chapter 1
Sirius black, for the first time in a long time, feels content with his life. He thinks. Maybe. When he’s sitting in the back table at the three broomsticks, surrounded by all of his favourite people, his arm around Marlene and her fingertips gently resting on his leg while his brain has been pleasantly fogged by the continuously flowing red wine at their table, he is properly happy. He thinks.
He looks around at his friends, wondering how he had gotten so physically lucky as to find people who could tolerate him after the way he grew up. There was something magical about the way he felt tied to each one of them. His (adoptive) brother, James, catches his eye and smiles at him, a simple act of reassurance, and Sirius feels that maybe things are back to the way they were at the end of their highschool days, before he messed everything up for them all. Sirius loves James as if he is of the same flesh and blood, but he knows that there was a time when their friendship had been drawn thin, ready to snap from the weight of his mistakes. They’re perfect again now. He thinks.
Marlene begins tracing warm, lazy circles onto his thigh, and he can feel the heat of her fingertips through his jeans. He knows that this should make him feel something more than a mild affection for her. It has been a year and a half now since they made it official, but they have been sleeping together since sixth form when he had -rather obnoxiously- jokingly asked her if she actually listened to nirvana, since she was wearing their shirt, to which she had smirked at him and whispered that even if she didn’t, she would love for him to introduce her to their best sounds, her voice hot on his ear as she walked away from him, in skin tight jeans, swinging her hips in an almost laughable manner. What he chooses not to remember, then, is how she had let out a laugh that reminded him so violently of Remus that he felt sick. He did not ask her out until weeks later.
When he looks over at Remus, Remus is already looking over at him. He supposes it has always been this way, but he doesn’t let himself follow that train of thought. He does not want to think of the imbalance that always hummed underneath their best friendship, followed by a hatred of each other, followed by friends. somewhat. Sometimes, he misses remus, moony, so much that he can feel it in his bones, the ache. He thinks about how in an alternate universe, he was supposed to be moving in with one of his best friends in the whole world tomorrow, and he had never gotten drunk and angry and said the one thing that they were to never address.
Anyway, Moony is looking at him.
Sirius supposes he is happy because this means that things may in fact become normal again. His stomach will no longer churn at the thought of seeing everyone together. He grins back at Remus, studying his honey curls and honey eyes and honey-sweet smile until he watches a faint flush raise on the other man's face. This is the first time they’ve seen each other properly since they had temporarily brokered peace, but sirius lets himself forget that remus will most probably ignore him at the bar shift they share tomorrow, lets himself forget the things remus has said to him in his fits of rage, lets himself forget the things he has said that caused him to hurt remus in the first place.
If he hadn’t been so caught up in trying to say something to Moony, anything, to start conversation with him again, he would’ve seen his girlfriend’s face drop as Mary walked in with what seemed to be another girl in her arms.
-
Marlene, although she could never tell anyone without genuinely contemplating death, thinks she has been in love with her straight best friend Mary for years now. Sometimes, she lays in bed next to sirius after they have yet another round of mind-numbingly boring sex, listening to his breathing and trying to think of how far backward she can go in her memories where she doesn’t feel jealousy of some sort at the idea of mary talking to, kissing, loving other people. Not even the idea, because marlene has suffered through phone calls at one in the morning to talk about how good her latest boyfriend was in bed, and she has let mary sob on her shoulder over the man who was twice her age, who left her for somebody else. Marlene knows that she chooses to suffer, chooses to pick up at first ring. But Mary completes her. Mary completes her in a way that her younger self thought no one would. This is why she had made peace with the fact that she could live as Mary's best friend, as she watched her fall in love with men who treated her like utter shit. She knows that she could be better than any of these idiots, not just because she was not a fuckboy but because she could read Mary like a book. Mary, the other side of her coin. Which is why Mary had to be straight. Because Marlene's life has never been fair.
But at that moment, Marlene swore she could feel her stomach drop. She has lost all sense of self respect as she watches Mary lean over to kiss the other girl lightly on the lips. Absentmindedly ripping her tissue into tiny shreds, she does not blink while they laugh together, and the other girl gently touches the side of Mary's face and mouths, you are the prettiest girl i have ever seen, no wonder i’m obsessed with you. There is no wonder why anyone is obsessed with mary. Soft, oval two toned lips and curly hair that is currently hidden under a short black wig. A smile that has always made Marlene feel slightly seasick. A soft spoken voice, untraceable accent and a laugh that tinkles like a wind chime. Mary, who has always lit up a room.
All these things which have haunted Marlene in the middle of the night, who knew that she could not have Mary even if she tried so desperately to seduce her, because she was straight. Best friend was the next best thing. But it seems to her now that it wasn’t that Mary didn’t see Marlene in that light because she was a girl - she remembers their drunken sleepovers at fifteen - if you were a boy I think I'd date you - She just wasn’t good enough for Mary to want to love like that. Marlene can feel her eyes glass over, and she turns to see Sirius attempting to make conversation with moony, leg shaking so much under the table that even her chair is vibrating. She blinks, once, slowly, before turning back again to see if Mary has stopped staring at her little girlfriend and started speaking to anyone yet. Mary looks up, at the same time marlene has turned back to face her, and she does not even say hello before quickly moving her eyes back down to the new anonymous girl. Marlene thinks- if I were not hopeless and I didn't dream about her, even in the daytime, that would be my last straw. Not even a hello. Your best friend and your girlfriend, who have never met, are sitting at the table together. You never introduced me to her, mary. You told me I was the most important person in your life. You haven’t even said hello.
-
Remus and Sirius have engaged in a stilted, painful conversation, which reaches its close after he mutters that he should grab a round for their group. He can't help thinking that at one point, Remus would’ve come with him, smiling even in their silences and muttering comments about the way the strangers at the bar flirt brazenly with one another. Marlene would normally follow him, follow him anywhere, but she is caught up in something else. He doesn’t give any mind to what it is, knowing they will talk about it later on his sofa before whispering excuses not to stay together that night. He wishes, sometimes, that he understood the distance between them.
He is happy, tonight, he thinks, because maybe things will finally go back to the way they were. And hours later, when he is so smashed he thinks that he will likely die from his morning hangover, he knows that things are finding their new normal and he doesn’t know how he will adjust. But tonight is the last night that he lives with James, before moving in with Marlene and onto bigger and better things. He’s been watching Mary from the corner of his eye, watching Marlene watch Mary, but he is drunk enough not to put two and two together. He’s celebrating the fact that he's grown up, he is becoming a better person than the one who could hurt the person who had actually loved him, unconditionally. He knows Remus isn’t his best friend anymore. He hopes that one day he will be. Again.
Their agreement, occurring over text, only existed because Sirius, although he had stopped apologising incessantly, had sent Remus one more message. In the lowest moment of his life, he had decided to run away and leave marlene, leave james, leave mary. He wanted to be a new person again; the one he was now was not good enough to the people who were good enough to him. Before he left, he had sent Remus a final text.
Siriuslypadfoot @ 2:15
sorry, remus
i know you cant forget what i said
but i know that ill always love you mate
Once he sent the message and he had packed his (scarce) pile of belongings, he went to sit in the park. He used to come here, all the time, when he was still stuck in the house that haunts his every move and infects every relationship he has. Sitting under his favourite willow tree by the entrance to the forest. The sky was clear that night, he remembers, but the moon was missing. He never really thought about what he was going to do next, because he was busy trying to put every memory he had of his people into a box in his head, trying to lock it before he got up and trod back to his twin bed in his empty room in james’ parents’ flat. It just wasn’t his home. He didn’t know where his home was, not really.
That’s a blatant lie, he thinks. His home wasn’t the Black household, however much time he had spent losing his life there. It wasn’t james’ new flat, however much he adored his best friend. James was his other half, the ground beneath his feet, but the flat was too much for him. Something didn’t feel right no matter how hard he tried to fall in love with it. It felt like it was somebody else’s house and he was trespassing, staying for a holiday. It had been weeks now and he still didn’t feel comfortable enough to get up in the middle of the night for his ritual; a Milk Magic straw and a tall glass of milk. (He knows it’s childish, but some parts of childhood will live forever in the darkness of his kitchen, Sirius thinks, even if it was just his secret drinks with his brother when they were starving but didn’t know how to cook).
He knows that really, he felt like he was living in someone else's house because he was supposed to be in his flat with Remus, which he had promptly removed himself from after everything that had happened. He needed a fresh start. He knew that Remus, in his right mind, would never forgive him. Remus was a push over until he wasn’t. And sirius loved that about him, the way he go anywhere sirius beckoned him until one day he fucked it up for both of them. If remus forgave him, he thought, then maybe he would be able to breathe again.
He had been staring out into the grass, unblinkingly, when he heard footsteps next to him. He looked up, and there Moony was, like the white knight of his fucking dreams, holding a mini bottle of milk from tesco’s meal deal isle and a chocolate magic milk straw. He didn’t sit down, only placing the bottle and the box of straws in the grass next to Sirius before turning to look at the field.
“I’m working on it. Forgetting, I mean.”
Sirius kept his eyes trained on remus’ face, waiting for the edges of his mouth to break into some sort of grin, something to tell him that he had already half-forgotten anyway.
“I hate that you made this about- Christ, sorry, I- will you please stop looking at me? You’re making this harder.”
With that, Remus turned to face the field as well, watching the grass move with the wind.
“For my sanity, will you please come, sorry, go home and go to sleep? Stop being silly. You know that however hard I fucking try, I end up coming back to you anyway.”
The last part he uttered with an expression Sirius still couldn’t decipher, no matter how many times he turned the memory over and over in his mind each night; trying to find the cracks in Moony’s glare.
Once he was sure that Remus wasn’t going to turn around, Sirius had watched him walk to what used to be their flat, through the alley a hundred metres from where he sat. He opened his milk and looked at his phone to check the time.
RJLMoon @ 3:04
lmk when you get home