#queeniegldstn

Fleamont is there, at the end of that long gravel driveway, ready to haul their bags out of the boot, but James takes one look at his father’s grey-laced head, and thinks of Mr Evans, and races around the car to get there first.

He trudges up the stairs, and Sirius heads toward the garden, or the bathroom, or the library. Euphemia follows James, and when he pushes open his bedroom door, she puts her arms around his middle, and rests her chin on his shoulder. They survey the room together for a second and there’s something off about it, but he can’t–

“Awful boy,” she says, and it’s the stripped bed that’s the issue, “not even giving me enough warning so I could have fresh sheets for you.”

“It’s okay,” he says, and he means it. He pats his mum’s wrist, and then he pulls free to dump his duffel next to the dresser.

Sirius knocks on the doorframe, and they both jump a little. “Pete’s expecting us. We’d better head.”

James nods, and kisses his mother on the cheek. “We won’t be ages.”

Peter’s street looks exactly the same as James remembers, except that all the curtains are drawn on the Evans house as they pass it. Lily’s light isn’t even on.

(He threw enough rocks at her window during sixth form that he’ll never forget the sight of her, in one of her dad’s old t-shirts and pants, silhouetted by the - and he’d made fun of her for this - soft pink light of her lamp.)

That window is a void space now, silent and nothing. He wonders if she’s in there.

“Hurry up, you sad fucker - if you start pining over Evans again as well, I’m going back to London.” It’s an empty threat, they both know it, but James looks away from the sleeping house anyway, and half jogs to catch Sirius up.

Peter hugs them both rather bodily, considering he was only in London to visit three weeks ago.

Mrs Pettigrew fusses over them for a few minutes - “My, James, how gaunt you look - it’s that city air, I’d bet my life on it, it’s no good for you!” - before Pete cuts her off with an exasperated mum, and leads them into the den.

“Smash?” Peter asks, and James nods his approval, and Sirius grunts in a way that seems to indicate yes.

Sirius and James fight over the only beanbag–

(There had been two, once upon a time, then Sirius had gone through his punk phase, and the flimsy fabric had been no match for his safety pins.)

James is the victor, but that doesn’t mean much, because Sirius just sits on top of him anyway while Peter turns on the PlayStation, and then Sirius says, “Why didn’t you tell mum we’re moving back?” and James is in a foul mood, just like that.

“Because,” James says, giving Sirius a shove that leaves him sprawled unceremoniously on the floor, “if I tell her that, then I’ll have to tell her I quit my job, then she’ll ask why I quit, then I’ll have to tell her I fucking hate engineering, and that she and dad paid for a degree in it for nothing because I’m never going to use it. And then she’ll ask what about Elenore, then I’ll have to tell her that Elenore cheated on me with a guy who looks a lot less like Harry Styles than she’s been telling everyone he does, and she’ll get this knowing look like didn’t I tell you white girls are no good for you? And I just don’t want to deal with that, yet.”

“Christ,” says Peter, and hands him a controller.

Two rounds in, when Peter is changing the settings from six stock to one, because he reckons it’s more fun that way, James’ phone chirps, and he gets this weird, apprehensive feeling when he sees Marlene McKinnon’s name in the notification, so he ignores it.

(It’s a video, shared to his timeline. He’d been young, and drunk, and in what he thought had been love, and it was the best night of his life, the night that he and Lily had lost their shit to a fucking Joy Division song at the roller disco that’s been sans roller since 1981.)

James says, “Are the Evanses away?”

Peter goes stiff for a second, and then, “Nah. I’ve seen Petunia around. The curtains have been shut since Papa Evans passed.”

“Did you go to the funeral?”

“‘Course,” Pete says. “Whole town did, just about. No-one’s seen Lily since,” he adds, because he knows James can’t bring himself to ask. “Let’s play - look, it’s sudden death, oh no don’t Sirius! Don’t just throw yourself off the edge, you’re spoiling it!”

Dinner is a funny affair, not in that it’s actually funny, but that it’s completely silent, which is the strange sort of funny. Euphemia keeps looking at James when she thinks he can’t see, but he knows what it feels like to have his mother’s eyes on him, knows the weight of it better than anything.

“I think I’ll go to bed,” he says, when he’s only halfway through his food, because he can’t stand it anymore. He hasn’t been alone in a week and a half, hasn’t been alone since he came home from dinner with Elenore and not-Harry Styles, hasn’t been alone since Sirius climbed  into bed with him that night.

“Remus gets in tomorrow,” Sirius reminds him, and he nods as he kisses his mother’s cheek, and takes his plate to the kitchen.

He sets it down quietly, and chokes back a sob, and lets his feet carry him into the back garden. He can see the whole town from here, but suddenly he doesn’t want to, so he takes off his glasses, and that solves that problem.

He lets his feet carry him further, and his fingers brush over petals, over leaves, over petals. He finds his hands full, somehow, and he lets his feet carry him further, past the back of the property, and down the hill, and out, and out, and away. He wonders when he’ll stop needing to get away.

Sirius is curled up on James’ bed when he gets back.

“Told Mum you were in the bath when she came to check,” he yawns when James shakes him softly. “Remember Remus gets in tomorrow.”

James stands, itching to cross the hall to Sirius’ empty bed. “I know,” he says quietly.

She intercepts him on the footpath outside her house. She looks like hell, and he wishes all of a sudden that he’d gone with Sirius to pick Remus up from the station because he doesn’t want to face her alone.

“Did you leave flowers on my father’s grave?” she asks, and it’s almost a challenge, an accusation. He nods, meekly. “Why?”

“Because he was a good man, and I’m glad I knew him, even if it wasn’t as well as I,” or you, “might have liked,” he says, and it’s the truth. He knows it’s the truth, because it makes her cry, and then somehow she’s sobbing into his shoulder, and he’s rubbing her back, and neither of them quite remembers how they got there.

“You weren’t at the funeral,” she says, quietly. “I needed you at the funeral,” she doesn’t, loudly.

He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t try to give her any excuses - no “I didn’t know” (false), or “Elenore would never have let me” (true), or “I was afraid” (truer) - and she seems relieved by that, almost.

“Come in?” she asks.

“I can’t,” he says. “The boys are all waiting at Pete’s.”

She has this half smile on - the one that always meant that she thought it was so cool that they were all so close, and loyal, and in love with each other, and she says, “Come ‘round tomorrow, then?”

And against his better judgement, he says, “Okay.”

She smiles softly, or, no, she looks at him softly, and maybe the smile is just a side effect. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands, or his  face, or himself, so he says, “I have to go,” and goes.

“Where’ve you been?” Pete asks when James appears in the doorway to the den, and Remus stands to greet him. Sirius does not.

“Ran into Evans up the street.”

“How is she?” Remus asks.

“How would you be?” James says, and Remus concedes that. “She wanted me to come inside.”

“Grief sex,” Sirius says, loudly.

“Man, shut up, my mum’s here!” Peter hisses, punching Sirius in the thigh.

“Peter, you’re almost 23,” Sirius deadpans.

“We don’t all have shitty parents who don’t–”

“Pete,” James warns, because he’s not in the mood to cross that line right now. “Anyway I told her I couldn’t so she asked me to come over tomorrow.”

“Grief sex,” Sirius says again, quieter. The look on Peter’s face says it’s still not quiet enough.

“Do you think?”

“Well, you have a history, don’t you?”

Even Remus seems to be on Sirius’ side now.

“Oh come on, that was once!”

“Once is enough,” Remus says sagely.

“Oh, fuck off, then. Are we going to do something or what?”

Peter rolls his eyes and puts on Stardust.

There are seventeen IKEA candles burning in Lily’s room when she lets him in. He counts them because she lets him in, and then sits down in her desk chair and doesn’t say anything. He sits down on the edge of her bed, and they avoid looking at each other for a while.

Mrs Evans brings them tea, after what seems like an eternity of studying the blutack marks on the walls. “I guessed that you still take your tea the same way,” she says. He doesn’t, but he thanks her and takes it anyway.

Lily gets up to close the door behind her mum, and then she surprises him by joining him on the bed. “How is, um, what’s-her-name?”

“Elenore?”

“Yeah, her.”

“No idea.”

“You broke up?”

“Yeah. It’s a long story, and not a clean one.”

“That’s why you’re back,” she says. It isn’t a question. He’s barely seen her in four years, but she still speaks to him like she knows him, better than anyone. Better than Elenore ever did. Fuck, he thinks.

“Doesn’t seem so important, in retrospect.”

She sizes him up, looks at him like she can’t believe he could be this daft. “It’s important, James. Shit things don’t invalidate other shit things. There’s more than one type of heartbreak.”

And then, because he hasn’t said it, and they both need him to, “I’m sorry I couldn’t come.”

“It’s okay. I mean, no, it wasn’t - I was so angry with you. I was so angry right up until I say you yesterday, and then I remembered you’re just a guy, and you can’t make everything better.” She takes a sip of her tea then, so he does too, just so he doesn’t have to respond. He doesn’t know how. “I’ve missed you.”

“You should have come to London,” he says. “To visit.” To live.

“I could never afford it.” I could never afford it. “You’re back now, anyway.”

“Not forever.”

“Are you going to go back, then?”

He thinks of Elenore and not-Harry Styles, and their facebook engagement announcement, and about how Elenore’s stopped posting instagram photos from the waist down, and he says, “No, I don’t think so.”

“Where are you gonna go, then?” she asks, and she’s playing with the corner of her quilt, worrying at the wool like he does when he feels like the world is too much.

“Dunno. Dublin, maybe. Prague, or Budapest, or I think Sirius wants to go to New York.”

“It’s like you don’t want me to visit,” she jokes, or doesn’t joke as she fixes him with a stare that feels like she’s thinking about jumping out the window.

“Maybe I don’t,” he jokes, or doesn’t joke, and she swallows, hard. “Of course I do.” He links a finger with hers, drags her hand away from the quilt. “Hey. Of course I do.”

She takes her hand back, takes an improbably large gulp of tea. Leaves her heart behind.

She puts on an episode of the IT Crowd, the street Countdown one, and they watch it without any particular emotion, and when it’s over, he leaves.

“What happened between you and Elenore?” Remus asks, when James has sat down, and flagged the server over, and asked for a pot of English Breakfast with soy on the side. He already has a coffee, the rude git.

“Nothing good,” James says tightly.

“C'mon, James. You have to tell us eventually.”

“What’s there to tell?” James sighs. “She started coming home smelling like smoke, and then she stopped drinking, and then she took me out to dinner and Ben fucking Adams was there too–”

“Ben Adams? The guy on her instagram who looks like Harry Styles?”

“He doesn’t! He doesn’t look like him! In like, that one photo, kind of.”

“Sore spot?”

“He doesn’t. He was there too, with his hand up her skirt, and she leans over and tells me that he’s in our relationship, tells doesn’t ask. And I say, isn’t this something we should discuss? And she tells me that he’s in, or I’m out.”

“So you were out.”

“So I was out.”

“Alright then. And what happened between you and Lily?”

“Ah,” James says. “That.” It’s been three days and, “I don’t really know,” is still the only thing to say.

“It’ll work out,” Remus says, as the waitress comes back with James’ tea. “Frank Longbottom’s DJing the roller disco tonight,” he says.

“Where’d you hear that?” James asks.

“His floor is my ceiling. I hear everything he says.”

“I forgot about that.” The waitress puts down the pot, and his saucer, and his cup, and the little jug of milk, and he thinks that they probably went to school together now that he looks at her properly.

“So are we going?”

“Going where?” James asks, looking back at Remus.

“The roller disco. Are you even listening? Like, listening to the words I’m saying?”

James throws a sugar packet at him. “Why would we go?”

“Because we know Frank.”

“It’s going to be full of seventeen-year-olds.”

“Yeah, but we know Frank.”

“You already said that.”

“We can get him to play like, actual good music. Music from this century.”

James thinks about the video on his timeline, and frowns. “You know Sirius will…”

“Make him play Gasolina seventeen times? Yes. I already foresaw that. And I decided it’s worth it.”

James stares at Remus, stares and stares, and then says, “Okay. Let’s go to the roller disco.”

He calls her on the busride home, which surprises them both. She picks up, which surprises them more. “Hey,” she says.

“We’re going to the roller disco tonight.”

“I can’t,” she says.

“Alright,” he says.

“I just…”

“It’s okay. That’s where we’ll be, if you need us.” He hangs up, and he’s missed his stop, and he wants to kick a hole in a fence, any fence. What the fuck are you doing, he thinks. He flips off a garden gnome, then he flips off the one next to it. He flips off every single garden gnome the whole way home.

Sirius takes forever to get ready, and by the time he turns up to Remus’ house in holographic shorts and a mesh shirt, the session’s already started. Frank laughs and laughs when they walk into the roller disco, but about what exactly, they can’t be sure.

(Maybe it’s just the sight of them, familiar and iconic even after four years, or maybe it’s the mesh top. Maybe it’s Peter’s flares. Maybe it’s Remus pulling a flask out from under his snapback. Maybe it’s the way James leaps up and latches onto the edge of the DJ booth to give him a quick kiss.)

James’ phone buzzes halfway through I Believe In A Thing Called Love.

He picks up on the second ring. “I’m in a taxi,” she says.

“Where are you going?” he asks.

“The darker side of town. Will you wait for me?”

“Of course,” he says, and she hangs up. “I’m going outside,” he tells Peter, who nods, “to wait for Evans.”

“I take it Sirius is here,” is what she says as he pays the taxi driver for her, and they take a moment to feel the bass from Gasolina through the closed hall door.

“Yep. C'mon.”

He takes her hand, or maybe she takes his, or maybe they meet somewhere in the middle. He pulls open the door and leads her through the dance floor, up to the DJ booth.

“I don’t know what to ask for,” she shouts over a ella le gusta la gasolina.

“Really?” he shouts back, over dame más gasolina.

She gets this look on her face, all mischief and excitement, and she ushers him back to the boys with an, “It’s a secret!”

He watches her catch Frank’s attention, and him lean down to hear her, and then Frank looks over at James as he nods, which sends a shiver down James’ spine.

She takes both his hands and drags him into the middle of the dance floor, and it’s just in time, because-

“Holy shit!” he shouts, and she grins at him as she starts dancing, and it’s such an inappropriate song for the mood of the place, and some seventeen-year-old is shouting what the fuck is this, but he joins her, and everything is going wrong but they’re so happy, and maybe he is in love with her, and–

Love, love will tear us apart,