Never Have I Ever...

Sirius's Mistake.

Of course you are more than friends! Charlie is young, whole, and comes from a good family. ~I must be pretty stupid to read into one night when you were both technically working. What was I thinking?! ~ Sirius berated himself.

He walked through his front door into the empty house, the two coffees long forgotten in a rubbish bin outside the Ministry entrance.

~I love you too, darling.~ Charlie's words kept playing in his head.

Bent over his kitchen table, hands gripping the back of a chair, Sirius shook his head, scoffed humorlessly to himself and for the first time in his life he did not stop the words 'this is not fair' pulse through his brain.

There were three times in Sirius' life that he could definitely consider unfair: when he realised the type of family he had been born into, when James and Lily died, and when he got sent to Azkaban instead of Peter.

Knowing how destructive that sentence could be, he refused to give it room in his head. As a young adult Sirius was many things: reckless, impulsive, rash, but to survive Azkaban like he did, he had to not feel sorry for himself, stick to the facts; thoughts that carried far less emotive power and try to remember who he was.

Sirius was incredibly mentally resilient to be able to not succumb to the dementors despair by madness or death like most of the poor inmates. In some instances he was mentally stronger than his pairs. However, in others, being incarcerated for 12 years during his 20s had left Sirius in a stunted and somewhat delayed sense of emotional development. Azkaban had stolen from him many simple and often taken for granted life lessons; first heart break, first rejection, first real adult relationship and the accompanying learning curve these lessons provide.

Visions of you and Charlie squeezed his heart in a suffocating way stirring up a wave of emotions such as loss, sadness, and if only's as well as a self destructive phase Sirius should have learnt from in his younger years. Not being able to handle anymore situations in which he emerged the loser, Sirius went out. Then out again the next night when it was Friday and you would be going out on your date with Charlie. He continued this two nights later, the night after, and then more nights after that.

Sirius got drunk, really drunk and threw himself into the willing arms of many women in the hope they would soothe his soul and make him feel love.

You see you had not only awakened the emotions of lust and desire in Sirius, you had made him want things; to love and be loved.

This did not go away after realising you couldn't be his so he followed an old pattern when his needs weren't met by trying, in vain, to get these needs met elsewhere.

It was futile and by the second week he realised he was only going to make himself feel worse.

No one felt, smelt, or tasted like you and as your name fell from his lips when he came he understood that though, for the briefest of moments at the height of his pleasure, did he feel good, when he opened his eyes and didn't see you there just the warm gaze of a stranger he knew he needed to stop.

Apart from hurting his heart, he was also putting his health at risk. A scare that came to nothing in his teens, taught Sirius always to make sure to practise safe sex and receive regular check ups but he couldn't hold alcohol like he used to and he was getting sloppy. If he wasn't careful soon he could be in trouble. So he stopped.

You had not failed to notice Sirius' new stony façade. He constantly smelt like cigarettes, was brief and distant at meetings and - according to Tonks who had been filled in by Remus – had turned up to missions tired, smelling also of stale alcohol and multiple different women's cologne.