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“It’s locked,” Sirius says miserably, the rain beginning to soak into his t-shirt, never mind that they’re wizards and he could have used an Impervius charm.
Speaking of, it’s a bloody good point. “Sirius, you’re a wizard.”
It comes out a bit slurred, because James is still a bit drunk. What had started as a night out to toast his broken engagement turned into surly shots taken while he watched Sirius dance with three fit blokes in a row. It was a fair number of shots.
“Yeah, but it’s locked-locked,” Sirius complains.
James jiggles the doorknob. He frowns at it and tries a few spells of his own. “Fuck,” he says when nothing works. The problem is that there are three doorknobs; he can’t be sure he’s casting at the right one.
“Jamie, I’m cold.”
Sirius stands there, wet and shivering like some sort of stray animal. His hair’s lank around his pale face, gooseflesh risen on his bare arms. Why he’s dressed for the warmth of a summer day when it’s October is beyond James. Though James isn’t quite complaining; the white t-shirt’s going translucent, clinging to his body. James looks away before his gaze can snag on his friend’s rosy nipples, peaked under the cotton.
“Here,” James says, taking off his own jean jacket to give to him.
“No,” Sirius moans. “‘s wet too.”
“Don’t be such a princess,” James says and then snaps the jacket at him like a towel.
“Fuck off, you twat.” Sirius goes to shove him, only connects with one hand, and stumbles.
James grabs him to keep him from falling straight off the stoop, but Sirius takes it for some kind of attack and drunkenly fights back until James gets a hand around each of his wrists.
“Calm down, you dickhead.”
Sirius stumbles again, their bodies connecting, brushing, and he breathes an inebriated laugh against James’s face. James means to let him go, but his hands tighten a little instead, keeping Sirius there, wet and whisky-smelling and warm against his own chest. Sirius’s fingers grasp onto James’s shoulders, and his laugh dies a little, his lashes blinking in slow motion.
“Now what?” Sirius asks, swaying against him.
He’d swayed against those blokes at the bar too. James should be used to Sirius swaying with men. He was. He thought he was. But now he’s got Sirius’s cold wrists warming in his hands, and James can feel Sirius’s pulse under his fingertips, and he’s reluctant to let go.
James sighs, says, “Fuck it,” and, against his better judgement (of which he has very little around Sirius anyway), he Apparates them away.
“Hogsmeade?” Sirius says once they’ve landed outside the Hog’s Head.
Truthfully, James has no idea why he’s brought them here. They haven’t been students for two years, but it’s one of the only places he feels confident in Apparating whilst dead drunk, and… They just need a place to crash, to sleep this off.
James needs to sleep this off. He’s two weeks out from Lily leaving him. He should be better by now. He should be ace.
‘It’s like me,’ Sirius had told him, two drinks into the night. ‘Remus left for uni, and look! I bounced right back.’
But James knows better. He remembers the crying jags that lasted into the wee hours, a few too many recreational drugs, the disconnection. He remembers the light going out in Sirius’s eyes for months after their break.
‘Be like me,’ Sirius had said tonight—apparently having forgotten the pain—and then flounced onto the sticky dance floor to rub his arse against a muscular man’s crotch.
James needs to sleep. He needs to blot out that visual completely. Needs to get warm and dry and remember that Sirius is his best friend, rather than the pretty bloke whose body feels so good up against his own. Rather than someone James has increasingly found himself staring at while fantasizing what it might be like to shag him.
“What?” Sirius asks now, as James is, indeed, staring at him again.
“Nothing. Let’s get inside.”
“Don’t have two rooms left,” the innkeeper says.
“You’re sold out?” James asks, aghast.
“Didnae say that. We’ve got one room left.”
“Perfect,” says James. “Two beds?”
“One bed.”
James’s heart falls.
But Sirius, still shivering, crowds in behind him. “That’ll be fine,” he says to the innkeeper. “That’ll be fine, right?” he says, softer, to James.
“Yeah,” James says and gulps. “Fine.”
They get their one key to go with their one room with the one bed, and they ascend the staircase.
The room, thankfully, is already warm, but that only makes Sirius shiver harder. James would try to work a warming spell on him, but he’s already failed at opening the door to his own flat and barely succeeded in Apparating them without serious Splinching problems, so he’s not eager to press his luck.
“You need the loo? You can have the bathroom first,” James says. “Run a bath if you want.” He winces. He sounds like someone’s mum.
But Sirius doesn’t go to the bathroom. He simply presses his body to James’s back and huddles there. “Don’t want to take my clothes off. It’ll be colder.”
“Only for a minute. I can try a Drying charm once they’re off, and then you can put them back on. And if I fry your clothes on accident, I’d rather you not be inside them.”
“Mm,” Sirius hums, wrapping his arms around James’s waist from behind, making no move to leave or undress.
“We’re dripping on the rug, dickhead.”
“You suck at endearments,” Sirius says and then grips James’s jumper in both hands, burying his face in James’s back.
“We’re dripping on the floor, sweetheart,” James says. “That better?”
Sirius loosens his grip, but it’s only to take James by the waist, turning him around. “Much,” he says, and James sees something flit precariously over his eyes before he shivers and says, “You undress me.”
“Whu—” James clears his throat. “What?”
Sirius wraps long arms around James’s neck, says, closer still, “You. Undress. Me.”
“Fuck, Sirius, what are you on about?” James’s cock has begun to get hard. His head’s spinning.
Sirius traces the shell of his ear with a finger, then James’s cheekbone with his knuckle. “Am I being too subtle?” he asks. “How’s this?” And Sirius leans in and kisses him.
James hesitates for a second too long—Sirius’s pillowed lips part against his own—before James pushes him back. “What are you doing?”
Sirius’s eyes are hooded, pupils dilated. He shrugs. “Getting warm.”
Then he takes the hem of his t-shirt and strips it off.
Sirius has a beautiful body. It’s not like James’s body, which is toned and muscled from professional Quidditch, a darker golden brown in the summer when he flies shirtless during training, but warm-toned year-round too. Sirius’s body is beautiful nonetheless, lithe and pale (where he’s not tattooed) and pretty. James has always noticed how Sirius looks; it’s impossible not to. But he’d been straight. Straight enough, anyway. He’d had Lily. This thing with Sirius… it was never… He noticed Sirius like two brothers who share a bedroom would. That’s what he used to tell himself.
It’s harder to deny what it actually is, now that James is going rock hard at the sight of him and he wants to touch him more than he’s ever wanted anything in his life.
“You’re drunk,” he hears himself say.
“So are you,” Sirius counters, and takes James’s jumper in his hands again, but this time with purpose.
James stops him. “Sirius… I…”
“Don’t want to?” Sirius looks up at him now, and there’s the glint of hope, shining in his eyes, hope he’s afraid might get dashed. Merlin, Sirius is offering himself—it’s all on his face, tilted up toward James: Sirius is voluntarily dangling over a cliff while he waits for James’s yes or no.
And while there are hearts in this world James hasn’t minded breaking, Sirius’s has never been one of them.
“Bloody hell,” he breathes, and he pulls Sirius into a much, much deeper kiss, a hungry thing, their mouths wet and hot.
Sirius makes a mewling sound and pulls James’s jumper up. They part as it comes off and drops to the floor. His hands press to James’s stomach, smoothing up over his chest, his voice coming out breathy with arousal when he says, “Why’d you have to be so fucking fit?”
And then he gasps when James hauls him in and scoops him up. He wraps his legs around James, and James walks him to the nearest wall, presses his back against it. His teeth sink his into Sirius’s long neck, sucking a bruise there as Sirius whimpers, his legs tightening.
But then Sirius wedges a hand between them, trying to loosen James’s belt. James stumbles, Sirius’s feet dragging the floor now as they veer sideways together, run into the dresser, knock off a vase.
“Bugger,” Sirius laughs against James’s jaw.
But James isn’t laughing about anything as he opens Sirius’s damp jeans, yanking them down—shithead’s not wearing pants—and he drops to his knees in front of Sirius’s pink cock, standing up from its neat thatch of black hair, darker at the tip and leaking already.
Sirius watches him, his wet lips parted, and when James holds the eye contact and fits the head of Sirius’s cock between his lips, Sirius gasps, pretty red mouth opening still more. James wants to wrestle him to the ground and stick his cock inside those plump, panting lips. He doesn’t. He stays on his knees, closes his eyes as he licks indulgently all around the head of his best friend’s cock. Sirius starts to shake when James finally goes down, letting Sirius’s cock touch the back of his throat as he bobs his head on it.
Sirius’s hands are in his hair, and he’s saying things like, “Oh fuck,” and “Jamie please,” and James is so damn hard in his pants, he might come if Sirius so much as says his name like that one more time.
He pulls off, a string of saliva following before he licks his lips. Sirius’s hands stay carded into his hair while James unlaces Sirius’s boots and slips them off one by one. He pulls the jeans to Sirius’s ankles and then says, “Hold on to me, you lightweight,” as he strips them off, one leg at a time and Sirius smiles down at him.
“You suck cock like a straight boy,” Sirius says.
James pulls him away from the wall enough to land a sharp spank on his arse.
“Mmm,” Sirius hums, still smiling, his cock smearing pre-come along James’s cheek.
Then James just looks up at his nude body, runs his hands down to his calves, up again and onto his thighs, watches as the muscles in Sirius’s abdomen twitch hard, then James touches him there too, something about it just as worshipful as it is exploratory.
“My God, you’re gorgeous,” James breathes. He wouldn’t have if he weren’t ten sheets to the wind, enough whisky floating in his veins to set him adrift on invisible ocean currents and Sirius his only hope of not drowning.
Sirius blinks wide eyes at him, and then James stands up, hefts Sirius into his arms, surprising him into a squeal, and hauls him off to bed.
~
They’ve been frotting for a while, whispering filth with their eyes closed, like they can pretend they’re other people, not Jamie and Sirius but… two young men who are simply too horny for words, who aren’t currently ruining a friendship. If that’s what’s happening, James doesn’t want to know.
In the midst of it, James lets slip, “Wanna fuck you.”
Sirius has been humping him rabbit-fast, nearly there, but now he slows. James blinks open his eyes to see Sirius looking at him. Then, into the silence, Sirius nods.
“H-how?” James asks, stuttering out his own ignorance. He’s never buggered a bloke. He knows Sirius has, though. Lots of boys before Remus. Then Remus for two years, before he went off to uni and found a girlfriend. More boys after that. James has never liked thinking about the men Sirius has let fuck him, nor the ones he fucks, though he’s not been able to stop himself picturing how it might be, the fantasy of Sirius’s mouth around another man’s dick simultaneously horrible and so hot he’s come from it many a solitary night.
James has fucked plenty. He’s had women every way you probably can. And he loves it. It’s always been good. And then there was Lily… And things with her were great, until their last fight was their last apparently. He thinks he’d marry her still, if she decided to take him back. And then what would happen to him and Sirius? What if this is a huge bloody mistake? What if they fuck and then Remus wants him back and James goes back to Lily and then this, all of this, will be between them forever, something that they had for one night? Something that hurts.
James knows, like he knows the magic in his own body, that no-one, of any gender, will ever replace Sirius Black. He can’t fucking lose him.
But then his fears for the future subside, because Sirius, now rolling underneath him, says, “Here,” and then lifts his bum to shove a pillow under it.
“Like… me on top?”
“Yeah, dumbarse. You on top.” But Sirius is smiling at him, even as he opens his thighs. He casts a lubrication charm and slicks James’s cock, then he does another for his hole. “Stick your finger in it,” he says. “Feel how wet.”
James prods, his finger sinking inside where it’s snug and warm. It makes a squelching sound, and Sirius’s cheeks flush, his mouth opening. James slowly thrusts in and out, and Sirius whines a little, like it feels good.
“Now your dick,” he tells James.
James pulls his finger out, lines up. Sirius’s hands tighten on his shoulders when he starts to slide in. James moves his fist so he can bottom out, and his eyes nearly roll back at how good it feels.
“Fucking hell,” he says on a rush of breath. He opens his eyes to look down at Sirius again. “Are you sure?” he hears himself ask.
“James,” says Sirius, “you’re in me.” The fondness in his expression is the very same fondness he’s seen in his friend since they met. It’s the same. It twinkles in his eyes and flirts over the luscious curve of his lips, and James lets himself be drawn down by it. Sirius blooms open when James kisses him, his legs rubbing up and down his sides.
How did he miss this? That he could have this? With the most important person in his life.
While James kisses him, Sirius reaches down to grip James’s arse in both hands—which feels fucking phenomenal—and he squeezes, tilting his hips a little for it, urging James to thrust. James does, dragging his cock halfway out and then sliding back inside.
“God,” Sirius breaks the kiss to groan, his eyebrows drawn, his face transformed by a look of excruciating pleasure. His cheeks go hot with pink, his sounds coming in sighs so sweet James has to kiss him again, to taste it, stopping only to hear those sounds meet the naked air between them.
Sirius reaches over his head, grasping the old, creaky headboard in both hands as James reads the moment, goes on some sort of primal drive, and starts snapping his hips.
He’s fucking Sirius. He’s fucking Sirius. And it’s better than good. Better than great, even. It’s something close to perfect.
Then Sirius meets his gaze, and he says, “Hold my wrists again.” He swallows as James’s thrusting slows. “Hold me down, Jamie.”
This is not a thing they’ve ever acknowledged… that this dynamic creeps up between them and asserts itself. Sometimes it’s James taking the lead that Sirius seems so willing to give him. Sometimes it’s Sirius practically begging for it, losing at their little wrestling matches in a way that makes it clear he’s actually won, writhing beneath James’s weight and laughing, going weak for James’s hold on him.
James has never looked at it in this light, which is to say, the light of the truth that it has always been for them, a truth he’s realising Sirius has understood far better than he.
Now his heart hammers ridiculously in his chest as he maintains the eye contact, takes one of Sirius’s wrists and then the other, and presses them into the mattress over his head. Sirius gasps, his cock stiffening still more against James’s belly. James thrusts into him once. Sirius whines in response. He pulls a little in James’s hold, and James just presses him down harder. He thrusts again.
Sirius opens his thighs wide, straining to do it. There are tears in his eyes. James bears down with his upper body weight and whips his hips into him. The tears slide from the corners of Sirius’s eyes, his sounds turning tortured. James moves his wrists together, crosses them, takes them both in one fist. He licks a broad stripe up his free hand and then tugs on Sirius’s cock, stroking him quickly.
Mouth open on a quavering wail, Sirius comes. The muscles in his arms work as he pulls against the hold, but James keeps him there, pounding his arse while Sirius shoots over James’s knuckles, onto his own stomach.
And he whimpers, “Jamie… Fuck, Jamie…”
James moves his weight off Sirius’s wrists. They’re red; he’s left marks. As Sirius pants in the aftermath, James pulls out, takes no time flipping Sirius over, hauling back on his hips. And Sirius obeys, going onto his knees, his face pressed into a pillow as James feels for the way in again and then shoves.
It punches a sound out of Sirius’s chest, but in the next instant, Sirius gasps, “Fuck yeah, take me.”
James wraps Sirius’s hair around his fist, pulls back, fucks him, balls slapping against Sirius’s raised arse. Suddenly, he’s angry about this whole thing… that Sirius kissed him, that now he knows what Sirius’s cock feels like in his mouth, that he knows how it can be between them, that there’s no going back.
They can’t go back. This, tonight, will either become something they survive or something they become.
Sirius’s arched spine is the most beautiful thing James has ever seen. He wants to sully it, sully him. He spits onto the place they’re joined, then lets go of Sirius’s hair to plant his hand on the mattress, leaning over Sirius to lick the dip between his shoulder blades, to bite his neck, moving his pretty hair out of the way to sink his teeth into his earlobe.
“Make me yours,” Sirius breathes. “‘m so yours.” When James ruts deep inside and Sirius’s breath hitches on his name— “Ja-mie” — James’s balls draw up, he grits his teeth, and he comes.
The thick ropes of it fill Sirius’s arse, and James pulls back to watch it, to see his cock emerge shiny with his own come, watch it thrust back in, opening Sirius up around him.
And Sirius is smiling, a sated, drunk smile—not drunk from the alcohol anymore, but from the sex, from this, from James.
James has to kiss that mouth one last time, just in case this is all he gets. In case tomorrow, Sirius acts like it didn’t happen, shows up to pub night and grinds against the hot men there, makes James watch it.
In case Lily… And yet he can’t think of her like this. He doesn’t want to.
He leans down, still inside Sirius, still throbbing, and tongue-kisses the corner of his mouth, in the next moment getting him square-on when Sirius turns his head for it, parts his lips, kisses James back with an indulgent moan.
James sinks his hand into Sirius’s hair, pulls gently, and Sirius makes a new sound of pleasure into his mouth.
Then James rolls away, onto his back, panting and staring at the plain, blank canvas of the ceiling.
Sirius stays on his stomach, and James can’t help glancing at his pink bottom, the shine between his thighs when Sirius moves to get more comfortable. James’s gaze trails up to see Sirius’s hair cascading over the pillow, his own gaze on James, his mouth curved in a soft smile.
“You’re smiling,” James says.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
James doesn’t say what he’s thinking: Because maybe we’ve ruined it. Maybe we’ve ruined us.
He lets Sirius move closer, up against him. “‘m cold again,” Sirius says.
James pulls the blankets over them both as Sirius curls against his side, lays his head on James’s chest. It’s not the action of a man who intends to fuck and forget. Or maybe this is how Sirius behaves after all his pulls. Maybe he’s just a physically affectionate person. James knows that he is. They’ve kissed each other on the mouth almost from day one. Hello, goodbye. Just a soft-lipped brief thing. They kiss a little longer when they’re drunk. They’ve never talked about it.
“Jamie,” Sirius says sleepily now. “You’re having buzzy thoughts.”
“Busy, you mean?”
“No, buzzy. Loud.”
“Mm.” James trails the tip of his thumb over Sirius’s shoulder.
“What are you thinking? Or would you like me to guess?” He nips at James’s jaw. “I bet I could guess.”
“Oh, could you?” James says, but his pulse is going faster, hotter, scared of these next moments.
“You’re thinking… what if Lily shows up and wants to make things right? You’re thinking… maybe this didn’t mean that much to Sirius, since he’s an actual slag and all.”
“Am not.”
“You’re thinking that you’re not quite sure what to do with me, now that you know how desperately in love with you I am.”
James turns his head on the pillow quickly, and Sirius moves enough that they can look at each other. “What?” James asks.
“You’re thinking,” Sirius says, and then traces along James’s bottom lip with his finger, “that I can’t know that, not after one fuck.” He meets James’s gaze. “But it’s not just tonight. It’s been forever, Jamie.”
James frowns, something in his belly burning.
“How could you not have known?” Sirius asks. He looks like he’s going to try to close it off, turn over or get out of the bed.
James doesn’t let himself think first. He lets himself be as brave and open as Sirius has. “Every time I see you with another man, I get so jealous I want to punch a wall. I— I don’t know when it happened. I’ve never liked it. But lately…”
Sirius’s smile is warming, and James strokes his hair off his face, marvelling that he can, that Sirius lets him, that Sirius may very well want him to. That Sirius wants him. Loves him. Like a brother, and like… this.
“What are the bloody odds?” James wonders aloud.
Sirius huffs a small laugh. “Jamie, don’t turn into a Ravenclaw on me now. Be your stupid Gryffindor self that I can’t resist and—”
James rolls Sirius beneath him, smothering his pleased yelp with a kiss that Sirius invites him to take deeper. And it’s easy. It’s so ridiculously easy.
James floats on it for a minute, kissing Sirius, but then he thinks about the flat, the stubbornly locked door. He wonders what would have happened if it had opened instead. The two of them drunkenly saying their goodnights, parting in the hallway. Maybe there’d be a wayward touch between them: James slapping Sirius’s arse, Sirius landing a moist kiss on his cheek… something they could pretend wasn’t this.
Dear Merlin, this.
“Are you too sore for another fuck?” James asks, rolling his hips, getting hard against Sirius’s belly.
Sirius shoves him, rolls on top, feels for James’s cock and rubs it against his sticky hole. “Fuck me and see.”
Together they fit James inside, and then Sirius is riding him slowly, his body rippling, that beautiful, mischievous smile on his face. The morning light sneaks in under the curtains and starts to crawl across the floor towards them. But James doesn’t fear it any longer. He knows, when it illuminates Sirius’s body, his face, he’ll see what he’s always seen: his best friend, his soulmate, his Sirius.
He’ll see him like he always has, and for the first time he’ll truly understand what that means.
James touches the body writhing on his, and when Sirius leans down enough, James threads his fingers into his hair, draws him down close enough to kiss. “Let’s make up for lost time,” he says.
Sirius smiles wickedly at him, and then rides him hard enough to knock the old, creaky headboard into the wall.