Sirius Black had always had an interesting relationship with the truth. It was an inevitable byproduct of his upbringing. From the time he was very young, he learned to convince himself of things he knew to be lies until they fell so slickly from his tongue he almost deceived himself. He learned how to vanquish the truth, how to spin it like silk, how to smooth it into something palatable and polished. How to shove it into the farthest corner of the back of his mind where Mother Dearest couldn’t get to it. All of this helps to account for the particular series of events that befell one Sirius Orion Black during his sixth year of schooling.
It started on an unseasonably hot day in early September on platform 9 and 3/4 at Kings Cross, with a resounding shriek from Lily. Prior to the shriek, she and Sirius had been catching up about their summers in the same way they had since third year; it involved a lot of posturing all around, what with Lily trying to make it sound less like her sister wanted to gouge her eyes out and Sirius glossing over his family’s differences in opinions , a satisfying combination of mutual commiseration and mutual schadenfreude.
Sirius was only mildly alarmed by her outburst; by now he was fairly accustomed to Lily’s predisposition to shrillness and he was fairly certain he hadn’t done anything to incite her wrath in the past few minutes. He followed the shriek’s trajectory and found Remus, who he hadn’t seen all summer, loping down the Platform towards them at shocking new heights. As Lily crowded him and immediately absorbed his attention the way girls are known to do, Sirius stood back and tried not to look too pathetically sidelined.
The height difference between her and Remus was almost comical. Sirius watched as his friend smirked down at her and when they embraced, lifted her a few inches off the ground. Presently we reach the first of many critical junctures. Sirius felt an odd stirring in his stomach watching them. He couldn't immediately categorize it among the sensations either he or Padfoot had experienced before but what he did know was that whatever the feeling was, it was strong. And he found that strange, because watching two people embrace had never previously inspired in him such a strong feeling.
Sirius thought it might have something to do with the lift. Or the height discrepancy that had enabled it. It was just that Remus–Moony– was so tall. But why was that relevant? Trying to sift through it in this heat felt like trying to paddle through a swamp, and his oar getting stuck in the thick muddy water and then a vindictive alligator coming out of nowhere and taking a massive bite out of it and he could hardly see for the Spanish moss hanging all over the place. He shoved his shag out of his eyes but it helped only marginally.
Remus was tall. He was so much taller than Lily that he made the girl of greater than average height look comparatively short. Now what about this was stirring? If Sirius hugged Lily– he would be taller than her too. By a fair amount, but not as much as Remus. Maybe that was it. Maybe he was imagining himself in Remus’ shoes and imagining what it would feel like to tower over such a formidable, fiery, female-friend. To be able to lift her up so easily. Pleasant, he imagined. It must feel pleasant. He knew James would certainly enjoy an opportunity to lift Lily. Of course she would never let him get that close to her. Yes, if James wasn’t currently occupied being fussed over by his loving parents he’d probably be feeling quite envious of Remus at the moment. But was that just because James was besotted with Lily or because that was a thing that boys enjoyed in general, the masculine thrill of lifting a bird? He considered trying to lift Marlene. No, she would hit him. Better not.
And by then Remus had turned, smiling, to Sirius and started towards him, looming closer and taller by the second. And then he was wrapping his arms around Sirius and Sirius’ thoughts went completely stagnant– a dead man’s float– and the only thought that penetrated all that miasma and murk was the peculiar notion that he wouldn’t much mind Remus lifting him. But that was obviously heat-induced rubbish so he hugged Remus back and stopped thinking altogether.
…
The beginning of the term puttered along much like it always did, with a few notable differences. One was that Lily and Remus were both prefects this year, which meant that in addition to squirreling off to the library to engage in their normal bookish activities they spent even more time together on nightly patrols of the castle. This, along with the fact that Lily would occasionally shoot covert glances at Sirius across the room while she was whispering something to Remus and then vehemently deny she’d been discussing him, had made things even tenser than usual between him and the redhead. Sirius didn’t hold it against Remus; Moony was a peacekeeper by nature, the fact that he let Lily natter on the way she did was just a testament to his endless benevolence.
But he couldn’t find it in himself to be as forgiving of Evans; she was already a bit of an interloper and this year she was really pushing the envelope, encroaching on the delicate order of operations they had devised back in the second year to ensure that everyone got their Remus time and upsets were minimal. She was monopolizing poor Moony, who, as unfailingly generous as he was, would rather eat dirt than disappoint a friend. By the fifteenth of September, Sirius had reached his limit and our story, its second occasion of consequence.
On the fortuitous afternoon in question, when it reached that time for a Marauder to go fetch Remus from the cobwebby jowls of the castle inhabited by books and anxious people, and set him back to the lofty pursuit of mischief making, Sirius volunteered. He made his way over to the table where they were sat pouring over texts, and attempted to extract his friend. But Lily refused to release Remus from her custody. Sirius was polite as ever, calmly stating that Remus was needed elsewhere, but Lily still glared at him, eyes like emeralds if emeralds had been melted down into angry smoldering pools of magma.
“Sod off Black. We’ve just gotten to the practical applications of boomslang skin and I’m on a roll.”
This irritated Sirius, but he was determined to stay civil. He dropped a hand on Moony’s shoulder —all the better to help shepherd him in the direction of mischief— and gave Lily his most winning smile. “It’s unfair of you to monopolize his brilliance, Evans. We’re nothing without our Moony.”
“Flatterer,” Moony said, smiling crookedly up at him, humor dancing in his eyes like sun on water. Sirius felt something unspool in his chest and grinned back broadly in a way that would probably look gormless on a less attractive person than himself.
His smile wilted a bit when Lily started looking at him in a way she had on various occasions before, an expression like she knew something he didn’t. As if there was something odd about him wanting to spend time with his own best mate. And he didn’t like that look. That look made him feel small and threatened, and as often was the case when he felt backed into a corner, he relied on twisting and molding his thoughts as a means of escape.
This was his second time feeling weird in the presence of both Lily and Remus and as only one of those people was his best friend, it had to be Lily that was responsible for his unease. She had always been particularly adept at getting under his skin and until now he had put it down to the matter of her annoying personality, but maybe… maybe what he was feeling wasn’t dislike at all. Maybe it was the opposite. He considered her vibrant red hair and vivid green eyes. There was a certain appeal to her if you got past the righteousness and swottiness and stuffiness. It was honestly annoying that such an uptight bird looked undeniably good in her uniform.
And they were always at each other’s throats…but maybe it didn’t mean they loathed each other the way he had always assumed. If Mary’s latest issue of Witches Weekly was to be believed, “fighting was foreplay”, an exchange of passions building up to explosive fornication. He didn’t feel particularly turned on during their spats but if Dorcas was to be believed, female pleasure was multifaceted and complex.
In fact, he thought, shoulders lowering into their familiar relaxed posture, and lips curling into a smize, Lily was a bird after all; she wasn’t resistant to the Sirius Black charm. She had always harbored a fair amount of hostility towards him and maybe there was something to that. A person as tight-laced as she was would hate being betrayed by their own lust. The more he thought about it, the more convinced he became that there was actually a fair chance Lily fancied him. It would certainly help to explain all those times he’d caught her and Remus whispering about him; she must have been begging Remus to talk her up.
And as for him… well he’d always put it down to him just being something of a late bloomer but he’d never felt the fabled tug towards a member of the fairer sex that seemed to have all the other blokes in their year by the bollocks. Maybe this was it. Maybe having a crush felt just like wanting to best someone in a duel all the time and prank them into oblivion and hating the idea of them hanging out so much with one of your best mates. He wasn’t an Arithmancy whiz but when he added it all up in his head it seemed an awful lot like Lily held a candle for him. And he held one for her in return.
All of this was just a bunch of pig-tail pulling. He was onto her now so she could stare at him with that same penetrating look all she wanted but she had fallen into HIS trap thank you very much. The cat had become the mouse, or whatever the fuck the saying was. There was the small complication that James had bagsied Lily for the foreseeable future, but all was fair in love and war, and if it stopped him from feeling like the bottom of his stomach had dropped out whenever he watched her and Moony so much as look at each other, then so be it. With a last enigmatic smirk, he made a tactical retreat to the dormitory to ponder the matter further.
…
Over the next few days Sirius thought hard on what he'd discovered.
The Lily Hypothesis, he termed it in his brain. As a prefect and all around busy-body she admittedly did have a kind of authoritative vibe that appealed to him. He quite liked the idea of someone telling him what to do.
He liked that she was tall; the taller the better he thought, but since she was a bird he guessed it was good that she wasn’t taller than him. And he’d always thought that Gideon Prewett would make a particularly attractive bird, or rather that he could see himself quite fancying a girl with striking red hair and unpretentious good looks like his and Lily was close enough, he supposed.
He still wasn’t fully convinced that combativeness translated to chemistry; his parents screamed at each other often and he was quite sure they remained as repulsed with each other as ever. Still, Sirius didn’t think he could rule it out. After all, he was still new to this whole romantic attraction business (of course, not being on the receiving end of it–when it came to that he was a seasoned professional, but new to feeling it for another).
He considered another test case. Remus and Lily didn’t argue much. Or at least, not in public settings. (The idea that they did so privately and that these encounters took place anywhere near a bed was so unnerving he cast the thought from his mind.)
What was more sexually charged? Lifting like the type Remus had done at the train station, or arguing? Was Remus aware of the sexual currency being exchanged between Lily and himself? Was he…aware that by both separately exhibiting these behaviors towards Lily they had essentially entered into competition with each other? If it came down to it, would Moony resort to physical force to best Sirius as a suitor? He imagined kissing Lily in some alcove and Remus coming across them, his brown eyes glowing furiously as he took in the scene. Maybe he’d grab Sirius by his collar and shove him up against the wall, until they were pressed up against each other, breathing hard. He felt himself harden in his pants. Merlin, he really did have it bad for Evans.
Just as he wrapped up this strand of thought, Remus walked into the dormitory and flopped down next to him. Sirius shrieked and fell off the bed. Godric, Evans’ dramatics were already rubbing off on him!
“Christ, Moons, don’t do that!” he scolded from the floor.
“Don’t come into my own dorm?”
Moony was looking down at him, a smirk on his lips and mischief in his eyes.
Sirius opened his mouth, and was dismayed to find that instead of the dignified reply he’d intended, what came out was a series of disjointed noises that barely constituted speech.
Oh God. This Lily business was going to be the death of him.
He was already having a hard enough time acting normal with Moony, what was going to happen when Prongs found out and he had to worry about him killing them both in their sleep on top of everything?
There was nothing for it. He had to talk to Lily himself–put an end to this torrid emotional affair between them before it destroyed the Marauders as they knew it.
…
Lily, rather than bursting into tears which eventually gave way to a grudging but compassionate acceptance as he had anticipated, laughed in his face.
“God, Black. You’re an idiot. There’s nothing going on between us and thank Merlin for that.”
“There’s no need to be rude!”
“Oh, I think there’s definitely a need.”
“But I have evidence. Primary sources– deductive reasoning, all that swotty shit you drool over. One— you’re always whispering and nudging Remus when I come around. Two— when you call me a prick and I call you a bint there’s an affectionate tenor. And you—there was, well that time when you congratulated me for our Quidditch win and I know for a fact that you don’t even like Quidditch, so ha!”
Lily looked at him for a long time.
“Sirius, I don’t mean to— I don’t want to offend, but are you sure you even— I mean I think when Marlene said the word ‘snatch’ the other day I saw you visibly recoil.”
“Well that’s because it’s Marlene. She’s like a sister to me. Obviously.”
“What about mine?”
“Hmm?”
“My snatch. If you like me so much I imagine you must have given it some thought.”
Sirius blinked hard. “I’m sure it’s very… quite nice.”
“Right.”
“I’m not seeing your point,” Sirius huffed even though he kind of was starting to. “I’m just being respectful and gentleman-like. It would be, well, vulgar to talk about such things openly.”
“Oh and god forbid Sirius Black says something vulgar. God Black. Please, just put an end to this and have a talk with Remus. I think, well I think if you were honest with yourself, and honest with him, you might get to the root of what’s causing all of this… madness.”
“Look, Evans. You’re smart. Or so I’m told.” She audibly hissed at that. “But that doesn’t give you the credentials to tell people what they feel. You don’t know the first thing about what’s going on in my head.”
Lily's brow furrowed and then surprisingly her expression softened. “You’re right, Sirius. I don’t. And I don’t mean to talk down to you; you do know yourself best. I just— speaking from experience. Sometimes it’s scarily hard to see things about ourselves that we don’t want to. I’d like to think I'm a fairly logical, rational person. But then, despite all of that, I look up and realize I’ve been running myself ragged coming up with all kinds of alternative explanations when the truth is really simple,” she frowned towards where James was sitting for a second before returning her gaze to Sirius, “hard to swallow, but simple.”
At those words, something that had been fluttering around madly in Sirius' brain, flapping its wings frantically just to stay airborne finally gave up the fight. He allowed himself to mull over what Lily had said, accepting how true it rang.
How close it sounded to what he always did with uncomfortable truths. What he had been doing since term had started this year, running away from the truth when it overwhelmed him, distorting it into a version that felt less threatening and easier to accept.
He’d heard from Marlene how nasty Lily’s sister was, he imagined the tricks she would play on herself to explain away the behavior, the same way he’d do for Reg.
“So sorry if I overstepped,” Lily continued, apparently realizing she was no longer at risk of having her head bitten off for it. “But… I just thought I might point that out. As a…” she screwed up her face as if enunciating the next word pained her deeply, “...friend-like entity of yours. And to be clear, I have no romantic feelings for you whatsoever. But I think you might make other people I know very happy, odd as you may be.”
“Thanks Evans,” he said honestly. She sent him a fond smile that would definitely have made James cream his pants.
Yep. Definitely not into Lily.
…
Often when Sirius was feeling out of sorts he went for a fly and he did that now. It felt safe in a way, looking down at the castle from a distance, seeing all the people and places that loomed so large in his everyday life made minuscule.
It would definitely take some time getting used to, not running from the truth. He’d been doing it as long as he’d been doing magic. It was how he’d coped for so long, how he convinced himself maybe this time summer with his parents wouldn’t be so bad, or that maybe this would be the time Reg stepped in to defend him. But maybe it was time to grow beyond it. After all, he was a different person now. Of course he still got afraid sometimes, but he was no longer that scared little boy all alone in a big house; he was a Marauder who knew his place in the world, with great friends who had proven their loyalty time and time again, and wouldn’t hold being different against him.
By now the first few stars had begun to embed themselves in the field of sapphire-blue sky and the wind was whipping with a vengeance.
Sirius took a deep breath and threw himself into a last lap around the pitch at breakneck speed. He was just slowing down when his eyes caught on a familiar lanky figure taking a seat in the stands.
Instead of flying directly over to him, he touched down in the middle of the pitch and made the trek up to where Remus was seated slowly. It defied all of his instincts, but he kept doing it anyways, one step at a time.
“Er, hi,” he said, lowering himself onto the bench next to his friend.
“Hey, Padfoot,” Remus said. “You left in a hurry earlier. I saw you were out here on the map.”
“Yeah. Sorry about that. I-uh, I’m trying out this new thing. Where I’m honest about stuff. And I figured I’d better start with you. If you don’t mind.”
Remus nodded at him encouragingly.
“Well–if I’m honest…Ever since school started, I’ve been a bit jealous of all the time you and Lily have been spending together. And if I’m honest… I don’t think it’s because I want Lily all to myself. Sorry if that’s, like, a weird thing to hear from your mate. Honestly, you can just pretend I never said it if you want.”
When Remus finally spoke it was softly into his ear. “Lily’s been insisting for ages now that you felt the same and I gave her so much shit for it. I was so sure she was just feeding my delusions… Trust me, pretending you never said that is the last thing I want.”
Sirius snorted. “Yeah…I reckon I owe her an apology too after today. And no, you’re not delusional at all. I just don’t think I was ready to accept the possibility that I was queer for my best mate.”
“And what about now, Black?”
“Now I’m hoping you’ll snog me,” Sirius murmured and Remus leaned in, eager to oblige.
The disorienting sensation from the train-station, the stomach-lurching from that day in the library, the nose-diving on his broom feeling, all hit him at once. But this time there was no accompanying urge to run away as fast as his legs would carry him. The longer he kissed Moony, the more he wanted to sink even deeper into this truth, to give himself over to it completely. Hell, he could write sonnets about how good it felt to kiss Moony, scream it from the Astronomy tower. They finally pulled apart with a slight sigh and two immensely pleased smiles.
Sirius leaned his head on Moony’s shoulder and stared out at the spangled sky.
”Moons,” he said, breaking the silence after a moment, looking up at Remus and batting his eyelashes cheekily. “While we’re being truthful I’d be very interested to know whether it’s technically within your powers as a Prefect to hold a special private detention.”
“And,” he went on, “As we both know I’m verrrry knowledgeable on the school policies, prank related and otherwise so I’ll know if you’re lying.”
Remus rolled his eyes and scoffed but Sirius could see the growing interest in his eyes and the way his entire posture shifted slightly to angle even more sharply towards him.
Sirius just propped his face up in his hands and smiled back coquettishly.
“Thoughts, Moony?”