn an
embarrassing amount of time trying things on, and a girl with pink hair shoots them the stink eye as
she sweeps off into the fitting room, unnoticed by Sirius as he takes a last look through his choices
and puts a couple of things back.

They pay and leave the shop, and James shivers as soon as they do. It’s gotten colder and windier
since they went in and it cuts through his thin hoodie like ice. Sirius swears when he follows him
out the door, curling his arms around himself and glaring up at the sky, and they hurry down the
street to the next spot without pausing, James letting Sirius take the lead past corner stores and
restaurants and boutiques and down a smaller street to the next store on his list.

“Okay, this place has great jackets!” Sirius says triumphantly when they spill through the door,
rubbing his hands together. This place is a lot smaller, lacking the furniture and knicknacks and
comprised solely of a few stuffed racks of clothes, and James is privately grateful. “We can find
something here instead of going back to your car!”

“Good plan!”

All of the coats are arranged along the back wall so they sift around together this time. Sirius is
efficient, flicking through and only occasionally stopping to feel the fabric or pull something out,
but James is slower, taking a good look at everything before moving on. He’s trying to keep an
open mind.

Now that they’re out of the cold and James isn’t so overwhelmed he takes a moment to think back
on his intentions for today, and immediately his stomach drops. After the conversation with
Remus, Dorcas, and Marlene last week he can see his nerves about bringing up Sirius’s absence for
what it is - fear of scaring him off, even losing him again - but their assurances haven’t changed the
way he seizes up at even the thought of it, and when he opens his mouth he barely manages to
squeeze anything out, mind eventually settling on something less blunt than he originally intended.

“Hey Sirius?” He nods, eyes scanning a long, purple leather coat with interest. “So, me and Lily
have been hanging out recently - she doesn’t live too far from me, and she’s new to the city,
y’know, still making friends and all that - anyway, I was wondering if you’d like to, y’know.
Come? Sometime?”

Sirius stills, his expression freezing, and James worries at his lip, nervously stroking a fur coat in
feigned nonchalance. Sirius and Lily were close in the last couple of years Sirius was at school,
and James suspects they bonded over their complicated relationships with their siblings, though
neither ever told him as much. Lily hated Sirius almost as much as she did James at first, but in
their sophomore year she became a part of their group, partially thanks to her falling out with
Severus and partially thanks to her existing relationship with Sirius, and James just knows that it
would be good for them to see each other again. Where he’s always had a bit of a soft spot for
Sirius, letting him get away with things he, retrospectively, maybe shouldn’t have, Lily was never
afraid to call him out, something he thinks did wonders for Lily’s confidence following Severus
and both he and Sirius’s egos, and he thinks her attitude might be a better way to try and get
through to Sirius.

“What, like a third wheel?” Sirius tries to joke, but it comes out a bit flat, and James rolls his eyes.

“Dude, that ship has long sailed. No, just like, for old time’s sake, I guess? I know she’d really like
to see you.”

Sirius narrows his eyes. “Oh. So you told her? About me?”

“No, but she was really worried when you, y’know. And I know you guys were really close, so I
just -”

“James,” Sirius interrupts, and his expression is pinched. “I don’t know if I’m ready for… all that.”

“Well, were you ready to see me?” It comes out sharper than he intended, and he cringes. “I just
mean -”
“Can you just leave it?” Sirius snaps, yanking a long black coat out with enough force to rattle the
rack. James sighs.

“Well, what about Pete, then? He’s not even in town, you don’t have to see him.”

Sirius is glaring at the coat, not sparing James a look, jaw tight. James feels like he’s pushing,
every instinct telling him to stop, back down, take Sirius’s rejection and let it be, but he had a plan,
one that he’s barely scratched the surface of, and he’s never been much of a quitter. Still, Sirius
looks like he’s about to toss the coat on the floor and stomp out.

“No,” he says stiffly, and that stings. Lily, he might be able to understand - she was really only a
part of their group for a year or so before Sirius disappeared - but it was always them, James-and-
Sirius-and-Peter, ever since they were children. He’s drifted apart from Peter over the years thanks
to distance and their busy schedules but he and Sirius were close right up until he disappeared, and
there isn’t anything in the world that could erase their shared childhood. He, more than anyone
else, deserves to know that Sirius is alright.

“Not just to tell him you’re okay?” James asks in a small voice.

Sirius closes his eyes, and for a moment he looks pained, like he’s about to burst into tears right
then and there - a small part of James wishes he would, and out with it all, and let them be done
with it.

“Please, James?” Sirius asks quietly. “It’s - we can talk about it later, maybe. It’s not like I never
want to see them again.”

It isn’t? James thinks but doesn’t say. Eight years wasn’t enough?

“Okay,” he says instead, and Sirius’s shoulders sag. “I didn’t mean to push.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

It’s a bit awkward as they continue shopping, the conversation starting and stopping abruptly, and
James heaves a long internal sigh. He’d been hoping that asking about Lily and Peter might help
them segue into his own questions, but after that it’s hard to imagine trying to bring anything up
without being completely shut down, and he finds his plan unraveling before his eyes much
quicker than he’d hoped. He still feels guilty about keeping all of this from Lily and Peter, too, and
the reminder of that isn’t pleasant, despite the blatant confirmation that Sirius wants to keep them
in the dark.

James manages to find a green bomber jacket that fits nicely over his hoodie and Sirius ends up
with the purple leather coat, so long it brushes his ankles and the sleeves cover his knuckles. Their
conversation is still stilted when they go to pay, and James is generally feeling off , his thoughts
tangled and his nerves on edge.

“Oh, this is so cute,” the cashier, a man with straight brown hair cut into a mullet and a piercing on
the bridge of his nose, says with a smile as he rings James up. “Can I get your number?”

“Uh, sorry?”

The cashier raises an eyebrow, his smile widening. “For our rewards program, of course.”

“Oh, sure,” James gives it to him without thinking, eyeing him while he types. He’s good-looking,
dressed in a t-shirt for some band James doesn’t know and a baggy pair of jeans, and the piercing
fits his features well, complementing his ski-jump nose and dark eyes.

“Have you heard about the vintage market next weekend?” The cashier asks as James fishes for his
wallet, and he shakes his head. “Here, check it out! We’re gonna be there, plus a bunch of other
vendors, and the weather’s supposed to warm up.”

He hands James a flier which he scans, mentally filing the date in his head. Sirius peers over his
shoulder at it and hums, and James thinks it’s something he’d definitely enjoy. “Sounds fun!
Thanks for the heads up,” he tells the cashier with a smile.

“Yeah, hope I see you there!”

Sirius pays for his jacket quickly and they slide them on before venturing back out into the cold,
James grateful for it when the wind immediately hits them. “Jesus, it’s even colder now,” he
grumbles.

Sirius is grinning at him when he turns, mischievous. “That guy was pretty cute, huh?”
James blinks. “Uh, yeah, I guess? I liked his piercing.”

Sirius squints at him. “Wait, you have figured out you’re bi by now, right?”

“Sirius!” James splutters, because what the hell. “What do you mean by now?”

“Oh c’mon!” Sirius laughs. “Your crush on Kingsley was so obvious I think Peter even noticed,
give me a break!”

James gapes. “I had a crush on Kingsley?”

That, actually, makes a lot of sense. He didn’t figure out his sexuality until college, and it was a
rather anticlimactic discovery, but Kingsley… yeah. That lines up.

“Oh my god, had you not figured it out?” Sirius snorts. They’re heading back to the main street,
side by side, and James nearly trips over a patch of uneven sidewalk as he considers this revelation.

“I mean, yes, I knew I was bi,” he says in an attempt to defend himself against Sirius’s incredulous
laughing.

“Oh? How’d you figure that one out?”

James’s face heats up. “Uh, I hooked up with Frank.”

This sends Sirius into a fit of giggles, nearly doubling over as he walks, and James groans. “It was
when we first met! Freshman year of college! He’s planning on proposing to his girlfriend now!”

“Fuck, I have to meet him! The guy who gayed James Potter, what a legend!”

“Okay, at least I didn’t figure out I like dudes because of a teacher!”

“I’d still fuck Mr. Moody,” Sirius says with a shrug, utterly unashamed. “He was a DILF.”

“Did he even have kids?”

“No, but he had DILF energy.”

James has never and will never see the appeal, but the memory of thirteen year old Sirius pacing
their dorm room trying to work out why he couldn’t stop staring at their gym teacher is a good one.
He was afraid at first when he figured it out, but James knows that it was also a relief, an answer
for why he was so uninterested in girls despite the rest of their peers’ sudden interest as they
finished middle school, and he and Peter did their best to be supportive over the years. Peter still
seems to be as straight as can be, but James can’t help but find it funny that the rest of their little
group turned out queer in the end, even if it took him and Lily a few extra years.

They stop for tacos at a hole-in-the-wall spot near an L station that Sirius claims is his favorite,
and it’s good, though it pales in comparison to L.A., in James’s opinion. He lets Sirius direct the
conversation to talking about which guys from their school they’d hook up with, and is able to
provide some info about the few he still follows on social media - there’s been quite a few coming-
outs since they all left Catholic school, unsurprisingly - which Sirius seems happy enough to hear.
His plan is still firmly derailed and he’s still frustrated but it’s fun, easy like it always is with him,
falling into their natural back-and-forth without another hitch.

Most of the shops are closing up by the time they’re done eating so they decide to call it a day,
Sirius accepting a ride back home with a smile. They’ve looped back around to the area where
James parked so it’s a quick walk, but James has to zip his jacket up against the cold and wind, and
Sirius complains loudly until they’re back in the car and the heating is turned all the way up.

“I like the stuff you got, by the way,” James says once they’re settled and Sirius has put the
directions into his phone, peeling away from the curb.

“Thanks!” Sirius lights up. “Dorcas really got me into fashion, especially when they were still
working at that shop we went to - a lot of the stuff they design is specifically for queer people, like
dresses that fit even if you don’t have tits or hips or anything and they’re working on some pieces
with built-in binders, but that’s more of a process.”

“Mm, I bet, that’s genius though.” James suddenly has a thought. “Shit, are you still, like… do you
still use he/him?”
 Sirius sighs, bobbling his head from side to side. “Right now, yeah. I’ve been kinda, y’know,
toying with they. Flirting with it, if you will.”

“Oh yeah? Thinking of asking them out on a date?”

Sirius snorts. “Yeah, thinking about it. I dunno, it’s like, I like dressing in feminine clothes and
everything and having long hair, but that’s… just how I like to look. Like, I don’t feel particularly
attached to manhood, or whatever, but I don’t hate it either? It’s just kinda there.”

James nods, understanding. “The definition of manhood: just kinda there.”

“Right? But then it’s like, I used to be kind of attached to the idea that dressing however I want
doesn’t make me less of a man, which is true, but also…” he shrugs. “It kinda has, in a way? Not
in a negative sense, just that I don’t know if “man” fits me as well as it used to.”

“Well, if you ever do decide to take they out for dinner, let me know.”

“Mhm, I will. Dorcas keeps making egg jokes and they’re never wrong, so, y’know. Be prepared.”

“Mental note already written, pending board approval.”

They laugh, Sirius pink-cheeked, and it makes James feel a bit better to know that despite
remaining tight-lipped about certain things Sirius still feels comfortable talking to him about
something that goes beyond the surface-level chitchat they’ve mostly been engaging in. Ever since
they met James has had this unending need to know Sirius, in and out, to see every part of him laid
out and pick through the layers, and that need has only gotten stronger with time and distance,
leaving his fingers itching to wrench open every door that’s been shut in his face.

Just give it time, he tells himself, watching as Sirius scrolls through his Spotify and puts on
something loud and fast, banging his head to the beat. He’s not used to this either.

Chapter End Notes

HMMMM okay early chapter this week! i have some stuff going on tomorrow so i
 thought i should just go ahead and post since it's all written. that being said! next
chapter is very much still in the works and i MIGHT take a week break to get caught
up and hopefully ahead again with writing, so next week may have to get skipped if i
dont get enough done.

OKAY this chapter was kind of a bitch to write but sirius and james my beloveds!! and
frank ive grown really fond of frank :)) i promise well see more of alice in future
chapters, i just love frank and jamess bromance

i really appreciate the sweet comments ive gotten on this!! this is my first real dive
into this fandom and im glad people are enjoying it so far!! love and kisses

End Notes

AHHHH okay this is my first fic in the marauders fandom and my first attempt at a long
fic!! it's still a wip so even though i'm gonna try to post weekly ill be the first to say that
might not happen, as im an adult with a full time job lol.

yes, i made them american because i refuse to write british slang.

uhhh what else oh yeah! this fic is going to be in three parts, the first part being james's
perspective, the second part sirius's, the third part remus's. the current plan is fifteen
chapters with five chapters each, but that might change!

i feel the need to say one more big fuck you to jkr, and to let yall know that im a nonbinary
author and there WILL be trans characters in this fic!! and explorations of gender! all that
good stuff!

OH YEAH the title is from Summer Came Early by Exploded View!!

n e ways let me know what yall think and see ya next week (hopefully)

Please drop by the archive and comment to let the author know if you enjoyed their work!