Lovesick
Every morning James went for a run. It helped him keep in shape, but that wasn’t the reason why he ran. He ran because at a certain time in the morning, the busy streets of New York City were almost empty. The only ones on them were people preparing to go to work, drunks stumbling home after a long night and people like him, who found peace running through the streets of New York with only their air pods playing their morning run playlists and the morning wind carrying them with it.
James would run for so long that sometimes he would even loose his perception of time. That normally lead him to be late to school.
“Good morning beautiful people.” He said as he entered the kitchen after arriving home and grabbed a cup of water.
“For goodness’s sake James do you know what time it is?” Aunt May was looking at him with disapproval in her face.
“Yup. I still have an hour to arrange myself and go to school.” His uncle Ben started laughing quietly behind his newspaper and James leaned on the counter confused.
“James, dear.” His aunt took the glass from his hands after he drank the water. “You have 10 minutes until your classes start.”
“WHAT.” When James grabbed his phone, he noticed that his alarm didn’t went off, so he ran to his room and started arranging himself.
“I don’t know what else I can do with this kid. He never does things on time.” May defeated seated on the chair next to her husband.
“Don’t worry, darling. He is just a kid, distracted with life and everything in it.” He winked at her.
“Wait do you think our James is in love?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Well, you aren’t denying it.”
Ben putted his newspaper down and held his wife hand. “Well maybe he is or maybe he isn’t, what matters is that he will tell us at his own time.”
“James these days doesn’t tell me anything.” She putted her head on their intertwined hands. “Teenagers are so complicated.”
In his room James was trying to run against time. He tried to smell nicer putting all the perfume he could on himself. Which made his cat Church leave the room because of the strong smell James left.
“You are a diva you know that right Church?” he said after the cat when he was going down the stairs.
“Goodbye Uncle Ben. Goodbye Aunt May.” James grabbed his skate and went to school.
He arrived at the schools parking lot, at the same time, as no other, but his best friend Sirius Black, and his brother Regulus.
Sirius was the type of person everyone loved. He was funny, charming, the class clown who always knew what to say. They had met when they were kids. Their parents worked at same company, so they spent long hours waiting for them on the company’s building doing mischief and leaving chaos wherever they went together. Sirius and James always had been a package deal.
After James’s parents’ disappearance, James started to join Sirius less on his adventures, but they never stopped being best friends. Sirius was a year older than James, but they were in the same class. This was because Sirius had to repeat a school year after being expelled. He wasn’t a bad person. He was just the troublemaker.
Regulus was different, he wasn’t as loud or as charming as his brother. His type of charm was different, he was quiet but sharp, always analysing everyone and everything. It had taken James’s years to finally have a whole conversation with Regulus, but the boy, who was a year younger than James, always found a way to run from him, which made James sad because he had always wanted to be friends with him.
“How come, you live closer to school, but you still manage to arrive as late as I do?” Sirius said as he got out of his motorcycle.
“How come, you have your own vehicle, which is faster than a skate by the way, and a whole house who prepares everything for you before you leave, but still” James tilted his head “manage to arrive as late as I do?”
“Well, you see, we must have a connection.”
“Come here.” They did their handshake and hugged.
“You guys seem like you haven’t seen each other for months.” Said Regulus after finally being able to get off the motorcycle.
“Oh, brother” Sirius putted his arm around Regulus shoulders “The bromance is real.”
“It sure is” Regulus got out of his reach.
“Good morning Regulus. How are you?” James reached his hand out so Regulus could shake it.
“Late” he ignored the hand and started walking. “See ya.”
“So cold in such a lovely morning, my brother is. Well, lets get moving Evans must be pissed.” And she was.
Sirius and James arrived at their classes door right as the bell rang. They had missed their class once again. The teachers had spoken with Lily, the head girl of their class, to warn them to start to arrive sooner to class. So, she did, and they and given their word that they would try to arrive sooner, and in a certain point of view they kept their word as they hadn’t promised to her that they would arrive early to class.
“Potter, Black” she said behind them, scaring them as they didn’t notice she was there.
“For fucks sake Evans, you should carry a bell with you.” Sirius tried to compose himself so the people around them didn’t notice that such a thing had scared them.
“It seems you guys have a new record for arriving late. And by new record I mean.” She looked at her watch. “Not arriving at all.”
Lily Evans. She was as beautiful as the flower which her named had been inspired from. Lily had beautiful red hair that cascaded along her back, her eyes were green, and her curves were just perfection. She was the breeze of spring giving you heat after a long hard winter full of coldness. James had had a crush on her since they were kids. He had tried everything to get her attention. He had tried giving her cards, asking her on many dates, in a lot of different ways, but nothing worked.
“We are so sorry. Aren’t we James?” Sirius looked at him waiting for an answer. “Aren’t we James?” he hit him on his head.
“Ouch. What?” he was so distracted with her beauty that he had stopped listening to everything.
“We are sorry, aren’t we?”
“Yes, we are so sorry.”
“Sure” she looked at them with a look of judgement. “You guys are lucky. We didn’t do much in class. However.” She took two papers from her bag “We are going to have a school trip on Friday and you two need to deliver these authorizations tomorrow, that say you can go and can be photographed on the trip. And you James.” When she pronounced his name, he thought he would faint. “The teacher asked me, to ask you, if you could take some pictures of the school trip to the school’s paper.”
“Anything for you Evans.” He winked at her, which made her roll her eyes and leave them.
“Anything for you, my beautiful wonderful, charming Evans.” Sirius mocked him.
“Fuck you Pads.”
“Do you know what you need?” They went to their lockers, that were side by side, since Sirius made sure they would be.
“Do tell me your great advice.”
“You should get laid.” James looked at him incredulously.
“Now I am sure you went mad.”
“What? I am right.”
“Not everything is solved like that Pads.”
“But Prongs, you need to get loose and leave this Lily fantasy behind. There are so many fishes in the sea choose one.”
“It isn’t that easy”. As Sirius continued talking James noticed that someone from the other side of the room was watching them. When he looked back, he saw that it was Regulus, who quickly looked away.
“Are you even listening to me?” Sirius complained like a baby.
“Of course, I am.”
“Them tell me what I just said.”
“You were talking about that guy from the club who gave you the best sex you ever had but you two only gave each other code names so you don’t even know his real name. And now you are desperate to find him?” James said still looking at Regulus.
“Well, you were listening.” Sirius said happily closing his locker.
The thing is James wasn’t listening, Sirius just had been speaking of the same guy he met at a club for the whole week. He told James that the guy’s code name was Moony, and Sirius had told “Moony” that his was Padfoot, which James had felt like a huge betrayal, since they had called each other Padfoot and Prongs since they were kids.
“Where are you looking? Sirius tried to see where James was looking but something distracted them both.
“Come on you little whiner. You can’t even pick your books, can you?” Severus Snape, the school bully screamed to a kid who was in the floor.
James quickly moved in front of the kid, trying to put some distance between them.
“Leave him alone Snivellous.”
“Or what are you going to do Potter?”
James came closer to him with an angry face. Antonin Dolohov, the bully’s group big guy, took a step closer to James too, and Sirius joined the circle to defend his best friend.
“What is happening here?” Professor McGonagall arrived looking confused at her students.
“Nothing Professor we were just talking.” Snivellous said.
“No, we weren’t. They were tormenting this kid.” When he looked back the kid was gone, he must had taken the opportunity and ran from the scene.
“What kid Mr. Potter?”
“No kid professor, I am sorry I was just confused.” He was holding his fists behind his back, trying to calm himself.
“Well, it is better that none of you get into trouble. I will see you next class.”
The day passed as fast as it started, and after James left his work at the convenience store, he went immediately to his bed.
When he woke up after a couple of hours he went to the kitchen. Aunt May must had tried to wake him up to have dinner but he was a heavy sleeper so that was definitely a lost cause.
When he was going down the stairs, he heard whispers.
“We can’t hide this from him anymore.” It was his aunt voice that was whispering as she seemed to be going back and forth on the kitchen floor.
“I know it is just… what if James tries to find more and ends up in a complication. You know how curious that kid is.” His uncle voice sounded worried.
“Yes, but hiding this? His story? Why his parents had to leave?”
James felt the floor crumble under him. It couldn’t be. They couldn’t be talking about that topic. D id they know something? What were they hiding?
He tried to go down a couple of more steps, just so he could see the kitchen, but Church was on his path. James tried to move him, but Church was a restless cat. However, James moved was able to move him enough so he could see his uncle and aunt.
His uncle Ben was standing up looking at an open suitcase, full of papers, and his aunt was on the other side of the kitchen with her hand on her waist like she always did when she was nervous about something.
“We don’t even know how to answer that ourselves Ben. And what if we tell him?” as his uncle said this his aunt started to move again. “We would just leave him with holes that he wouldn’t be able to fill.”
Church seemed to want to go to his former place on the stairs, so he started to jump over James, not being successful.
“You are right. It is just…he isn’t a kid anymore. We can’t protect him forever.”
“I know...but this” he pointed to the table. “It is just too dangerous.”
“What are we supposed to do?”
In that moment the cat screamed, James had accidentally stepped on his tale with his hand, while he was trying to move him away. That made them stop talking, and his uncle started to clean the kitchens table.
James sped to his room and jumped to his bed pretending to be asleep when his aunt entered the room to make sure he was asleep.
He was going to find out what happened, and he was going to see what was on that suitcase. A plan was already forming on his mind and all he needed was Sirius.