Sirius knows he can be rather self-centred. He is self-aware, despite what some would claim. However, he firmly believes he is justified this time in his ‘dramatics’.
No-one else had been as affected by the events at dinner the day before as him, certainly.
Marlene McKinnon, in all her fierce, blonde glory, had frog-marched into the Great Hall, dark eyes blazing and barely on time. Mary had rose to greet her but it was as if Marls was a woman possessed, staring straight through her friends like they were spectres on an entirely different plane to her. Her loose, tangled hair trailed after her on her war-path, as she veered towards the Slytherin table rather than their own. And then, and then-
And then, she’d had the nerve to take his baby brother by the scruff of his gothic, sharp jacket and smash their faces into a kiss!
It wasn’t even short! They’d all, Sirius especially, stood watch, eyes popped like goldfish and gaping stupidly at the stupidity! He’d seen far, far too much for an older brother through his narrowed gaze.
Her hands fisting into and ruining his brother’s admittedly well-cared for hair, Reggie’s wide, wild eyes as he licked his lips after the initial shock and didn’t seem to care, Marls plunging upwards again for a better-reciprocated, deeper kiss…
He’d only been stopped from tearing his way right over by James’s strong hand gripping his arm desperately tight. Sirius hadn’t turned to him, eyes locked ahead on the train-wreck he was witnessing, when he snarled, “What the hell is your best friend doing to my brother!?”
James had shared a glance with Lily - and Sirius hadn’t bothered to ask when that had begun because no-one seems to be telling him anything anymore when they fall for people they should rightfully hate, and stay far away from - and stated diplomatically, “I don’t know, Padfoot.”
He hesitated before adding, shuddering all the while like he were committing treason by not automatically soothing ruffled feathers, not instantly taking her side and sorting it all out, “She hadn’t told me a thing.”
Sirius had had to be dragged out of the Great Hall when the meal had ended, keen eyes still parsing through a horde of students to seek out the target of his ire as he’d been tugged away.
He’d supposed they would leave together, and the thought was a dagger of worry running him through, only fuelling his vehement search.
She’d found a way to avoid him all night and the next day, though he doesn’t know how. His mates had refused to let him view their map for this and so he had reluctantly began lurking around Marlene’s favourite spots, places he had taken her before to snog, to drink and to lose their clothes and tangle. He’d stayed outside for hours regardless of the numbness the cold hammered into his hands, the winds misplacing his dark hair and all the signs he’d not find success.
Clearly, that hadn’t worked out, and so he finds himself camped outside the Gryffindor girls dorm in the early hours of the morning, his cloak folded beneath him like a limp pillow and James’s spread on top of him, a thin covering doing nothing to chase off the nipping chill of winter. Thank Merlin for heating charms, he thinks with a hint of bitterness to warm his chest.
As he moves to turn again for the hundredth time, grasping for comfort his ill-accustomed rich-boy bones won’t find, he feels something blunt swing into his side.
He holds his breath, confusedly, before it comes again, twice and rapidly, and far more hard. Some dimwit chose to kick him!
He pulls James’s cloak of his head hurriedly, rising to his feet in a scramble befittingly undignified for such an awakening, cheeks aflame.
Lily Evan’s sharp green eyes greet him in a bewildered glare matching his ruffled mood, brows pulled into the frown she so often wears when he is involved and pointy-toed shoes half-extended as if she was going for a fourth try at his precious body.
Coughing awkwardly as he processes that this is James’s rival-secret-crush-whatever and he can’t step on her feet quite yet, he says, reversing from the curses his mouth was seconds from letting fly, “Don’t let me give you crow’s feet, love.”
He prays she’ll just forget this, for he does not have the patience this early for a confrontation but all the pride when in front of her to keep him from dragging a bony hand down his face and unfurling his tension as he wishes.
Just leave, and let him have peace for a minute, please, before demons wreck havoc in his brain, supplied with shiny, new ammunition; having broken his baby brother’s heart for the better, in short time.
Surprisingly, she sticks her ground, rather than the typical act of flouncing off that Remus commends her for, and demands, “What are you doing here?”
”What was McKinnon doing with my kid brother?” He counters concisely.
She looks suitably flabbergasted at that and he is proud for all of five seconds. Sirius surveys the empty corridor they’re standing in, that he’d been trying and failing to sleep in for at least an hour, and he swears it’s not his imagination that it seems just a little less dim, shadows receded to the corners they belong in.
That is, before she opens her gob again.
Lily replies quietly, as if she’s afraid of waking someone up despite the thick mahogany of the door - much like Pete would be, “Kid?”
He doesn’t like the understanding light in her eyes, now. He’d much rather choke on her poisonous green. She would’ve much rather had him choke on her poisonous green just two minutes ago.
He is not this vulnerable. He is not this weak. He can’t be read so easily.
He’s gotten rusty.
The little James in his head, who’d normally congratulate him for the fact and toast him until he understands it is in fact a good thing, is eerily silent.
Sirius is not a dog, no matter what his animagus form might be. He is not simply Padfoot. He doesn’t go running with his tail tucked behind his legs, not when he feels stripped naked by a gaze, not when a snake wraps around his heart and squeezes until guilt outpours, not ever.
Their gazes lock in a silent competition of wills, eyes hard. Her face is suddenly unreadable, thin lips pinched and haunting eyes piercing. She mouths a word he daren’t look away to read - she doesn’t even seem to have intentionally said it, lips only moving slightly, ‘Tunia’.
Then, she sighs, head bowing for only a second as her fiery hair falls as a curtain around her, resting on her collarbones gracefully. He can feel his own beneath his thin shirt now like knives, feel the silent ‘we are the same’ from her mouth in the same breath as her loud, “I’ll fetch Marlene. She’s already up.”
Lily disappears inside, and despite how he innately knows now that she wouldn’t break her word, an older-sibling to older-sibling understanding, the knowledge does nothing to help the moths gnawing at his insides, picking away at his skin until he bleeds. He loathes what he has to do - but he loathes seeing Regulus hurt and used infinitely more.
Sirius knows that he hasn’t been the best brother, not in the longest time. That little boy, stout and strong, shielding his baby brother with his own body, that boy would hate him now for more reasons than one, for letting things become this. He supposes he’d need to sneak a strong bottle of fire-whiskey into his system before he’d ever think about that, those years as dark as his family name, too deeply.
He knows that all of that doesn’t mean he still doesn’t care. He does, he loves the not-yet-man his younger brother has become as much as he loves the wide-eyed, soft child he had once been. He loves them both, and on occasion, he dares love them as one, when he sees the endless curiosity brimming in those storm-grey eyes that pains his chest, that reminds him of when he was hounded by a dozen questions, a chubby hand clenched firmly to Sirius’s sleeve as they traipsed through their grandma’s large, haven of a garden.
He can’t let him get hurt, not again.
Sirius knows from his own autumn-fling the year previous just how unserious Marlene is. That’s what he had liked about her, their no-strings attached, friendly dalliance.
They’d tossed back bottles of liquor, devoured each other in dim lightings and parted with a shake of the hand and grin at the end of it all.
Marlene cared as much as he had; not at all. They still knock down drinks and tousle and compete heatedly, as if those three months had been nothing but fun.
They had been nothing but fun.
Regulus is not a ‘nothing but fun’ person, Sirius knows this. No version of his soft brother could be, not even this seemingly cold person he has grown into.
Marlene can’t be let to hurt him and James won’t go against his childhood mate, so Sirius stands straight-backed as Marlene finally exits her dorm room, all decked out in her Quidditch gear. Lily hasn’t joined them.
Seriously, do these people never take a break? No wonder she and James get along so well. They’ll probably be going down together.
She takes one look at him boredly before cutting what he was about to say off with a sharp, “What’re you bothering Lily for, Black? Spit it out.”
”You know what I’m here for,” Sirius grits out, feeling that familiar burning. She always riles him up so easily.
Marlene stares at him goadingly, one dark eyebrow cocked and he speaks, deadly serious, “Leave Regulus alone.”
Glancing around them, so close to where the girls lay asleep, she asks, “You want to do this here?”
He defends, scowling, “If you hadn’t been avoiding me, this could’ve happened sooner.”
”My apologies then. No, I will not leave my boyfriend alone.”
”Boyrfriend?!” He splutters.
She douses the impassioned speech begging to fall off his tongue with one glare. Marlene squares up to him and he struggles to not step back wearily, “Yes. Boyfriend.”
Sirius softens or more like collapses, stuck like he had been so many times when he was younger - unable to spit fire as he so wished, unable to speak back, looking at his- his friend, and says quieter, words barely making it into existence, “He deserves better. He deserves, wants, something serious. Don’t lie to him.”
He hears a loud inhale from where Marlene stands but he doesn’t look at her, not until she presses callused hands to his shoulders, squeezing too tight to not intend at least a little pain and speaks, “I am serious.”
He looks up, meeting her coal gaze, and sees nothing but truth staring him back, truth and bared teeth - she’s so not happy.
”I care for him. And I honour him as I honour everything else of mine, I swear.” Marlene continues, not letting up on her hold for a second, her pride warring with the need to bash his head in and make him understand.
He thinks, dizzily, that he does.
Sirius brings his hands to clasp hers and says hoarsely, “Okay.”
He stands there, stunned for a minute more.
Okay.
That’s all his stress had lead to?
Shockingly enough, he is half-way glad for it. Surveying the girl in front of him, casting back in his memories to the girl of a year ago, hearing James’s voice whisper endless stories of his childhood escapades in the dead of the night, Sirius is satisfied.
Only half-way, however.
”If I could offer you anyone, if you could get back together with that Finnish bloke you’d pined after for a year, you would…?” He says, tone light, eyes dark.
”I would nothing,” she bites, “I may not be hufflepuff but I know loyalty.”
Sirius exhales his relief, cautiously stepping back from her clenched fists, “Good. Break his heart and I have some nasty hexes in my arsenal, though.”
Marlene just grins, all wild, dangerous and barely-restrained violence, and with a promise to beat him to the ground their next official team-practice,“Right back at ya.”
Then, “You could’ve just told me that was what you were worried about, you dimwit.” Their eyes meet with understanding, both of their hearts holding space for a person in common, before she saunters away without a glance backwards to meet James.
He watches her go blankly and laughs wryly, relieved.
He knows she isn’t exactly happy about his accusations, know he himself still isn’t content completely with her relationship, yet they can learn, he thinks, with time. The immediate problem is dealt with, next in the list - the upcoming bruises he can already feel begin to colour his skin. He really should have been calmer initially.
Now, he just knows far too much for an older brother, everything she’d likely try with his courteous, stoic baby brother.
He best get to ordering brain bleach. Some things are just too much to know for an older brother.