telegraph ave [the only one i know is you]

It was the same dream every time. James couldn't tell if he loved it or hated it. Well, he used to love it; now it gave him a lump in his throat that carried over when he woke up, sun streaking through the curtains.

In the dream, James put his head in Sirius’ lap. Sirius looked down at him with a toothy grin and brushed James’ hair out of his eyes – then he could see him properly. They were both much younger, not quite kids, maybe sixteen. He could tell from Sirius’ haircut. They sat in the public garden they grew up near, on the patchy grass.

“You’re mad,” Sirius told him in the dream, laughing. “You’re my best friend, James.”

The way he beamed damn near made James want to weep. He rarely smiled like that anymore.

“I mean, you’re not going to leave, though, are you?” asked James in his dream. It was beyond his control; it always went that way. If he could, he’d ask Sirius something different.

“You’re my best friend,” Sirius repeated every time. “You’d follow, wouldn’t you?” He never offered any straightforward answers, but dream James was always distracted by the cigarette Sirius put between his lips, and his own, leaning forward to light both of them at the same time.  

“I would, I swear,” James wanted to say, struggling to keep his thoughts together, but his mind always threw him into a limbo-state between dreaming and waking at this point.

You know I would, and you’re cruel, Sirius. His first compulsive thought as he opened his eyes. Burning with shame, he pushed it away, embarrassed of his own spite.

It was like this: he would follow, and he had. Sirius perpetually tried his best to outrun the hole in his heart, and James ran after him, trying his best to fill it. They had run all the way to Dublin, in fact, Trinity College. Sirius had wanted to study classics there – Latin, Greek, he had always loved dead languages. James had studied business, which he was completely indifferent towards, but Sirius loved Dublin, so they stayed.

Sirius had moved onto post-graduate studies, and James was still bartending at the pub, which he liked well enough. He didn’t tell Sirius about the job offers he had turned down in London, or that he had no idea what he was doing in Dublin. It was probably time for him to have started a proper job, marketing or finance or something, but the pub was fine for the time being. Plus, Remus was there; the one friend James had made by himself, who wasn’t first Sirius’ friend. Did coworkers count? Remus did, James decided. He didn't particularly need anyone else.

He went about making coffee and getting his day started in a slightly robotic fashion, Bowie on the vinyl player doing nothing for his mood (which Remus would probably find sacrilegious). The mornings after he had the dream were always spent in a bit of a melancholic haze. What really bothered him now, though: he’d seen the same thing so many times he no longer remembered if it was an actual memory, or if it was something borne entirely from the delusion of his dreams. James almost wished he could knock the recurring vision out of his head altogether, but then again, he might miss it.

The beeping of the coffee machine broke his reverie, and James looked at it, then down the hallway towards Sirius’ bedroom. He’d made enough for two, reflexively, without meaning to. He wasn’t sure why – Sirius never slept in their flat anymore.