Archive of Our Own

It happens the night of James’s twenty-eighth birthday.

None of them had planned for it to happen. 

It’s not a gift. But it feels like one.

Sirius leans into him and puts a hand between his shoulders. “Get out of here soon?” His voice is loud in his ear, ticklish and bordering on painful, and James lifts his shoulder slightly, a reflex. 

Around them, the music thumpa-thumpas against the walls, through the floors, vibrating beneath the soles of his Converse. 

“Yeah!” His voice is hoarse from trying to hold a conversation over the noise, and when he picks up his drink, lifting it to his mouth, he realises all that’s left in his glass is murky ice water.

Eleven quid for a cocktail that’s lasted for a grand total of four sips. Fantastic.

Remus leans over Sirius and shouts, “Has the music always been like this in restaurants? Is this a new hip thing we don’t know about?” Underneath the table, his legs nudge warmly against James’s, stretching out to wrap around his ankles. 

James suspects Remus thinks they belong to Sirius. He doesn’t move closer, but he doesn’t pull away either.

He doesn’t think Sirius would mind so much. He never used to.

An hour ago, the three of them had been finishing up a tiny, overpriced steak dinner, and James was able to see further than his own limbs. Half an hour after that, the lights in the bar went low, replaced by an eerie orange glow currently making all of their skin look sallow and sickly.

It’s a far cry from the craft beer pubs they usually frequent on weekends or after work when any of them can be bothered going out.

Sirius lifts his hips and picks out his wallet from his jeans pocket. “I’m sorry, mate,” he says, grabbing the attention of a nearby waiter in a tight t-shirt. When he returns, he doesn’t take his eyes off of Sirius the entire time he runs his card through the machine. “We should have picked somewhere better. I was trying to be a fancy pants.”

“The food was… good though?” Remus says, clearly trying to search for something positive to say.

The three of them look completely out of place in the crowd, mostly made up of young professionals in suits and heels. On the high table in front of them, a gaggle of ladies in short dresses with legs up to their ears chatter around their round of cocktails. James has clocked every one of them not to subtly glancing back at Sirius more than a few times since their arrival.

Barking up the wrong tree, girls, he thinks bitterly. 

“The Tripadvisor reviews said ‘ambient atmosphere’,” Sirius says as he tucks his card and receipt back into his wallet. “Load of bollocks.” He lifts his chin in a nod. “Let’s go back to ours, yeah? We’ll crack open some fancy wine? Or that whisky your dad gave us for Christmas, Re? Stick some better music on? Talk shit about Marls and Pete who couldn’t be bothered coming…”

James’s mouth tucks upward in a small smile and he nods. “Yeah,” he says, because it does sound a hell of a lot better than heading home to an empty, cold flat, to his thoughts, which are rather less empty. Tangled, painful, crowded things, they are. “Sounds brilliant, actually.”

Outside, Edinburgh in March is windy, wet, and chilly. Remus looks the coldest of them all, wrapped up as he is in several layers: t-shirt, jumper, sherpa denim jacket, green woolly hat. His teeth chatter slightly as a howl of a stiff breeze wends its way up the steep New Town hill, whistling between the Georgian sandstone buildings, rattling the manicured trees that line the handsome old street. Sirius loops an arm around him and holds him close. In his biker jacket, ratty grey scarf he’s had for years, and hair tied back off of his neck, he’s seemingly impervious to the temperature and sideways drizzle, but then again, like James, he’s always run hot.

They hail down a nearby black cab. Remus bundles in beside James, and Sirius gets in after them, settling down on the single seat right behind the driver. He stretches out his legs and stuffs his hands into his pockets, the dangly silver cross he wears in his right earlobe glinting in the yellowish streetlight that pushes through the rain-dappled window.

“I can finally hear myself think again,” James says. “Is this what it feels like to get old, Sirius?”

Sirius kicks his shin. Grins toothily. “Tossbag,” he says, but his features quickly rearrange themselves into a softer smile, and he brushes some damp, curly black hair from his forehead. His skin is paler in winter, but in a few months’ time, it will be golden olive. 

Typical Sirius. Striking in every season.

And that’s when the, “Are you feeling alright?” comes, hurtling down the tracks after a hundred other ‘are you okay’s and ‘are you alright’s that have come James’s way in the past month. He holds back a sigh, and he tries to smile, because that’s what’s expected of him, what’s always expected of him, James is always happy, always joking around, if you ever need cheering up, go talk to James!

He nods, in what he hopes is a convincing way, but he can feel the stiffness of his neck, the wobble of his smile, and without thinking about it, he pushes his hand down deeper into the pocket of his smart wool coat and finds his phone. He squeezes it, hard.

He’s made it four hours now. Four hours without looking at it. Four hours without scrolling for messages, four hours without opening Instagram and checking timestamps. 

Remus’s hand, pink from the cold, reaches out to wrap around James’s forearm. James’s fingers loosen a fraction, and he lets his phone go again.

“We should order pizza when we get in, I’m still bloody starving,” Sirius says. The tip of his doc marten is still pressed against James’s shin, and James finds himself slowly turning his ankle toward it.

He glances outside the window, the view jewelled by rain; they’re trundling up Princes Street now, getting stuck behind buses, behind other taxis and cars, behind swathes of youths off out on their Saturday night jollies using their jackets and scarves as shields from the weather, and when they finally make it over the Mound, the driver takes a turn behind the station and hurtles them left and right through the windy Old Town roads thick with cobblestones.

“If I don’t lose my stomach, sure,” James mutters after he grabs hold of the handle by the door for balance.

“Let’s get it from that place on the Meadows,” Remus says, and he’s leaning into James more now, resting his chin on his shoulder. His breath smells like espresso and sugar from his last cocktail. 

“Yes!” Sirius enthuses as the cab pulls up slowly outside of their building. “The boxes are the size of our fucking coffee table. Heavenly.”

Remus and Sirius’s flat, situated on an affluent street in trendy Newington, is so typically them in that it’s very much a meeting of two separate but oddly complimentary worlds: books and music everywhere (Remus’s weird penchant for dead folk musicians and jazz, Sirius’s old school thrash and post-punk), displayed neatly on shelves and in cabinets and cases James knows Sirius picked not only for aesthetic purposes, but to keep everything in its rightful place, otherwise Remus would just have everything in piles on the floor, I’m telling you; a hell of a lot of plants; a small but spotless and wonderfully stocked kitchen; brand new and expensive wooden floors covered in ancient rugs probably found in a skip; fancy inbuilt wardrobes in their bedroom where all of their clothes, mostly vintage, mostly second hand, are mixed, so they all smell the same.

James remembers when they used to smell different; Remus and Sirius.

Remus: all soft paper, aromatic tea, sea salt, and earth.

Sirius: an electric storm, cigarettes, musk, and leather.

The two of them now, intertwined, indistinguishable. And it’s been that way for years.

Sirius and James have known each other for almost their entire lives. Same nursery, same primary school, same boarding school. Same secrets, same lies; so close, always.

Same university.

When they met Remus in Edinburgh ten years ago, this boy with the messy curls,  the oversized jumpers, the huge, sleepy eyes and the sarcastic streak a mile wide, James knew he and Sirius were going to end up together, either straight away, or further down the line. 

Selfishly, back then, when James was still trying to sift through his own shit and work out what it was he wanted, who he was, he had hoped for it to happen later than it did.

Because he wanted Sirius first. (He had wanted Sirius for a long time).

He wanted Remus first. (He had wanted Remus instantly).

Sirius and Remus’s coming together had been fire-fast. Opposites attract, it had burned bright; resilient and impregnable. James got to hear it from both of them before they told each other: 

I like him. I like him so much. Do you think he likes me?

Of course he fucking likes you. No one else exists for him except you. Tell him.

“Sirius, you can’t have mayonnaise with nice pizza.” 

Remus’s voice rings out from the little kitchen behind the living room; James has already made himself comfortable on their L-shaped sofa, sitting on the short end and looking down into the glass of whisky Sirius has just poured for him, watching the pile of ice cubes roll around the liquid, melting slowly.

“I can and I will,” Sirius says haughtily. He marches back into the room with a giant bottle of the stuff that ends up on the edge of the coffee table beside the napkins and plates they’ll pretend to use.

Sirius’s leather jacket is gone; the loose, sleeveless Misfits t-shirt he’s wearing would look ridiculous on anyone else. No one but Sirius Black would be able to get away with flashing that much nipple in March.

“Disgusting,” Remus says fondly. “Can’t take you anywhere, not even our own home.” He plops down onto the long end of the couch, stretching out his legs and rearranging the large squashy cushion behind him. Sans hat, his curly hair has gone frizzy on top, a tangled tumble of auburn and blond curls.

James resists the urge to reach across and fix it back into place for him.

“You’re alright?” Remus asks him. Again.

James’s phone now sits on top of the coffee table, cover-down, pointedly silent. He still hasn’t looked at it.

“I wish you’d stop asking me that,” he sighs. “Both of you.”

“Well excuse us for caring,” Sirius says. He gets up to answer the doorbell and briefly runs a hand over the top of James’s head in the process. It softens the sarcastic edge of his voice.

Remus bites on his thumb and speaks around it. “You should block him, James. For good. Gideon’s… not a good person. Actually. I’m just going to say it.” He drops his hand onto his lap. His jumper sleeves are rolled up to his elbows now, revealing the mottled burn scar James knows runs from the inside of his right forearm and all of the way up to his shoulder and half of his collarbone. A childhood accident he never talks about. A portion of his body never revealed, unless it’s Sirius. Unless it’s James. “He’s a prick, actually, and you could do so much better than him.”

Sirius returns with the pizza, and the box is, indeed, almost as big as their coffee table. James swipes his phone up before Sirius can move it out of the way.

“Come on. You did it with Alice and it did you a world of good,” Sirius points out, settling down on the floor between them. He’s pulled his hair out of its knot, and it hangs in thick curls over his shoulders, down his back. Remus reaches out and idly runs his fingers through it.

James wishes, sometimes, he could do the same.

He used to. He used to touch Sirius freely, openly. Remus, too. The three of them affectionate without thinking about it, until Gideon had pointed it out to him one night early on into their relationship. 

Don’t you think it’s a bit weird? 

Weird? I don’t know. I suppose I don’t really think about it, to be honest.

Well, it makes me uncomfortable, Jim. Would you mind… not?

Oh. Okay. Sure. Sorry.

And that had been that. No more touching Sirius’s hair, no more wrapping his arms around Remus. No more casual bed sharing, no more chaste kisses. Not even a friendly peck on the cheek in greeting.

A drought. A world of affection, pulled from him like a plaster ripped off a wound still bleeding.

James and Gideon called it quits almost three weeks ago. And Sirius and Remus, in small ways, have been inching their way closer to him again; little touches, brushes of fingertips, half-hugs, shoulder squeezes.

A chin on his shoulder in the taxi. Warm breath on his cheek. 

James can still see Gideon staring at him in the rear view, though. From his WhatsApp icon. From his old texts and voicemails he hasn’t gotten around to deleting yet. 

It makes it difficult to touch them back. To fall back into that familiar, beautiful habit.

But God, he really wants to.

Sirius tilts his head, chewing slowly around his mouthful of pizza. His eyes fall half-closed as Remus continues to work his fingers slowly through his long hair, and when Sirius swallows, he smiles up at him, all shark-toothed and dimply, the kind of smile that used to get him into and out of trouble in school, the kind of smile that had Remus kissing him, deeply and for the first time, at the party at Marlene and Dorcas’s flat a million years ago.

A million kisses shared since then, James imagines. A million touches.

He saw them having sex, once. They’d gone away together, the five of them: James, Sirius, Remus, Marlene, Dorcas. A music festival in Wales near Remus’s mother’s house, a lush landscape of rolling green hills, a weekend of indie bands and folksy singer-songwriters and drugs most of them had never heard of. They’d been nineteen, and Sirius and Remus had been together for less than a year, unable to keep their hands off of each other the entire time. On the first night, James, Marlene, and Dorcas had lost them to another stage, and when James had returned to the tent he was sharing with Sirius and Remus, it had been empty. 

They’d all been quite pissed, quite high that night. James doesn’t remember a lot of it, but what he does remember remains burned on the back of his mind, tattoo-like, searing and permanent.

He’d fallen into a loose substance-addled slumber, a half-dozing thing, the kind of sleep that can only be had at festivals, on a hard and unfamiliar floor. When Remus and Sirius finally joined him at some ungodly hour in the middle of the morning, the sun had just started crawling up the horizon, a flash of pink and orange that quickly disappeared again behind the dark edges of the tent.

James had been on his side, facing them, and he kept his eyes shut as they settled down beside him, a couple of arm’s lengths away.

First, it was drunken muffled giggles. 

Then, a whispered exchange of: he’s sleeping. 

Then, deeper, richer laughter cut off with a shh. 

More whispers. 

Do we have…? 

Yeah. Yeah… found it.

Then, murmurs of encouragement.  

Then, a choked off gasp.

James’s eyes had flown open in the dark. When they adjusted, he saw the blurry shape of an arm, a hand fisted tight in dark blond curls, the unmistakable lines of Sirius’s long body underneath the sleeping bag, on top of Remus, who was lying face-down with his own arm stretched out, the tips of his fingers pressed against the wall of the tent. The obvious rutting of sex, of Sirius fucking Remus into the floor, something that had been quick and hard, both of them trying to muffle the noises; Sirius with his face buried against the back of Remus’s neck, Remus with his hand pressed against his mouth.

When they came, and it didn’t take long, heat had pooled low in the base of James’s stomach, spreading out over his guts, molten and painful. 

And suddenly, it became blindingly obvious who James was, and what James wanted.

James’s phone buzzes on the floor where he’s left it, startling Lucy Fur, Remus and Sirius’s black cat, from her slumber on the rug. When he scoops down to grab it, she darts off underneath the couch and out of sight.

“Oh,” he says, scrolling through his messages, phone in one hand, floppy slice of pizza in the other. “It’s—it’s not him.”

Sirius sighs and tosses his crust back into the box. “He’s a cunt,” he says bluntly. “I wish you’d just get rid. Properly. Block him, as Remus says. Delete him, all the rest of it. And if I see him pootling about Leith again with that fuckboy Fenwick, I swear to God, I’ll give him what for. Both of them this time.”

And it’s not as if Sirius hadn’t given Gid “what for” back then, either, when he caught James’s then-boyfriend snuggling up to one of his coworkers, the one he swore he didn’t fancy but oh so clearly did, and had oh so clearly acted on it.

They’d gotten into a fight, a physical one, Sirius and Gideon, right there in the middle of the pub. Sirius had dragged him up on top of a table half full of people they didn’t know, the sounds of their shouting and shrieking soundtracking the horrifying moment Sirius poured some poor bloke’s pint right onto Gideon’s face, waterboard style, only to be quickly and forcefully dragged out by staff and barred for life, you’re lucky we’re no callin' the fuckin polis, pal.

At least, that’s how the story goes according to Marlene. Sirius has been more sheepish about it. Understandably so.

“Please don’t,” James groans. “I get it, though. I get it, Sirius. And I do think he’s prick, and a prat, and an arsehole, and all of that. But—it’s still fucking humiliating, you know? It still hurts.” 

Sirius’s expression softens. He reaches out and puts a hand on James’s leg, wrapping long fingers around his calf over the material of his dark jeans. 

On the other side of the couch, Remus rubs his fingers clean with a napkin. He looks thoughtful. And hesitant. James drops his eyes to his arm. He’s always wondered what it would be like, to kiss the skin there. He’s always wondered if Remus lets Sirius do that. “You know. I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, James. But… we never liked him for you.”

We, James thinks. They do that, sometimes. We think this, and we want that. 

Like they have some sort of hive mind.

James tears his eyes away from Remus and looks at Sirius on the floor between them. His eyes are fierce in this light; stormy. Impossibly round. He shakes his head, and James swallows. 

He holds his breath and reaches out, putting a hand on top of Sirius’s head, slipping his fingers through his dark curls. It’s a careful touch, but it’s a deliberate one. 

His first in almost a year.

“You didn’t like Alice for me, either,” he says hoarsely. “Or Em.”

Some of Sirius’s dark hair has fallen into his eyes, but they remain bright beneath it. Quietly, “No.”

James meets Remus’s gaze over the top of Sirius’s head. “Then,” he says, carefully, “Who do you like for me?”

The words hang suspended in the air between them, loud, terrifying. Obvious.

James’s heart thumps hard in his chest.

Maybe it’s just the unspoken answer that’s obvious.

Remus looks down at his hands, a line forming between his brows; Sirius is still staring up at James, unblinking, unswaying.

James doesn’t think he can eat any more. He puts his slice of pizza back down in the box and runs a hand over his mouth, over the hair on his face, through the hair on his head, messing it up. 

I want to watch you. 

The words get stuck in the back of his throat and he flushes, mortified. He moves his gaze slowly between them, a silent prayer their hive mind has somehow found its way to his so he doesn’t have to say it out loud.

I want to watch you, and I want to be with you, too.

Don’t you know how much I care for you? Both of you.

Sirius turns his head. The edge of his lips, red and full, meet the edge of James’s thumb. A flare of heat ignites low in James’s belly.

But then Remus suddenly gets up, and he carries the pizza box back into the kitchen without a word, and James has a sudden jolt of panic he’s gone and done something very wrong, something truly terrible, that he’s missed something along the way, picked up on the wrong signals, that Remus is going to come back any second and punch him in the nose for touching his boyfriend.

James holds his breath for so long it starts to hurt, a pins and needles sort of sensation radiating out through his lungs.

Remus doesn’t come back.

“Come on,” Sirius says, dragging James back to earth with that rich, deep voice of his. “Let’s go.”

In a slight daze, James lets go of his breath.

They find Remus hovering in the hallway outside of their room. James suspects Sirius knew this already, that he knew where to find him, because he suddenly crowds Remus up against the wall by the door, bracketing his arms around his head as he dips down to kiss him, slow and deep.

The sight of it steals any words or questions James might have had straight off the tip of his tongue. 

He stares at them, watches the way Remus arches slowly to meet Sirius’s mouth, and he becomes all too aware of the pulse in his neck, his wrists, his groin.

He thinks back to all of those years ago in the tent. The muffled moans, the delicate sounds in the back of Remus’s throat, the deep whispers pressed against his neck as Sirius pushed into him.

With a shaky breath, he leans his shoulder heavily against the wall beside them, adjusting himself in his jeans, and he wonders, wildly, if they’re going to stay here, just like this. If he’s going to watch Sirius turn Remus around and fuck him up against the wall of their hallway.

Jesus.

And then when Sirius pulls back an inch and gives Remus a look that truly burns, when he says, “Fuck, look at you,”, James wants to melt into the floorboards. 

He thinks he may have done so already.

“James,” Sirius says, but he’s still looking at Remus, rubbing the back of his neck; slow, firm touches of devotion.

“Yeah?” It comes out like a croak.

“What do you think?” Sirius breaks eye contact with Remus and meets James’s gaze. His eyes are still so stormy, and the intensity of them makes James feel unsteady on his feet, untethered from the gravity keeping him upright. He looks at his hands. A confirmation he’s still here, that he’s corporeal.

That this is happening.

God, this is happening.

“I…”

Sirius reaches out to him then, runs a hand over the back of his head, pulls him close. James can feel his hot breath against his mouth, he can feel Remus’s breath against his cheek.

“We’ve wanted this,” Sirius whispers. His brow crinkles, and he drops his forehead against James’s, “For the longest time.”

“Forever,” Remus confirms, deep in the back of his throat. His hand is playing with the material of James’s shirt, pinching at it against his ribs, fingertips sliding over the soft fabric, over the skin that's too-hot beneath it.

Sirius crowds in closer, and when he kisses him, finally, James can taste the electric storm he thought he had lost years ago.

And it should be strange. It should be so, so strange, this; kissing his best friend, pressing their mouths together as desperately as they are, searching and chasing fire with tongues and teeth.

But it’s not.

None of this is strange.

Because Sirius tastes like home.

His best friend. The love of his life.

The three of them stagger back into the bedroom and Sirius is still kissing him, he’s still cupping James’s face in his hands, and they’re smiling like idiots against each other’s mouths and it’s so good, it’s so fucking good, and James can’t remember the last time he felt like this, the last time he was touched and felt this fucking good about it, about his body and the body of his partner.

Partners.

Remus.

James breaks away from Sirius to look at him, to drink in the way Remus is looking at them: wide-eyed, flushed, close. 

“Come here,” James hears himself murmur in the narrow space between them all; Sirius now crowded up behind him, Remus tucking himself in against his front and brushing his nose along James’s cheek, through the hair on his jaw. His breath is hot, and it tickles against James’s skin.

When they kiss for the first time, it begins shallow and slow, searching, but it doesn’t take long for it to deepen, for Remus’s lips to open enough to let James lick into his mouth, and when he does, Remus makes a sound in the back of his throat so soft and fragile with need James almost comes right there and then, fully clothed.

It’s too much.

It’s not enough.

Sirius and Remus start kissing again, and soon after that, their clothes come off, and it all happens surprisingly easily.

James has seen Sirius naked before, many times. At school, at the flat they used to share. He hasn’t changed much; he’s still long and toned, slim but strong, the hair underneath his arms thick and dark, the dusting on his chest and navel dark too, but softer, sparser. Olive toned but winter-pale skin covered in black and grey ink, both arms, his ribs, his back, his thighs. Some new ones James hasn’t seen up close yet. One in particular, on the back of his thigh, that he’d like to get intimate with soon.

Remus doesn’t have any tattoos, but his skin is a patchwork of freckles, gold and amber and flecks of light brown, a map of stars to count with fingers, with his tongue. The scar on his arm shines slightly, healed for years now but pinker than the rest of his skin. He has prominent hipbones but his shoulders are surprisingly filled-out, and he’s—

Big. Remus is rather big, and James finds himself loath to look away.

“I know, right,” Sirius murmurs, pressing a smile against his neck. He’s bent over James, kissing his shoulder, his neck, the back of his head, the both of them now hovering over Remus on the mattress after James peels off Remus’s jeans and pants the rest of the way and tosses them aside, the last of the barriers, now discarded.

Remus arches up against him, wraps a leg around him, and James loses himself in that for a while, helpless to do anything but drop his head down against the warmth of Remus’s throat as they rock together slowly. All the while, Sirius makes himself comfortable along Remus’s side, hand loose around his cock, touching himself lazily as he slides his other hand up and down James’s back, soothing, guiding, pressing at the dip in his spine, over the curve of his thigh, nimble fingers dipping down, occasionally, between his legs to seek out hotter skin.

It’s minutes of that. Or hours. Whatever it is, however long it goes on for, it’s pure bliss and tangled, sweaty limbs, and James moans and Remus moans, and the latter is occasionally swallowed by the warmth of Sirius’s mouth as the two of them kiss lazily beside James, side by side.

When James looks back at this later and thinks about all of the ways it could have gone, Sirius’s heated murmur of “do you want to watch us?” would still come out on top, as the best possible outcome. Because when he does ask, and when James is encouraged to shift up onto the bed to sit against the pillows, when Remus uses his sweet mouth on him as Sirius kisses his way down Remus’s freckled back, disappearing between his legs to prepare him, expertly, with lips, tongue, and fingers slick with the lube from their drawer, when Remus nods desperately and moans loud against the jut of James’s hip after Sirius extends up on his knees behind him and asks him if he’s ready, James thinks this must be what heaven feels like. 

Fuck all of the sex he’s had before this. Fuck all of the drugs he’s taken. Fuck all of the times he thought he was happy. This —this is it.

This is everything.

James’s fingers find their way back to wild curls just in time for him to feel a full-body tremble run through Remus when Sirius slides home, both of them letting out long, exulted moans when it happens. 

Sirius swears, and Remus’s hand tightens against James’s ribs where he lets it rest, and James can feel his hot breath puff out against him, where he’s still impossibly, painfully hard, a leaking mess, shiny from Remus’s mouth. And then Remus is asking for more, weakly begging for Sirius to move, and Sirius slips his hand up the sweaty expanse of his back and clasps onto his shoulder, leaning over him and closer to James, close enough to kiss him, sloppy and open.

The languid pace of it all soon becomes bruising. The kisses break, and it’s just breath, the three of them panting openly, Remus powerless to use anything other than his hand and lips on James, Sirius gasping, grinding them into the mattress and half covering James’s face with his long hair. 

It’s a sea of endless black when James comes, vision blurry, glasses lost a long time ago. Remus, pressed between them, yelps out and stiffens, burying his face against his hip, sliding his hand into the striped mess of James’s stomach, and it’s seconds before Sirius follows them, seizing and hitching a knee against James’s side, bracketing Remus in tighter. Holding them all close.

The three of them, impossibly tangled. Indistinguishable.

James wonders, in his haze, how long it will take for Sirius and Remus’s mixed smells to curl around his own, to pull him in and keep him there, forever.

Physically, they all have to pull apart, eventually. Sirius, who was once a breathlessly exhilarating weight above both of them, now feels too heavy and too leaden, and Remus is the one to poke him with his elbow, encouraging him to roll off to the side, where he lands, breathless, a mess of sweaty skin and wild black hair.

“That was,” he says, his voice scratchy, wrecked. James rearranges himself against the pillows when Remus slides up against his side between them, and James runs a hand through his hair, pulling it back from his forehead. When he looks down at his face, Remus’s eyes are half-closed and hazy, halfway to sleep.

“Yeah,” he gasps, pointing his eyes to the ceiling again. There’s a hairline crack on the plaster by the lamp, and James wonders, idly, if he should offer to fix it for them.

They sleep, for a while, exactly as they are: James on one side of Remus, Sirius on the other. When James wakes up later, minutes or hours, he’s not sure, the light outside of the half-curtained window is hazy and wet, a post-midnight drizzle that sprinkles against the glass silently. 

Remus’s head is buried against his shoulder, and Sirius, across the way, is sleeping peacefully on his back. Until he’s not.

He opens his eyes, and turns his head just enough to meet James’s blurry gaze. 

It’s been a night. One night. The newness of it feels like the second it takes to strike a match, but it also feels like they’ve been doing this for years, have been burning for years, and James hopes, desperately, that maybe from now on, they will.

“You know I…” he whispers. He looks down at Remus, who is unmoved, tucked as he is against James’s chest. “You know I love you both. That I wish we’d…”

Sirius turns onto his side, careful not to knock against Remus too much. He winces; they’re still sticky, and soon, they’ll all get up and remedy that, but for now, James is content to just stay close. 

“We know. You don’t have to say it,” Sirius whispers. “We don’t have to think about what we should have done, what we could have done. Any of that. We just have to think about… what’s next, yeah?”

“Yeah,” James breathes, and he’s smiling, he’s burning from the inside out, pressed against the man he fell for instantly, and the man he’s loved forever.