Chapter Text
James calms down the second he sees the state his best friend is in.
Padfoot’s hands are trembling hard and he is having trouble breathing. He approaches him slowly, knowing he can get flinchy when he’s in this state.
“Mates, leave us a minute” He says while giving a glance at Remus,silently asking him to stay, knowing his first mate is the only person besides him who can calm him down.
As soon as they’re alone, the long haired pirate seems to calm down a bit.
“Do you want to sit down” Remus asks him. He responds by frantically shaking his head. James thinks he’ll crack his neck if he continues so he decides to take the matter into hands.
“Pads, can you name the people who are in the room with you right now ?” He doesn’t respond immediately. Remus, carefully starts touching his neck, drawing little circles with his fingers and it seems to finally make him be more aware of his surroundings.
“Moony” His voice is trembling. “And Prongs”.
“Amazing, what about three things you can see ?” He tries to keep his voice calm but firm to keep his friend grounded.
“A chair, the stove and hum” They don’t interrupt, leaving him time “Potatoes” He says finally, smiling a bit.
“There you go” remus praises him, kissing him on the temple.
It’s still a bit weird for him sometimes, seeing his two closest friends being together. It’s still fresh, they only started being in a relationship a couple months ago, but the whole crew knew they were head over heals for each other and it was a relief for everyone when they finally stopped ignoring their feelings and admitted they were in love.
“Do you want to talk about why you reacted like this?” The dark blond asks.
Honesty, James would like to know too. One second his friend was happy to stop his cores and ready to party, the next he looked like he’d seen a ghost. Was it something he had said? Except he didn’t say anything special, he just mentioned the prince, so that couldn’t be it.
“Is it about the Prince?” Remus seemed to think like him, this had to be the thing to set him off. Why it did, he had no clue.
The mention of the Prince seemed to wake the panic back in Padfoot. Instead of answering his boyfriend he walks out of the kitchen, the two men look at each other before following him and they realise he is heading for the cells.
Barty is there, he was always the one in charge of prisoners, he could scare them off enough so they didn’t try to escape, and if they did, he was the one to catch them. He had probably made his way there after coming out of the kitchen, knowing the party wasn’t for today seeing the state Padfoot was in.
The panicked pirate stopped in front of the cell and looked at the captor. He was still passed out, his hands were tied together in his back and he had a bandana in his mouth. This is how they always did it, wait for their prisoner to wake up, scare him off when he was still tied up, wait an hour or two before untying him to make it seem like an act of kindness when it really wasn’t.
“Wake him up” Padfoot demanded, his tone was sharp, it was an order. Barty was about to protest but the two other men wanted to know what was happening, so James glared at him and he shut up. Remus took the key from his belt and opened the cell, he took out a small vial from his pocket, opened it and put it in under the Prince’s nose so he inhaled it.
His eyes snapped right open, he looked panicked just for a second and it struck James how young he looked, he had to be only eighteen or around it. The Captain was only twenty one himself, but the people they usually kidnapped were much older; either pirates from boats who had defied them, or old men who tried to steal from them.
The prince rose to his feet, surprisingly well given his hands were bound, he looked around him, making himself aware of his surroundings. His eyes lay on Padfoot and his face turned crazily angry, he tried to talk, or scream probably, but his words were muffled by the bandana. James thought that if eyes could kill, his best friend would be no more. In return, Padfoot was frozen in place, a shocked look plastered on his face.
However, probably because he was frantically moving his head, the bandana fell off, finally letting him talk.
“Get me out of this cell right now or I will rip your face off” The Prince wasn’t acknowledging anyone but Padfoot. It seemed to wake the latter up because he walked forward, untied the arms of the Prince and took him by the arm in direction of the deck.
“Pad’s what the fuck are you doing?” Barty chimed in. The only response he received was an aggressive “Fuck off” by the both of them, surprisingly in sync.
James was completely lost. What the hell was happening but mostly why did the prince seem to recognise his friend?
He quickly followed them, they were standing on the middle of the deck, screaming at each other, the rest of the crew watching them, helpless.
“Why would you do this to me !”
“It wasn’t me, I had no idea.”
“Then take be back right now.”
“Oh yeah? In case you haven’t noticed Reggie we are in the middle of the ocean !”
It suddenly struck James how the two of them looked alike: sharp jaw, grey eyes, dark wavy hair, even though Padfoot had them longer.
“Don’t call me Reggie!” The Prince hissed before violently jumping on the other one. The two started fighting. Well the younger one was, the older one was only trying to dodge the punches and to pin him down which he finally did after a bloody nose and a couple of seconds.
When they finally stopped fighting, Lily, the sailing master of the Marauder, was the only one set to find out what was happening because she approached the men on the ground with her sword raised threateningly.
“Padfoot, care to tell me what is happening here?” Her tone was menacing and James knew she would use her weapon if she needed to.
However the prince wasn’t scared of her -that’s because he didn’t know her- and he only laughed at what she said. “Padfoot? Is that what you make them call you? What are you? A street dog?”
“No, I’m a Pirate” He responded, proud. The prince started laughing as if he was told the funniest joke ever.
The situation was getting on his nerve. The captain was completely lost, he didn’t understand what was happening and he hated that. Those people were on his boat, so he was going to take charge and find out why one of his crewmates had the same face as a fucking prince and was fighting with him as if they knew each other.
“Alright” He decided to step in. “This masquerade stops right now, Moony, you take the prince in my office and Pads, be smart enough to follow them kindly or I will drag you there myself”.
Regulus is fuming.
First, he is sent by his father to do a job that he doesn’t even want to do to avoid a punishment.
Then; he gets kidnapped by filthy pirates.
And lastly, he finds his brother with those pirates having the nerve to scream back at him.
Right now, he is tied to a chair in the captain’s office. They didn’t want to tie him at first but he kept trying to attack his brother so they were left with no choice.
Sirius, or Padfoot apparently was sitting next to him. They were facing two other pirates, James Potter and the one with the scars who he recalls was being called Moony.
They were looking at them with a mixture of confusion and anger and Regulus really wanted to wipe that emotion off their face.
“Okay, Pads I’m giving you five seconds to explain yourself here” James says as he sits in front of them.
“It’s not what you think, I never thought this would happen and you guys would be safer if you didn’t know who I was” His voice was being so whiny. Had his brother become a baby during those last two years? He fought really hard not to roll his eyes.
“And who are you?” Moony stepped up, angry. “I’m your boyfriend for fuck’s sake and I don’t even know who you are.”
Regulus tried to stop his laughter but failed “Really Sirius, a pirate boyfriend? I never thought you would stoop so low”.
He knew it was mean, but he was trying to hurt his brother. How dare he leave him alone, to live the dream they had and find love. They dreamed to sail together, but Sirius accomplished that dream alone. He wanted to hurt him as much as he hurt him when he left.
“Sirius” The man with the glass was testing the name on his tongue, probably trying to remember where he had heard that name before.
“Really Potter, you let people on your ship when you don’t even know their name? That can’t be safe”. James was about to respond but the other pirate was faster.
“You’re Sirius Black. You’re the heir of the Grimmauld kingdom” He was speaking as if he didn’t believe what he was saying. James was wearing the same expression.
“Actually I’m the dead heir of Grimmauld, I ran away fulfilling baby Reggie’s dream. He is now the future King. Isn’t that what you always dreamed of little brother?” Regulus thought he should be trying to apologise to his ‘boyfriend’ instead of attacking him but he was never refusing a verbal match when he could.
“That’s right I am the future King, the first thing I’m going to do when I access the throne is to ban the name Padfoot because it is ridiculous. And just so you know, I loved your funeral, I have weekly parties on your grave”
“Oh my god, do you even hear yourself, you sound just like mother”
Oh so Sirius wanted blood. That’s what he was going to get. “I will kill you, you’re lucky I am tied up, I will rip those horrible piercings you have and then I’ll-”
“Shut up, the both of you” James was gripping his hair. “Remus, take them away, I need to think”
“Where to?”
“The cells” He sighed heavily, and then continued “The both of them, not in the same one or they’ll kill each other”.
The last thing Regulus saw as he was dragged out of the room was the betrayed look on his brother.