Summary: James makes no attempt to hide that he's uncomfortable with Sirius and Remus being a couple, but when he loses a bet and must act as Sirius' slave for a day, he's forced to come face to face with his friends' relationship.

Warnings: Mild language, angsty beginning, fandom cliché

"King's Ransom"

"It's just weird, okay?" James said.

"It's not," Sirius replied coldly. He took a deep drag from his cigarette and stared out over the lake, not looking at James.

"It is. The idea of you and Remus... that two have my best mates have been... How long has this been going on?"

Sirius shrugged. "Since the end of last term."

"Last term?" James exclaimed in shock. "Merlin. I can't believe it... the two of you doing... things. You're really serious about this? D-do you love him?"

"You love him too."

"But that's different! He's my friend. I don't want to kiss him, or grope him in a broom cupboard or something like that. And why didn't you say anything? In the summer the two of you would have been – at my house." James was unable to keep the horrified look off his face at the thought of what might have gone on in the guest room of the Potter residence.

Sirius sighed heavily. "Because I knew you would react like this. Look, we're not going to start snogging in front of you or anything, so you don't have to worry. Nothing's changed."

"But it's weird. You understand what I mean, don't you? We've all been friends all these years... It just seems so wrong." James glanced over at Sirius, hoping that Sirius understood his dilemma, but there was a dark look on Sirius' face.

"That's not for you to decide," Sirius said. His voice was flat and hard.

James sighed. "Okay, okay, let's not fight about it. We're brothers, aren't we?"

"Yeah," Sirius grunted. He flicked his cigarette butt into the water.

"And I guess – I guess it's okay. Just keep it away from me, alright?"

"Yeah," Sirius grunted again.

James knew he had really mucked this one up. He always had a way of mucking up important things like this. Sirius had originally hesitated from telling James because he was worried about how James would react, and now James had gone and done exactly what Sirius hadn't wanted him to do. But what did Sirius expect? Of course James wasn't going to be pleasantly surprized that two of his best mates were queering off together. It just didn't seem right.

But still, James wanted his friends to be happy. As long as they kept it to themselves, James would be able to deal with it. Sirius was practically his brother and he couldn't grudge something like this against him.

"Hey, race you back to the castle?" James suggested. A competition always put Sirius in a better mood and a race would be especially effective; James had always been the faster runner of the two of them and he'd won every race they'd ever had together, so Sirius was infinitely eager for a chance to finally beat James. Maybe James would even let Sirius win today's race to bolster his spirits.

A mischievous twinkle had appeared in Sirius' eyes and James could easily recognize it as the look that meant that Sirius was coming up with a brilliant idea. "Bet?"

"What did you have in mind?" James asked, grinning. He was relieved to see that Sirius' bad mood had been so quickly lifted.

"Slave for a day."

James grinned. It was an extreme prize, but then again, they both had a tendency to take things to extremes. "You're on!"

They quickly got into place, poised to take off. There was no way that James would let Sirius win this race now, not when the stakes were this high. Sirius would make an admirable attempt to win the race, but James knew he'd still be able to outrun Sirius.

"Three... two... one!"

Immediately they both took off at full speed. Feet pounded over the uneven ground as they raced up the path to the castle. James was in the lead, though Sirius was very close behind, clearly putting in every ounce of effort he had to try to beat James.

Once they reached the grass around the castle, James knew he'd be able to win this. Here, free from the uneven ground of the dirt path, he'd be able to use his long legs and full speed. James was quickly able to gain a larger lead over Sirius.

James grinned as they neared the front doors. This race was his. Sirius would have to be his slave for the day, and James was already plotting out the things he would force Sirius to do: using Sirius' flare for poetics, James would make Sirius help him write a profound love poem that would surely win Evans' heart.

But something was going wrong. Sirius was gaining on him. Sirius was level with him. Sirius was ahead of him. James tried to force his own legs to move faster, but it was no use. They raced up the steps to the front door and Sirius' foot hit the top step first – the clear winner.

"YES!" Sirius shouted in triumph, jumping for joy even though he was very out of breath.

"H-how..." James panted, bent over and gasping for air.

"I've been training. And you-" Sirius took a few gulps of air, still trying to get his breath back, "you're going to be my slave tomorrow!"

Sirius let out a whoop of triumph, and James groaned.

Judging by the embarrassed, slightly terrified look that Remus had given James in the morning, James guessed that Remus had heard that James now knew about the previously secret relationship. But James didn't have time to think about that right now because Sirius took up his "slave for a day" prize almost immediately.

As far as James could tell, he was meant to be something of a butler for Sirius today. His first task was retrieving Sirius' slippers (since when had Sirius even worn slippers?) and now he was holding a towel for Sirius as Sirius brushed his teeth.

"Towel," Sirius commanded, reaching blindly for the towel once he had rinsed his mouth. James pushed the towel into his hand. Sirius dried his face, then dropped the towel on the floor for James to pick up. James grumbled.

"Ah, what's that, slave? I command that there will be no grumbling today!" Sirius said with far more cheer and smugness than James could stomach right now. It was times like this when James cursed his own devotion to the Marauder Code of Ethics Regarding Bet Fulfillment, because he very badly wanted to hex Sirius right now.

There was a creak of the bathroom door opening and Remus stepped inside, clad in pyjamas and a dressing grown.

A ridiculous grin spread across Sirius' face. "Moony!" he cried happily, bounding over to Remus. With one hand on either side of Remus' face, Sirius pulled him down for a kiss.

James would have laughed at the look of abject, frozen horror on Remus' face at being kissed in front of someone else if James hadn't been so shocked by the sight in front of him. "Eurgh! Sirius, you said you wouldn't-"

"Ah ah ah!" Sirius said, wagging his finger at James in admonishment. "No grumbling."

"But-"

"No grumbling."

Luckily this seemed to be the end of the early-morning snog exhibitionism, and Sirius let Remus go about getting ready for the day without any more surprise shows of affection. Sirius and James left to go down to breakfast, where Sirius made James butter his toast, sugar his coffee, and read the newspaper aloud.

The school was well aware of what was going on; this type of behaviour had come to be expected from the Marauders. Just last month Peter had foolishly bet his own arm in a drinking contest, and, once the Marauders had remembered that they had made the bet in the first place (and realized that Peter's arm would need to stay attached to his body, probably), Peter had been forced to carry textbooks, take notes, and embarrassingly shake hands with whichever Slytherins were decided to be the grimiest. Before that, Remus had lost a bet where the punishment was wearing ridiculous hats of the Marauders' choosing for a whole week. He had alternated between an outrageously tall top hat, a Viking's helmet, a cowboy hat, and a strangely charming fez. So to the rest of the school, a "slave for the day" arrangement was hardly anything to take notice of. It was practically normal, or at least as close to normal as the Marauders could ever be considered to be.

Sirius' orders during morning classes were surprisingly few. James had at least expected that Sirius would order James to take notes, but neither Sirius nor James ever took notes, and Sirius apparently didn't see the point in starting now. Sirius did, however, order James to cast a jelly-legs jinx on Snivellus, but it was hardly an order; James had been about to do it anyway.

Afternoon classes continued in much the same way. By the time the last class of the day rolled around, James was starting to worry. In a typical "slave for a day" arrangement, James should be tap-dancing on McGonagall's desk right now. Instead, James had only been ordered to "Pass that ink bottle, will you?" It made James slightly nervous and he couldn't shake the feeling that this was all leading up to something terrible.

After classes was always the Marauders' designated 'alone time', where they all purposefully spent time apart from each other in an attempt to ward off the insanity and rage that could result from spending all of their days and nights together. It was with horror that James realized that Sirius' and Remus' 'alone time' was actually their 'together time', and, being that James was still bound to act as Sirius' slave, he would be at Sirius' side during this time.

"Look – if you two want to have time together then there's no point in having me here. This is the time that I usually spend pursuing Evans, so I'll just go do that, okay?"

"No," Sirius said. He was sitting beside Remus on Remus' bed. Remus was looking just as uncomfortable as James felt. "You lost the bet, you have to be my slave for the whole day."

"But why would you even want me here? It's so weird that – Merlin, I don't want to watch that!" Sirius had crawled into Remus' lap and started to kiss him, and James' hands flew up to cover his eyes.

"You don't have to watch. You just have to stay here. We're not going to do anything more than kiss, anyway."

"Uh, Sirius," Remus said hesitantly, pulling back from Sirius a bit. He was clearly feeling very unnerved about being so affectionate in front of someone else after they had kept their relationship under wraps for so long. "Maybe James is right. This must be very uncomfortable for him right now."

"Thank you!" James cried, his hands still clamped over his eyes.

"No. He stays. He does whatever I want. He can keep his eyes closed if he wants, and we don't even have to pay attention to him. He can ignore us, and we'll ignore him."

Remus sighed. "Fine." There was no point in trying to argue with Sirius once he set his mind on something.

James sat with his back facing the two of them and with his eyes closed as well, just in case. So this was the terrible thing that the day was leading up to. He did his best to ignore them, but with nothing else in the room to distract him, James had no choice but to listen to their conversation.

Remus was awkward at first, hesitant about being so open while James was in the room, but eventually Remus started to relax more. The conversation between Remus and Sirius was easy, not much different that the types of conversations they normally had, other than a few flirty comments and the occasionally sentence that was punctuated by a kiss.

James still didn't want to be here, but as he listened to their conversation, his reason changed. At the beginning, James hadn't wanted to be here because the idea that two of his best friends being involved in any kind of romantic relationship was so disturbing that he could hardly bear it. But now, James just felt guilty for interrupting. This was their only time they had together because they had to keep their relationship secret from the rest of the school. Really, James felt that they should be entitled to all the alone time that they wanted. James felt that his friends deserved to be happy, and they clearly were happy together.

Designated 'alone time' eventually ended. Peter returned to the dormitory and regular Marauder activities resumed as usual. They worked on their latest prank for a bit before they went down to supper. Sirius' only command for James was to cut up his chicken for him, which wasn't too grievous of a task. After dinner, Remus and Peter settled down for a game of chess, and Sirius pulled James upstairs for a private talk.

"I release you from your slave duties," Sirius said solemnly.

James grinned. "Wow, an early release? And today wasn't even that bad!"

Sirius was chewing his lip in a way that James knew to mean that something was really bothering Sirius. "James, I have something to tell you," he said quietly.

"Go on," James urged, starting to get worried.

"I... I cheated."

It took James a moment process this and understand what Sirius was saying, and hot anger coursed through him when he did.

"You cheated? Merlin, Sirius, how could you? Do you have any idea how much he cares about you? Any idea of what you're throwing away?" James' voice was rising in anger.

"I-" Sirius started to say, then stopped. "What?"

"You cheated on Remus, you complete bastard! I thought you cared! The way you two were this afternoon, I thought it meant something! And then you've gone and done something like this." James was pushing back his sleeves. Magic wouldn't be enough to clobber Sirius. James was going to pound him with his bare fists. "Black, I'm going to give you such a beating that-"

"No, James, I mean I cheated in the race!"

James stopped cracking his knuckles. "In the race?"

"Yesterday when we raced, I cheated so I could win. I cast a Swiftfoot charm on myself. But-" Sirius said, continuing before James could interject, "I did it for a good reason. I knew that if you were my slave for the day you'd have to see me and Remus together, and once you saw that things weren't that different than the way they've always been, you wouldn't be so uptight about it. And it worked, didn't it? By the end of the day you were so supportive of us that you were ready to knock my head in because you though I had defiled Remus' honour!"

James blinked. Had he really been played like that? He stroked his chin, pondering. "It wasn't as weird as I was expecting," he said contemplatively.

"So you see? A good reason for cheating, and everything worked out fine in the end."

James fixed Sirius with a level look. "Sirius, I assume you're familiar with the Marauder Code of Ethics. You are aware of the punishment for cheating on a bet."

Sirius groaned. "I know. Repay the original prize – double. Two days of being your slave."

A delighted grin spread across James' face. "Two whole days. Just think of all the love poems we can write! Evans won't know what hit her!"