the_debt_of_time

He sat up and stared at her, offended. "What do you mean nothing? I came chasing
after you. I tried to apologise before you bloody hit me, and then... Merlin, Mia, you
know how I feel about you!"
"How?" she asked point-blank.
Sirius froze.
"See? You know how you feel, and I know how I feel, but you can't say the words."
"I have my reasons," he said softly, his eyes downcast.
"Your family?"
"I... I have to keep you safe," he admitted in a low voice. "It's like there's
something inside of me... the deepest part of me that needs to keep you safe. It's always
been there. Since the first time I ever saw you. When Snivellus shoved you down, I just...
I felt anger—something triggered inside of me—and I needed to make sure you were okay.
That sounds ridiculous, right?"
"No. You've always kept me safe. You're my constant protector, Sirius."
He looked up at her and saw the way she stared past him, through him, as though
he was not there. Sometimes she looked at him like she expected something—someone—
that he was not.
When she reached out and gently touched his face, he flinched regretfully. He could
not remember the last time that he had done that. Fear of touch had been instilled in him
from a young age. Walburga had never been affectionate with him, but she had turned
cruel when he started mimicking the voices he heard from the front windows of
Grimmauld Place. Muggles walked back and forth to and from work, and Sirius listened to
them with curiosity. They all sounded so different from one another and especially from
his parents. When he echoed their accents and language, Walburga struck him hard across
the cheek. His father, predictably, did nothing to stop her.
Thinking about what he wanted to protect Mia from caused him to remember too
vividly. He hoped that she had not noticed the way he briefly pulled away from her, but
the sympathetic look in her eyes said otherwise.
Sirius closed his eyes. Please don't pity me.
It hurt to see the way he pulled back at her touch. Sirius looked like he was in pain
the moment her fingers grazed over his cheek. She knew that he had never received a gentle
hand at home, and she wondered if he bothered to intimately, gently, touch all the girls he