#dissimulate

"You're spending a lot of time not sleeping in your bed, you know?" Peter tried to catch his eye, but Sirius wasn't having it. He deflected like he always did when Pete tried to stick his nose in matters that weren't his.

"Ah, Pete, I didn't know you cared. Have you realized I'm far more dashing than that pretty little Hufflepuff you want to ask to Hogsmeade?"

Peter snorted but James cut off further argument.

"Pads, why don't you just tell Marlene how you feel about her?"

Sirius rolled his eyes. So now this was some sort of intervention? The least they could have done was made it about his smoking habit. This conversation was not only getting old, it was getting on Sirius' nerves.

"I have. I tell her on a regular basis how good she is in bed and in a broom cupboard and behind tapestries, you know how polite I am about that."

"Sirius," Remus spoke up, "We know it can be nerve-wracking, but look, James had to ask Lily at least a hundred times over the last seven years…"

"But we're dating now!" James interrupted and Sirius didn't need to turn around from his wardrobe to know that his best mate was glaring daggers at Moony.

"That was exactly the point I was getting too," Remus responded to James before speaking to Sirius again. "What have you got to lose, Pads?"

"Her."

It was a strangled whisper that escaped his lips as his wanker mates managed to pull the emotions he'd been carefully locking behind stone walls crashing down around his ears.

Before he actually broke in front of them, Sirius grabbed his clothes and shower caddy before glaring at his three friends.

"Mind your own bloody business, will you?"

Then he stormed out of the dorm and into the showers. He hoped a shower would help him feel better, but he was still teetering on the edge of a breakdown as he dropped everything back off at the dorm. Thankfully his well-meaning, but idiot mates weren't inside to break him completely.

Sirius headed to the Great Hall, intent on overpowering these terrifying feelings before he made it there.

But, Merlin, they were terrifying.

The thought of losing Marlene was as bad, maybe worse, as the thought of losing James.

That thought brought on the alarming realization that Marlene was on the same level as James.

Merlin, when did this happen?!

It was just shagging. It was just shagging. It was just shagging. Sirius attempted to get his brain to calm down but it was to no avail.

Because, yes it was shagging...And making her laugh, and pulling that one smile out of her, and feeling her melt into him, and listening to her tirade about what a coward Voldemort and his Death Eaters were, and seeing her eyes light up when they read her motorcycle magazines, and getting lost in how much her eyes looked like glacier runoff and how her nails felt against his scalp and…

He was so screwed.

"You look like you've just found a troll in the castle."

It was incredibly backward, but the voice of the woman he was currently freaking out over seemed to calm him.

"Nah, just a three-headed dog."

Marlene smirked up at him. "James and Lily are taking ages to get down here."

She stepped closer to him let her fingers brush against his.

Sirius felt all his emotional turmoil start to ebb away as her blue eyes twinkled up at him.

"How inconsiderate of them to deny you your fun."

Marlene pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and smirked, "But you would never be so inconsiderate, would you, Black?"

Sirius felt the smirk spread across his face as he looked down at her, "Never to you, McKinnon."

He reached out and wrapped his hand around hers before quickly pulling her into the closest broom cupboard.

This, wrapped up in her, this was where he felt free from those horrid emotions about what this was between them and what it meant and where it would lead because he was with her and that was all that really mattered. Sirius didn't care if there were labels or plans, he cared that she was there. Marlene was with him through all his shite. She called him out when he was being an idiot, but she stood by his side while doing so. She made him want to be more. Her presence brought him a source of strength he didn't know he could have. And when he was with her those things were all that mattered and not the crap his mates kept trying to throw at him.