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Chapter Text

James Potter is smitten by Regulus Black.

His best mate’s little brother.

And isn’t that the greatest set up for the greatest tragedy?

***

It’s Wednesday, because no one and nothing, not even the universe they exist in, thought much of it. Regulus is already here in the cafe, sat, ankles crossed under the small circle table next to the window. He’s had two shops of espresso and a pastry that was too nice for this place ad too expensive for this city.

James Potter has absolutely no class and even less taste.

And Regulus waits, because that’s all he’s ever good for. Whether he’s tardy or punctual, his timing is always wrong. James is right on time, late by thirty minutes, stood right before him, towering if if you will, and he stinks of….

God.

What is that, oil?

“You cut your hair.” James says.

Regulus looks up, cautious. “You didn’t.”

There’s a half smile between them, and then nothing again. Regulus focuses on the clink of a spoon on ceramic and Regulus writes in the corner of napkins. James thinks it’s pretty—poetry, but he never asks, of course. He has a shoeboxof the ones Regulus leaves behind anyway.

And James looks at Regulus now, waits for invitation to sit, which never comes. He sits anyway.

They never did what they were allowed to do. James remembers: Sirius ran away, too young to have done so, too old to have been in that place for so long. Sirius Black went to James Potter and Regulus Black stayed in that empty estate with his mother’s perfume on his coat and a new kind of eerie quiet in the black, rich, soulless walls. He had felt so erased, he didn’t bothered with anything for a two months.

James kissed him three months later, in his car. After a party where Mary was laughing with Lily like they’d known each other in another life, like they’d seen all the beauty in every world, and still, all they wanted to look at was each other.

Regulus was a man of habit, of consistency and predictability, so of course, he tasted like sparkles and guilt. He said, “Don’t ever tell Sirius.”

James didn’t and still hasn’t. He’d bring the stars down for Regulus, if he said he was lonely. And he’d gut himself and tie a bow around himself with his intestines if Regulus desired a gift. But Regulus desired silence, not flattery. And James was on the brink of insanity trying to grant him that much. His flat is full, and his phone fuller. He’d get drunk and text Regulus, because he could only do so when he was running away from sobriety. And nothing was stopping him because Regulus hadn’t blocked his number.

You make everything so much worse for me and I hate you for it. Come over.

I can’t look at Sirius without hearing your voice. I stopped going over. I’m losing him for you and I don’t even have you.

You held my hand once, for no reason at all. I remember that. Do you love me still? Did you ever? Could you? Reggie, I love you.

I dream about you driving away and I wake up angry.

And Regulus Black texted back once or twice, when it was three in the morning, when he was at his peak of awareness.

This doesn’t end well for either of us. I wanted to be good once. I would’ve stayed if you asked me. But you didn’t, so let this go.

***

They fuck in the rain. Behind a gas station on the edge of town where the lights don’t know if they want to be on or off. James bruises Regulus’s hips and Regulus scratches lines into James’s shoulders. He bleeds easy.

“Anyone could see us, baby black.” James gasped.

“Don’t call me that—”

“Would you rather just baby, then?” James laughed, thrusting in, nearly toppling them both over, which Regulus seemed to love.

“More—” Said Regulus.

“Ask nicely, baby.”

Regulus found it in him to scoff, pushing back hard against James, “James, more.”

Right. Because Regulus wasn’t nice.

James turned them, leaning his back against a wall, and leaning Regulus against him. Regulus’s head fell back, hand on his mouth, but that just wouldn’t do.

James tore his hand away, kissing his neck, “Let me hear all those pretty sounds, Baby,”

“Someone could hear—” Whined Regulus. He was such a forsaken mess, he was the fallen angel. All those prim manners tossed away when he was touched in the right ways.

James bit down, his sense dimmed, his legs shaking as he tries keeping Regulus held up at the right angle to push into him right, he wants Regulus to see the stars of his constellation.

James snaps his hips forward, tugging on Regulus’s hair, licking down his neck. “Open wide for me.” Said James, pulling his neck all the way back. Regulus eyes are glistening, tears tricking sweetly, and he beams as his mouth opens, tongue sticking out. God.

James smirks and then he spits, “Swallow.”

Regulus does, James sees his throat flexing, then Regulus twitches,

“James, I’m so close—”

James groaned, eyes finding Regulus an angry red shade, swollen and leaking, and completely untouched by either of them. The desperate boy.

“And I haven’t even touched your prick yet, baby—”

Regulus quite literally exploded, and James was right behind him, cumming from the hazy smile plastered on Regulus’s face.

***

Regulus says, “I saw Sirius yesterday.”

James exhales. “Yeah?”

“He looked happy. Remus makes him soft.”

“Good,” James says, like it doesn’t hurt, like it doesn’t seem worthy enough to kill himself over.

Like he isn’t already thinking about how Regulus isn’t soft, and never will be.

The war is different in this world. It’s quieter and much more domestic. A mother who stopped calling and a brother who won’t come home and A cousin who forgets how to smile when she sees a baby.

Lily and Mary live in an orange house, which is just farcical. There are plants in the kitchen and scratched records playing at night. They talk about peace as though it’s a dog they might one day adopt. As though Mary isn’t deathly allergic to canines.

Marlene and Dorcas send postcards from Berlin, of all places. Barty writes poetry on Evan’s back in blue ink. Alice dyes her hair the color of Narcissa’s eyes, which is even more farcical.

James walks through it all like a specter, only Regulus sees him.

There’s a party.

Sirius and Remus dance in the living room, tangled and laughing and ever so bright. Sirius glows, he wears eyeliner and Remus calls him honey. What’s funny is that Remus doesn’t dance, he doesn’t like to move much at all, pain has become his constant. But for Sirius, pain is but a figment of his imagination, and nothing if more powerfully persuasive than Sirius Black’s grin. It’s all worth it for Remus.

James drinks too much and, of course, Regulus doesn’t drink at all.

They end up on the porch, somehow, sometime. Details blur away, irrelevant in the face of love and catastrophe.

“I can’t keep doing this,” James says. He means it this time, he thinks.

Regulus lights a cigarette and passes it to James. “I know.”

James doesn’t leave.

Regulus says, “You’re the only thing I want.”

James replies, “You don’t know how to want things, Reggie.”

It was cruel, but true. Like most of what they are.

Regulus softens down, “My mother used to brush my hair so hard it bled, and there would be hair all over the floor that she’d make me clean. Sirius went to you and he never looked back. Narcissa loved me only when no one else could see. And you—” Regulus sighs, “You’re James bloody Potter, brother thief. Heart breaker. And of all people— I’ve—” He sighs again, snatches the cigarette back and takes a hit.

James listens since it’s really all he can do.

Then Regulus looks at him, tired and sappy and so empty. “I want to be chosen, James. I don’t care much for love.”

James doesn’t know the difference until it’s too late. It was on another Wednesday, during another heatstroke. The one day, god, the one time Regulus Black doesn’t show.

James waits anyway. He writes a note on a napkin,

I never chose you because I was afraid I’d mean it.

He leaves it there, he takes an orange pastry, doesn’t take the coffee, and doesn’t look back.

Weeks later, Sirius finds James on his doorstep. His eyes are crimson red. Sirius doesn’t ask, he just pulls him inside. It gave him flashbacks he had to hit his head with a closed fist to be rid of it.

There’s music playing, a stairway to heaven. Remus is in the kitchen. James sits on the couch. His hands shake and he doesn’t try to still them.

“I think I ruined him,” he says.

Sirius sighs. “He was ruined before you, Jamie.” Sirius says, “You were the first to stay, is all.”

“Maybe—”

“Yeah, Maybe. Look at Remus and I. But… You aren’t Remus and Reg isn’t me. You should get your ass to him and make things right, but only if you know that, James.”

James nods.

“Do you know that?”

“I’ve always known that. It’s him that doesn’t.”

Sirius smiles, looking up and past James. James’s eyes follow Sirius’s to find Remus standing in the doorway of the kitchen, grinning,

“Then make him know, James Potter.” Says Remus.

Chapter Text

Then make him know, James Potter.

The words pose in James like a sickness, nestling themselves between rib and lung, consoling deep where he cannot touch them but can feel their burn. James sits there, hunched, hands open against his knees, as though the whole room might spill out if he holds himself any tighter. He feels Sirius watching him the way one watches a mirror; half seeing themselves, half hoping for distortion.

He laughs. Not because anything is funny (God, nothing has been funny for a long time), but because the sound feels like proof that he is still here, that he hasn’t split in two somewhere between shame and appetite. Remus disappears back into the kitchen, the smell of onions catching in the air. Sirius’s knee bounces. James’s palms sweat. He thinks, I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to do this because I want it too much.

It is an aged kind of hurt that he’s feeling, the one that starts with Sirius. Sirius, who ran to him, who curled up like a half-drowned animal in his childhood bed, who made James the keeper of secrets and bruises he had not earned but carried anyway. That night, he’d sworn that he would never fail Sirius Black. And yet here he is, decades later, surging in the knowledge that he has failed Sirius’s brother a thousand times over, quietly, invisibly, with the sort of negligence that doesn’t look like being mean until you see it with your own eyes, until you taste its spicy, acidic flavour, not one you could ever grow to love. He’s sick. He’s sick, he has to be sick, this feeling cannot be normal, and there must be a remedy for it.

Regulus. Always Regulus. The name itself feels dangerous, the acerbity of it hooking on his teeth, delicate as glass and twice as liable to cut him open. He thinks of him the way one thinks of an accident; slow-motion, replayed endlessly, searching for the moment where it all could have been undone if only he’d turned the wheel differently, pressed the brakes sooner, chosen another road entirely. But James has never been good at prevention; he was born to crash.

There is something unbearable about remembering Regulus as a boy, because James hadn’t looked then. He’d been too busy shining, too loud with laughter, too intent on being liked, while Regulus stood in doorways like a phantom, hair neatly combed, hands behind his back, eyes cataloguing every impetuous brutality of the world. He must have been lonely even then, though James hadn’t seen it, hadn’t thought to look. Sirius’s stories had painted him cold, severe, their mother’s son. And James had believed it, because it was easier to believe that Regulus had chosen that path than to consider the possibility that it had been chosen for him, forced upon him, as a malleable child, a boy who’d only ever wanted his mother’s love.

But then there was that night. That party. Lily laughing with Mary, Sirius radiant as ever, and James stepping out into the dark with Regulus following like a shadow that wasn’t his but wanted to be, in some way. The kiss in the car had been clumsy, practically dubious, as if James had misstepped into it out of pity, out of curiosity, out of some fervour he hadn’t yet dared name. And yet the taste of it had dallied. Guilt, yes, but also the dizzying thrill of having caught a peek of something forbidden, something sharp and all the while precious.

James has always been greedy. That is the truth of him, the sin at the root of every mistake. He wanted Regulus, and he wanted Sirius, and he wanted Lily, and he wanted to keep every constellation of love pressed tight to his chest without admitting that they burned him alive. And what has he done with Regulus except scorch him? Except come late, leave early, demand more than he was willing to give, retreat into cowardice when faced with the choice to stay?

And yet, Regulus never locked the door. Closed it, yes, but the key never turned. That is the barbarity, the web made of it. He never said no. He never forever blocked the number. He never pulled away without leaving something behind for James to follow, like breadcrumbs to the gingerbread house. Whether that be a napkin or a cigarette half-crushed in the painted ashtray, or the muted aroma of cologne on a borrowed jumper. Regulus Black has always been a map James could not stop reading, invariant of when every turn led straight into obliteration.

Fear. That’s what it is, has always been. James has been afraid of permanece, more than he ever was of love. To choose Regulus is to admit that there is no better, no brighter, no escape. It is to admit that Regulus is not the shadow but the sun itself, small and cold and terrible, the only fixed point in James’s cluttered, sprawling universe. And to mean that choice, it would undo him. He has lived his whole life as a boy running forward, never staying long enough to feel the poundage of what he holds. To stop, to root himself in another person, to tie his existence to Regulus Black, that is to step off the edge of something expansive.

But the truth is that he already has. Every laugh he has faked in Lily’s kitchen, every time he has watched Sirius dance and pretended not to search for the younger Black in the corner, every message typed and deleted until it turned into hush, every one of those was a confession he could not articulate. He has been in love with Regulus in every way except out loud.

And what does Regulus want? Not love, not the kind James knows how to give, sloppy and golden and abundant. He wants to be chosen. James thinks of the way Regulus said it, voice breaking like glass under a footstep. I want to be chosen. He thinks of how obscene it is that Regulus, who has survived a house designed to overcome him, who has walked away from gods and monsters alike, still cannot believe he deserves that simplest of acts. Choice. He is the boy left behind when Sirius ran, the one brushed until bleeding, the one whose worth was always conditional, hidden, fragile. James cannot love him with declarations and names written behind planes in the clouds with his favourite colour smoke and still expect him to believe it. He has to choose him, every day, every hour, as the only thing that matters.

And has he done that? No. He left speechless instead of the truth and left fear instead of faith.

James’s chest hurts with the thought, with the natural acumen that the tragedy is not that Regulus does not love him, but that Regulus might, and James has not been enough to hold it. That love might already be rotting, unchosen, and utterly wasted. He pictures him, Regulus, alone in some rented flat, cigarette smoke coiling like an aureole, shoulders harsh under too-thin fabric, writing in the margins of a notebook no one will ever see. He pictures him waiting, not for James but in spite of him, because what else has he ever been taught to do except wait until someone finally notices?

Remus’s voice echoes still: Then make him know, James Potter. It's something that has been spared for James, something he does not deserve, something he just allowed himself to understand. James handles the words in his structure, in his blood, and the only thing louder than the fear is the longing. Not for love, not even for forgiveness, but for a chance to prove that he can choose, that he can stay, that he can stop being the boy who always leaves before the music ends, because he’s too afraid to think, and too afraid to be alone when he inevitably does, but also too afraid of someone seeing him to his thoughts. (Oh, why is he so afraid of being perceived?)

Because what is the alternative? To keep drinking, keep pretending, keep laughing in houses that are not his, while Regulus fades into a quietness he has mastered far too well? James cannot bear it. He cannot bear the thought of Regulus believing he is unwanted or, worse yet, unworthy. He cannot bear being another pall on that boy’s long ledger of abandonment.

He thinks of the rain at the gas station. He thinks of Regulus’s throat working under the word swallow. He thinks of Regulus’s beauty and his radiation. He thinks of the note he left on that stupid napkin, coward’s words in a coward’s hand.

And under all that is the certainty that he cannot escape this. That it has been Regulus all along, since the beginning, since the kiss in the car, since Sirius’s absence left a space only Regulus could fill. It is not love that damns him; it is inevitability. He is not free. He never has been. He will never be.

So James sits there, trembling, Remus’s words stitched into his skin, a pretty, pretty pattern it makes, and he knows: either he goes to Regulus now, or he will spend the rest of his life haunted by the ghost of a man who isn’t even dead yet.

***

It is late August when James finds him again, though “finds” is too generous a word. Regulus is not lost, not ever; he exists with the precision of a well-drawn line. He has always been right where James could not help but look.

Regulus is on his balcony, the rail rusted in patches, his hands steady on the chipped paint. He wears a shirt too thin for the weather (Called it.), loose at the wrists, as though his own body is something he refuses to occupy fully. James, on the other hand, takes up space like it’s his calling; he slams the door too loudly, laughs when nothing is funny, even at his own jokes, and leaves his trainers at the threshold like a boy who never learned reverence, and his mother would still be proud.

The wallpaper inside Regulus’s flat is bright pink and floral, and that only clicks once the outside breeze hits him.

“Thought I might try choosing you,” James says. It is half a joke, which means it is almost entirely true.

Regulus doesn’t look up from his cigarette. He exhales slowly, a visible line of smoke between them, another barrier. “You’re late.”

James’s grin is sloppy, defensive. “Always am.”

This is their comedy: callous in its tenderness, devoted in its ruthlessness. Neither of them could pull off sincerity for more than a sentence without the other tearing it down, gnawing on it, spitting it back out as something rotten. Still, the truth bleeds through the apertures in everything they say, because words hold the power we give them, and silence is ever more perilous for creatures of language and speech.

James sits on the floor of the balcony because Regulus hasn’t given him permission to take the chair, and James pretends not to mind. His knees jut awkwardly, his hair curls damp at his temples, and he looks like he has carried something all day that no one else would carry for him. He looks fatigued in the way only someone relentlessly hopeful can ever look. Like hope itself has frayed his bones thin.

“Why do you keep doing this?” Regulus asks finally. His voice is sharp, but the sharpness is dulled by how goddamn tired he is. He is always tired, and James has never been.

James leans back on his palms, squints up. “Eh. Because you’re here.”

“Pathetic.”

“Probably.”

Regulus almost smiles at that, which makes James’s chest ache worse than if he’d laughed outright. The almost is what kills him, always, always the almost.

“Who sent you?” Regulus asks softly, like he’s testing James to see if he’ll be candid.

“I came by myself.”

“That’s almost believable. I could have fallen for it if you weren’t such a shit liar.”

“You’re a shit liar.”

“Yeah. That’s why I don’t lie, James.”

There are stories neither of them will say aloud, but both of them know: Sirius’s speechlessness in the years between, their mother’s hand like a talon in Regulus’s hair, James’s eyes on Lily in the daylight and on Regulus in the dark. There is the story of James kissing him in the car, the condensation on the windows, the taste of cheap vodka and better intentions. There is the story of every morning-after, where James looked at him too long, and Regulus looked only at frivolity.

There is the story of the Black brothers’ inner demons, who demanded that they straighten out and forsake their love for men. In the end, the demons were slayed, at their cessation is a favourite of the bunch, but not one you’d tell your children at night.

The balcony railing creaks when Regulus leans harder against it, cigarette nearly down to the filter. “What am I about to say?”

“That I ruin you.”

Regulus nods. “And what would you say to that?”

James laughs, quick and breathless, as though it were a compliment. “You were already ruined, Reggie.” Or so he heard.

“Don’t call me that.”

“Why not?”

“Because you make it sound like you love me.”

James’s grin slips. He looks young all of a sudden, caught out. He runs a hand through his hair and says, “I do love you.”

It would be comic if it weren’t devastating, the way Regulus freezes like someone has slapped him. He snuffs the cigarette on the railing, leaves a black mark among the rust, and for a moment, James thinks he might walk inside, shut the sliding door, end it all with a single gesture. But Regulus doesn’t. He stays. And James is stupid enough to take that as a kind of victory.

The night air grows meaner, and James shivers. Regulus notices, James notices that he notices, and he loves that too, almost as much as Regulus must hate himself for it. He drags his chair back gradually and deliberately, and without a word, gestures for James to sit. James does, careful, reverent, like it is an altar.

There is a hush then, it’s that kind that reminds someone of an orange pastry. It’s the kind that means everything has already been said, hard not to have been after so many years, and it’s still not enough.

James leans forward, elbows on his knees. “You don’t have to love me back,” he says. “But you could let me—” He stops. He doesn’t know how to finish. Love you? Want you? Ruin myself back for you? All of the above; none of them adequate. He shakes his head and lets it pivot unfinished.

Regulus looks at him, really looks, which is rarer than James will ever admit. His eyes are steady, but the tremor in his hand gives him away. “You know what I want.”

James swallows hard. “Then I choose you.”

It is laughably simple, absurdly so, and still it lands like a bullet in Regulus’s chest. He wants to believe him. He wants not to. Want itself is a danger. He sets the thought aside and says nothing, which James takes as permission; James always has.

Later, much later, Regulus will pull him inside, and James will push him back against Regulus’s old mattress, his hands at Regulus’s hips like he wants to morph him into something small, and keep him in his pocket until his death. Regulus will let him, because what else is there left to do but fall into the demolition of it, eyes wide, mouth open, silent where he should be screaming.

“I choose you,” James will say.

“Liar,” Regulus will cry, “Liar. Liar. Beautiful, stupid liar.”

“I choose you,” James will say again.

And he will kiss Regulus, kiss him even though Regulus hasn’t allowed him to in years. He will kiss, and lick, and try his very best to suck the soul out of him, because this time had to be different, this time James was going to choose Regulus, and he was going to keep him.

“Baby,” James will groan, as Regulus’s mouth takes him in, sucking him back with equal force, equal passion. Desperate could not even begin to describe their state.

“Jamie,” The vibration around his cock, that name leaving Regulus’s mouth, oh, oh, it was too much. He was too far gone to even feel embarrassed by how short he lasted, how truly pathetic he was for this man.

“Choose me,” Regulus begged, after he swallowed his seed, even though he always spat it out, oh, and James was sick, and he was in love, and he wanted to die. He thought he would, at least, a human body didn’t seem capable of handling this much love. Maybe that is why the greatest tragedies are love stories.

“Done,” James swore, a man of his word, and he knew Regulus would hold him to it. Regulus kissed him up, all the way back to his mouth, where they spent what felt like both a single second and an entire century rubbing, humping, whining, crying. James was drooling, and Regulus licked it clean. Regulus was crying, and James licked him dry.

***

There are people who imagine longing as dramatic; wailing sonnets in the moonlight, collapsing under the unbearable significance of desire. Regulus knows better. Real longing is small, banal, and humiliating. It is waiting by the window with yet another cigarette burned down. It is saying, don’t come, while every nerve prays he will. It is finding himself restless in grocery store aisles, buying milk he doesn’t drink just to fill the hour until James knocks, or doesn’t.

Tonight, James arrives in the most James way. He came with no warning, no hint of rhythm, a boy who has never learned the meaning of knocking properly. The door opens, and there he is, all golden disarray and wide, terrible hope. The thing about James is that he’s tardy. To appointments and to parties and to Regulus. And his tardiness does not come with a pattern; ergo, it is nearly impossible to predict. He comes when he comes, and that day in August, he came.

Regulus was mean and full of riddles, and James was dumb. They talked a bit, about nothing, then Regulus pulled him inside on a whim he’d been dying to itch for months, where they fucked so thoroughly, so passionately, words could not capture it, and neither could they. Before they knew it, they were battered down, folded onto each other, and fallen into a deep, deep sleep. When they awoke, they took one look at the other, and immediately their mouths found their match.

“That was so sick, dude.”

“You’re a child,” Regulus sighed into his pillow.

James had snorted, “Weird thing to say after we just fucked.”

Regulus looked at James and grimaced. James grinned like he had been accused of a crime he intended to commit again. In other words, he grinned, and he was blazing in the afterglow of sex.

Regulus turns away before James can see the corner of his mouth tug upward. “You’re too self-absorbed to learn.”

“Self-absorbed? I’ve been thinking about you —only you— since I was 15. Doesn’t sound very self-absorbed to me.”

Regulus exhales through his nose. “Obsession isn’t selflessness, Potter.”

“Neither’s denial, Black.”

It should be a fight, shouldn’t it? It should hone into something nasty, but it doesn’t. In its place, which is a rather large one to fill, James stares and tries to memories Regulus, and Regulus stares and tries to understand James, and both of them hold on to see who will blink first.

Regulus gets off the bed and he showers, and James is still in bed once he’s done and out.

“I’ll be in the kitchen,” Announces Regulus, already on his way out of the room, not looking back at James.

“Don’t wait up on me, honey,” Regulus could hear James’s smile.

He turns the hall, barely evading hitting his elbow against that stupid, unconventional corner again, and busies himself with the kettle. it’s either tea or cigarettes for Regulus.

That… softness that James has come with this time, it is worse than any declaration. The kettle clinks against the stove, Regulus’s hand not quite steady. And here enter James. Showered, because he showers in a couple blinks, and looking dangerously seductive, with his brushed back, dripping wet hair caressing his neck, trickling onto the already obscenely tight shirt— One of Regulus’s, Regulus prioritizes health and James, looks— and the same ridiculous, almost inappropriate grey joggers.

Someone ought to put Regulus down, he’s about to pounce at this man like he’s in heat.

James takes a few steps closer, the philosophy between them maturing, and then narrowing. He smells like he always does, because Regulus bought the same stupid body and hair wash that he uses, to use himself if longing ever became too unbearable. He’s smiling again, but it’s gentler, calmer, less in your face.

“You don’t have to pour tea for me every time,” James murmurs.

“Ah. You don’t have to come here at all,” Regulus replies. His voice is level, but his chest feels tight.

James hums, amused but wounded, as intended. “Guess we’re both lousy at doing what we don’t have to.”

Regulus places two cups on the counter anyway, explicit, premeditated, he’s, once again, quickly losing control, and he cannot have that. And if he must, he’ll pretend he isn’t. His fingers brush James’s when he passes one across. Neither of them flinches, and neither of them speaks of it.

They drink in silence for a long time. James leans against the counter, speedily drying hair shadowing his eyes, while Regulus sits straight-backed, ankles crossed, just as he was taught.

Finally, James says, almost idly, “Do you, uh, ever think about what it’d be like if things were… You know.”

“I don’t know, actually. I’m not a mind-reader, James. Enlighten me.”

James rolls his eyes, “…Different.”

“Different how?”

James shrugs, careless in the way people are only when they care too much. “If you’d left with Sirius. If we’d… started differently. If I wasn’t… me.”

“If you weren’t you,” Regulus repeats, flat. “That would defeat the point, wouldn’t it?”

“…What’s the point, then?”

Regulus looks at him, really looks, and there it is again; the unbearable sincerity in James Potter’s face, the thing Regulus has spent years trying to ignore, years trying to rebuke, because he just couldn’t take it. The point is that James is infuriatingly alive, careless with it, radiant. The point is that Regulus wants him anyway. The point is ruin.

But Regulus only says, “There isn’t one.”

James laughs, “You’re impossible, Regulus.”

“And yet,” Regulus echoes, allowing himself the faintest smirk.

James shakes his head, fond and wrecked all at once, and sets his empty cup down with a clatter. He takes a step closer. Regulus doesn’t move. Another step. The heat of him now, filling the room. Oh my goodness, he is going to collapse, James is too much, and he cannot take it, and he wants it, and why hasn’t he kissed him yet?

“You’re doing that thing again,” James says.

“What thing?”

“That thing where you look like you want me to kiss you but you’re daring me not to.”

“I don’t want—”

James interrupts, quietly but firmly, “You do.”

I do. I do. I do. I do.

If you kiss me, I’ll kill you.

Kiss me.

Fuck me.

Someone help me.

Regulus’s throat works. His pulse hammers in places James can’t see. The seconds stretch until they are nearly breaking.

And then, finally, inevitably, James reaches up, fingers brushing against Regulus’s jaw, tentative for once in his life. Regulus doesn’t lean in, but he doesn’t lean away either. His breath catches, and James closes the distance, just barely, lips grazing, not yet a kiss but the pall of one.

Regulus inhales sharply, shatters the space between them.

Their kiss is absolutely starved when it finally happens. Their teeth catch, their hands clutch too tightly, and it is ugly, it is true, it is genuinely crazy. It couldn’t be described as poetry or fireworks because of how positively mortal it is: threadbare breath and trembling discretion and the flimsy poundage of contact, and so help him the higher powers of the universe, Regulus wants to just die here, and die right now, die in the hands of cosmic love and despair, yet, reality contradicts this desire, because he has never felt more alive, and maybe he doesn’t want to die anymore.

James presses him back against the counter, mutters something that Regulus doesn’t catch, and he lets him, for once, lets himself be wanted out loud.

“Fucking fuck—”

“Such dirty words—” Regulus moans, and it sounds vulgar even to his own ears, which explains the immediate notable reaction that becomes of James’s body.

“If you don’t stop me, I’m going to fuck you right here, Regulus,”

Regulus makes another sound, they’re humping now, like they can’t help themselves, like even if they could, they wouldn’t want to.

“Regulus, baby, stop me, push me off—”

“You’d fuck me right here?”

James chuckles into Regulus’s mouth, licks up some runaway spit, and smiles, “Such dirty words.”

“James—”

The kettle screams then, forgotten on the stove, an almost-comedic intrusion. They break apart, breathless, foreheads pressed together, both of them laughing a little, too close to crying.

“Well,” Regulus murmurs. “Perfect timing,”

James laughs into his shoulder. “The universe hates us.”

“Or it doesn’t care at all.”

They stand there an awful long time, cocooned in each other, the whistle dying down eventually, when tended to, the night depressing in. It is enough and not enough, and it is what happened and all they had.

The rest, what happens after conversation, how the two talk it out, after decisions are made and dialogues exchanged, is not for words. It is only for them. But know this: Love, sometimes, isn’t enough. But sometimes, it is.

And what are the sun and stars, if not all stars in the same space? And what is a lion without its heart?