coffee and oblivion
Sirius Black was not someone who regularly indulged in the fantasy of an omnipotent, omniscient being, in fact he was positively against such fantasies. Mostly due to his own family’s unnerving adoration with such ideas and their disturbing obsession with it all, particularly their need for it to be woven into the fibres of their being, to be present in all their life’s choices.
However as he sat in his ancient civilisation class and watched Remus debate with Lily over which Homer text to burden upon themselves for another year, he couldn’t help but wonder if there was something up there laughing down at him. Something that had shaped and carved Remus with such love and care and then cruelly placed him at the centre of Sirius’ world, just out of reach and forever out of bounds. Whenever such wonderings found themselves flouncing through Sirius’ mind he found himself cursing himself for sounding like such a poncy twat, even if it was only internal. Perhaps he was not to be blamed for being such a poncy twat, internally and probably externally too, perhaps it was his parents doing. Well it was his parents doing, they were the ones that had opted to send him and his brother to be educated in far flung boarding schools with strange professors to fill in the role of parental guidance that they found themselves lacking.
It wasn't until his secondary school years that he began to recognise the fancy lilt of his words when presented with Remus’s sharp comparison. Of course there were other examples too as the secondary years brought in flocks of scholarship students without the upper class flounce to their voices but it was Remus who had made him so aware of his own. He had never heard a welsh accent before he met Remus, even if it was thin and dying the longer he spent at school and living in London, but it was an accent nonetheless. He had heard Marlene's accent over and over on the news but it still took him months to fully understand her speaking which did not make her adjustment to boarding school life any easier.
Having been released from Ancient Civilisation early and Sirius being too lost in his own mind to notice it he had to be brought back to reality by the reason he was trying to escape it. He felt his hand before he realised it was him, the hand that made its way from the nape of his neck to muss up his hair in one quick motion. Due to Sirius’ place against the wall Remus had had to lean across the wide wooden tables in order to annoy his friend and due to the wide wooden tables Sirius was then able to see right down Remus’s shirt. Sirius then had to use his faux irritation and new need to fix his hair in order to hide his reddening face from his friend.
In doing this he caught the eye of a ravenclaw girl that was evidently waiting for Remus. Her stare, although not possessive, was disconcerting nonetheless and Sirius excused himself from their company in order to find James. The ravenclaw girl was spending more and more time with them recently and from what he could tell from Remus’s increasingly lovesick behaviour she was going to be there a while. He did know her name but having to remember it made her seem more permanent than Sirius was altogether comfortable with. Remus and Peter had taken to sitting on the windowsill of their dorm and discussing, at a seemingly never ending rate, their girls. Remus would rattle on about her and Peter would rattle on about some new girl that he was trying to unsuccessfully ‘woo’. He was almost glad they never attempted to include him or James. He heard enough about Lily without having it actively brought up in a conversation he had no way of diverting from her, it wasn't like he could jump in and start telling them all about his latest crush. That would be self-sabotage and Sirius doubted it would get that bad for at least another three months.
What scared him the most about this ravenclaw girl was her stability, she wasnt like those girls that just float by and leave behind a blissfully happy guy that only sees mystery in their vague and quick relationship. No, the ravenclaw girl was solid without the sense of entrapment, smart without making you feel inferior, unnervingly pretty but without a hint of arrogance, she stood her ground but was never rude, perfect but still real. What scared him most though was how strikingly different she was to him.
If it wasn’t for Remus’s new found awkwardness surrounding anything to do with close proximity to Sirius he would probably find more fault in Remus’s new tendency to spend less and less time with their group. It wasnt just Remus but Mary and Peter as well. They had all taken to escaping their little group in favour of more romantic endeavours at the hands of the lower sixth Ravenclaws.
Mary had been taken with a Ravenclaw unfortunately named Edgar who was fortunately referred to only by his surname Bones. She was definitely not falling in love with the boy but he seemed to provide her with a welcome distraction from her studies and and an even more welcome distraction from whatever had happened between her and Lily. Sirius was yet to be enlightened on the details of this incident however he suspected it to have taken place during the summer and their friendship had become increasingly hot and cold. With the arrival of ‘Bones’ the flukes of warmth in their relationship had faltered dramatically and they were currently awkward at best and subject to active animosity at worst. This had led to Marlene acting as an uncomfortable go-between for the trio and she was unhappily bearing the brunt of both of their aforementioned animosity towards the other.
Their little group, bar the three off on more romantic endeavours, sat around the common room in an awkward silence that Sirius was unwilling to break due to his mind never quieting for a minute meaning that the silence of his external world was quite welcome. But against his best wishes the silence was broken by Lily.
“James, please listen-“
Sirius then felt quite guilty for not noticing the dense and uncomfortable air between the two of them. Had it been like this all term? Had he really been so self absorbed that he hadnt noticed?
“No Lils I dont want to talk about it, just- im- im gonna go-“, and with that James hurried upstairs and the familiar sound of the dorm locking echoed lightly through the room.
“Am i gonna get an insight on all of this?”, he asked Lily and Marlene who were looking at eachother accusedly as if they were arguing with their eyes.
“Ok, ok i guess you have a right to know as any, everyone else knows anyhow,”, Lily said after sighing with resignation.
“What? Everyone? Even Petey?”
“Oh definitely,”, input Marlene, “Did you see the eyes he was giving you yesterday?”
“Yeah, that took me off guard,”
“Hello??”
“Oh, right. Okay. So. Okay.”
“Lils.”
“Right. So I kissed James-“
“What!!?”
“It gets worse.”
“Worse?”
“Worse. Okay so I kissed James at the end of last year and then kind of ignored him all summer until one of his letters really freaked me out and I kissed Mary-“
“Holy shit-“
“Wait. And then I panicked and frantically apologised before ignoring her for the rest of the summer, and now they’re both not really talking to me.”
“Jesus.”
As the three of them settled back into their prior uncomfortable silence Sirius couldn't help but feel slightly wounded. James hadn't told him, at all. It was the 14th of October and she’d kissed him just before the summer. That was three months of not telling his best friend the biggest thing to happen to him since he’d discovered his crush on Lily in the first place. Then it hit Sirius that all the others had known too. Remus. Peter. They’d all known. As the moments of silence sped on Sirius began to feel more and more self deprecating. He needed to talk to James. He could have a go at Remus whenever he returned with a few new hickeys and a disgustingly lovesick smirk. For now it was James.
He didnt realise he’d excused himself and had started banging on the dorm door until he felt himself fall through the now open door. In moments of anger or woe he had the tendency to not entirely process that he was moving until it inevitably brought him to his senses. He could feel James pulling him up from the floor of the dorm in a far too brotherly manner for someone he was so annoyed with and so once he’d righted himself he shrugged James’s hand off of his shoulder in a way he hoped conveyed his anger suitably. He stepped away and was on the verge of starting to have a go at James who was standing in front of him with his hands in his pockets and his head bowed, looking awfully too sorry with himself and all he could say was; “You didn't tell me.”
James opened his mouth to reply and the door fell open which Remus and Peter subsequently fell through holding onto each other in their mirth. Such mirth died quickly in their mouths as they took in the scene they had stumbled into.
“Oh you told him.”, said Peter to the silent room and Sirius watched James cringe under his glare. Remus was looking between the two as if he was ready to stop them and Sirius hated him for it. Why did he always have to play the nice guy? The inbetween guy. The guy who ‘could see both sides’. The guy who almost always said the right thing. Or the guy that said all the right things but never to him. The guy that the day after Sirius had told him one of his biggest secrets had said awkwardly that he ‘fully supported him’ and then proceeded to awkwardly avoid him for the following two weeks. Remus could evidently feel his glare having moved from James to him as he had reached up to mess up his hair which, in an annoying twist of fate, revealed a reddening swatch where his jaw ended.
This was the final straw for Sirius who, upon noticing it, stormed out and up to the upper sixth dorms. He slammed the door to his room and was met by a wary hello by Michael. Michael had his own room, being head boy, and was quite annoying to be around for extended periods of time; this didn't bother Sirius much as he and Michael preferred not to spend their time together talking.
James didn't seem to notice the direction Sirius had stormed off in but Peter and Remus shared a look that confirmed they both knew where Sirius was.
The next morning they watched as the head boy told off a Year 9 chewing gum and Peter pointed out the badly concealed hickey under the collar of his shirt. They both then commended Sirius for his taste under their breath to the other and perhaps did so too loudly as Sirius consequently stormed off once again but not before he ‘accidentally’ let Remus’s coffee spill over his shirt.
Sirius had got significantly worse at concealing his anger the longer he spent away from home, each summer he’d learn to relax his anger snd let his parents' ludicrous ideas wash over him and pretend they didn’t bother him. However this summer they had gotten concerningly darker and he found his anger bubbling towards the surface more often than not. He had hoped once he was back at school that he’d be able to let his anger subside again but Year 12 had been worse than any other year so far. And so Sirius found himself back in the dorms five minutes before class splashing water in his face willing himself to calm down. Once he had done so he left the bathroom and what he did not expect to see was a shirtless Remus rifling through his suitcase. In fact he didn't process that Remus was going through his suitcase at all. Sirius had stopped processing anything beyond ‘Remus shirtless’. He did not doubt he was bright red and Remus had probably noticed that he was staring and he was once again willing himself to stop and yet he was still staring.
Eventually he must have broken out of his short circuit as he found himself in art doodling a certain person that he then had to scratch out before cradling his head in his hands in self pity. What on earth was wrong with him?