james potter (deeringdo) wrote in thedisplaced, @ 2017-11-03 23:14:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | !log/thread, james potter, sirius black |
WHO: James & Sirius
WHAT: talking about some hard stuff while drunk & then it ends on a good note.
WHEN: tonight!
WHERE: out on the streets in Tumbleweed
WARNINGS: mention of the werewolf stuff that happened in Jaha, aka people being turned and killed
It had been a fun night, and James was more than a little drunk. So was Sirius, and so when the bar closed, James slung his arm around his best friend’s shoulders and walked home with him. It was quiet in the street - quiet and relatively warm, even though it was winter.
“I missed you,” he said after a moment.
It was a stupid thing to say, probably, but he hadn’t really been drunk since Mt. Weather and thinking about alcohol there made him think about Pete. Or maybe it was just that he was still sadder on the inside than he’d ever been in his life and alcohol made it harder to pretend. Maybe that was why he hadn’t said this yet, because it was something Sirius wouldn’t understand because he hadn’t been at Mt. Weather. But also, Sirius had been there, and he had been sadder than James remembered because he’d lived through James’s death and years in Azkaban, and James hadn’t understood that at the time.
His head was all tangled and James had gotten better at keeping that to himself but he wasn’t doing a great job of it right now. “No, I miss you. Present tense. I don’t know why. Sorry, that’s a stupid thing to say.”
--
Sirius had been happy to spend his birthday with the people he had here, especially James. It had been a long time since he’d just gone out to a bar and gotten completely drunk. The ease of doing so with James was good.
He leaned back into James as they walked, and it took him a moment to process exactly what it was that James had said.
And even though, logically, he didn’t really understood, emotionally he did. They were together here, but they had gone through so much separately before arriving here. Parts of them still fit together, because they always, but there were parts of them that didn’t fit quite as neatly together as they once had.
“I get it,” Sirius answered, knowing it was a clumsy response.
…
“It’s me, I think,” James said. “Merlin, just… so much happened at Mt. Weather. I don’t even know how to - and I don’t want to ruin your birthday with all of it. But sometime…” He gently squeezed Sirius’ shoulders. “Maybe when you show me some of your memories of Harry, I’ll tell you about it. We’ll both catch each other up, yeah?”
He almost wished he hadn’t said anything; it was hard to think about this. He’d been purposefully not thinking about any of it. It was eating him up inside, though, and it was putting distance between him and the people he loved. It was going to have to come out sometime, and it was probably best if it was to Sirius. He definitely didn’t feel like he could tell Remus, although he wasn’t certain that Remus didn’t already kind of know. Even if Remus vaguely knew, James didn’t want to make him know it any further.
--
Sirius’ mind turned a bit sharper as James began to talk in earnest about what was going on in his head. It helped a little, but it also made Sirius want to take action now. He wanted to make James feel better.
“You can tell me,” Sirius reassured James, no joking included. “It’s not going to ruin anything.”
…
“Yeah, it is,” James said, sighing. Sirius was only saying that because he didn’t know how bad it was. But a look over at Sirius’s face told him that Sirius was being, well, serious. He had dug himself into a hole by bringing this up now.
So after a moment of very serious-faced (not sirius-faced) silence, he said, “I let Moony bite someone. And then they turned other people. And then a whole bunch of werewolves attacked us, and killed and turned even more.”
It felt really strange, just to say it. Somehow the words didn’t hold the real weight of it on his shoulders. “Thankfully all they did was lock all the wolves - the ones that were ours - up on the full moon. They could have killed them. Moony too.”
--
Sirius grew more somber as James spoke. He understood the magnitude of what James was telling him. Even though they had been relatively young, they had all known what was on the line when they had decided to help out Remus.
Sirius pressed a hand to the side of James’ face.
“You didn’t let Moony do anything,” Sirius said. “You and I both the lengths you would go to, and have gone to, to keep Moony and everyone around him safe. And I can only imagine that was even harder to do at Mt. Weather. It was a mistake. A terrible one -- but then you did everything you could to fix it too.”
He pressed his forehead against James’.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that, Jamie, and I’m sorry you still have to remember it,” Sirius said.
…
“No, don’t,” James said. He didn’t pull away, but he shook his head. “You can’t let me off the hook for this, Pads.”
He didn’t know how to explain this. It was not about needing to be forgiven or excused. It was about how his entire view of the world had changed. Things had always gone well for him, and he had learned the hard way that sometimes things went very badly, despite his best of intentions. His luck had run out - which of course it would also do at home, when he trusted the wrong person and he and Lily both ended up dead as a result. He had to live with that too. But this was bigger, and it hadn’t killed him or anyone he loved, but so many other people had died.
And he was glad to be out of Mt. Weather, but he was also still worrying about whether everyone else was still there without him, and he didn’t know how to be the person that everyone here knew, the person that hadn’t lived through that.
He tried to figure out how to put this into words that Sirius could understand. “I’m more cautious about everything now. About taking risks, and trusting people. I thought the world was a good place and most people were inherently good and the heroes would always win, but that’s not how it works.”
Sirius, of all people, should know how different this line of thinking was from the way James had been in school, or even afterward, during the war. He’d always been optimistic, sure of himself, sure that good would win out over evil. Just hearing himself say all of this made James feel almost like a stranger in his own skin.
--
“You think I don’t get that, James?” Sirius asked.
That was how he felt most days. No, he understood that the scope of his experience wasn’t as broad as James.
But he had lost James. And Lily. He had suggested Peter, and they had agreed. That would always be on him. The memory of that conversation haunted him. He had gone over it so many times, wearing at it, wondering how he could have thought that was the best plan. He regretted it with every ounce of his being, but he couldn’t change it.
And not only could he not change it, he was responsible for Harry now, and being responsible for another life right after sacrificing James’ and Lily’s made him hyper aware. It was hard not to simply want to hide Harry in a bubble so that he wouldn’t have to suffer a single bit of pain. But neither he nor Harry would be better for that.
But, regardless, Sirius got it. He got the ways the world and the people in it seemed darker.
…
“I know you get it,” James said. “I just want you to know that I do, too. I didn’t before.”
Sirius had always known this a little better than he did. Maybe because of his family, maybe because of the prank on Snape that James and Remus had both gotten mad at him for, maybe because of the war - but even then, it would have been driven home even further after James and Lily had died. James had spent enough time with his post-Azkaban friend in Mt. Weather to see it in his face. But it had been different, at first. Now James felt on the inside the way that Sirius had looked on the outside. But James still looked young on the outside, because he’d gone to Mt. Weather straight out of Hogwarts.
--
Sirius quieted for a moment before speaking.
“I think that’s a part of getting older,” Sirius said quietly. “Maybe some people don’t learn it as early or as harshly as we did, but I think that’s something that everyone learns at some point.”
It wasn’t fun. He had always wanted to think that his family was a terrible outlier in the makeup of the world. And maybe they still were, but they were also in good company.
…
James sighed. “Getting old is the worst. Actually, I can’t decide. Getting old, or dying before you get old?” He offered Sirius a wry grin. “Somehow I’ve gotten the opportunity to do both.”
But he was feeling better, in spite of himself. Maybe it was just this level of understanding that he’d missed between the two of them. He turned and wrapped his other arm around Sirius, so that the arm-over-shoulder turned into a full hug. He got a face full of Sirius’s hair, which always smelled just a little bit like dog - in a good way. “I’m glad I got to see you have an old man birthday, old man.”
--
“Definitely dying before you get old,” Sirius said, and it was hard for him to even say that, much less joke about it. He would always, always, always regret not getting to see the man that James would have become, because he had always been certain that James was destined for bigger, brighter things than him. Some days, he felt like a poor support for James’ life.
He hugged James back hard in return, because now that he had him again, he was so afraid to let him go. The age difference between them was a little weird, but Sirius felt it should have been weirder, but some part of him just always pictured James at this age.
…
“Mm,” James murmured in agreement, because it was hard not to agree when Sirius was so obviously torn up about it. He hadn’t meant to tread on those nerves, but it was also impossible not to; he probably tread on them just by existing. He tightened his hold on Sirius, because he knew this hug - he’d felt it before. And Sirius had just taken on the weight of James’s emotional baggage, so James definitely wasn’t going to deny him a hug that could make him feel better. “We’ll be old souls here together, then.”
--
Sirius couldn’t help but laughing at that, because it sounded amusing and so James and Sirius also wanted it to so much to be true.
He had thought it over and over: It wasn’t fair that he’d had so little time with James. But in the end, all he could come to was the inclusion that, yes, it wasn’t fair. And that changed absolutely nothing.
So, he tried, once again, to remind himself that his grief would only take away from his time with James here and now.
He clapped James hard on the back a few times.
…
James was glad he’d managed to get a laugh. He grinned, and patted Sirius’s back in return, a little less hard. “Good talk,” he said, managing to get his cheerful tone back.
He was still a little sorry that it had happened this way - on Sirius’s birthday, while they were drunk - but he wasn’t sorry he’d said something. They seemed to be on more even footing now. “Happy birthday, mate.”
--
“Thank you,” Sirius said, and genuinely meant it. “It was a good one.” They could have done nothing more than be together, and it would have made Sirius more than happy. But it meant even more that James was there and they’d spent the evening having plenty of fun with many of their friends and families here.
Unable to resist, Sirius leaned over to smack a wet kiss to James’ cheek.
…
“There it is,” James said. “Good ol’ Padfoot slobber. I missed that.”
He raised a hand and pressed it to his cheek, but not to wipe it. He just kept his fingers there, as if to keep it. A thoughtful look came over his face.
“You know,” he said, “We won’t be able to do it for the full tomorrow, but there wouldn’t be any harm in you and me going for a run tonight.”
--
“You’re on,” Sirius said without any hesitation, a shit-eating, wide grin immediately lighting up his whole face.
It had been so long since they’d run together simply for the sake of a good run.
…
“We should probably get out of sight first, though,” James said, unable to help being reasonable about it - it really was becoming an annoying trait of his. But he was feeling the excitement of a run pounding through his veins already, and he was looking forward to it.
He broke into a run on his two human legs, heading for the end of the street, where there were less streetlights and less people around to be able to see them transform. Over his shoulder, he said, “C’mon, let’s go.”