james potter was tired.
he was simply tired, tired of pretending.
tired of lily's constant rejections, that sunk into his brain deeper than they should.
tired of smiling and laughing when inside him everything was burning and piling and turning into ruins.
tired of being the therapist friend, tired of being the shoulder to cry on for all his friends, tired of hoping that someone would notice that there's something wrong with him.
because he really, really wanted them to notice that he wasn't well. he wanted them to notice the bags under his eyes and the exhausion from setting up even the tiniest of their pranks. he wanted them to hear the quiet, muffled sobs that he was letting out almost every night, he wanted them to hear the broken cries for help, he wanted them to hear it all.
the point is, that he still pulled the curtains around his bed, he still charmed them so they wouldn't hear, so that they wouldn't know.
wouldn't know that there was something wrong with him, because there obviously was.
his parents were the best, he loved them so much and he knew that they loved him too.
he was an only child, no siblings that could potentially hurt him or that he could loose.
he was almost top of the class in every subject, only remus and lily being better in some of them than him.
he didn't have a reason for any of it, he didn't deserve them comforting him. all of them were broken for a reason, all of them had a reason for all the panic attacks, for all the cries and screams.
sirius was... there wasn't anything to explain. sirius had lived through a lifetime of abuse, sirius had survived more cruciatus curses then the rest of the marauders together (the answer was still zero). sirius had scars on his back and arms and legs and stomach and on his brain and his heart, sirius had a reason. had a reason for waking up screaming at four am, for shaking uncontrollably whenever someone yelled at him. and james was there for all of it, he was there to calm him down, he was there to force him to eat something, he simply was there for him.
remus got turned into a werewolf when he was a defenseless child and he turned into a monster every month, and it was enough. it was enough to scream in pain while laying in the hospital wing after a particuraly bad full moon, it was enough to eat tons of chocolate hoping that it would kill the wolf inside him. it was all a perfectly good reason for isolating, for not talking to anyone for days, not even james, because he wasn't enough. but it was alright because it was remus, and remus had a reason to be angry and sad.
hell, even peter had a reason for the cries and bags under his eyes after coming back to hogwarts after holidays, for the quiet sobs when he though that he was alone in the dormitory, but james was there. he was always there. peter lost his father, peter had to help his mother all summer and all winter breaks and sometimes even mid-school year. and it was fine, because everytime he came back, james was waiting for him with his favourite cake from the house elves and a cup of hot tea and a shoulder to cry on.
but who was waiting for james with all those things?
who was comforting him after another nightmare about his parents dying? they were old and he knew it, it just hit him harder after every letter that informed him about them being sick, again.
who was reassuring him that everything will be alright after another panic attack, because he only got a EE in his transmutation class and professor mcgonagall must be so disappointed in him and she must hate him now and he, again, wasn't enough.
the thing is that nobody was, because he didn't deserve comforting. if he didn't have any serious reason to be broken, why would anyone want to fix him?
the only person that could've fixed him was himself, because remus had his own problems and he had sirius and peter had him and he had mary because they were best friends, they grew up together, and marlene had dorcas and dorcas had marlene and lily hated him and he wasn't even suprised anymore, how could she ever want to date someone this useless?
every rejection, every "forget it, potter", every single of sirius' barking laughs that he let out after she charmed him, it was all engraved into his brain. and he couldn't stop thinking about all the things he did wrong, but he kept asking her to date him, because that was what everyone expected him to do.
and who was he, if he couldn't be the person that everyone expected him to be? if he wasn't the sun, the golden retirever, the most popular guy in school? without it he was no one, and that scared him the most.
because, in the end, he was tired of pretending that he was someone.