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Chapter Text

Regulus had come to love the cold, sharp and biting that always brought an edge of satisfaction to him. He had come to love the push and shove of the ice, of winning.

Remus just thought he was dramatic, loving wiping out just as often as he landed the trick. Regulus’s scholarship to college off the back of his figure skating would beg to differ. He is going international one day if it kills him,, which it probably would, seeing as figure skating is hard.

For all that Remus moans and groans, Regulus knows his favourite part of the week is Saturday mornings watching Regulus train on his own in the giant rink, always there no matter the weather, slugging along schoolwork and a million or so hot chocolates that he drinks intermittently after inevitably getting cold.

The ice enticed him, the one thing about his life before he moved out that stuck with him, he had tried to give it up for all of two days and immediately gave up. The ice was in his blood, he couldn’t help it.

He supposed that was why he was always so cold, having been small as a child and never truly growing, he had been diagnosed with poor circulation and the skating had been a cause for concern, but Regulus had already been addicted then to the cold, the ice flowing into his already chilled heart and hardening it, nothing could make him give it up.

He had met Remus during dorm move in day, dreading sharing a living space with someone for a year before his hard heart practically melted towards the man.

Remus was a year older than him, but had been pulled behind a grade when he was young and was nervous about having someone that wouldn’t understand him.

He was a carbon copy of Regulus in an eighty year old body.

Remus had the same kind of personality as Regulus, biting remarks and cutting jokes, quiet comfort and closed up emotions. Regulus may have been a fortress of secrets and Remus may have been a safe, but within a month, Regulus knew about Remus’s lupus and Remus knew about Regulus’s transition.

Regulus was not a girl, he wasn’t. He didn’t care what his parents said, or what his old friends said, he was not a girl. He was a boy who was going to get a college education and competitively ice skate until he eventually perpetually injured himself too much to compete, then he would choreograph, just like he did for most of his own routines, in his spare time, and become a therapist for children.

Either way, both topics were hard for the boys to talk about and it was okay, they had plenty of other things to discuss. 

Item number one to discuss: the bills.

Going into their third year of college was hard, the boys renting a flat a few blocks away from campus that they both usually took up jobs during the year to keep, less than five rooms held most of Regulus’s fondest memories off the ice.

Regulus walked into the flat, throwing his keys into the gag-gift bowl shaped like a skeleton hand, an inside joke between the two boys, and shrugging off his jacket, shaking around his shoulders to help himself warm up.

He slipped one of Remus’s jumpers off of the back of a chair, slipping it over his head as he dropped his bag with skates in it, the bag making a dull thud when hit the ground that was not dissimilar to the sound he made when he flopped onto the couch, flicking through the mail Remus had left on the counter.

There was a semi-formal letter addressed to him, from the ice sports committee, which was weird because they usually emailed him, and he ripped it open. He set the unfolded letter down on the coffee table in front of him to rip open his energy bar as he skimmed it.

They had apparently sent him an email about a job opportunity that would require working with other skaters in an instructing position.

Regulus got his tablet out from its computer bag, eating the energy bar as it powered up, and logged into his email, scrolling past the multiple subscription emails that were filling his inbox before he found the email the letter detailed, skimming over it with a groan.

It was as he flung himself backwards on the couch, sitting criss-cross on the floor in front of it with his head hitting the soft worn leather as he groaned that Remus walked in.

From his view on the floor, Regulus could quite clearly see Remus’s raised eyebrow as he took in the scene and the slight playful hesitation before asking, “What are we complaining about this week?”

Regulus sat up with a slight glare at Remus that was ignored, “They want me to work with puckers.”

Remus winced, aware of Regulus’s absolute resentment for puckers, hockey players, who tore up the ice and were always shouldering people out of the way, aggressive in sport and life, “Who exactly, are they?”

Regulus gestured helplessly at his open computer, “The ice gods, the ice sports committee, the deities of the universe that think I haven’t suffered enough ”

Remus made a face, “But why?”

Skimming the email, Regulus answered absentmindedly, “The hockey coach thinks it might improve their performance if they get a bit of ‘formal ice training.’ Bloody hell, do they think formal ice training is figure skating?”

“Isn’t it?”

“Sod off.”

Remus smiled, sitting on the couch above Regulus as he read the email over his shoulder, “It pays well.”

His face pinched, Regulus turned to Remus with the most disgusted attitude he could muster, “You could offer me a million dollars and I would still say no.”

Remus just hummed, still reading the email, “Your instructor hand picked you for it, said you were independent and would make a great teacher. It’d be great experience for resumes”

“Are you trying to talk me into it?”

The boy just shrugged, “The bills have to be paid somehow and I’m not getting a raise anytime soon.”

A glance at the coffee table confirmed that statement, the red text printed over practically every paper was pretty hard to miss, and even harder to pay.

With a sigh, Regulus clicked the reply button. 

Planning lessons were hard, especially when he didn’t know the skill level of the people he was going to be working with and it would be a lot of students, far more than the five private lessons he does intermittently on weekends in between training.

Regulus had ended up procrastinating the lesson planning, not realising how much time it would take to just think of where to start and didn’t even begin it until one in the morning the day of of the first lesson (he had no better word to call them, even if he hated it) after finishing his assignment for his human studies class, one of the most interesting ones he was taking this semester.

The vague idea of a lesson plan surfaced around two in the morning after lamenting to a sleep deprived Remus about it. He didn’t wake Remus up, Remus was already up because he had a presentation in for his classical civ class that he had remembered at eleven the night before the presentation. 

Remus had taken one look at him and sighed, putting his computer to the side and letting Regulus bounce ideas off of him for twenty minutes before he finally broke ice, multiple ideas rushing to him at once that he hastened to write down.

Both boys pulling all-nighters weren’t exactly uncommon things, so Regulus stopped by the twenty-four hour coffee shop down the street from their apartment, settling down in a booth as he drank his cup, typing out his lesson plan as he took occasional sips of his coffee.

At around three in the morning Regulus logged out of his computer, done with the first four lessons, and got up to order another coffee along with Remus’s chai tea that he drank like an addict needing a fix., stepping back to watch the familiar motions of the barista making his drinks.

Someone brushed against his back, knocking off his balance as he fell forward, the man catching his arm and steadying him.

Regulus looked over his shoulder to see another shoulder, craning his neck awkwardly to see the man’s face as he tried to scowl, the position making it slightly ineffective.

He pulled away, stepping back so that the height difference wasn’t as prominent. 

Height was always a sore subject for Regulus, having not grown since the beginning of high school, already past the age where testosterone would help his height and stuck at 168 centimetres.

“Sorry, my fault, I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

Regulus looked up, staring unimpressed at the boy’s nose to avoid eye contact as he slyly took him in.

Of course, it was a pucker, the division one sweatshirt plainly detailing his status as team captain of the hockey team. He just knew, all puckers did was shove, on and off the ice, taking the job was already a massive mistake and he hadn’t even started yet.

Regulus shrugged, looking away from the boy and back to the barista still making his order, willing her to move faster with his mind.

The boy frowned, “No really, I’m sorry, I should’ve been watching where I was going.”

Drawing his attention back to him, he could see the slight wringing of fingers as he apologised, annoyingly earnest.

Okay, he is allowed to not detest one pucker, just one. 

Besides, he’s going to have to get along with the student captain anyway.

“It’s fine, I was in the way and it’s early.”

Nodding again, scarily earnest, the boy’s entire demeanour seemed to brighten, standing up straighter as he practically beamed.

His smile was quite nice, a complete parting of his lips as most of his teeth were on display, slightly parted as one corner of his mouth lifted up higher than the other, creating a crooked and exceedingly hot effect.

Oh, he had dimples too, that was just right lovely for Regulus’s sanity.

“Yeah, all of my teammates hate me for scheduling practice early, but we are going through intensive training right now, trying to emphasise technique, it's exciting.”

Exciting was definitely a word.

Regulus just raised a brow, feigning indifference and watching as the boy practically stumbled over himself at the look, cheeks turning slightly pink.

That was definitely exciting.

“What, uh, what’re you doing here?”

Regulus let his eyebrow raise just a smidge higher, angling his head until he felt like he was reasonably conveying that he was looking down on the boy from below him, letting him squirm for a few moments before nodding his head at the counter behind the boy where the barista was finally finished with his drinks.

“Oh, right yeah,” he was adorably flustered, enough that Regulus almost took pity on him, but then the bastard of a pucker reached his hand up and ruffled he back of his head in what was obviously a nervous tic and Regulus suddenly didn’t care too much for how he was feeling, too preoccupied with how soft the hair in the back of his head must be.

God, why did he always have to fancy the straight boys?

He would later blame his next action on sleep-deprivation, but he angled his head up as the woman behind the counter called his name, stepping forward a bit to move past him but being blocked by the boy, “That’s me.”

He was so close he could see his pupils dilate as Regulus stood there, waiting for him to back down.

So his surprise was warranted when the boy just pressed closer, both of them practically touching through the two inches between their noses.

“I take it back, I’m not sorry at all that I ran into you,” the boy was breathless and Regulus could feel his own unaffected composure slipping as he looked at him for longer. His lashes were long because of course they were, he probably didn’t even treat them like Regulus did, and his skin was flawless but Regulus doubted he had a skincare routine.

Lucky goddamn pucker.

Regulus let a slow smirk spread across his face as he rocked back onto his heels, slipping around the boy and grabbing his coffee without a backward glance, and if he turned around at the end of the street and watched the boy until he picked up his own order, that was between him and the street cameras. 

Remus was completely unsympathetic to his woes, just rolling his eyes, annoyingly fond for Regulus’s taste, who was trying to explain how awful of a life he had as they walked into the ice arena (god-awful name, Regulus could do far better).

By now, Regulus was completely regretting ever agreeing to do this as they walked in, Regulus over an hour early to set up for what they were doing today, Remus just there because he often hung out in the visitors empty bleachers doing homework during Regulus’s practices and he wasn’t going to miss Regulus’s first lesson for anything.
Regulus was sure of a lot of things, but this he wasn’t sure about, he knew what puckers were like, except for the one he met this morning, and he wasn’t sure how his slightly-outside of the box lesson would be received.

He quite liked his face, is was particularly masculine and would be a shame when it was broken on the ice because the puckers hate him and his stupid lesson plan ideas. 
Remus recommended he skate off some of his worries before setting up and for once he had a good idea, the timing and precision of his harder tricks required focus, and eventually his mind was clear enough that he could recognize he somewhat knew what he was doing.

He set up as best as he could, running through the entire lesson plan in his head and doing the equivalent of pacing nervously for around forty-five minutes in what he hoped was graceful before some of the hockey boys began arriving. He watched from across the rink, skates already on as he sat on top of the opening and closing door for the away team side, Remus just a few rows behind him on the bleachers making quiet comments Regulus made valiant efforts to not laugh at.

The boy from the coffee shop arrived in a rush, probably late, and dread started pooling in his stomach as he caught sight of the man next to him, long back hair that was pulled into a bun, sweatpants slightly paint-splattered and fraying, his entering laugh was slightly akin to a bark and he was practically beaming as he bounded in, hockey skates held loosely in his hands as he walked, banging against his legs.

Regulus could recognise him anywhere, could spot him in any crowd.

The pool of dread in his stomach was an ocean, and Sirius Black was tugging him down.

Chapter Text

James sometimes didn’t know why he chose to double major in something so complicated when he planned to go to the big leagues with Hockey.

It was times like these, when he had just finished an assignment before collapsing into bed right as his alarm to get up for morning conditioning went off, that he sincerely regretted every single life decision he had ever made, ever. 

He needed a cup of coffee.

James was a simple man alright? He had a system for his coffee, if it was before the day had officially started, that being the sunrise, he was allowed to indulge and break the no sugary caffeinated drinks rule he had set for the entire team to follow.

Leaders were historically good at being above the law without consequence.

James a morning person, he dug the sunrise, he went to bed early as a child to sit on his roof and watch the sun turn the sky pink in the mornings, but this was early for even him, and he hadn’t yet put in his contacts, opting to not wear his glasses in public like one might when they needed them to see, instead follow vague shapes, if he squinted, he could see far away, and close up sight was mostly fine.

It was fine up until he practically ran over someone else, reaching out instinctually to grab the person’s arm to help steady their balance as he apologised.

He was shorter than him, not by much, but it was a noticeable amount, James was probably almost a foot taller and that had set the man’s balance off so much he was nearly toppling. 

James mentally shook himself, trying to wake up as he apologised almost on autopilot.

And then he looked up.

James had been asked once, in an art class he took for fun to be with Sirius, what he thought an angel would like personified, he had given the standard answer, blonde hair, blue eyes, glowing with holiness.

He was wrong.

This man’s hair was dark black, like the night sky, and artfully styled on his head, fluffy at the top and shaved on the sides, he had deep blue eyes that infringed on grey territory, and they were sharp like ice, like a stormy fire. He held himself almost gracefully, limbs long and lethe but not gangly. God, his jawline, James wanted to lick it.

He was still apologising, wringing his hands together and trying to get his mouth to stop talking before he embarrassed himself more when the man spoke, his voice rough as tired as he blinked almost sleepily at James, but the look was too dignified, “Its fine, I was in the way and it’s early.”

James practically beamed, nodding far too much to be considered socially acceptable before practically word vomiting, “Yeah, all of my teammates hate me for scheduling practice early, but we are going through intensive training right now, trying to emphasise technique, it's exciting.”

The man blinked, nodding slightly as he stared at James and there was nothing he wanted more in that moment than to hear him talk again.

James tried to think of something to say as the silence stretched on, the man raising an eyebrow at him when James floundered, now even more flustered than before, “So, what’re you doing here?”

Stupid stupid stupid.

And he must have said something right because suddenly the man was crowded in his face, words coming out but the sound drowned out by the feeling of his breath against his cheek.

James couldn’t help rocking forward slightly, revelling in the slight widening of the man’s eyes, “I take it back, I’m not sorry I ran into you at all.”

That’s right, James has game.

He had so much game he left the coffees he had ordered at the coffee shop and didn’t realise until he had gotten to the rink.

Running his teammates through a weights and flexibility training, he tried to push them because he was unsure what the evening training would look like, seeing as they were giving up this one and the Thursday evening training to do more balance and classical ice training, he was unsure where the instructor was going to start them.

Luckily, by the time they were done with their workout, everyone was sore and complaining, some barely able to walk, so the small reprieve that would come in the form of afternoon practice was quite welcome with his team.

After heading to his morning class, he finally sitting down and writing that paper for his biomechanics class that he had been putting off for days.

He arrived late to the rink, multiple of his teammates already there while Sirius laughed about him stressing, heading to the locker room to give people time to clear out before he would go to the entrance booth and have them make an announcement about the reserved space. 

It was easy to be patient usually, having had the man at the entrance booth make the announcement in a bored tone, voice echoing around the room from the speakers installed in the rinks.

James watched from his team’s side of the rink, sitting in the home team’s benches as he tied his laces, watching almost everyone that were taking advantage of the last few minutes of free-skate file out.

There was someone left, a skater that was gliding across the ice in a way so graceful it looked effortless, pushing himself up into a dizzying jumpy spin before landing easily, hands in his pockets the entire time. 

James hated to interrupt, but the instructor was supposed to arrive soon, the rest of the team not long after that, so after watching the man for another minute, he began waving him down.

Coming to a stop, the man seemed to regard him silently for a moment, completely still in the middle of the rink, poised to move any which way he had the notion. 

He seemed hesitant to come over while James was surrounded by the team, Sirius tying his laces behind him and grumbling under his breath about sore muscles, the rest of the team no better.

James walked away from where everyone was sitting, hoping to get this over with soon and not fight with some random dude.

Eventually, he glided over to James, and now that he was closer, James could make him out better, black sweatpants sporting the school’s logo, a cropped green hoodie stopping just above his waist contrasting where his sweatpants hung low on his hips, showing the black undershirt that was tucked into them, a green beanie secure on his head that perfectly offset dark grey skates. One hand was covered with a black fingerless glove while the other was bare. 

He looked familiar, and as he drew closer, James suddenly remembered him. 

Mystery man was even more angelic when James could fully see him.

That perfectly manicured eyebrow raised as he came to a stop, a few inches from the side of the rink, not even needing to touch the barrier, “Yes?”

James cleared his throat, which was suddenly, suspiciously, dry, “Uhm, we are about to begin private practice.”

The man rolled his eyes, “I’m well aware.”

James should not find this hot. James should not find this hot. James should not find this hot.

“Right, erm, well, it’s private, we can’t have other people here.”

That eyebrow raised higher, practically covered by the curly hair spilling out the front of his beanie, “I’m sorry, I was under the conception that you had hired a figure skater to work with you all for your evening session today.”

Oh Jesus, he was the skater, someone kill him now.

“I’m so sorry, I thought you’d…”

Smirking, and didn’t that do something funny with James’s stomach, he said, “Older? Most people do, but seeing as I am a competitive champion and the only one on our skating team trying to make it to the big leagues when I’m out of college, my coach thought I was the best recommendation.”

James was speechless.

He had a thing okay? Passion and talent, especially for underappreciated things, Jesus it was hot.

“If you have a problem with my age, I’m sure there is a suitable replacement.”

“No, no!” James hastened to correct himself, “No you’re fine. You’re perfect.”

Jesus, he was so perfect, James wished for just a moment that his entire team wasn’t watching this exchange, because he knew how he got when he was infatuated, and it wasn’t hot, it was bumbling and nervous and if anything Sirius would pick up on it.

“Right then, if there aren’t any problems, I suppose we should get started?”

James checked his wristwatch, five minutes until practice started, perfect.

“Right, yeah, sure.”

The man rolled his eyes before spinning and skating off in one smooth movement, nothing left behind but the echoing sound of blades scraping ice.

He was in the middle of the rink when James had the team file onto the ice, his gaze tracing back to the man over and over again as he lined up, facing him along with everyone else.

The man was watching everyone carefully, slowly inspecting each precise movement the hockey players made, eyes picking out what were no doubt flaws in the perfect form. 

When he was satisfied, he began skating back and forth across the line of hockey players, an extremely graceful mix between pacing and suicide runs. 

He stopped abruptly, not even sliding as he shifted his feet to come to an immediate stop in front of them, “Right then,” he said, shaking his hands out at his sides, “my name is

Regulus, you can call me that and nothing else. I am going to be instructing you guys in basic figure skating training for the next few weeks to hopefully improve your grace on skates, but that isn’t important right now. Today we are going to go back to the basics: learning to fall.”

Regulus, and wasn’t that just the prettiest name he had ever heard.

“Do you want us to go around with our names?”

Regulus shook his head, a sharp smile spreading across his face that made James slightly nervous for his response, “No, you guys want the authentic figure skating experience, I, as your instructor, have no use to know your name unless you are of use to me. I will ask if I want to know.”

James should not find this hot. James should not find this hot. James should not find this hot.

His sharp smile shifted slightly into a more amused smile as he watched the team’s varying reactions and damnit, that was so hot.

Five minutes later James was no longer completely sunshine and rainbows towards Regulus as he fell onto the ice with a force that would no doubt bruise his shoulder. 
Regulus just laughed when James complained and all of his annoyances fled at the sound, “Again, jump higher this time, and try not to put so much of your weight on your arms, that’s how you break them.

“Damn you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Fuck he was so hot when he laughed.

After falling on his ass intentionally more times than he could count in the span of thirty minutes, Regulus finally called for a break, telling them to get some water and come back ready to make more bruises.

James groaned, guzzling water as fast as he could swallow it as his teammates around him complained, Sirius draped himself over James lap as he whined and James was quick to shove him off when Regulus looked their way from where he was sitting on the other side, another man near him that he seemed to be talking to, completely engaged in whatever they were talking about.

At the end of five minutes, Regulus was back in the middle of the rink, watching James and the rest of his team skate in, wincing at the forming bruises that were forming all around their bodies. 

This exercise was slightly different, instead of jumping and trying to fall without breaking something, they were now jumping and trying to land on one skate (not the original one they jumped with) while doing a quarter turn, engaging what they learned from their falling practice when they didn’t land it.

It seemed easy enough.

It was not.

James landed it the first few times, the third landing taking every ounce of his core strength, his endurance being stretched by the tenth land, the eleventh making him throw his arms out to keep his balance, when he threw his arms out the on the twelfth jump, Regulus was behind him smacking his arms down, skating out of distance as James fell with a curse, laughing as James flipped him off.

“Alright switch to half turns, not more or less than 180 degrees people, chop chop!”

His legs burned, the forming bruises doing nothing to help the ache in his stomach as his abused arms panged every time he hit the floor.

At one point he landed at the same time Sirius did, both boys groaning as they made eye contact, pushing themselves up on shaking arms.

“I forgot this sport was so damn violent.”

James huffed out a breathless laugh, “I forgot you ever did figure skating.”

Sirius groaned as he did another half turn, landing leg wobbling, but staying upright, “Worst five months of my life, Gina loved it though, took to it like a duck to water.”

James very wisely didn’t respond and the conversation faded off, as it usually did whenever Sirius brought up his sister.

When everybody eventually started improving, their fall numbers decreasing after the increase, Regulus started throwing tennis balls at them, skating circles around the team as he bounced the balls back and forth in an intricate dance, immediately toppling half the team in one jump.

James let out a surprised shout when a ball caught the edge of his blade and sent him pitching forward towards the ice, groaning as Regulus skated to a stop next to him, laughing as he sent another ball ricocheting across the rink and sending three different people tumbling.

“I’m convinced you’re doing this on purpose because you hate us,” James complained as he rose up on wobbly arms, preparing to do another half spin.

His blade caught on another tennis ball, sending him straight back into the bruising and unforgiving ice as Regulus replied, “You’ve caught me out, what’re you going to do about it?”

James just groaned, allowing himself to lay on the cold ice for a few moments before Regulus bounced a tennis ball against his back, “Get up, no slacking Potter.” 

An hour later, Regulus finally let them go, wobbling away on shaking legs as the team struggled to preserve their pride.

James shucked on a hoodie and took off his skates before jogging over to the other side where Regulus was in the process of taking his skates off.

He looked up when James approached and suddenly all of his confidence faded under his clear eyes and sharp gaze, full lips set into a slight smile that still gave the air of intimidation as James slowed to a stop.

“I just, uhm, wanted to thank you for the time you’re putting in to this, and also apologise for earlier-”

“It’s fine,” he dismissed, finishing tying his grey converse and pulling his other skate up as he began unlacing it. 

James shuffled back and forth, trying to find something else to say as he ruffled the hair on the back of his head in a nervous tic, watching as Regulus watched the motion, following his hand with his eyes as he took his skate off.

“Potter, seriously, it's fine, I expect rudeness from a bunch of puckers anyway.”

James blinked in confusion, “Puckers?”

Regulus huffed what was almost a laugh, shaking his head, “What we common folk here call the hockey players, you all aren’t the most well loved.”

James winced, “Yeah, I’m well aware we don’t have the best reputation.”

Shrugging, Regulus said, “I don’t know, a lot of your team surprised me.”

“They were sucking up to you to maybe not prolong the torture,” James said dryly, watching as Regulus slid on his high rise converse and started lacing it back up, the bottoms giving the man at least an inch if not more with the platforms.

Shaking his head, Regulus cut James a look, “There is a point to all of this Potter.”

“Oh I’m sure, how do you know my name? Think I’m important huh?”

Sketching a brow, Regulus was the picture of amused indifference, “Your last name is on the back of your hoodie.”

“Oh.”

Regulus huffed, an almost laugh, muttering “Oh” in an amused tone before saying, “Yeah.”

Sirius came bounding up, sputtering pure gibberish and Regulus excused himself, a foreign expression on his face as he walked away and James tuned into Sirius’s exclamation of the new guy he had just met, noticing that James was slightly awestruck and slipping in an innuendo or two about their new instructor as they took the walk back to the dorms, both wincing at the forming bruises.

Jesus, James was becoming such a masochist, that he began looking forward to the next practice, though morning James with sore muscles and fully formed bruises wouldn’t quite share the sentiment.

Or at least, James hoped he wouldn’t

When James woke up the next morning, his arms, torso, and legs more purple then brown, he didn’t regret it one bit, shoving himself out of bed and stupidly looking forward to the next time he would see Regulus.

Totally worth it.

Chapter Text

Sirius was pretty sure that he had never been this bone dead dry after a night practice, usually this kind of ache in his bones came from morning workouts with the team, or extra practices when the competition season started elimination games, but never this early in the season. 

He did have some credible stamina thank you very much.

Either way, the new guy that had been assigned the thinly veiled torture the board wanted to call teaching them came to be endearing evil and had it out for the whole team. He wanted them dead.

A small part of him thought the man similar, a pull coming from him that was enforced by the man's every movement. He felt like an old friend, a distant life come back, sweet and startlingly familiar in a way that Sirius had never experienced.

He felt like he knew him.

No matter if they knew each other or not, there was no mercy in the practice, it had a harsh and hard edge to it, a tension that came not from total hatred, but from the love of skating itself, sharing the talent with others and wanting them to succeed. Either way, it exhausted Sirius and every part of him longed for his bed right now.

Still, that pull to talk to the man (it had nothing to do with attraction, more the mystery around the bloke itself) had him skating to the other side of the rink, pulling off his shoes and unlacing his skates on the bench as he waited for the guy, Regulus, to come over.

Someone behind him cleared his throat, and Sirius turned around to be greeted with the prettiest man he had ever seen.

Here’s the thing, cardigans are arguably one of the sluttiest things a man can wear, but cable knit sweaters? The sluttiness factors are off the charts. The man behind Sirius was wearing a creamy cable knit sweater, brown leather elbow pads an all, his jeans were dark and perfectly contrasted the colour of the sweater, which offset the colour of his hair, a dark blonde light brown mess of curls that was short on the sides and long at the top, the fringe getting in his face. He stared at Sirius with an eyebrow raised, his perfect eyes fixed on where Sirius was sitting as his lips quirked up in a slightly indulgent and self satisfied smile, like he knew how hot he was, but he had no idea.

Speechless, Sirius practically gaped as the man’s face became more and more satisfactorily amused, his tiny smile doing wonders to show off his immaculately chiseled jaw.

Willing himself to find his voice, Sirius did what he did best: talked. 

He leaned back, fixing the man with a stare of his own as he smiled, going for charming, “Hi, here watching someone?”

Sirius watched as the eyebrow went up further, “Yeah, starting to think maybe I should be watching you though.”

Holy shit.

Holy.

Fucking.

Shit.
Love, Sirius had finally found it and it shined with the light of a thousand angels, burning like a star as Sirius practically fell into it with open arms, he hadn’t ever heard a better line in his life. The man was captivating.

The man cracked a smile, the spell that his joke had created cracking through Sirius’s awe and leaving behind shining iridescent reverence for him, and held out his hand, “Remus, yes like the guy from greek mythology, I’ve heard it my whole life, my parents had a thing for myths evidently.”

Bloody fuck, his voice, Sirius could feel himself starting to slowly spontaneously combust. Greek indeed, he found himself thinking, trying to not be obvious about his staring, Greek god more like it.

Reaching out a hand, Sirius said, “Sirius, like the star, since apparently both our names are abnormal.”

Remus smiled wryly, all hot sarcastic humour that made Sirius contemplate the genuine consequences for snogging a stranger senseless, “We should start a club.”

Sirius forced out a smile that hopefully didn’t look lovestruck, “Only hot people are allowed to join.”

Remus smiled a little wider and two dimples appeared in his cheeks, Sirius felt faint. “I suppose we would have to make you the leader then?”

Sirius found himself again in awe, Remus had talent when it came to this, pure untapped talent.

``There would probably be a mutiny if I became the organiser over you.”

“I highly doubt that.”

Sirius found himself standing to sit closer to Remus, gravitating towards the man’s captivating energy like a ship to harbour, “So what possessed you to sit in on practice? I’ve never seen you here before.”

Remus nodded down towards his work, “I had homework to do, and the rink is always where I think best, I’m here quite often, seeing as my best friend is a competitive figure skater.

Ah, so he knew the skater that held a secret hatred for all things hockey.

Figures.

Literally.

Sirius smiled at his joke, “You guys are friends?”

“Dormmates,” Remus corrected, “Been living together in the hell that is rented apartments for three years. It forms an unbreakable bond between men..”

It was said sarcastically, but Remus’s face was undeniably fond as he watched Regulus speak with James, curious, but not Sirus’s problem right now.

Remus stood, abruptly ending the moment, “Either way, I do have to go now,” he shot Sirius one last smile that made him almost dizzy, “See you around Sirius.”

Holy shit, the way he said his name. It made Sirius want to do all sorts of unbecoming things, firstly, sticking his tongue down Remus’s throat.

He watched as Remus walked away, eyes straying down to see how lovely the jeans were for Remus’s looks, before rushing over to where James stood talking to Regulus who seemed rather rushed once he had caught sight of him, “James! I just met the love of my life. I’m pretty sure I’m dreaming, everything hurts but I’m also floating, like filled with helium.”

Sirius practically crashed into James in his excitement, spouting declarations of love as he practically preened, barely noticing when Regulus excused himself and rushed off, bag slung haphazardly over his shoulder as he nearly ran out the rink.

James grabbed him by the arms, steadying him as he tried to decipher his onslaught of information into something understandable.

Both boys made eye contact for a moment and sighed, a bit of understanding moving between them in the telepathic way it seemed like it had always been between them, a bond that ran deeper than blood. 

Sirius recognized the awestruck look on James’s face, it was probably reflected on his own.

“Holy shit Jamie, tell me all about it.”

They had migrated to the nearest benches, still clutching each other’s arms like schoolgirls spilling secrets about their crushes. 

James bit his lip, considering for a moment before suddenly it was all spilling out of him in a rush, unable to be contained, “He is just so pretty, like the prettiest man I’ve ever seen. He has this grace about him, a steadiness that could withstand a fucking empire falling and I just want to like, hug him, and like, hang out with him, and watch him skate.”

“Be honest, you also want to push him against the wall and make out with him.”

James levelled him with a bored look, “Not all of us are made of two brain cells that crave sex at all times Sirius.”

When his response was met with silence, James sighed, looking wistfully out at the ice, “Not just the wall, also the plastic glass in the rink, and the chair, and a door as it closes, and any horizontal item ever.”

Sirius snorted, nudging James in the shoulder, “Just keep it PG in the common areas of my dorm, when the love of my life comes around I don’t want him thinking we’re heathens.”

James reached a hand out to pull him off the bench, both boys groaning as their sore muscles chose to break them out of the dreamland of crushes into the harsh reality of tomorrow's bruises.

Sirius got back to their dorm to immediately sequester himself away in the arm room, the only room really, with sufficient lighting that he had claimed the moment they moved in together, finally finishing his project for his art practicality calculations class after quite a bit of coffee and accidentally drinking from his paintbrush cup twice, the sun well beyond set and entering into risen.

His muscles were not appreciative of this use of his time, and as Sirius showered and tried to make himself seem like someone who had gotten sleep and was functioning as an adult, he very much regretted not getting enough sleep.

He could, at least, blame little sleep on the clusterfuck that was his Latin class.

The class had started fine, Sirius got there twenty minutes early and promptly put his head down and slept. The bloke next to him nudged him awake when the professor entered the room and Sirius raised his head from its quite comfortable spot on the wooden desk to try to learn at least one thing in this class.

His computer luckily turned on the first try (rare occurrence honestly) and he took at least a few notes as he tried to stay active in his learning and not look like he was risen from the dead.

His ninety-eight in a dead language class hadn’t been maintained on looks alone.

It could possibly be blamed on the lack of rest that made it take Sirius almost half the class to realise the bloke next to him was the same hot guy he had nearly made a fool of himself in front of after practice yesterday.

As it was, as soon as Sirius noticed, he did a quite embarrassingly exhausted double take, his face probably doing that dumb thing other people found comical when he couldn’t reconcile reality to what was in front of him. 

Remus laughed, turning slightly and speaking low so people wouldn’t hear him, “I had begun to wonder when you would notice.”

Sirius blinked incomprehensibly for a little while, just staring at the boy next to him as the lesson went on, watching as he smiled, satisfied, and taking in the details of his face when he was trying to work through a particularly tricky sentence. 

Perhaps his focus on Remus could be blamed for what happened next.

Sirius’s professor, having finally gotten his attention after Remus nudged him, asked him a question about something they had been discussing and Sirius’s mind went blank, literal empty spaces appearing as his heart started to race, more and more people beginning to turn around to stare at him when an answer was not immediately provided. Remus elbowed him for the third time that day, pointing to something in his notes that Sirius could barely make out as he read aloud and the professor, satisfied, continued on with the lesson. 

Sirius smiled thankfully at Remus before trying to actually pay attention to the lesson, which became a futile effort when Remus stretched five minutes later, arching his back against the chair as he spread his arms above his head.

Sirius was so fucked.

When class had ended, his notes were ten pages shorter than they usually were after a latin class and Remus was looking at him with something akin to pity.

The man almost looked sheepish as he scratched at the back of his neck, running his fingers through the hair there in a way that made Sirius inexplicably jealous, “Sorry for distracting you.”

Sirius could feel the beginnings of a plan forming, one that James would no doubt call stupid and Remus would call him out for immediately.

He took one look at Remus, all sheepish in his sweater with fucking elbow pads.

It was definitely worth it.

Dropping his gaze to the floor, Sirius gave his best impression of an embarrassed expression as he rubbed a hand against the inside of his arm, “It’s okay, I’m honestly pretty shite at this class anyway, its bringing down my overall grade.”

Remus looked like he had been submerged and drowning in the guilt of distracting him, “Oh Christ, I’m sorry.”

Trying to seem nonchalant, Sirius shrugs, “It's fine, just resigning myself to another all nighter after hockey studying nominal denominations.”

Hesitantly, Remus offered, “I could run through some of the material with you.” 

Perking up immediately, Sirius practically jumped up and down as he beamed at Remus, “You’d do that? Really?”

Seemingly making up his mind, Remus nodded, “Yeah, we can run through some of the material after my morning class tomorrow.”

“Okay, I’ll give you my number so we can get down time and place.”

Sirius probably perked up like a puppy, the grin so large on his face that he could feel the ache of stretch in his cheeks, his legs slightly numb as he bounced on the balls of his feet, “Really?”

Remus smiled, shaking his head as he gave Sirius a look he couldn’t decipher, “Yeah, here,” he ripped a piece of paper out of his notebook, scribbling down his number, “We’ll talk yeah?”

Sirius just beamed, “Yeah.”

Shaking his head again, Remus waved awkwardly, “See you around then?”

Somehow they managed to exchange goodbyes without Sirius royally fucking up whatever tenuous relationship they had. 

Now he just had to pretend he was bad at Latin.

Chapter Text

When Regulus woke up at three in the morning having gone to bed only three hours earlier, he knew he had a long day ahead of him.

He couldn’t do it.

The ice, which had always been a safe haven, somewhere for him to leave all his problems behind and throw himself into, had been invaded by his past, he couldn’t lace his skates without seeing the white ones that were flecked with bits of paint and double laced with red fingerprints, he couldn’t jump without seeing the frustrated face of a boy he once knew trying to build of endurance for jumping.

Having spent so much time running from his past, getting away from everything it represented, he had been unprepared for such a sore spot in his memory to thrust itself at him in the middle of his sanctuary.

During the day, when Remus was ranting about the cute boy he had met at practice and Regulus could focus on lesson planning (he planned thirteen lessons straight before collapsing into his bed and passing out, mind blissfully numb) it was easier to ignore the rising tidal wave of thoughts he had been unconsciously keeping at bay since he saw the tousled black hair so similar to his own and heard the bark-like laughter that crested his childhood with joy.

But in the dead of night, when the only distraction came in the form of the alarm clock he hadn’t used since the beginning of primary school, it became infinitely harder to keep the panicked thoughts at bay.

The fear of people from his past finding out about his transition had always been at the back of his mind, Regulus could practically picture the disgusted look on his mother’s face, the disapproval on his father’s. 

It wasn’t that Regulus thought Sirius wouldn’t accept him, but Sirius would accept him simply out of spite for their parents’ unapproval, finally loving him when he became something his parents would detest.

Regulus had longed for unconditional love his entire life, the kind of love he held for Remus that was reciprocated in full, he didn’t need a brother that had abandoned him during the darkest point of his life to go play fantasy with a nicer richer family he had met at his stupid fancy all boys preparatory school.

He hadn’t felt hurt for the entire situation in far too long, having gotten over it years ago, but that didn’t mean he wanted Sirius in his life ever.

When three-thirty rolled around and Regulus found sleep still evading him, he picked up his comforter and went in search of Remus.

The man in question had been sitting on their ratty old couch in the common area of their apartment, a cardigan pulled over his wrists as he stared into the bright light of his computer and typed something up.

Remus looked up when Regulus walked out of his room, an arm opening up for Remus to collapse against his side as he leaned into him, resting his head on Remus’s shoulder and closing his eyes, taking a deep breath and matching his breathing patterns to the rising and falling of the chest beside him.

Allowing Regulus to sit in silence for a bit, Remus typed up another two paragraphs of an essay Regulus vaguely recognized from Remus’s rants about his philosophy class before tentatively breaking the silence.

“Something keeping you up?”

Regulus burrowed deeper into the comforter he had wrapped around his shoulders, shifting to get a more comfortable view of Remus’s computer as he continued writing his paper.

A flash of curly black hair, the sharp cut of a hard earned smile, a mischievous smirk as their parents screamed in the background, “My brother is on the hockey team.”

The typing halted, the silence stifling without the slight tapping of keys as Remus freezed, head tilting to look at Regulus as he kept his eyes steadfastly on the blinking text cursor as it waited for more words to be added to the document.

Remus’s voice had become significantly softer as he said, “How do you feel about this,” his hand coming up to gently brush through Regulus’s hair as Regulus fought off tears.

A flash of warmth, the strong embrace of a protective older brother, a bond formed in terror and blood, “I don’t know yet.”

The arm around Regulus tightened (“ from the first moment I saw you, I knew I’d do anything to protect you”) “Did he recognise you? Did he accept you?”

Shaking his head, Regulus answered the sudden onslaught of questions, ‘He doesn’t recognise me, but I think he would accept me if he did.”

Remus leaned his head on Regulus’s head, both boys sitting in semi-silence as Remus muttered, “Good.”

A flash of black hair dyed with streaks of red, a bloody smile as the lips they belonged to swore it had been worth it, the belief and strength that there were things worth standing up for.

Regulus couldn’t be sure it was good at all.

The biggest struggle, Regulus found, had been the fear of the ice rink. 

Whenever he struggled with problems in his life, Regulus turned to unforgiving cold and harsh spins that left him dizzy and unable to think about anything but technique. 

His sanctuary had been invaded, filled to overflow with pictures from his past, memories Regulus wouldn’t be ready to dig up in a hundred years. Traumas and scars that were best left alone being split open.

He knew, somewhere deep down where memories of chipped black nail polish and old leather jackets hid, that being afraid of his haven happened to be just about the stupidest irrational fear he had ever had, but Regulus couldn’t help the racing of his heart when the thought of jerseys with “Potter” written on the back of them where another name originally lied in bold print seeped into his mind and refused to leave.

Logically, the best way to get over a fear is to face it, all lessons about fear taught that, but Regulus had lived with real terror, his reality for more than half his childhood had been terror and facing that, seeing people from that dark part of his life, was about the last thing he wanted to do.

Irrationality came from something invalid, his fear and avoidance of his past had been perfectly rational, but avoiding the rink couldn’t be grouped in the same thought process that allowed him to avoid all his problems.

Not facing it couldn’t be an option when the ice held his life, his futures, and his dreams.

This became a fact, so after his last morning class Regulus went to the rink early to skate during free-skate before he had to set up for his second lesson.

The more he avoided it, the more he would dread going.

An arm around his shoulder, an older hand to wipe away the tears that refused to dry up, the push and pull of having someone’s back and knowing yours was covered too.

Skating faster seemed to do it, throwing himself into jumps he didn’t dare attempt on off days, doing more and more dangerous tricks and catching ice more than once as he pushed himself harder and harder, fighting away tears that tried to fall as he jumped high enough to touch the sky, spinning so many times he lost count before landing as gracefully as a ballerina.

A boy bandaging bleeding blisters, a comforting smile, an awed whisper, “ You’re so strong Reggie.”

Eventually, he slowed to a stop when he could feel hard earned blisters forming and his lungs rasped with every breath, body begging for water as he practically floated over to his things on the benches.

His head was lighter now, eyesight seemingly higher than usual, like he was floating, the feeling of flying that warped his mind after a good workout making everything else fade away, an add on his spotify playlist adding to the removed idea of it.

The opening chords to Hawaii (stay awake) by waterparks found him back on the ice, executing a quick jump and tucking his ankles together and he counted the glimpses of the ground below him, releasing the tight coil into an arabesque as he skated backwards, a thrumming back in his body that compelled him to jump, move, keep spinning until he was too dizzy to tell up from down.

A flash of chipped black nails, the green bands of skin that signified where rings were supposed to go, a reflection of a mirror as a boy bent over it to apply eyeliner.

Reguls skated faster, and for a moment, his past lifted from the aching weight it pressed on his bones to become something more manageable, held between him and the ice as he spun until he could barely see straight.

Time passed in this haze of jumping and landing, the only marker of it came in the form of his three hour playlist restarting and playing songs he had already listened to.

Eventually, his legs begun wobbling in the tell tale way they started faltering before they gave out on a jump and left him hurtling for the ice, so in a moment of rational thinking, Regulus took a break, gliding half-heartedly to where Remus had now set up his homebase, the papers detailing something vaguely greek spread all around him as he wrote a paper.

Remus gave him a suggestive smile when he saw him, nodding to the other end of the rink, “You’ve got an admirer.”

Regulus looked over his shoulder to see James, staring at him with his mouth open like a loon.

Shaking his head, he took another sip of his water as he turned back to Remus, “Captain of the hockey team, he isn’t an admirer”

Remus just smiled, giving Regulus a little knowing smile that made him want to throw the older boy off a bridge, “Okay, if you say so.”

Rolling his eyes at the boy, Regulus skated off towards James, pushing the headphones that had previously been sitting on his head behind his ears onto his neck as he fluffed his hair out.

A flash of curly black hair laid almost mournfully on the ground, the flying soaring happiness of freefall, the crashing when he had nobody with him to weather the storm of his parents when they found out what he had done.

James smiled as he skated up, still lacing up his left skate as Regulus watched, doing two bunnies and tying them together.

A flash of scabbed knuckles guiding hesitant fingers, a song about bunnies and a high five when the knot stayed, buying a new pair of lace up shoes to commemorate the event.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to creep you out.”

Regulus shrugged, “I honestly didn’t notice you until my friend pointed you out.”

Gaze flickering to Remus and back, James said, “You’re like, scary good.”

Never one to back away from a compliment ( shoulders ahead, if you cannot take a compliment without blushing like a bride than you are not worthy of the noble house of Black) Regulus smiled, looking James up and down before replying, “It’s mostly practice, I’m sure I couldn’t do most of the things you lot do during matches.”

James smiled.

“I’d have to buy padding to wear to be able to do it, and that’s simply too much work for a sport I barely tolerate.”

Frowning, James leaned back, prompting Regulus to realise he had been slowly moving forward throughout the entire conversation, “I don’t know,” James drifted closer to him, both boys leaning in again, “it seems like you more than just tolerate some of the players.”

A paint splattered shoe and a jersey displaying the name Potter where a different name used to lay ( Black Black Black).

Regulus had seen them interacting last practice, he wouldn’t be able to do it, keep up a double life where the guy he kinda sorta talked to had formed a brotherly bond stronger than anything Regulus could have dreamed of having. 

He pulled back abruptly, letting his skates guide him backwards near the middle of the rink as he began plotting out where he would stand for the practice, checking to make sure his tennis balls were still in the bag they were supposed to be in.

James followed him onto the ice, pushing with a composed strength completely different to the technique and grace Regulus relied on, for not the first time, he wondered how well the two styles might mix, and if that was something he could ever be anywhere close to qualified to teach.

He’d try to teach him anyway.

James followed him as Regulus skated around the rink, weaving in between invisible obstacles backwards as James followed the same pattern, “I’m sorry!”

Regulus tilted his head in response, too busy watching the line he made in the ice almost perfectly followed as James followed him to ask why.

“I didn’t mean to come on too forward, you’re just really-”

The doors started opening, other players trudging in with their skates slung over their shoulders, held by the laces as James cut himself off.

You’re just really-

Self-centred.

Cruel.

Unloved.

The doors banged open one more time, a more than familiar figure walking in, paint splattered skates slung over his shoulder in a similar fashion to the man in front of him.

Terrified.

Chapter Text

Remus hasn’t been on a date for five years, and he liked it perfectly fine that way.

He could remember that one perfectly, agonising over his button down shirt, picking up the girl, bringing her to the movies, and her telling him after that he had been perfectly sweet, but not what she had been looking for.

Remus didn’t like dates.

But, the study session with Sirius couldn’t be classified as a date, not when both of the parties included in it were only in it for homework help, it could be a prelude, though Remus couldn’t be too sure he wanted to follow that route.

Either way, at ten on the dot, he found himself standing in front of their dirty bathroom mirror as he nitpicked his appearance, his packed backpack lying on the floor next to him, filled to bursting with textbooks as he ran his hands through his hair.

Practically filled to the brim with nerves, he ran a hand down his shirt, smoothing away the wrinkles and trying to make his hair look somewhat presentable.

Running a hand through his hair brought away almost a handful of curly hair and he groaned, checking his pulse as he counted to fifty.

He had to be careful with this, he didn’t want to spike his stress, it could cause an episode.

After being careful for years, Remus had become plenty accustomed to living with lupus, the autoimmune disease that seemed to control his entire life.

He took another belimumab pill, the prescribed medicine had a recommendation of once a day, and a specific dosage for when he had a suspected pre-symptom flare up.

He hadn’t had a flare up in years, though his consistently thinning hair always warned him before a fever appeared.

Living with a disease would never be easy, which partly contributed to Remus swearing off dates for most of his life, the nerves that came with going to grab coffee with Sirius definitely came from this.

Taking an anti-fever pill, he shrugged on his backpack, nearly buckling under the added weight as he headed out, throwing a blanket over the sleeping form of Regulus on the couch and moving the boy’s laptop off the couch onto the coffee table.

Regulus had a nasty habit of staying up all night working on something or other until it consumed him and he fell asleep in random places, a coping mechanism that stemmed from trying too hard not to think about a certain topic.

Regulus’s brother being on the hockey team had been a sore point in the flat lately, little things setting Regulus off on a biting tangent about how awful Remus acted because something reminded him of he-who-must-not-be-named (Regulus’s unnamed brother).

Safe to say that Regulus had been put through the ringer, and had been practically bursting with excitement for Remus in the days leading up to the study session.

Seeing as his joints groaned in pain every time he moved, he elected to take a trolley to the coffee shop he planned to meet Sirius at. 

Though they planned to meet at eleven-thirty and it was only eleven, Sirius was already there, nursing a coffee as he stared at the door.

Remus smiled, sitting down across from him with a small greeting on his lips as Sirius grinned back.

He got out his textbooks and then stood to order a green tea, one of the only things on the menu that fit into his stupid lupus mandated diet.

Set with his drink and his books, Remus walked Sirius through the lesson they had last class, becoming increasingly aware of the fact that Sirius knew his stuff, possibly better than even Remus did and he had ranked highest on their last two tests.

To Sirius’s credit, he obviously put effort into seeming lost, asking questions about the material and pretending not to get it when Remus explained things the first time, but he asked questions about the wrong things, playing too dumb and then asking a complex question that Remus had never even entertained, the switch up from complex to simple questions showing that Sirius had an in depth knowledge of the language that came from years of practice, something even Remus didn’t have.

After three hours, Remus set down a direct object dictionary and levelled an unimpressed stare at Sirius, trying to hide his smile at the caught out look Sirius gave him.

Wide eyes stared back at him, the expression shifting every few seconds as Sirius tried to project the  image of complete innocence.

“You know this stuff better than I do.”

Sirius smiled sheepishly and Remus had to take a moment, nearly breathless as Sirius rubbed an elbow, staring at his feet, “Maybe.”

Shaking away his nerves, he let the smile already involuntarily turning up the corners of his lips show on his face as he leaned in, “Sirius, if you wanted to go on a date with me, you just had to ask.”

Trying to ignore the fluttering in his chest at Sirius’s appraising look, Remus held firm until Sirius leaned in too, “Fine, go on a date with me?”

Holy shit.

It had nothing to do with the fact that Remus had never actually been asked on a date, that did not influence the floating feeling in his head, quite honestly, it had nothing to do with it.

Absolutely nothing.

Remus smiled, standing and closing the book in his hands, “Same time, same place next week, our second first date.”

Sirius stood, wide-eyed as he watched Remus pack up, “Why not now?”

Shaking his head, Remus smiled, “I have to tell my best friend I have a date first, and pay him twenty for being right, and it’s getting late.”

Sirius walked him out, and once they reached the street he gave him a shy look, “Would it be okay if I gave you a kiss goodbye?”

Remus huffed amusedly, “Did we enter the victorian era?”

Sirius leaned in until Remus could see the flecks of silver in his grey eyes, the storm of them focused completely on him, “Maybe I just really want to kiss you.”

Shock, white hot and soothing ran through him, striking his limbs nearly useless when Sirius pressed his lips against his.

Everything inside him was screaming, limbs pressed against him, a boy willingly kissing him as Remus panicked, placing a steadying hand on Sirius’s jaw as the man wrapped his arms around his neck.

His chest felt tight and light at the same time, like all his organs had turned to air as cloth wrapped around his ribs to keep the air inside, his muscles bursting with excitement and his eyes fluttering shut as he put his other hand on Sirius’s waist, pulling him just a smidge closer and relishing in the excitement that rushed through his veins, turning all thought into pure light and emotions, the crevice of Sirius’s jaw, the press of a cheek as he leaned his head down, the way his hand fit perfectly in the dip of the shorter man’s waist.

As soon as it started, two people connected on a street corner began drawing back, Sirius pulling away as Remus opened his eyes, more dazed than he had ever been in his life.

His organs were slowly settling back into their usual form as the wrapping around his ribs loosened, his brain having turned to mush somewhere back when two lips pressed against his and his thoughts were more muddled than when he got hooked up to drugs to dull the pain of surgery.

Sirius shot him a smile, “Next week?”

It had been all Remus could do to nod numbly, watching the black haired boy strut down the street and thinking to himself that his life just got a whole lot more interesting.

Cracking joints and all, he walked back to the flat and came face to face with a bouncing off the walls Regulus, the younger boy pulling him in with a grin and practically jumping up and down as he asked, “How’d it go? How’d it go?”

Remus leaned back on the couch, watching Regulus wait in anticipation of his answer, “It went well I suppose.”

Regulus cut him a dry look, “Don’t tell me all at once now.”

Laughing, Remus settled into the couch, Regulus jumping on beside him and curling up like a cat, “He admitted it had all been a front to go out with me and we have an actual date scheduled for the same time next week.”

Practically squealing in excitement, Regulus said, “I knew it! Nobody as hot as you say would be failing a freaking latin class, it’s like the easiest language.”

Remus shoved the boy, laughing, “Shut up Mr. private tutors my whole fucking life.”

“What’s his name? I want to make you guys a Mr. and Mr. stocking for Christmas, really jazz up the flat and then rent a room so you guys can have you alone time.”

Regulus said it with a wiggle of his eyebrows, giving Remus a suggestive look that had him shoving him back against the couch again, “Ew!”

Practically shrieking in laughter, Regulus taunted him, “Remus and his lover, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G”

Holding a hand over his embarrassed flush, Remus whined, “Reggie.”

Regulus shot him a look, watching him for a moment before his eyebrows raised in surprise, “You’re kidding? You kissed before the first date?”

Remus groaned, throwing himself back on the couch, “He kissed me.”

“Like there’s any difference.”

Ignoring the boy now sprawled across his lap, looking up at the ceiling and playing with one of Remus’s hands, twisting the rings on his fingers around and around in circles as Remus counted the water lines on the ceiling, reimagining a pair of lips pressed against him, the pressure of arms pushing against the back of his neck, the rush of joy through his veins, “There’s a difference.”

“Fine, fine, but his name, good sir?”

Remu frowned down at the boy that had taken him hostage on the couch, laying across his body in a way that pinned him down as he sat up slightly, trying to get a better view of the younger boy, “Have I really not told you?”

Giving him a smirk, Regulus answered, “It just hadn’t come up between “Oh Reg his jawline could cut me and I’d thank him,” and, “I want to lick him, is that so wrong?” Regulus threw a dramatic hand against his forehead, hamming up the agony of his words, like a personal grievance had been committed against him because of the man’s good looks.

“I never said that!”

“Did too!”

“Oh whatever,” in a desperate plea to get Regulus to stop teasing him, he answered the earlier question, “His name is Sirius,” preparing himself for the teasing that the man’s name would bring him ( wolf and star? You two must be trying to start a club. )

Regulus’s entire face dropped, the boy going very near white as all the joy drained from his features, whispering a disbelieving, “What?”

Remus had never seen him look so scared.

Chapter Text

Regulus could count on one hand the amount of times in his life he had been truly terrified for his life. But then again, not much really ranked when the bar had started so low that his parents wielding a knife at him didn’t even faze him.

Yes, there were moments in his childhood he had been afraid for his life, but he knew deep down his parents wouldn’t actually kill him.

The night Sirius left, there had been a solid four hours where if Regulus had been asked, he wouldn’t have been able to deny his parents were going to kill him.

To this day, he hadn’t decided whether it had been a mercy or a punishment when they eventually didn’t go through with it.

It started, as most things had in his childhood, with Sirius’s return.

Summer break had just started, the air so poignant it pushed and weighed on everyone’s skin, their top of the line air conditioner doing nothing for the humid days that one couldn’t escape from.

It had been tense around the house since Sirius came home from his stupid prep school, screaming tales of glory and unashamedly showing off the star tattoo he had on his back.

In theory, the spot could be easily hidden, but Sirius flaunted it every chance he got, much to their parents' disapproval. Sometimes in the dead of night, before everything went to shit, Sirius would let Reggie trace his fingers over the constellation as he listened to Sirius talk, the older boy’s eyes bright as he explained the meaning behind it, the Canis constellation, Sirius the biggest star in the collection, highlighted and coloured in a way the other stars weren’t, a blue tinge pulling at it that made it seem like it popped off his skin.

That had been before their fight three weeks into break, the boys shouting at each other through the tense silence of their house as their parents ran errands, Sirius angry that Reg had sided with his parents and Reggie shouting that he didn’t understand.

Sirius got to leave, Reggie stayed stuck in this house, constantly under the heavy judgement of his mother, and the heavier hand of his father, the more appeasing he came off as, the less punishment.

Out of the two brothers, Sirius didn’t have stretching scars across his back from too many belt lashes, a mark that Reg carried on his own.

Reggie hated everything about the situation, from the way Sirius eyed his manners and followed him as he walked with a purposed gait across the room, his etiquette classes finally shaping him into their parents’ version of a lady, to how his tone and voice seemed completely different than the excited and loving brother that wrote pages upon pages of texts and emails, lettering pictures for Reg to hang up with pride. 

The Sirius that returned to the Black mansion watched him with wary eyes, never getting too close to the younger boy, his parents’ puppet.

And so, it began their fighting and bickering, screaming matches over broken promises, snide comments over observed habits, glared looks across the dining table, both too prideful to break the silence.

By the end of that summer, Reggie had taken to crying himself to sleep, counting down the days until Sirius left for school again.

Their odd sibling stalemate came to a head the week before Sirius would leave him all alone in this horrible house for another year, Reggie’s older brother and his parents getting into a row, screaming themselves hoarse as Reggie sat atop their grand staircase, cold marble numbing his legs as he pressed himself against the bannister, listening to every word.

He vividly remembered it, smoothing his pooling skirt along the stairs until it spread out around him like something out of a disney movie, his hair brushing against his back as he braided it absentmindedly, the picture of perfect little lady, blinking away tears at how unfair the situation seemed, he wanted nothing more than to look the way he felt.

Sometimes he caught himself looking at Sirius longingly, watching the way he carried himself, sat without a care of someone looking up his nonexistent shirt, how people moved out of his way when they walked the streets, how he got so much more freedom than Reggie would ever get.

Sirius shouted about how they were racist blood supremacists, toxic and poisoning politicians that had half the upper class world in their pocket, they shouted about his ungratefulness, how awful of a child he had always been, how they wished he had never been born.

It ended with his father storming out, Reggie’s mother worked up into a rage as she audibly beat on the boy before leaving as well, making Reg scurry into his room to listen to her passing, nearly being caught atop the stairs.

His mother stormed past his room, slamming the door to their master suite as Reg peeked around his doorway, trying to quiet his racing breaths as he listened for any sign of his mother coming back out.

Hesitantly, Reggie made his way down to where Sirius laid near the kitchen counter, feet as soft as a breeze against the ground as he strained his ears for any indication their mother itched for a round two with her oldest child. 

He came embarrassingly close to breaking down in sobs as his older brother, his role model, practically his third parent, looked up at him warily, barely concealed anger at him hiding in his tense muscles, the clenching of his hands as he pushed himself off the ground.

There were cuts on Sirius’s arms, superficial, made by his mother’s nails, constantly scratching and digging into her disappointing children’s skin hard enough to draw blood, Reggie’s own arms ached in sympathy.

The dinner knife sat on the table next to where Sirius had sat, covered in something so suspiciously red it made Reggie nearly become reacquainted with his dinner.

A puddle of blood gathered on the floor where Sirius had been laying, Reg staring at it as Sirius shouldered past him, fleeing to his room.

Stomach turning, Reggie had begun cleaning up the remnants of the fight, washing the dishes that had been left behind as what Reg now referred to as the last complete Black dinner, getting started on scrubbing the awful, staining blood, off of the grout when footsteps started sounding down the stairs.

Having recognized them as Sirius’s, he peeked out of the kitchen into the foyer, watching a brooding Sirius storm down the stairs, his two backpacks on his back as he carried a duffle bag.

Reg stood in front of the door, heart beating in his throat as the sweat cooled on the back of his neck from the earlier adrenaline, unable to fully process what he saw, unwilling to understand what had been set in motion.

Voice quiet, because any louder would echo into every crack and crevice in the house, tears edged away the bottom of his vision, his brother impatiently stood in front of him as Reggie asked, “What are you doing?”

Sirius didn’t bother with a response as he pushed past Reg, beginning to unlock the front door, ignoring the sibling scrambling behind him, “Where are you going?”

After being ignored again, Reggie’s chest began to shake in suppressed sobs, breath rattling in his chest as he watched his brother walk away without a goodbye, the door opening as Reg followed him out, sobbing freely now as he stumbled after his brother, “Wait! Wait- Sirius please-Sirius-no Sirius please I can’t- please Sirius don’t- Sirius!”

In the middle of the yard, Sirius spins abruptly, making Reg’s hand fall away from his brother’s arm as Sirius rounds on him, “Go back inside Reggie.”

Go back inside, go back to the life that will kill you while I leave, leave you here all alone.

Reg just shook his head, tears streaming down his face, his mind running quickly, but on mute, he felt like the world had been put on fast forward, moving far too fast for him as he reached out to brother, another sob escaping when Sirius stepped away from the touch, eyeing the offending hand like it held a knife, “Please, don’t leave. Stay. Please”

Sirius shook his head, “Why should I?”

There were thousands of reasons, more than Reggie could even name, even think of, even comprehend, how could Sirius even have a reason to leave in the first place?

Reggie didn’t know how to say what curled in his chest, how to describe the knife pushing into his ribs and slowly twisting, every breath painful, “Please,” Please, I need you. Please, you can’t leave me here alone. please, what about me, please I can’t do this without you, please, please, please, please, you and me against the world, please take me with you, please, this house will kill me, please, I’m already dying every time you walk away, please, I’m screaming it, please, pleasepleasewhycan’tyouhearme? Please. Sirius. please

Sirius scoffed, “Please? All you can think of? Honestly Regina, you need to be better than that.”

Regulus could pinpoint exactly where, in his life, he started forming a hatred for his brother, his perfect stupid brother who didn’t even appreciate that he didn’t have to struggle with the way his body didn’t match up with his brain, his ignorant brother who knew, he knew, how much he hated his first name, his awful estranged brother who used to be a little boy that noticed the way Reg flinched at his name and started calling him Reggie, Reg, Regilicious, Lion, R, Gin, Resin, Rey, Rey-Rey, anything and everything but that awful name that made Reggie want to claw at his skin until it somewhat resembled the mess of a boy that laid curled up inside.

Nearly sick, Reggie watched as Sirius took satisfaction in how deep his comment had sunk into Reg’s skin, curdling his blood and making him instinctively flinch back as Sirius turned with new purpose, and walked away.

 Reg didn’t call out again as his brother walked further and further from him with each step, the tear in their relationship growing and growing until it split with the clang of their metal gate being slammed shut, two strangers in the world, one walking away from a London street he would never return to, one chained to all the responsibility that came with the crushing weight of the deadly house that stood behind him, watching with growing hatred, someone who now resembled a stranger to him walk away without a backwards glance.

He didn’t hear or speak the word Sirius again for the better part of a decade.

Eight years later and aeons heavier than he ever had been at fourteen, Regulus sits on a lumpy couch, one of the springs sticking out next to him as he chokes out sobs, trying to fight his way to breath, remember how to breathe, how to think, how to be anything past the gnawing ache spreading through his veins like a poison activated by two syllables uttered by his best friend.

Said friend is nearly white as he stares at him, hands fluttering around uselessly as he tries to comfort him, something Regulus can just barely see through the tears blurring his vision.

Remus isn’t touching him, his arms open hesitantly, though he isn’t imposing, and Regulus nearly launches himself into his arms, trying to patch together the wound that had been stitched haphazardly as a teen and never fully healed, oozing blood and hurt as Regulus curled up in Remus’s arms and sobbed, body shaking with the strength of it.

“Regulus?”

How could he tell him, how could he admit that he had been crushing under this weight since he watched the best person in his life walk away without ever looking back, how could he keep Remus from being happier than he had been in ages, a new boy that actually seemed interested in Remus, like all the men should be. 

“Reggie?”

He pushed away, scutting like a mad crab away from Remus, from those comforting arms so similar to the only other comforting hands he had ever experienced in his life.

Already sputtering apologies, Remus came slightly closer, arms up in a non-threatening way as he tried to reason with Regulus, practically begging him to breathe.

How could he breathe when everything that Regulus had worked for after he left his parents slowly started crumbling down.

How long until Sirius recognized him, got his suspended from the ice skating team for being transgender, ruined his life and his reputation.

He would do it, Sirius had already ruined Regulus’s life once, Regulus doubted he would hesitate to do it again.

Why Remus even bothered to room with such a pathetic boy as Regulus, he didn’t know, but as soon as he told him about his relation to the boy’s new date, Remus would leave him just like his future boyfriend did.

Everyone leaves him eventually, he’s too much, not enough, too needy, too aloof, a bad friend, and a worse brother.

Remus sat next to him patiently, waiting for Regulus to calm his breathing enough to explain the tightness in his chest, the pain pressing against all his senses, why couldn’t he just man up. 

Is he really so weak that he can’t even hear his disowned brother’s name without falling into a panic attack?

Regulus calmed down his breathing, though he still hiccuped his way through stuttered apologies, talking over an indignant Remus as he practically begged for him to forgive him.

“I’m sorry,” please please please don’t leave me

“I’m- I’m sorry,” I wouldn’t be able to handle it, I need you

“Please, Remus I’m so sorry” If I have to watch you leave too I’ll never recover.

“Regulus, stop it. You have nothing to apologise for.”

If you choose my brother over me, I would die.

Remus and Regulus don’t talk about their trauma, it’s like an unspoken deal, they acknowledge it exists and move on. Regulus doesn’t push when a wine glass clutched in his hand sends Remus spiralling into a panic attack, he just stops drinking from those kinds of glasses and spends an afternoon with the boy shattering all of the glasses in an abandoned parking lot. Remus doesn’t blink when Regulus flinches away from unknown touches, just starts asking before ever getting close to the boy. When Remus nearly cries as Regulus cuts his hair in the bathroom, Regulus ignores the piles of hair involuntarily shed off the other boy’s head in the trashcan and starts cutting his hair at Pandora’s apartment.

But when Regulus has a full blown, sobbing mess, flashback panic attack at the name drop of Remus’s talking stage, he does owe him some semblance of an explanation.

Remus knows about Regulus’s brother in the way that Regulus knows he has a medical condition called lupus, they never talk about it and never give details.

Regulus has abandonment issues from his brother leaving, that's all that needs to be said, and all that is ever said.

Sitting on their kitchen floor, backs pressed against their old thrifted couch, Regulus lays it out, the fear, the depression, the days of being unable to leave his bed, how his brother’s hateful face sneered down at him every time he closed his eyes.

And for the first time in his life, someone listened.

Remus started practically vibrating by the end of it, all his muscles tense as he pushed slightly at the ground like finding Sirius and beating him the fuck up would come immediately after comforting his friend.

When all the words were out there, clear as day, most of his past laid bare for Remus to judge, the other boy just quietly asked, “Can I put my arm around you?”

As Regulus leaned against his best friend, Remus began talking, about how he constantly lived in terror over dying from Lupus, how frustrated he got when he had to miss out on life because of his medical condition, how his father left when five year old Remus got diagnosed with the disease.

“I know what it’s like to be abandoned without deserving it, Regulus. I don’t care how much I’ve begun to like your brother, you always come first.

When both boys woke up, curled together on their kitchen floor as the sun rose through the windows behind them, nothing had officially changed between them, and yet everything had.

One week and two practices with the hockey team later, Regulus began setting up for his next lesson as team members began trickling in, most of which Regulus had learned the names of.

As he grabbed more tennis balls from his bag, testing to make sure they all still bounced (throwing tennis balls at people had become surprisingly therapeutic) Sirius approached him.

Regulus watched as Remus stood up from where he not so subtly watched on the bleachers under the pretence of doing his homework, but regulus waved him off with a particularly sharp glare, the older boy sinking back onto the cold stands hesitantly, tension curling in every muscle as he prepared to come to his aid in a moment.

Instead of focusing too hard on Remus, Regulus took a fortifying breath and turned to Sirius as the man rubbed the inside of his elbow, a habit that Regulus recognised as an anxious tick, after all, he did it himself when he became particularly nervous.

Sirius stopped a healthy space away from him, which had Regulus scrabbling for control of the situation as Sirius stared at him glancing away when Regulus practically glared back.

“Do you-” he cut himself off, rubbing his arm again as he cast a glance towards where Remus sat on the benches before asking with renewed confidence, “Do you know why Remus is ignoring me?
Shocked, Regulus lost control of his mouth, “I didn’t know he was.”

Sirius looked up in surprise, “Really? But aren’t you both friends? I thought-”

Honestly, Regulus didn’t know what he had expected from this conversation, but a little bit of him had hoped maybe it would be about him, which would be stupid, nobody, not even his brother, would recognise him, he couldn’t blame him for that.

That didn’t stop the bitter ache from spreading across his chest as Sirius began to ramble about Remus, not even asking Regulus about himself.

It made no sense to be hurt, they logically didn’t even know each other (as far as Sirius knows) and Sirius had no obligation towards him, but all the same, he could feel the tears building behind his eyes, a tell-tale ache forming in his throat as he fought to inhale and exhale at a normal rate.

Sirius didn’t notice, Regulus didn’t expect him to, as Regulus slipped deeper and deeper into the throes of a dissociative panic attack, breath stopping altogether as his mouth opened and closed like a particularly unintelligent fish.

Suddenly James appeared, pulling him away from the conversation as he said something quickly to Sirius, leading him over to the away team’s benches, one hand light on his back, the other guiding his hand as Regulus fought to breathe.

He couldn’t remember how, oh god, why couldn’t he remember how?

James talked to him, though Regulus couldn’t understand what he said, words fighting towards him in a storm, just the bare imprints indicating sound, but no clue to what those sounds were.

Slowly, Regulus came back to himself, sounds filtering in as he remembered how to breathe, James keeping up a steady stream about his day, talking about his classes, Regulus focused on the sound of his voice until he became grounded enough to feel his fingertips ache with cold again.

Recognising the worst of it had passed, James drew back slightly, brows drawn together in worry as he stared at Regulus, “Are you okay?”

How could he be okay when he had to face his waking nightmare every time he came to his safe space, when this boy who cared so much and was so sweet added to Regulus’s reasons for being afraid to show up at the rink.

How could he explain to James that doing this had been killing him slowly since the first time he saw paint splattered skates.

Regulus pushed away from him, mumbling a weak assurance and not giving James the time to fling another question as he ignored the burning in his eyes, the aching in his heart, and started the lesson.

If, for the first time, he forgoed meeting with the captain of the team after the lesson to instead jet out of there with Remus’s arm slung firmly over his shoulder, it really had nothing to do with the captain, but instead the captain’s best mate that stood next to him when the time came to give a rundown.

Chapter Text

Regulus had no hang ups about his childhood, he had gotten over it years ago, it no longer affected him. If he saw his mother on the street, he would not be afraid, maybe he’d even confront her, show her how far her perfect little lady had strayed. 

When he had first moved out (read: run away), he often passed boring days by imagining what he would say to her as he stared himself in the mirror, scissors in hand and black curls littering the ground like unlocked chains, freeing the constrictions around his chest that prevented him from breathing right.

Because he had been so ready to fight her, he had never imagined seeing Sirius would hurt him. If he’s honest with himself, he would be able to recognise that he had simply never entertained seeing Sirius again, it seemed improbable, who even knew where Sirius had ended up. 

If Regulus had been in his older brother’s shoes, he would have moved to America, or some other awful place where his mother would never dare go.

Of course, as he had learned, Regulus is not Sirius, because Regulus makes good decisions, and Sirius doesn’t.

Understandably, his decision to stay in England came with consequence, but out of all the possible outcomes, all the people he could have encountered, Regulus had never imagined seeing his estranged brother again (he had, back right after Sirius left, curled in a ball in his room, staring at his window, begging and pleading to a god that didn’t exist that Sirius would come back to take him with him).

Fate didn’t like him, that much seemed evident when he caught a glimpse of Sirius running down the street towards him as he exited his favourite coffee shop. Why his brother had been tromping around the streets of England at three in the morning, Regulus didn’t know, but he couldn’t judge when he had just been buying three coffees (one for Remus and two for himself) to help him along his all nighter so he could finish his four papers due in the AM.

“Regulus!” 

Maybe if he ignored him, he’d go away.

“Regulus!”

Slipping his phone out of his pocket, he turned up the music on his headphones, The Oh Hellos blasting in his ears and drowning out the calls of his relentless brother.

“Pardon me, Regulus!”

It’s like constellations/ A million years away/ Every-

Sirius caught up tapping on his shoulder, something Regulus couldn’t ignore without being obvious of his avoidance.

He slipped one of the headphone ears off of his, pushing it behind his ear to rest against his head as the track switched to a Half.Alive song, the opening chords ringing in his ears as he turned towards the brother that had recently taken up the task of haunting his every waking hour, one eyebrow raised as he frowned in a way that came off as intimidatingly annoyed and not terrified.

“May I help you?”

Sirius looked properly chagrined for stopping him on the street at three in the morning, but he ploughed forward, “I need to apologise to you.”

Regulus had never really believed people could completely change, everyone had core values and beliefs that could not be wavered, set in place by their childhood, fully formed by the time they entered their teenage years, around the time Sirius stopped apologising to him when he hurt his feelings. Quite often, their fights would just fade away when Sirius had been in the wrong, Regulus always being the first to apologise as Sirius stared impassively, the house tense for a few hours before they forgive each other.

It hadn’t been possible to hold a grudge in that house when they were all each other had to survive.

And yet, wonder of all wonders, here Sirius stood, gearing up to apologise to Regulus for god knows what.

For a stupid, futile, weak moment, his heart leaped, hope soaring as he imagined Sirius saying he recognised him, that he felt awful about storming out that night, that he saw him, that no matter what, he loved him, that he wanted to have a relationship.

“I didn’t mean to corner you the other day, your roommate’s decisions have nothing to do with you.”

Stupid.

Regulus knew better than to get his hopes up, if his childhood had taught him anything, it had been that one of man’s greatest fatal flaws came in the form of hope, it always led you on, never good for you.

He cleared his throat, fighting against the stupid lump in it, curing his traitorous eyes for pricking with the early signs of tears as his vision clouded, of course, Sirius would never apologise for leaving, he didn’t even know.

Regulus’s fault really.

“Right, well, if that’s all, I’ll be off now,” off to lick his wounds, maybe cry to Remus for a bit, because these tears weren’t going away, if anything, they were unpreventable, inevitable.

Blacks don’t cry.

He set his shoulders, staring right into Sirius’s eyes, trying to look down on the man five inches taller than him. Who cared if his eyes were glassy if he narrowed them enough that the whites of them were barely visible.

Of course, even before he made to rush off, he knew that wouldn’t be it, fate had never been that kind to him.

“No, really, I’m being sincere, it hadn’t been right of me to bring up my relationship with your friend, it has nothing to do with you.”

Blacks don’t cry, Blacks don’t cry, Blacks don’t cry.

Reggie stay out of this, it has nothing to do with you you white supremist bitch, do you even care you support people that would burn you at a stake!

“Right, now that we’ve settled that your relationship with my best friend is none of my business, am I free to go?” Regulus could feel the desperation edging the end of his words, the barely held back tears clogging every sound trying to leave his throat.

Lucky for him, he had always been the more perceptive sibling, Sirius couldn’t recognise the signs of sadness if it stripped and did a pole dance in front of him.

“Wait,” foiled again, he should honestly expect this, everything Sirius did, he turned into a long experience, story, encounter.

Whatever.

“I just, I don’t want my aggressiveness to affect your relationship with James, you seem like a really nice guy and I think you and James would be great together, don’t ignore him on my account please. I think we could really get along.”

Regulus considered making a comment about how people should stop assuming he’s gay, maybe throw in a comment about healthy male relationships, but Sirius looked embarrassingly earnest, and no matter what he did, there would always be a soft spot in him for Sirius.

His music switched, the strumming beginning chords of Underground by Cody Fry started as he opened his mouth to say something, anything, to discourage Sirius from trying to be his friend, maybe say-

“I really like you, I don’t know, you just seem really familiar to me, I think you remind me of someone I know, I just can’t figure out who.”

The world around him became drowned out in a ringing that started in his ears, a numbing feeling sweeping through his body and down to his toes, his whole body on pins and needles as white hot fear races through him, muscles tensing as he prepared to run, rasping out through broken lungs, “Probably James.”

Sirius shook his head, either oblivious or uncaring to Regulus’s recent struggle to get air in and out of his body at a normal pace, heart pounding in his ringing ears, “No, you and James definitely have an “opposites attract” thing going on, plus James usually falls for people that could either step on him, or refuse to give him the time of day, you happen to be both in a very familiar way.”

He can’t breathe, can’t breathe, can’tbreathe, can’tbreathecan’tbreathe.

“Probably another teammate then.”

Sirius shrugged, scuffing his foot against the ground, “Yeah, maybe.”

Cody Fry’s soaring chords and gliding voice traded itself out for the tapping, frantic chords of 30/90, yes he liked musical theatre, sue him.

“Right, well I have a sociology paper due in three hours that I haven’t started yet, so I’ll see you at practice, hope you figure out who I remind you of.”

He started his retreat, ignoring Sirius’s response in favour of getting the hell away from there as soon as he could without running, turning around a street corner and breaking into a dead sprint through the empty streets.

They’re singing happy birthday/ you just wish you could run away.

He lived about a nine minute walk from the coffee shop, he got back to his flat in less than five minutes, the beginning chords of “I Of The Storm” by Of Monsters And Men making his hands shake as he fished for his keys in his pocket, trying to get into the two bedroom cramped space that felt more like home than anywhere else he had ever been.

Remus obviously heard his struggle with the door because the lock began turning of it’s own volition, opening to Remus’s concerned face right around the time that Regulus began realising tears were streaming down his face, silent rivers carving tracks down his flushed from running cheeks.

Regulus shoved his chin up, trying futilely to stop the onslaught of tears, but recognizing their existence just seemed to make him cry harder, lungs rattling with the ferocity of his sobs as his body curled around the coffees that were somehow unspilled.

Gently taking the cup holder from him, Remus drew him slightly closer, wrapping an arm around his shoulder as he guided him into the flat, not questioning the crying yet as he sat him down on the couch and pulled him closer. 

As he buried his face into Remus’s shoulder, he felt the headphones slipping off his head, Remus’s voice coming into better clarity as he shushed the younger boy, hand rubbing up and down his back in comfort as the other held his head, wrapped around his shoulder as he ran fingers through his hair.

When Regulus finally felt like his lungs had remembered how to work properly, he pulled back, accepting the cup of what had probably been Remus’s tea, cooled down enough to be drinkable since Remus liked drinking the tea when it still bubbled from being boiling hot. 

Feeling just slightly like a child, limbs still shaky and head light like he sat moments from passing out, Regulus mumbled out an apology into the cup of tea, not ready to see the sympathy in Remus’s eyes as he stared at him.

Remus shook his head slightly, obvious enough that Regulus could see it from where he looked at his lap, “Don’t apologise for feeling things, you’re human Regulus, no matter how often you forget it.”

The words pushed at him, soothing an ache in his chest he hadn’t even realised had been there as tears pricked at his eyes again, his head feeling less light, like he had finally returned back into a near normal state, nerves still shaky and on edge from the flight or fight mode he had switched back from.

“I-”

“Oh don’t even.”

Sometimes it amazed him how well Remus knew him, how the man could instantly know when Regulus prepared to apologise by just one word, how he could see when Regulus teetered moments away from passing out, how he knew exactly what to say to comfort him, when to hug him and when to give him space.

That being said, he could always read Remus too, he knew when to help him up the stairs and when trying would just make the exhausted man indignant, he knew when he felt weak and when he was just tired, he knew how to follow the mood swings like he got pulled through them with Remus.

He supposed it came with the territory of living with someone, you learned how to read him, he certainly could read when his parents were in a bad mood, or when Sirius came home itching for a fight, but he had never felt that reciprocated, sometimes trying to convey emotion to Sirius had felt like screaming at a brick wall.

Sometimes being seen like Remus saw him made him so inexplicably happy, unable to put into words how someone seeing him when nobody ever did made him feel on top of the world, other times, like today, it just made him sad. He put so much effort into appeasing people, reading and understanding their emotions to best react in any situation, and nobody ever even saw that he didn’t feel great.

Loathe as he had been to admit it, being ignored his whole life, being invalidated when having emotions just because he periodically bled from something he didn’t even want, had left lasting damage on his self esteem. 

Remus let him take a few more calming sips of tea, most likely chamomile, but the amount of honey poured into it made it nearly unrecognisable by taste alone.

“What happened?”

Black hair, an earnest smile, you feel so familiar

“I ran into…an old friend,” it seemed stupid, but he couldn’t do it, couldn’t say his name, how could he, when he had begged for years to be heard, had screamed that name in a rotting garden as the man himself ran away, shouting awful things. 

Somewhere inside himself, Regulus had been sure Sirius knew, had understood why he hated being hyper-feminine, hated being called Regina.

He had been wrong.

“Our mutual one?”

Regulus nodded, “I think, you might need to talk to him, he came and apologised to me for asking about you last practice, he could recognise that it had nothing to do with me and it had been unfair of him to ask.”

Nodding, Remus took in his words before jumping up, walking towards the door like he anticipated kicking it down.

“Where are you going?”

Remus stopped short, hand on the doorknob as he turned slowly, looking for all the world like he had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar, “I’m going kick his arse.”

Regulus snorted, “It’s fine.”

“He made you cry.”

Remus’s face had been set, a fierce set to his eyebrows that made his eyes look darker in the dim lighting of their flat, the certainty of his statement taking the breath from Regulus’s lungs as he tried desperately to convey to Remus that his brother hadn’t really done anything, that he just didn’t know how to regulate his own emotions.

“He didn’t intentionally do it.”

Face twisting, Remus nearly yelled, “Bull! You came home crying so hard you couldn’t see straight! Excuse me if I want to go beat some sense into him.”

Regulus took a steadying breath, “Don’t yell at me, I’m not the one you’re mad at.”

Remus visibly backed down, shoulders falling forward as his entire body seemed to cave in, fight seeping out of him as he looked at the floor, ashamed, “Sorry Reg.”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not.”

Shrugging, “Right, well I’m not in the mood to go back and forth about it, I forgive you, end of story.”

Remus joined him again on the couch, burying his face into Regulus’s lap, voice muffled by the pillow he had put there, “You forgive too easily.”

Regulus shrugged again, “I think sometimes I don’t even know how to forgive.”

Remus got in his face quite suddenly, hands grabbing his shoulders as he looked into his eyes, “You can’t forgive Sirius without at least an apology.”

Avoiding eye contact, he nodded, a warmth growing in his chest from the love Remus had for him.

“Promise me.”

“I can’t.”

Remus shook him slightly, making his head bob back and forth, “Please Regulus, make him beg for it.”

“I hope he never finds out.”

A forehead rested against his shoulder, Remus banging his forehead against his shoulder a few times, “Goddamnit, just promise me please.”

“Remus, light of my life, fire in the cold, air in my lungs-”

“Regulus,” his mother warning him before he spoke out of turn, Sirius, an edge of terror in his voice as he watched him climb onto the roof of their house, Remus when Regulus refused to go to sleep even though he hadn’t slept in over a day.

“Fine, I promise.”

A squeeze just too tight when he heeded the warning, a breathless grin when he settled on the roof without breaking his neck, an exasperated smile as he dozed on a shoulder, a tight hug after a promise for his own wellbeing.

Yes, Sirius would probably always haunt him, being left to rot in that house would always affect him, but Sirius had once been his Remus, Sirius had once been the one he turned to for everything and anything. Sirius taught him to tie his shoes, had learned how to braid hair just so Regulus could have his hair done without his mother ripping his hair out of his skull, Sirius had sat up with him after nightmares, and had comforted him when he couldn’t sleep.

Yes, Sirius left and a part of Regulus would always ache, would always be hurt and broken from it, would always feel like broken glass, but there had been a time before that where Sirius had been the one to teach him how to glue glass back together with gold, how to pick himself back up even better than before.

He couldn’t reconcile his brother with the man that deserted him, but he didn’t have to anyway, because the hockey season would end and Regulus would never have to see him again.

It had just become a matter of waiting, and Regulus had been waiting his whole life, he could be patient a little longer.

Chapter Text

Remus woke up on the floor of his apartment, three different alarms sounding, one muffled by a door, and one buzzing against his leg as the doorbell rang.

Peeling open his sore eyes, he looked around the room, head still fuzzy with sleep as he watched the living room swim in and out of focus in his blurry vision.

Blinking hard to wake himself up, he slunk out of a sleeping Regulus’s grip to get ready for the day, taking one of the muffins Regulus had gotten from the bakery down the corner for breakfast and practically swallowing it whole as he shuffled around the room, trying to remember everything that happened last night.

His phone buzzed against the kitchen counter, drawing his attention away from a slumped Regulus as he wandered over to it, taking in the twenty or so texts and emails from different people. 

The startling majority of them were from Sirius, no surprise there, he had texted him sometime last night asking to talk. Sirius of course, the more impulsive of the Black brothers, had already set up a time and place, expecting him there.

Remus spared Regulus another glance, head pounding from lack of sleep as his stomach turned sickly with nerves. Picking up the phone, he scrolled until he found Sirius’s contact, hesitating only for a few moments before pressing the call button.

It was obvious after the third call that Sirius was sending him straight to voicemail.

Cursing, Remus sat down at his island/table/coffee table to hash out the most grammatically perfect agonised text he had ever written.

Two sentences.

‘Hey, I’m so sorry about the radio silence, could we meet up today and talk. Nothing super bad, I just have some things I need to tell you’

Sirius left him on read for thirty minutes, enough time that when Remus sprang across the room in a mad grab for his phone his feet were numb from misuse. He really deserved nothing better.

After spending almost ten minutes agonising over the uncharacteristic punctuation Sirius used in his message, he supposed he should actually get some productive things done and get into working clothes.

After powering through a few papers and assigned readings, he nudged awake a grumpy Regulus and spent nearly an hour nursing a tea with him before kicking him out to go to the food shop.

Having food in his pantry again largely helped his stress levels, and he settled into his closet for what would be a gruelling thirty minutes as he debated what to wear.

Once finally settled on black baggy jeans and a tighter one of his undershirts to be under a cream coloured cardigan, he settled his headphones over his grey beanie and started the trek to the coffee shop he agreed to meet Sirius at.

The place seemed nice, if not a little edgy, guitars hanging on the wall and band tapestries and posters draped across walls and even the ceiling, multicoloured fairy lights bathed the room in an array of colours that reflected off mirrors and metal to give the entire shop the illusion of being fractured by light. The lights were like a mirrorball, held gently in the calm atmosphere of the room as people laughed and joked.

It seemed like exactly the type of place that would draw Sirius’s attention.

He only had to wait ten minutes for Sirius to show up. His appearance perfectly matched up with his hot tea finally reaching that perfect drinking point where it won’t burn your tongue but it still warms you to the toes.

Sirius had come dressed to the nines, leather jacket covering a shirt with the skeleton holding a cigarette by some famous artist or another, black skinny jeans ending at just the right point that when he lifted his arms to wave at a waiter, the shirt peeked up to reveal a slip of skin and beginnings of a tattoo that settles safely on his hip bone like it had always been there.

Remus couldn’t glance away from him, from the eyeliner highlighting his grey eyes (they were slightly bluer than Regulus’s, but the similarity had become shockingly clear ever since he had found out the truth) to the doc martins he had tucked his jeans into. 

Sometimes, it became woefully obvious Remus had a type.

Trying to remind himself that the man in front of him had done damaging things to his best friend, he shoved down the fluttering in his heart until it settled into a faint thump in his feet he could pass off as ache from the walk here and smiled at Sirius, beckoning for him to take a seat as he stood.

“Your order?”

Sirius winked, then seemed completely disgusted with himself for allowing himself to wink at Remus, “The Black special.” The fluttery feeling that made his heart beat irregularly returned.

This conversation had been doomed from the start.

After trying and failing to give himself a pep talk as he got Sirius’s order, he returned to the little table to see Sirius fiddling with the lights above their head, bathing their booth in the soft blue tones of led before flicking the soft white fairy lights on, creating a harsh shadowing on his face that highlighted his cheekbones.

Remus suddenly found it hard to swallow past the dryness of his throat.

“Right, so, I suppose I better explain.”

“Suppose so.”

They faded into a silence, stilted in a way it had never been between them before.

Remus lasted thirty seconds before clearing his throat, “I’m, erm, really sorry for ignoring your messages, a personal issue came up and I became single mindedly focused on fixing it.”

Sirius scoffed before slouching back in his seat, “Could you sound any more impersonal Remus? Who am I? Your boss?”

“I’ve never kissed a boss before.”

“Wow, live a little, you gotta kiss a superior at least once in your life, it brings you a new understanding to Taylor’s All Too Well.”

“Swiftie?”

“Hardcore.”

Remus nodded and Sirius raised an eyebrow, the banter of companionship fading back again into uncomfortable silence.

Remus originally started his major in psychology before completely switching tracks to ancient civs with a focus on Greek and Romans and Architecture. One of the first things he learned in his psych class before it got too much? Silence is the best way to get someone to talk, sit in silence for long enough and you can peel a person back like an onion.

It really boiled down to human nature, an ingrained unchangeable response. Biology.

Remus, loathe as he is to admit it, was only human.

“My best friend had a very triggering experience and became practically catatonic as he dipped in and out of dissociative episodes, I’m sorry if I had been too worried about him eating three times a day to check my phone Sirius.”

The man in question bristled, leaning forward, the blue light shifting on his face, highlighting the creasing in between his eyebrows as his eyes narrowed to bullets, ready to pierce his skin, “One text Remus, just a ‘Hey I’m alive, I need a bit!’”

“I needed a bit!”

“Then communicate that!”

“Yes, next time my best friend cries himself to sleep on my couch I’ll make sure to stop him for a moment so I can whip out my phone and let you know I need space.”

“No, next time you call me and I find a way to help!”

“Oh yes, let me walk away from my friend in need so I can ring up my study buddy and let him know I need him to help me with a stranger that hates other strangers!”

“Oh don’t even, it’s not as dramatic as that!”

“Don’t act like you’re so above me you entitled posh! You’ve fucked up before too believe it or not!”

“Oh and you’d know?”

“Welcome to the world Sirius, you’re a human.”

His arms flew up, flapping angrily before freezing as Sirius flinched back, shoulders curling up as he pulled his arms in front of his face, looking to the side to protect himself from an imagined blow.

Dread curled in his stomach, cold and heavy as he took in the standing sight of Sirius, looking around at the rest of the shop’s residents that had quieted down, looking over in little glances at his table as the quiet sound of subdued clicking of glasses filled the silence in the room.

Somehow Remus had stood up during the maybe-screaming match, the only thing preventing him from looking down on Sirius being the table between them, though it didn’t help much when their height difference is that prominent, especially with Sirius shrinking back from him like he is now.

“Sirius…” the man looked mortified, hands falling like forgotten winter leaves still clinging to its branch before finally floating to the ground, “I wouldn’t ever hurt you.”

A watery sheen glittered in Sirius’s eyes, making Remus’s own eyes burn in the blue and white light, “It hurt when you ignored me.”

A knife to the chest would hurt less than the defeated tone delivering the killing blow to Remus’s ears, clawing into the softest parts of himself and digging in, leaving sharp spikes of pain where his shrivelled heart used to be, wilted from the emotional stress of this conversation.

“I wouldn’t hit you.”

Put bluntly, it propelled Remus into memories of the Regulus he had first met, pale and small with choppy self cut hair who jumped at every sound and flinched from every movement. Regulus had eventually gotten better, having been allowed the time to heal with a boy majoring in psych living with him, though he still had bad days that had him turning to see every sound and tracking every movement with careful, wary eyes.

Sometimes, Remus wondered how he didn’t figure out they were brother’s sooner.

Remus had never seen true sibling resemblance between the Black brother’s before, but something about the tilt of Sirius’s head, the slight tremble in his white knuckled hands, the mistrust in his eyes, it had become an instinctually recognized habit Remus could point out anywhere. 

Painfully, Remus could see every inch of Regulus painted between the hard line of Sirius’s shoulders, reflected in the wary wrinkle of his eyebrows, an unconscious radar that had been attuned to Regulus for years, sounding all the same alarms at Sirius’s display.

“I’m…” Sirius wouldn’t look up at him, wouldn’t look at anything but the fracturing reflections of the light above their heads, “Sirius, I would never hurt you.”

“You ignored me for almost two weeks.”

Hands clawed at his heart for it, dragging the organ down deep into his stomach and ripping it apart like a wolf.

“Physically…I wouldn’t physically hurt you.”

Sirius scoffed, rocking back on his heels, still unnaturally pale and unable to make eye contact, “I know Remus.”

The words were quiet, the entire world seemed to quiet as Sirius reached down to pick up the jacket he had shed when sitting down, throwing it over his shoulder and moving to leave.

“Where are you going?”

Sirius turned, a flash returning to his eyes that Remus began to realise had been missing since the start of their conversation, “I assumed this conversation finished, not unsimilar to our relationship.”

While Remus had come to break things off with Sirius officially, the finality of them just started hitting now. They never really got to enjoy each other, anything they had being over before it started, just like everything in Remus’s life, gone before he could enjoy it.

Like this, with Sirius pale and pursing his lips in anger, the resemblance to Regulus became so striking that Remus couldn’t ignore it if he tried, and yet, even with that stark reminder of his best friend, he didn’t want to let this slip through his fingers.

“Sirius-”

“Goodbye Remus.”

Remus tried to call out, to pull him back, but he couldn’t act, couldn’t speak past the rising lump in his throat as he watched the first of the Black brothers walk away from him.

It would not be the last.

Regulus couldn’t think, couldn’t concentrate on anything but Sirius. Sirius with his paint splattered skin and constant grin, wildly safe and well adjusted, a contrast to the last time he had seen him.

Though Regulus had changed more in appearance since the last the Black brother’s had truly met, it had become increasingly obvious throughout mild exposure to his brother that Sirius had changed more mentally.

Sometimes, when dreams turned sour and old scars ached with fervency, Regulus still felt all the same as the little girl that had grown up and died in that house, still crying for a brother to save her when he wouldn’t come back.

He had been gone for two days before he got his hands on a sharp thing adequate enough to cut all his hair off, only just able to remember the technique from all the times he had cut his brother’s hair and not completely ruin his.

It took two months to gather together enough money to be financially stable enough to make rent and also pay for top surgery.

Six months after moving out of the Black manor, Regulus had become officially unrecognisable enough that even if he tried to return, he would be more likely to be mistaken for his older brother than for the girl that fled from a marriage set up to kill her.

Name changed and body altered, Regulus looked in no way like the girl that fled, yet he felt more like the girl hiding from her parent’s angry footsteps than he did like a well adjusted boy putting himself through college.

Seeing his brother especially didn’t help, though Sirius not recognizing him did soothe him the slightest. Sirius arguably knew him more than any other person in the world did, if he didn’t recognize him nobody would, but the last time he saw Sirius he had been fifteen, he had been eighteen when he ran and even then looked different from the budding fifteen year old he had been.

Sirius skated just as gracefully as he always had in childhood, the perfect male technique still not completely shed after years of training. The way he made it so masculine had always been a point of jealousy for Regulus, unable to understand how he could be so unappreciative of something he didn’t even have to ask for, and now, watching his brother slip and fall trying to build up technique after years of growing rusty in the skill, it made Regulus want to laugh until his lungs were sore.

The boy on wobbly legs next to him proved to be a different matter.

James had a way of making everything look effortless even when he struggled, like how he glided so perfectly while visibly shaking like a leaf.

He emulated pure warmth, laughing off the stupidly graceful tumbles with a bright grin and a responding quip to Regulus’s pointers that had something syrupy and soft seeping into his chest, clearing away the ice biting at his insides that kept him frozen.

Regulus couldn’t indulge in stupid things like crushes, though it would be pointless to deny he didn’t have one. Having a crush didn’t mean you had to act on it, it just meant you had to get the fuck over yourself and maybe stare longingly a few times before you did.

Crushes were the swooping high of spinning in the air before being cut off by the harsh reality of the ice crashing into. Relationships were tricks that Regulus had always and would always be unprepared and untrained to execute, being alone in romantic endeavours had just been a given for someone like him.

Loveless childhoods did make loveless lifes.

But, sometimes he looked at people and could picture it, laughing and hand holding and countless other pure and dirty things.

Things he simply did not deserve.

James had started a frankly reckless habit of showing up early to help Regulus set up and staying back to help Regulus put everything away.

Reckless really, it had Regulus falling for the man far faster than he had predicted.

It had become increasingly obvious to Regulus that James had a problem of prioritising people, putting everyone and everything above his own happiness (he paid attention in his psych classes thank you very much Remus).

James liked to talk, unable to stand silence for long, Regulus, who had grown up in a house of silent halls and pickling skin from the eerie quietness of it all, wouldn’t dare complain.

“God, have you ever shut up for one second Potter?”

James just grinned behind the box of different sized sports balls that had been growing since day one (throwing things at puckers directly correlated to Regulus’s stress levels going down, it had become, in a way, therapeutic) eyes gleaming as if he knew Regulus would never be truly annoyed by James’s rambling nonsense, “Oh but you love it sweetheart.”

Another new thing Regulus had discovered: James had an infuriating habit of creating nicknames designed specifically to send him to an early grave.

After the unfortunate Reggie incident (that specific nickname had been reserved for one specific person for years, it had always been off limits) James had made it a personal mission to call him every pet name under the sun.

Something about James grinning at him behind gold rimmed glasses, tan skin creasing with smile lines as his gravelly voice directed the title love toward him…it did things to Regulus.

Ignoring the rising heat in his cheeks, an oddity that had become increasingly common in the past few weeks, Regulus gave James a glare at the new nickname, the usually fear raising sight did nothing to quell the helpless grin that overtook James’s face at Regulus’s reaction.

Entering the supply closet (the hockey coach had been allowing him to store the tools he used to abuse his team in the team’s closet), Regulus navigated through the room on pure muscle memory, trying to remind himself that the man that made his stomach swim around his ribcage doubled as the man that had torn his brother away from him as a child.

Regulus had never been mad Sirius had someone to run away to, somewhere safe to go, eleven year old Regulus had just been bitter that his best friend had replaced him with a new one.

Sirius hadn’t needed him since he met James, a part of Regulus would probably always resent that, and that resentment had been aimed at James for years, though it had been quickly dissipating whenever the man in question came in his near vicinity.

One of the lights on the side lights went out, bathing the room in semi darkness and James reached out to flick on the main lightswitch, somehow hitting the wrong one and sending the room into full darkness.

With pitch black pressing against his eyes, Regulus tried to push down the growing terror flooding his veins as he remembered nights of being locked in a cupboard, stomach growling from lack of food, head light from malnutrition.

“James! You idiot, the lights are wired wrong!”

“What do you mean wrong?”

“You flick them down to turn them on and up to turn them off. Honestly, have you never come in here before?”

The darkness had started wrapping its thick tendrils around his lungs, his throat; air struggling to get where it should go through his mangled breath as he tried to listen for James.

“I, uh.”

“Oh honestly!”

“I’m sorry!”

He couldn’t do it, he couldn’t force himself to breathe past the darkness forcing itself down his throat, throwing him back to his childhood, to compressing walls and stifled sobs, begging to be let out.

“Reg?”

Sirius would visit him at night, calling out his name softly, Sirius always brought safety, always brought food.

“Reg?”

Sirius hadn’t talked to him in years.

“James?” 

Embarrassing really, how debilitating the dark had always been for him, leaving him vulnerable and defenceless within moments.

His mind felt watery, like all sounds were entering his ears after penetrating pounds of water between him and the source. All thoughts were muddled, like thinking through mud, unable to pick a single solid thought and stick with it.

“Reg where are you?”

A clatter sounded from Regulus’s right and Regulus nearly broke an eye rolling it so hard, “Are you moving away from the lightswitch?”

“Um.”

“Don’t say it.”

A thud sounded from his right, a little closer than before and Regulus swung his arms out blindly, body racked with involuntary shivers as he felt around for something, anything.

“Where are you?”

He didn’t exist, nothing to tie him down, no senses to hold him here, nothing to touch, nothing to see, how could he even know he had ever gotten out of that godforsaken house.

“In the middle of the goddamn room! Jesus Christ James!”

Tension settled over the room, stifling in the dark silence as Regulus flung his arms up, swinging around, suddenly terrified his parents were going to jump out of the darkest corner and grab him.

Illogical really, seeing as his parents were far away from him, but the dark always reminded him of them.

“Could we uh,” James sounded off, different from before and if Regulus could bloody see he would be able to read his body language and figure out what troubled him, for the time being, he had no sympathy, “maybe refrain from taking the Lord’s name in vain.”

“Oh Christ,” a sharp intake, interesting, and Regulus didn't mind having something other than the crushing darkness to focus on, “don’t tell me now you are catholic.”

“What’s wrong with Catholics?”

“I guess nothing, just are you really going to enforce the Jesus Christ thing on everyone else.”

Another sharp breath, closer now.

Extremely interesting.

“Nope, just you.”

He sounded within reaching distance, so Regulus swung an arm out again, hitting him smack in the chest with his arm and grabbing his shirt, reeling him in. 

“Ow!”

With the dark pressing in against his eyes, Regulus felt absolutely no remorse.

“Sorry.”

“No you aren’t”

Jesus Christ.

James’s breath hit his cheek when he spoke and smelled like cinnamon and sweetness, hot against his prickling skin. His fist clenched in James’s jumper and pulled James the slightest bit closer, his left side pressed against Regulus’s, the only thing keeping them from being chest to chest being Regulus’s fist.

Jesus Christ.

“Reg?”

James radiated warmth, a light in the darkness, the tightness in his lungs eased a little.

This time he whispered it like a benediction, “Jesus Christ.”

James leaned forward with a slightly obscene groan, pressing his twisted face into Regulus’s hair as he inhaled slightly shakily.

Okay, so Regulus could spare a little sympathy.

“Are you like, mentally sound right now.”

James took another breath, the air wobbling and hitching on the way out, “Jesus Christ Reg.”

Oh.

oh.

The bones in his knees softened into something akin to jello, barely able to hold him up as heat rushed to his cheeks, James’s phrase echoing in his ears, the way he curled around the e, his s’s sharp and quick, the t sharp against the soft words, how his voice took his name, a nickname really and one he didn’t despise, and made it softer, sweeter, a benediction just for him.

He did not have time for this.

“Right, retrace your steps, we can't spend all day here.”

James shot up, taking a step back as his jumper slipped like running water out of Regulus’s hands, too quick, like the stream of a life-giving river.

Regulus had been dying of dehydration his whole life.

Tensions settled back in, thicker now even though they were no longer touching, and Regulus nearly squirmed to get away from the heat of a gaze he couldn’t even see.

Honestly, pathetic.

He stretched his arms out in front of him and started walking hesitantly forward, sliding his feet forward in a hopeful attempt to not step on something sharp of accidentally kick something blunt, the blundering sound’s of James following him in the background as he closed his eyes and tried to remember the layout of the room.

He walked forward until he hit a wall, fingers curling inward at the solidness of it, something settling in his chest at the steadiness of it, breath calming once again.

Freaking out internally would always be fine, when it started bleeding into his actions it became a problem.

Shaking out one of his hands, he walked with his shoulder against the wall, feeling for the lightswitch or even the door to know he had set on the right path.

“Found it!”

The voice sounded from somewhere in front of him, and he stepped forward a few steps as the lights flickered on.

Flickered on right before Regulus would have run into James.

James laughed as Regulus stumbled backwards, the sudden sight nearly overwhelming him as his eyes adjusted to the brightness.

Adjusted to James’s face right in front of him.

“We were like this close!”

James leaned in further and Regulus could feel with every piece of himself the centimetres between his nose and James, the centimetres between their lips, eye to eye as James leaned forward, bending down.

Without thinking, Regulus straightened up slightly, bringing them just slightly closer as James’s eyes dilated slightly, head tilting to the side in thought as his lips parted slightly, no more than millimetres apart. 

He tried really, to not look down, but he had no choice, it had been inevitable since their first meeting.

Regulus’s gaze dropped down to James’s lips as his tongue darted out and wet them slightly, a completely unsexy action on literally anyone and yet it dug a pit of longing into Regulus’s stomach, hollowing out his organs as the ache to kiss him persisted.

James’s head bobbed in slightly, Regulus’s following suit and he had just enough time to deliriously think, “oh christ we’re about to kiss,’ before someone started knocking at the door.

They sprung apart as Regulus spun towards the door, grabbing the handle and swinging it open, coming face to face with the janitor.

“Hello, I’m just off, all done in here,” he rushed out, barely speaking words as he slipped around the man, ignoring James calling out behind him as he practically ran out, sweeping past his bench to grab his bag before taking the emergency exit, running through dirty London streets to get to somewhere, anywhere that had never met James Potter.

Sweeping into the apartment and finding Remus laying on the floor staring at the ceiling, he decided this could do.

“I have something I need to tell you.”

Jesus Christ.

Chapter Text

Here’s the thing: there is not a single Black in existence that could ever have a healthy coping mechanism. It’s part of the bloodline, a genetic trait that had been passed down since the first case of cousin marrying cousin in the Black bloodline.

He figured at least, he could blame at the very least, this particular problem on incest.

Mother had a horrible habit of taking out her anger on her children, a terrifying coping mechanism really, and Father had never truly cared about his kids, instead throwing himself into heaps of work to get away from the terrifying reality that his homelife had become.

Sirius of course, had inherited that little trait from his father.

Fingers splattered with flecks of paint, nails covered in black nail polish that had chipped under his teeth, and pads of his fingers calloused from nights playing the guitar, Sirius threw down the paintbrush he had been using to add final details as he stepped back. He blinked for the first time in a while as the fog faded from his head, making him suddenly aware of the dryness of his throat and hollowness of his stomach, past aching for hunger and moving on to filling out with nothing but air, leaving him feeling empty and lightheaded. 

Sirius hadn’t planned to waste away the day bent over another extracurricular painting (really, he had four assignments due on Monday, two of them painting pieces, he couldn’t afford the time for recreational projects), but somewhere along the line, his project for art emotion had become less about a certain weather and more trapped. Droplets of water sat on a window, dewy against the grey background they had been painted on, metal bars separating the viewer from the outside, the outside where light gleamed in the distance.

It rained inside the house.

He supposed that if he had been assigned the task of interpreting it, like some poor sod in his class would be on Monday, he would say it resembled the stark reality of freedom, how some people are trapped within darkness while freedom stays just in reach and just too far away.

To him, it obviously resembled the Black family house he had spent countless years crumbling in, wearing away as his mother’s words pushed at him, changing him over time, eroding him from the inside out.

Too bad his chosen work involved confronting your feelings and interpreting them onto a medium that would inspire thought.

Throughout his entire life, he had always had art as a fall back, but that didn’t make it easy.

It had started with sketches, little barely there doodles on notes and cards, a rough outline of someone’s hand, a shaded scribble of somebody’s eye. Somewhere along the way, little sketches and doodles turned to actual art theory, trying to figure out how to draw someone forcing Reggie to stand still for hours while he tried to encompass everything that made up a person onto a page.

The first time he created a work he truly loved, he gifted it to Reggie.

Their mother burned it in the fireplace two days later.

So he wrote letters, wisps of not-there doodles hidden between words, telling Reggie about his life and including a sketch of James’s glasses, an outline of a mangy dog, a portrait of his teacher standing in front of him. Art slowly became more and more important to him, blocking out his feelings and letting the pencil bleed the hurt out of him.

Slowly, paint started being added to the equation, then clay, then pretty much any medium he could get his hands on.

He made Reggie a painting of himself once, a tiny concept piece on the smallest canvas he could get his hands on, smaller than the palm of his hand.

He doubts Reggie kept it.

With paint staining his fingers and the front of his shirt, he stands to wash his brushes, moving over to the sink that had been stained with colours for years, haunted by other’s work leaving the imprint of an emotion they had spent hours putting onto canvas.

His phone buzzed again, two short vibrations followed by a long one.

Remus.

The man in question had been calling and texting him for days, ever since their argument in the shop. 

Sirius had been steadfastly ignoring all his calls and texts for days. 

Coincidences were so funny sometimes.

With a sigh, Sirius finally broke, opening up his messages and scrolling through them before starting a new message.

He sent off a quick message, a pleasantry really before practically throwing his phone away from him before he did anything else. 

The abstinence lasted all of twenty seconds before he was scrambling for his buzzing phone and pulling up his new messages.

The typing notification bobbed up and down on the screen as Remus debated his answer and Sirius unashamedly watched it as someone walked into the room.

“Sirius?” James called out, throwing his bag down on the little fainting couch Sirius had added for dramatic effect, “Where are you?”

Sirius popped up into a sitting position from behind his sink, looking around for a moment before spotting James inspecting his latest work, “Over here.”

James spun, not one to be surprised easily as he grinned, “Whatcha doing?”

Sirius shrugged, trying to nonchalantly set his phone on the ground beside him without James noticing, “Decompressing.”

James took another glance at the painting as Sirius set the phone down before his head whipped towards the movement, “What do you have?”

Sirius scooped the phone back up, slipping it into his pocket as James quickly approached and scrambling to get up, “Nothing, nothing, nothing!”

He started running as James followed him, “Liar, what is that? Give it to me. Sirius, drop it!”

“Stop treating me like a dog with something bad in his mouth!”

“Stop acting like one!”

Sirius slipped on a stray paper and went sprawling, James followed him down and scooped up the phone that had slipped out of his pocket.

“Ugh, is that Remus bloke still texting you? Block him already.”

Sirius scrambled to get up, attempting to get his phone back and practically climbing James like a tree to get it from where James held it above his head.

“Oh God, have you been texting him?”

Sirius reached a little higher, the legs he had wrapped around James’s middle pushing his up slightly, “Piss off James.”

“Talk dirty to me baby.”

“Fuck you,” he said, with feeling.

“Am I walking in on something?”

The voice made both of them freeze, one of James’s hands coming to rest on Sirius's back as he slid down, feet touching the floor again.

Euphemia leaned against the doorway, a small smile playing at her lips as she took in the two boys and Sirius smiled at her, “James stole my phone.”

James gasped in mock offence, “Snitch, mum he’s a snitch.”

“James, baby, give the phone back.”

James reluctantly handed Sirius’s phone over and Sirius instantly swiped over to Remus’s messages, trying to find the response.

Remus had responded two minutes ago, a simple hello and an offer to meet up at a coffee shop for lunch as soon as today.

Sirius glanced at the clock before agreeing to meet him after hockey practice.

Euphemia walked in the room, ignoring a whining James as she looked around, “Sirius dear, you have to clean up every now and again.”

Sirius nodded sheepishly as she collected stray paintbrushes and put them in the sink. Euphemia walked over to him, giving his hand a squeeze as she passed, “What have you boys been up to?”

James spoke up before Sirius could, “Sirius has been texting the situationship that ghosted him.”

Euphemia frowned at James, turning towards Sirius, “I trust you have responsibility in your actions Sirius?”

Sirius, who had been sticking his tongue out at James, hastened to nod quickly, “I’m just hearing him out, he’s really sweet.”

James scoffed, “Oh, I’m sure he’s sweet alright.”

“Like you can talk you masochistic-”

“Boys.”

Sheepishly, Sirius scuffed his foot, wincing when his phone buzzed on the table thrice in succession.

Euphemia hugged him, “Well I’ll let you boys be. Come stop by later, I’m making pot pie.”

James stepped forward to hug his mom too, sticking his tongue out at Sirius over her shoulder until she swatted him lightly on the head, “Don’t think I can’t see you.”

Sirius snickered at James until Euphemia levelled an unamused look at him too and he cleared his throat, “See you for dinner mum.”

James hid his snicker behind his hand before standing up straighter with a grimace as Euphemia cast him a look.

For not the first time since Regulus started teaching the hockey team, James is resoundingly grateful for the lighting in the rink.

The artificial lighting that kicks in at seven hasn’t turned on yet and the sun is setting behind the windows in the ceiling, casting the whole place in a bright soft meld of yellows and pinks. Regulus stands in front of the team, sun at his back in a way that lights the edges of him up, making him look like he’s glowing. 

The edges of his hair look golden and James is slightly dazed as he stares at the boy, unabashedly not listening.

He’s in the presence of an angel.

Regulus must have said something because everyone starts moving all at once and Regulus moves too, gliding to the side and making James breathless as he watches the way the golden light flickers and caresses Regulus’s body like an old friend.

Entrancing.

Sirius elbows him in the side as he passes, tugging on him slightly to spur James into motion and James shakes his head to clear it of the cobwebs, “Sorry, what’re we doing?”

Sirius snorts, shooting him a disbelieving look, “Loops right now for a warm up, I wouldn’t be surprised if trigger happy over there starts throwing things at us.”

At the dig at Regulus, James spared a glance behind him. 

Regulus stood facing the fading sun, one hand up to block his eyes as his skin lit up in a glow, pale skin shining against the sun and Jams could see from here the shining of his eyelashes.

“He’s so pretty.”

Sirius shoved him away and James fought to regain balance, “yeah, yeah, fawn over him somewhere else will you?”

James just grinned, glancing back at Regulus to see him looking right back.

They held eye contact right up until James tripped over a tennis ball and nearly fell flat on his face.

He groaned, body complaining about the harsh impact as scraped up grey skates came into his line of vision.

“Remember everyone,” Regulus announced to the room at large, “being constantly aware of your surroundings and proximity to everything and anything on the rink is the most vital skill an ice skater can have.”

A blade nudged his shoulder until James turned to lay on his back, staring up at Regulus.

For a moment James just laid there with his lips parted, staring up at Regulus, pieces of golden lit hair falling into his face and casting shadows over it. Regulus’s mouth hadn’t so much as twitched, but the corners of his eyes crinkled slightly as he held out a hand for James to take. Light spiked tendrils of gold across Regulus’s face, one of his grey-blue eyes lit up and glowing from it.

James could die a happy man.

He took the offered hand, equilibrium shifting as Regulus pulled him up and held out an arm for him when he stumbled slightly.

James stared for a moment as Regulus turned away, “Let this be a lesson for everyone, James Twenty laps in five minutes, if it takes you longer I’ll add ten laps for every minute, no stopping.”

Half the team snickered as James stood there frozen until Regulus started counting down, skates scraping as he hastened to speed up.

When, seven minutes later James finally slowed to a stop, sweat dripped down his face as he began joining in on the strengthening techniques Regulus had begun walking them through.

Regulus cut him a quick look before turning away and skating paces through all the boys.

Sirius clapped him on the back as he began following his lead, giving him a sly look as he nodded towards Regulus, James just grinned.

Regulus, somehow having acquired a stick of sorts, had taken to whacking them in places they weren’t extending correctly, or in places they weren’t facing correctly, or, in Sirius’s case, just when he felt like it.

Sirius groaned as Regulus began making his way back down towards him, the slow glide they had let themselves into wobbling as he fought to stick his leg higher up in the air, hand clenching down on James’s from where they were connected in their partner group.

With a blooming smile, Regulus called out for Sirius to straighten his knee and promptly bopped it with his stick.

Sirius shot Regulus a wellmeaning glare, the type you’d send a friend that you were playfully annoyed by, “It’s like I’m back in fucking ballet classes.”

Regulus raised an eyebrow, “I would like to think I am hitting you at least lighter than a ballet teacher is, my old teacher would leave bruises.”

James eyed Regulus up and down, shuddering at the idea of any Regulus being bruised up intentionally while Sirius barked out a laugh.

“Mine did too, had a stick and everything and wielded it like a whip, nothing could escape that lady.”

Regulus smiled, though he looked slightly uncomfortable, “She made me call her madame and had eyes like a hawk that one, could spot a bent leg a mile away.”

Sirius laughed again as James shuddered, the idea of Sirius’s biological mum popping up in his mind, all scary in back and eyes like a hawk, picking out a young boy’s insecurities with frightening accuracy.

Sirius didn’t seem to make the connection, “Don’t know why mine made me call her madame, she definitely came from somewhere but it couldn’t have been France.”

Regulus smiled slightly, just a quirk of his mouth really, but his eye crinkles were so heavy James could barely see his eyes and he whacked Sirius on the back before skating away to torment someone else.

The entire encounter left him confused. He had supposed that Regulus would want to talk about the whole we almost kissed in a closet thing, but Regulus had been practically ignoring him since he showed up today.

Regulus had spent more time talking to Sirius than he did James, and he liked James more than Sirius usually.

Being second to Sirius proved to be an odd feeling, odd still when James realised the reason he worried about it at all stemmed from jealousy. Seeing as he had never been jealous of Sirius before, the realisation struck him dumb, but mostly, he just wanted to clear the air between him and Regulus.

The trend of Regulus giving Sirius attention seemed to continue throughout practice while James lamented silently at his best friend’s side. 

The two prettiest people in his life, and it figured that they’d get along together better than James ever had with Regulus.

On the bright side, they seemed to be warming up to each other, the odd tension Regulus carried around Sirius fading slightly as he talked with him more and James just hoped Sirius wouldn’t see what James saw when he looked at Regulus.

If the man he considers a brother tries to go for Regulus, James will probably cry, maybe tear up a pillow, and then be really happy for Sirius while quietly dying inside.

James kept waiting for Regulus to smile at him, maybe say something snarky in response to his jokes, but the man practically treated him like a ghost.

James had never been ghosted in real life before.

Walking up to him after practice had never been out of the ordinary, he usually helped Regulus put away supplies, but Regulus regarding him warily was new.

James picked up a few cones from what they had used today, slinging the supply bag over his shoulder as he walked Regulus to the closet.

Now that they were closer, James could definitely see the tension in Regulus’s shoulder’s that seemed directly related to James’s proximity to him at every moment. Trying to relax him, James said, “How’ve you been?”

Regulus cut him a dry look, “Just swell James,” speeding up his walking so James had to jog a bit to catch up with him again.

“Hey, wait! About last time-”

“It’s fine Potter”

Regulus didn’t even look at him while saying it, “Now see, you say that, and I get the feeling it's really not-”

“Drop it Potter.”

“I thought we had graduated to James?” James asked hopefully, heart sinking to his stomach as he watched Regulus roll his eyes and speed up.

They both stopped short at the supply closet and Regulus sighed, taking the bag and cones from him.

“I think it would be best if you stayed out here this time, maybe held the door open.”

James didn’t have it in him to argue, though getting stuck in a closet with Regulus again didn’t seem like the worst thing in the world, “Yeah okay.”

Regulus tried to be quick, but watching him dart around the room putting things away just made anger swell in James, “Are you just going to ignore me forever?”

Regulus didn’t even spare him a glance, “Does seem that way doesn’t it?”

“Is that a yes or a no?”

Regulus hesitated for a moment, movement halting as he registered James’s tone and thought about it before continuing on. So much time passed between the question that it practically answered it for him, “I don’t know Potter.”

The defeated tone had James calming a bit, rational thought seeping in between the anger, “How do you not know?”

Regulus threw down a cone, spinning to face James, “I just don’t okay! Is that so terrible to you? I know you’re used to having everything you want handed to you on a silver platter but that doesn’t mean I can just give you an answer when you want it, I would tell you if I could!”

James had never been shouted at by Regulus before, he had always been the type to quietly stew in his anger, but today it seemed to be exploding out of him, pushing and pricking and finding each of his insecurities until James left crying.

Fortunately, James had plenty of experience with explosive anger, it’s Sirius’s specialty.

Usually he remained calm, level headed, talked Sirius through his anger until they got to the bottom of it, but James could not be calm, not when every atom in him buzzed, “How dare you!”

Regulus reared up to strike and James couldn’t let him, stepping closer into the room as all the anger he constantly pushed down spilled out of him, “I know I seem pretty privileged but you have no right to assume that I’m a silver spoon child! I’ve been through hardship too believe it or not and I’m sorry that your life sucks so much, but, newsflash: other people struggle too! I’m desperately sorry that you can’t figure out your own life long enough to answer a question but you don’t have to snap at me for asking it!”

Regulus rocked back onto his heels, face paler than usual as he took in James, more subdued that James had ever seen him, “I apologise, I didn’t mean to take my anger out on you.”

James stepped back as if struck, all the anger in him draining immediately and leaving behind a guilty husk. 

“I-”

“It’s fine James, I’m just not comfortable right now. I’ll get over it. Can you just go?”

Numbly, James walked over to the door, registering with a slight rush of quickly tapering off excitement that he had been called James again.

As he reached the door, he turned to say something, anything, just to fix-

“Just go James.”

He turned the handle, hesitantly looking back as he leaned his weight forward to open the door.

The handle stuck on the locked door.

They were fucked.

Chapter Text

“We need to talk.”

Regulus pressed himself against the door at his back, snapping it shut as he threw his skating bag somewhere to the left of him and moved forward to where Remus lounged on the couch.

“You start-”

Both boys laughed at the double speaking and Regulus gestured at Remus to speak, “Ladies first.”

“Homophobic.”

“Yes, the transgender gay man is homophobic.”

Remus throws one of their ratty pillows at him, slumping back down on the couch to stare at the ceilings, for the first time, Regulus notices the computer cracked open on the floor streaming music.

“Are you listening to Phoebe Bridgers?

“Lizzy McAlpine.”

Regulus physically rears back in disbelief, scowling slightly in confused disgust, “Why?”

Remus’s music taste had always been notoriously bad, the one point in which he utterly failed at being a good friend, his greatest weakness. Regulus’s fault for befriending a lowlife probably.

Remus raises a brow, “Could you be anymore judging?”

“You’re listening to Orange Show Speedway right now I have a right to be judging.”

Remus lolls his head back, “It’s my sad contemplative playlist leave me alone.”

Deciding for the sake of Remus’s mental health to let it go, Regulus steps forward to sag against the couch next to Remus, staring at the ceiling.

“Spill,” Regulus says, holding out a hand for the cig he knows Remus has, he can see the smoky tendrils that remain from the cig that Remus obviously hid from him.

Remus sighs, handing over the entire pack and saying quietly, “I really like him Reg.”

The pack slips through his shaking hands, flashes of a different room, different smoke, a black haired boy flicking a lighter and making fire swim through his fingers as he shows him how to light cigarettes, gossiping about his latest boyfriend, “I really like him Reggie.”

The box clatters into his lap and multiple cigs spill out over the couch, Regulus stretching his trembling hands out to scoop up the stray ones.

Remus plucks up a few, depositing them back in the box and lighting over, holding it out for Regulus to take.

Smoke curls in his lungs, filling the heavy empty space that feels thicker than soup, a weight he hasn’t shaken since the first time he saw his brother prance into practice.

“Reg?”

He took a shaky breath, exhaling smoke in a perfect ring, a talent he had mastered in a pink room, the feminine colour hidden by hazy smoke, “Okay.”

The song ended, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road started playing and Regulus put his foot down. Grabbing the computer to turn the music off, Remus complained in a series of groans and moans that Regulus ignored, scrolling through Remus’s knockoff not-premium spotify- the calling cards of all poor college kids- to find his account.

He put on his sad playlist, one with much better music taste in it than Remus’s sorry excuse of a playlist.

Ceilings started streaming from the tinny speakers as Regulus set down the computer and Remus flopped back down, wriggling like a worm to get comfortable.

“Anything else to say?”

Remus peeked up at Regulus, vulnerability glinting in his shining eyes as he took Regulus in, slowly shaking his head no.

Regulus sighed, taking another drag as he stared up, curling his tongue and blowing out a square, “I think I like James.”

Remus perked up, excitement smoothing out the lines in his forehead as his eyes crinkled, “Really?”

Nodding, Regulus inspected a piece of stitching in their fraying couch that had been in the apartment longer than they had, “And he’s best friends with my brother, so I suppose I have to learn how to be around him eventually.”

Remus looked surprised, Regulus had been surprised by the decision too, but it hardly required thinking, even if it happened to be a difficult decision.

“Holy shit,” Remus flopped around, “You like, really like him.”

Regulus snorted, taking another drag as he tried to hide the slight shaking of his fingers, residual shocks still running through his body, “I guess.”

They fell into a silence, comfortable in its familiarity, somewhere in the background Phoebe Bridgers began crooning about Georgia.

“So, my brother…”

Remus glanced over, muscles tense in anticipation even though his face made a valiant effort at staying nonchalant, “What about him?”

Regulus took a deep breath, ignoring the pang of nostalgia and safe and warm and hurt that rushed through him at the thought of his brother, “You can date him.”

This time Remus didn't try to hide his tensing up this time, sitting up to fully face Regulus as he twisted his body, “What do you mean?”

Regulus raises a brow, “I think I was very clear? Don’t make me repeat myself.”

Remus scrambled up from his seat on the couch, “Really?”

Rolling his eyes, Regulus slumped against the back of the couch, lolling his head back to keep Remus in his sight as the boy started jumping up and down.

“Lovely,” Regulus said, standing and brushing his hands together to try to hide the shaking of them, “if that’s all-”

“Reg, you don’t have to forgive him.”

Freezing, Regulus turns to Remus, head tilting to the side as he stares at him in confusion, “What?”

“I want you to know, if I had to, I would choose you, every time, because you’re my favourite Black.”

The mention of his last name didn’t even phase him any more, but Remus, claiming he’d choose him, it made something inside him grow, bloom, shine.

Regulus had never been first choice before, he had always been the younger child, the spare, and then he just couldn’t be good enough for his parents, too quiet, too timid, too childish. All of his friends were friends with him for fame, for money, to get closer to Sirius, nobody had ever chosen him over something.

Life at the bottom of everyone’s lists got lonely.

Taking a shaky breath, he moved forward until he leaned against Remus, a not-hug since neither of them had their arms wrapped around each other before Remus stands straighter, arms coming to fold around him in a light hug as the rest of Regulus’s life and stressors fall away.

God why didn’t they do this more often?

Remus rested his own head on top of Regulus’s, cheek to the crown of his head and they stayed like that until Regulus could feasibly pull away without bursting into tears.

Once they had calmed down a little more, Regulus pulled back, sniffing quietly and ignoring the wetness in both his and Remus’s eyes, smacking Remus on the shoulder, “Go get your man.”

Grinning, Remus practically dove for his phone as Regulus rolled his eyes.

Step one of his plan had been completed.

The world had dealt Regulus the short hand and here’s why: 

1) his brother has just the hottest friends, as well as most of the looks when it comes to masculinity (ah, the perks of not starting testosterone until years after finishing puberty

2) His brother didn’t constantly deal with gender dysmorphia

2) His brother didn’t have childhood trauma

2) His brother got out

Okay, the list is in progress, but it makes sense either way, and though Regulus has managed to convince himself flimsily that every time he looked at his brother the aching well of emotion that seeped into the pit of his stomach came from a place of anger.

It doesn’t

Regulus takes a deep breath, pushing his legs harder to make himself move faster, weaving between hockey players like wind through a blade of grass, pushing them off course with his own momentum and making them reset their centre of balance before they hit the floor.

Training people had never been so fun.

He still remembers how his own teacher had taught him how to shift his momentum, pushing and shoving him around and berating him when he didn’t dodge or when he fell on the ground.

Benevolent teacher that he is, he opted to not give his pupils (read: puckers) childhood trauma.

Exhaustion clings to him like a second skin, shedding slightly as he moves faster, the wind pushing against his face and the ice gently holding the tiredness for him until he can slow down enough to take it back, on top of the ice and on top of the world.

Sirius stands out against the white ice like a representation of the last name that isn’t printed on his back, POTTER instead lettered in bold red, James is sporting the BLACK jersey today, a fact that has not yet lent to make Regulus uncomfortable.

He smiled, smiled, at Sirius when he walked in for practice, ready and eager to push aside all his trauma and ignore it for Remus’s sake.

Are his coping skills bad? Is his last name Black?

Sirius had smiled back, if a little confused that Regulus had given him attention when he usually opted to ignore him, something that Regulus reserved specifically for James.

Regulus held no anger for James, he simply could not face him with no sleep, he would do something stupid, like confess his crush on him, or berate him.

Practice officially started and Regulus directed each person into laps, tennis balls once again bouncing around the rink like a pinball machine.

James waved a few times, the incompetent, beautiful idiot that he is, waves and approaches that Regulus ignored, too busy facing the lesser of two evils: his brother.

It exhausted him, watching everything he said, seeing this full version of a boy he once knew the shadow of, the colours of his personality startling when he usually only saw him in black and white.

His brother: a stranger and the person he knows best.

Regulus could sometimes be persuaded to admit to himself that the way he grew up had nothing to do with him really and the way his parents treated him had never and would never be his fault.

Sometimes.

Watching his brother live, truly live, laugh with his friends and not hold himself back, it felt a little like healing his own inner child.

If his brother can be happy and have what he wants, why can’t Regulus?

Subconsciously, his eyes drift to James, who has been staring at him all practice, catching him in one of those rare moments where he is laughing at something Sirius said, not paying attention to the world around him, afternoon light giving him the appearance of glowing, tan skin shining as he throws his head back.

Regulus looks away quickly, feeling caught even when nobody had noticed.

He could never have everything he wants, not only does he not deserve it, but what he wants is so far out of his league it is laughable, sweet smiles and unabashed affection, uninhibited by trauma and normal, not like him, broken by people who probably don’t even remember he exist-

James needed to leave the room before Regulus did something stupid, like punch him in the face, or snog him.

Both options would make him regret it later.

He had done so good today, staying on plan and giving himself exposure to interaction with his brother (he would need to be able to be in the same room as him if Remus were to date him) and he had been ready thirty minutes ago to go home and collapse into a pillow and sleep, maybe cry.

James won’t take the hint though, following him around like a dog, and usually Regulus would find it endearing, he does find it endearing, but today he is too emotionally exhausted to not say something he would regret.

Regulus doesn’t get heavily expressive, it’s just not part of who he is, he feels everything internally, face a blank as a block of ice. It’s a skill he takes pride in and one that he has been honing in on since childhood.

All that practice fades away when he is tired, especially emotionally.

He couldn’t sleep last night, too busy planning out exactly how to be okay with his brother again, how to eventually tell him who he is (he can’t hide it forever), nerves already frayed by morning, the exposure to his brother just made his brain tired, too tired to conjure up memories of nail polish hidden under floorboards and streaked across unmanicured nails, hands grabbing at him demanding him to admit to helping his brother be gay.

Regulus could feel the exhaustion weighing on him like a water soaked coat.

Finally leaving, James moved away from him as Regulus exhaled, tension slowly bleeding out of him with every step James took away from him, carefully attuned to the boy’s footsteps and breathing.

He paused at the door, taking a breath to speak and Regulus cut him off before James could say something stupid that Regulus would have to kiss him for, “Just go James-” his breath caught in his throat, cutting off the please that nearly slipped out.

He knew better, begging is beneath a Black.

Suddenly his mind caught up with his brain and he shook his head at his own conditioning, opening his mouth to add a late “please” as a middle finger to his mother before James started jiggling the handle like a madman.

The sound rang in his head, clanging around through the mush of his brain as he sighed, turning, “God James. Can you please just-”

James looked back at him, wide eyes blinking fast as his face turned pale enough to make him white passing, “It’s locked”

Slowly, so slowly, Regulus’s eyes drifted down to the door handle still jiggling under James’s palm, dread beginning to curl in his veins like spoiled milk, turning to sludge as his heart fought to keep it moving at a normal pace, practically beating out of his chest in terror.

“What do you mean it’s locked James, it’s a fucking dual handle, it doesn’t have a lock!”

James throws his arms up, obviously panicking as he jiggles the handle harder like that’ll do anything, “I don’t know, it must have locked from the outside.”

“Stop jiggling it, you’re going to break the bloody thing off and be drowned in student loans from having to replace it for the rest of your life.”

James stops, turning to him with his lips parted, staring at him like he’s never seen him before, head tilted slightly in a way that makes the stupid artificial lighting catch in his hair and make him look like it’s glowing. The colour is rapidly rushing back to his face.

Regulus’s knees feel more like jelly than bone as he takes in James’s awestruck face, biting his tongue to stop himself from begging him to turn back around and focus on jiggling the door, anything but him, but if he opens his mouth, he might do something stupid, like beg him to snog him.

“You curse?”

Regulus winces, hating himself for a moment. He doesn’t often curse, nor let his emotions get the better of him, he is usually above that, but he is so exhausted. Being tired often weakens his filter, making the rigorous thought process between his brain and mouth thinner, making it easier for things to slip through the cracks. Remus usually tells him to go take a nap when he starts cursing every other sentence, claiming he has to sleep out all the nasty words before he can have a conversation with decent people.

Remus never faults him for getting mouthy, in return, Regulus tries to tamper down the scathing remarks to something kinder.

Regulus clears his throat, mentally berating himself, “Not often,” the pause where sorry would fall from his tongue is so heavy he wants to cry, “does it bother you?”

Still stunned, James shakes his head ever so slightly, mouth parting a bit more as his hair flops back and forth, Regulus digs his broken nails into his arm to stop himself from reaching out and touching it.

James is stepping forward now and all Regulus can do is swallow down stupid words that are fighting to get out of his stupid mouth with their stupid-

He really needs sleep.

Regulus steps backward a few times, trying to avoid being back to back with the wall as James keeps stepping closer and closer.

“James-”

His voice seems to break James out of whatever trance he had been in, the taller boy stepping back and blinking as he jerks slightly, “Sorry…I-”

Regulus shakes his head, trying to ignore the slope of his neck, the curve of his lips, the warmth of his eyes, so close he can see the whites of them.

James steps back farther, unfairly handsome features becoming more bearable to be around without snogging him desperately as Regulus tries to remind himself how to breathe.

Air floats through his lungs, thick and soupy in the hot air of the closet.

Suddenly Regulus remembers the locked door, and the small closet seems to get impossibly smaller, creeping in on him and pressing in on all sides, morphing into another decade, another closet, darker and damper as his parents shout angrily from outside of it, his fingers pressed to his own pulse trying to control his panic attack and praying for them to go to bed so Sirius can break him out.

The childhood broom closet didn’t hold fond memories and often had more people in it than it did brooms.

Regulus remembers being nine and caught picking the lock to the closet by his mother, his mother had bought a fucking chain the next day, locking him up like a prisoner for days with a lock that only she had the key to, supposedly one of those unpickable ones.

Sirius had learned how to pick it in days, and could do it one handed in two weeks.

Regulus never got the hang of picking it, and could certainly never have managed to pick it one handed.

The years after Sirius left were filled with much more closet time than his early years had been.

Regulus could feel his breath speeding up but he couldn’t find it in himself to care, lungs spreading faster and faster in a poor attempt to press against the space enclosing him.

Someone grabbed his wrist and for a moment Sirius stood before him, a worried expression on his face that didn’t quite look like. 

Regulus blinked again as James looked back at him, words floating to him like he is submerged under water, warped and faint, “Regulus, Regulus, Regulus .”

Shaking his head, he took a step back, hoping for more space between them or something at least a little spacier, his back hit the wall and the situation caught back up to him.

“James,” he whispered, cursing himself for the weakness he had been displaying all day, “Please break down the door.”

Hands shaking, he pressed himself further into the wall, scrunching his eyes up as he turned his head to avoid James’s expression.

His voice floated to him through a haze of panic, “I’ll be drowned in student loans.”

Regulus lets out a breathy huff, amusement bubbling up in him as he cast his gaze around the room hysterically.

James huffed a little laugh too, drawing slightly closer even though Regulus no longer felt suffocated by his presence, couldn’t even think hard enough to remember why he had been avoiding him in the first place.

Edging closer, James leaned towards him, gaze searching as Regulus's eyes got caught on his tan skin, shining slightly with drying sweat from practice, the way his hair curled around his ears, the tiny freckles on brown in his dark green eyes.

His lips.

Suddenly, Regulus reminded himself why he didn’t want to get close to James in the first place, eyes caught on the way James’s bottom lip shined in the fluorescent lighting, the boy in question’s tongue darting out to wet them slightly as Regulus watched.

“James,” he drew closer, caught, pulled by an invisible string, reeled in by the wire, pulled into James’s orbit.

This wouldn’t end well, it would hurt more than anything ever had in Regulus’s life ever.

He would relish in the pain.

“Regulus,” James steps forward slowly, head tilting as their steps eat up the space between them. 

This will be a mess, a catastrophe, a disaster of epic proportions. Regulus has never done something as impulsive as this, as stupid and reckless as-

Oh. 

oh

James kisses Regulus. 

And Regulus kisses him back. 

Chapter Text

James can remember the first time he thought he might be queer, a small thought, a whisp really.

Between the girl in the first form’s curly hair and the woman in the second form’s bright eyes, there had been a boy’s sharp smile and a man’s hands fluttering over a piano.

James hadn’t paid attention to the people he thought were pretty, too busy with illusions of grandeur to worry about their gender, too busy dreaming up ways to ask them to dances to care if they’d wear a suit or a dress.

Gender just hadn’t mattered to him.

Sure, James could recognise that people were men and women, but he hardly noticed that as a tying factor really, no pronouns were safe from his wandering eyes and fantastical daydreams of dates and love and kisses.

Especially kisses.

And James will be the first to admit, lips pressed to Regulus’s soft ones, that of all the people he had crushed on, he had never truly felt like this for anyone.

He had of course kissed people before, but they were silly kisses, spur of the moment childish things with no lead up and no follow through.

James could taste the difference between those and this on Regulus’s tongue.

Regulus kissed like he would be scored for it, an olympic sport that he’s going for gold in.

Who is James to stop him, stop Regulus from melting forward into him the moment James cards a hand through his curly hair, feeling the man practically turning into a puddle as he slings an arm around the shorter boy’s waist, humming in pleasure as Regulus’s hands played with the hair at the back of James’s neck, pulling him closer.

There were no fireworks, no shocking moments of realisation, James felt too deep for that, a starving man entering paradise and trying to have everything all at once. Kissing Regulus felt like everything all at once.

James squeezed Regulus’s hip, smiling slightly into the kiss when Regulus slightly jolted before pressing closer, relishing in the breathy sigh against his mouth as he slid a hand up and down the side of Regulus’s body, thumb beginning to dip under the boy’s shirt to rub at his hipbone as he pushed closer and-

The door opened from the outside, the click of the unlock the only warning the two boys had to spring apart as someone opened it.

Sirius let out a bark of laughter from where he leaned against the doorway, eyeing both men as James frantically smoothed out his rucked up shirt and Regulus tried to smooth out his suddenly messy hair.

James grinned, running a hand through his messy hair, “Hey Siri.”

Sirius practically bent over in laughter as they both stood there, James feeling out for Regulus’s hand in the semi-dim room.

The back of his hand brushed Regulus and the boy in question shot him a look of surprise, yanking his hand away on instinct as he stared at James, lips parted in shock and wide eyes inspecting James’s every move.

Squashing down the need to kiss him again, James turned away in slight disappointment, cursing Sirius for interrupting them.

“Glad someone’s getting action at least.”

A slight pressure brushed against the back of James’s hand as Sirius spoke, unexpected enough that James nearly jumped in surprise. He glanced over at Regulus in shock as the boy laced their pinkies together, his face not giving away a thing as he raised an eyebrow at James’s best friend, “It’s my understanding you have someone trying very hard to do exactly this with you.”

James pressed his free hand against his mouth to hide his grin at Sirius’s shocked spluttering, remembering his friend’s own situationship that happened to be with Regulus’s best friend.

Regulus grabbed his skates from the floor, leaving a cold space next to James like he had never been there in the first place as he strode out, not giving either of them a second glance.

Stepping forward, James called out to stop him, to talk to him about what just happened, justify himself, maybe apologise, but before he could say anything, Regulus got there first, “See you both around boys.”

The finality of the statement gave James the hint, they were done for the day.

Sirius reached out and patted James on the shoulder, both of them staring in the direction of where Regulus had sped off faster than a racecar, “Looks like your love life is looking even more dismal than mine.”

James shoved him in jest halfheartedly, grabbing his own bag to walk out with him as he muttered a, “Shuddup”

See the thing is, Sirius has an amazing memory. He can always place a face with a name, can remember running into absolute strangers when he sees them on the street, can place anyone he’s met at least once just by seeing them.

And yet, seeing Regulus makes him feel like he’s forgetting a face.

It’s an odd feeling, seeing Regulus quirk a small lip up during practice and feeling such a powerful sense of deja vu he gets vertigo. 

Looking at the man head on makes him itch, like a missed step on the stairs, a puzzle piece you know goes somewhere but can’t get to fit.

There’s something familiar about this stranger, and Sirius wants to know what.

Regulus raises an eyebrow at Sirius from across the rink, spurring him into action from where he had previously been just standing there watching him like a creep.

He had no shame.

It’s not his fault really, I mean it is, but it’s like, diagnosed, he can’t help it.

Sirius tends to obsess about people, hyper-fixating on one person until he figures out and moves on, it usually pertains to girls, dating them for the mystery and breaking it off when he puzzles them out.

James says he has a disorganised attachment system, pushing people away when they are close enough to figure him out so he doesn’t have to deal with rejection. Sirius thinks James is taking too many psychology classes.

So maybe he can’t get close to people, man or woman, and maybe feeling things about others that aren’t his close forever friends is scary, it doesn’t mean he’s traumatised, it just means he’s bored.

Maybe Remus staring at him from his seat in the rink makes his insides light on fire, and maybe he had been ignoring him, pushing him away, but the other man pushed him away first.

And yet, Regulus interested him in a different way than usual, he wanted nothing romantic to do with him, but he wanted to know him, he felt like he already knew him.

He felt like they were connected.

Sirius felt connections oddly, like a string tied around his ribs, constantly point towards the person, he knew where James stood in any room they were in without even looking at him, could puzzle out how far away he stood from Effie and how many steps across the room it would take to get to he without even looking at where she stood.

He knew where Regulus glided along on the ice at all times without sparing him a second glance.

He had never been so in tune with a stranger, never been so aware of a stranger’s presence. 

It scared him slightly, being so comfortable around a virtual stranger he has maybe had four conversations, and it has nothing to do with him and James possibly getting their collective acts together and fucking this century.

He hadn’t warmed up to Lily until months after she started dating James, and yet, Regulus seemed to slot in perfectly with Sirius’s reality.

Regulus…and Remus.

Remus, who he had finally started texting back, Remus who he had plans to get coffee with after this practice.

Remus who had known Regulus for years.

And look, Sirius had no harboured jealousy towards Regulus, it’s just that, he had this effortless look about him. Sometimes Sirius caught himself in the corner of his eye, a reflection in the ice, before realising he had been staring at Regulus.

He spent an entire afternoon in front of the mirror, a blurry photo of Regulus that he had taken for James propped up against it, staring at the bridge of his nose, the cut of his jaw, willing it to be less similar to Regulus’s.

Catching a quick glance of the boy made him feel like he had caught a glimpse of a better made clone, like all his faults had been taken out and the result ended in Regulus.

He started losing track of time, something that hadn’t happened often since he left home, constantly feeling like he had an itch in his brain, a nagging thread he couldn’t reach to pull.

There’s just something about the boy.

And it’s odd, he knows it is, to blink to life in the middle of his kitchen, feeling so close to grasping that loose thread and so far from the truth, smiling at James before blinking and being on the ice.

He hasn’t told James yet, hasn’t been this bad in his disassociation since his teen years, he felt like everything he had done to get out of the hell pit he had dug himself in had been slowly unravelling since he saw Regulus, since he met Remus.

Since he left his only family member alone in that house.

Since he started thinking about where she would be now.

Since…since…since.

Two boys walk into an ice rink.

They look similar enough to be brothers.

Walburga smiles at him, her real smile, not the socialite one that is polite and cheery, but her shark smile, all teeth, out for blood.

Being afraid of his mother had never been new to Regulus, and this night had been etched in his memory since the day he lived it, not a single detail forgotten.

His mother held a knife loosely in her left hand (she’s right handed, she’s right handed, she isn’t going to stab me, please please don’t stab me again, oh god it hurts) and her right hand strokes the handle back and forth, her fingertips glide along the sharp edge. Every pass of her palm against the handle makes his breath catch, fingers spasming against the ground involuntarily, trying to find a way to get up without his mother lashing out.

His legs ached with bruises, the deep spiking pain spreading across his body, to the belt lashes on his back that throbbed, to the Black family crest branded against his hip bone, easily hidden by underwear and a skirt, loudly shouting with protest at every brush of his skin against his clothes.

He probably resembled one large feminine bruise and he hated it, his body a reflection of every single single thing he is not.

His mother smiled, a shark smelling blood as her right hand gripped the handle of the knife, Regulus flinching back unconsciously when the silver blinked through the air, rushing past him to knick against his shoulder and bury itself in the wall he leaned against.

A terrified sob escaped his mouth as his mother bent down to backhand him, screaming, her shrill voice sharper than the knives she threw, burying itself into his head.

Stupid stupid stupid girl, you will never be anything more than a gigantic waste of space.

His mother transformed into Sirius as Regulus’s vision warped with tears, his surroundings blurry as his mother’s figure became Sirius’s taller one, leaner and differently proportioned.

“How could you not tell me! How could you be such a fucking awful sister to not be happy I got out! How could you be such a disappointment of a fucking family member that you couldn’t see I had been slowly suffocating since the day I had been brought into this goddamn house!”

Regulus wanted to shout, he wanted to scream that Sirius hadn’t been much better to never notice how he flinched when someone referred to him with his full name, how he shied away from any show of femininity, how he hated anything womanly in connotation to him.

He stayed silent, letting his brother yell at him.

Suddenly, inexplicable, they were in the Black Manor’s front yard, impossible but it didn’t confuse Regulus at all.

This moment, this conversation, had been everything their strained relationship had been building up to since the day Sirius came back from his first semester at boarding school. 

It felt like a knife in his chest, a stutter in his heart, a fist shoved down his throat to constrict his airways, “Please,” he says, barely conscious of the words coming out of his mouth, unable to speak, an invisible hand gripped around his vocal cords, body curling tight in anticipation.

He knows what comes next.

Sirius will look at him with those distrustful, distrustful eyes and sigh, the patronization so pungent that Regulus will taste it on his tongue and hope, just barely hope that Sirius will see him, him, like he actually is for the first time in years, that he will look straight through him to the inner thoughts and intentions like he always did as a child.

And then Sirius will open his mouth, will shove him away with his words, will use his full name that he knows Regulus hates for the first time in thirteen years.

He knows what will happen, it’s etched into his brain, a scene from a play he has watched millions of times, he could quote every sentence word for word.

Sirius does none of these things, Sirius steps forward and hugs him, pulling Regulus into his chest and Regulus does not care that he has gone off-script, doesn’t even realize he did.

How could this not be the only outcome, the inevitable reconciling. 

They’re brothers, how could their love for each other ever not be the strongest emotion in the room.

He relaxes against his brother as all the pieces of his life slide together, his skewed universe realigning, the world making sense again.

Everything is right in the world.

And then the knife slides into his back.

Regulus gasps, a small gurgling sound coming out of his throat as he is guided away from Sirius slightly, one of the boy’s hand on his back, the other on the hand of the knife he had just shoved into his back.

“Oh Regina,” Sirius sighs, like this whole thing is a game, like he isn’t slowly killing his only real family, like he isn’t slowly twisting the knife in his back, “You will never be good enough to be loved.”

He jolts awake, throwing himself up and scrambling to get away from Sirius, the pain of the knife still fading in his back when he realises he is in his bed, nestled between twisted silken sheets.

None of that actually happened.

Well technically most of it did, all of it did in a figurative way.

Sirius may have never stabbed him, but there were plenty of emotional betrayals that had been stabbed into his back by his brother.

That night had been the biggest one.

Regulus wished he could be surprised by the nightmare, but it hadn’t been a new occurrence, the always changing but still recurring dream had been a staple since Sirius moved out, had been changing since the day Regulus had moved out.

It always started with his mother, yelling at him, or hitting him, berating him, and that morphs into Sirius doing the same thing, they end up in the garden, and they play out the night Sirius left, deadname and all.

This dream had been a staple in his life for a long time, but Sirius going off script had been a new occurrence in the last few weeks.

Every time it happened it left Regulus shaky for hours, constantly avoiding contact, terrified he’s going to be stabbed, someone he loves is going to watch the life bleed out of his eyes and enjoy it.

It’s not spiralling, it’s a constant state of being, and Regulus is not spiralling, he refuses to.

Regulus can admit when he spirals, and this is not spiralling, this is slow, controlled, crash-landing.

He knows this won’t end well, having any sort of close relationship with his brother’s best friend, that this will all blow up in his face when he comes out to Sirius (he has to eventually, or ride this out until his contract with the team ends, but even then, he can’t just pretend James doesn’t exists can he?). It’s all very complicated, and he can’t think, can’t dream because he sees his brother’s best friend, his brother’s best friend who is more of a brother to Sirius than Regulus will ever be.

Sometimes he hates James.

Mostly he wants to snog the man senseless.

It’s like having a dirty secret.

Regulus told James he didn’t want the team to know they were together, didn’t want to loose any sort of reputation he had with them by them thinking he had been fucking their captain (like they could ever fuck without James knowing his deepest, darkest secret, like that wouldn’t automatically make everything in this whole clusterfuck twenty times more complicated).

James hadn’t argued, saying it would be good for him to also keep it under wraps, Regulus hadn’t pressed, James hadn’t asked why he lied about the reason he wanted to be secret.

A clusterfuck indeed.

Meanwhile, between getting snogged in empty closets and having secret meetings while Regulus made lesson plans and James made game plans, Regulus had another mission to focus on.

Befriending his brother.

If a stranger walked up to him on the street and claimed to be his transgender family member, Regulus would run away and never speak to them again.

If his friend sat him down and gently told him they were related and his friend actually had been trans for a while, Regulus would…well Regulus would get them like a fucking pig for ever lying to him in general, but he hoped befriending Sirius would make him more likely to hear him out.

Besides, he could feel Sirius’s eyes on him sometimes, inquisitive glances that from anyone else would make Regulus kick them in the balls, but he knew his brother, and he didn’t look to see how big his ass looked from behind, but to compare Regulus’s features to his own mentally.

Slowly controlled trainwreck, still messy, but anticipated.

Didn’t mean Regulus would be any less fucked when he finally came out.

He hoped, a small part of him that he quieted at every sound, against all hope he hoped, that Sirius would just figure it out and be okay with it.

He hoped Sirius would just walk up to him someday and smile, ruffle his hair like he always did when they were kids and hug him, tell him how much he missed his little brother.

Regulus didn’t dare to voice it, to even think it, but the small hope curdled in the back of his mind anyway.

He had learned early in life to not hope, that any expectation or wish for the future would only disappoint, so he didn’t hope, he didn’t dare, he didn’t think about telling Sirius about their relation.

He just dreamt about it, the new stuff of his nightmares.

Sometimes the garden dream ended with Regulus screaming at Sirius that he had never been a girl, that his name had been Regulus since the day he read that astronomy book about the Leo constellation.

It’s fucked up and insane, and it still always ended with Sirius calling him his deadname.

He’s unbothered, it’s not like it would happen in real life, they’re hundreds of miles away from the Black manor and he hadn’t heard a whisper of his parents or their house since he moved out.

It didn’t stop him from flinching away from Sirius at the end of Thursday practice, gaze already searching for Remus to save him from this.

Remus, for once, had not come to practice.

Sirius gave him a hesitant smile, hands held up by his face, “Just me.”

Cursing himself for ever flinching in the first place, Regulus nodded, trying to avoid looking him in the eyes.

He had looked in the mirror this morning, his gaze set on his own, he looked paler than normal, the bags under his eyes so large Regulus had been slightly surprised they fit on his face.

Bending back down to grab another cone, Regulus snatched it up as he kept skating, heading towards the closest orange cone.

Sirius sped past him, bending down to grab the cone, he wobbled slightly as he straightened up, but he didn’t fall.

Regulus hid a smile under an annoyed glare as Sirius skated back towards him, cone held out between them.

Taking it and adding it to his growing pile, Regulus waited for his brother to continue.

“Have we met?”

His pulse shot to his throat, breath freezing in his lungs.

“Multiple times by now, I’ve been coaching you for five weeks.”

Sirius let out a bark of laughter, a little shout of joy that faded into a wheeze, so painfully similar to his genuine childhood laugh that Regulus wanted to lay down in the middle of the street until some poor sod ran him over.

“No, no, I mean…” Sirius started, getting back on track, “You just seem really familiar.”

And this was it, right here, this gold plated opening that begged Regulus to just tell him, tell the truth, but he hadn’t had enough time with him yet, hadn’t had enough sleep, he hadn’t been ready.

Regulus laughed instead, not missing a beat in the conversation as he stepped off the rink to take his skates off, “Sometimes complete strangers just seem that way. We’ve never met, I would remember it.”

Later, when everything had been laid out on the table, when the truth had come out and Regulus had spilled everything, he would look back on this moment and wish for a time machine so he could go back and do it right.

He would regret not telling him later, he knew he would the moment he did, but terror had refused to let him tell him.

He hadn’t been ready.

He would never be ready.

Chapter Text

It’s the moment of complete and utter clarity Regulus has when waking up that solidifies the oddness of the day.

Not once in his life has Regulus ever woken up in a good mood off the bat, always battling off the remaining nightmares that stick in his head as he regains consciousness. 

He wakes up for the first time in months without a nightmare.

Not one to look a gift horse in the face, Regulus quickly moves on with his day, scrambling for his phone to check his messages as he pulls on his shoes and rushes to his first class.

His only morning class of the semester, taught by a lovely little lady named Madame Pomfrey. The teacher in question taught basic nursing classes along with intermediate psychology, a class that would have beat Regulus’s ass if the teacher didn’t love him. 

Pomfrey had an affinity for collecting strays, as she had done with both Regulus and Remus, and though Regulus claims he has never been to therapy (he hasn’t, not once in a way that would show up on his record) he has weekly Wednesday afternoon meetings with the teacher where they talk about anything and everything.

It isn’t therapy, Regulus refuses to let it be.

Once settled in the class, he picks out one of the closest chairs to the front that  he didn’t sit in last lesson (the only rule for seating is that you have to sit in a different chair than the one you sat in the class before, most students get around this by just switching spots with their table partner) and plunking down next to Pandora Lestrange. 

Regulus had honestly had more interactions with the girl’s cousin Rhodulphous (though she didn’t know that) back when he had been wed to his cousin Bella, but he had deemed Pandora an unusually competent table partner, and he often sat near her in lessons.

They would be friends if Regulus could stomach interacting with someone closely tied to his past, hell, Regulus would have a brother if he could handle it. He could only handle so much stress before he collapses, so he prioritised, and just happened to choose his brother.

The best course of action really, when Remus had finally been given the time of day again last week, it hadn’t become uncommon for Regulus to see them around campus trying to suck each other's brains out through their mouths.

Regulus couldn’t complain, wouldn't allow himself to, not when James had somehow memorised his schedule and kept appearing to walk him to his classes (though he had much better class than snogging in public allowed, sometimes he would let James pull him into a closet or an empty classroom and subsequently end up late to his lessons.

He recognized this for what it is, a grace period before everything goes bad and he has to tell Sirius they’re brothers, but for now, he would live in oblivion and hope that this could be his life forever.

Remus had become a walking ball of paranoid guilt, stretched to the breaking point, constantly looking over his shoulder for one of the black brothers.

He never claimed to be a good friend, but this situation had been testing the boundaries of loyalty for days, and it stressed him out.

Guilt sunk like a rock into the bottom of his stomach every time he saw Sirius, lying to one brother and trying to hide from the other, the stress had been getting to him.

The circles under his eyes have become darker in the past few weeks, and as Remus reaches up to cut his hair in the mirror, whole strands come falling out without prompt.

Having thick hair had always been a blessing and a curse, for without the thick hair, his now thin hair probably wouldn’t be there and he’d be walking around bald (the result of being constantly stressed and also having lupus) and yet, it didn’t make watching his hair fall out as he tried to cut it any easier.

It would grow back, he knew it would, that didn’t make him feel any younger.

One day he would just go bald and then people would start drawing dicks on the back of his head while he slept and Sirius would leave him because he’d already out of his league with hair, that amount of beauty couldn’t be contained by a significant other who’s bald.

People would stop him on the street and express pity for him having cancer and he would have to explain it isn’t cancer, it’s lupus, and then die inside when they ask even more questions (he had gone bald for a short period of time in his childhood, and had vowed to never experience it again.)

He would go broke and drop out of college trying to buy an adequate and somewhat realistic wig, and then he’d be homeless and die because he had no money.

Either way, those were problems for the future him, the him of today just had to focus on cutting his hair.

Running his fingers through it reminded him of Sirius doing the same thing at the movies today, the smaller boy leaning against his chest as Remus drew patterns on his arm and tilted his head into the boy’s free hand as he massaged it.

It had been too dark for Sirius to see in the theatre, but when they stood up, there had been a noticeable amount of shed hair left on the seats behind them.

Remus had resolved to cut it a bit, maybe that would chill out the lupus gods and he wouldn’t go bald this month.

Dating Sirius felt like a dream, a wondrous haze of moments that were too picturesque and romantic to happen to him, and yet every moment with Sirius felt more real than anything else Remus had ever experienced in his life.

A door slammed somewhere in the apartment as Regulus arrived home and Remus smiled slightly at the sound of the boy throwing down his bag and sliding into their kitchenette.

“Remus?” the boy called out, a vibrant man compared to the quiet shadow he had once been when they first met, shouting across the flat for him, “You home? Or did you leave your bag here to go snog my brother?”

Wincing at Regulus’s subtlety, he called out himself as he picked up the scissors, grabbing the clippers, “In the bathroom.”

Flicking on the clippers as they started their soft clicking, he started shaving the back of his head and fading up, leaving a curly, heavy mass on the top of his head that quickly faded into a buzz around the sides of his head, long enough for the short pieces to curl except at the back of his head. The perfect summer haircut in the middle of winter.

Regulus appeared in the doorway behind him, raising an eyebrow at him through the mirror as they made eye contact. 

Remus remembers teaching a smaller boy how to cut his own hair in this bathroom, and he watches now as this same boy picks up the discarded pair of scissors and passes them between his hands contemplatively, taking in his own hair in the mirror.

Even before Remus had cut his hair, Regulus’s had been a bit longer, the curly strands framing his face elegantly and the back pieces shorter, but still longer than the length at the top of Remus’s head, the whole thing an adorable curly mess that Remus was convinced only worked because of how freaking beautiful every single Black family member seemed to be.

Regulus looks up at him now, jerking his chin slightly to get his hair out of his vision as he takes Remus in, moving closer to rest his forehead against his shoulder.

He mumbles into Remus’s bicep, “You look tired.”

Remus smiles and puts a hand on the back of his head, ignoring the sudden rush of dizziness that threatens to pull the ground from beneath his feet, “No more tired than you are I’m sure.”

Regulus huffs, pressing his face more firmly into Remus’s arm as he sighs, “You need to sleep, preferably before you keel over from it.”

Pulling back, Regulus runs a light finger over the bridge of his nose, “You’re all red, running yourself ragged.”

Remus leans his head into Regulus’s hand, casting a look at the butterfly shaped blush that spreads over his cheek and nose, “‘m fine Reg.”

Scowling, Regulus reaches his other hand up to guide his forehead to his lips, “Fine,”he mutters against his head, pulling back to place the back of his hand there, “You’re burning up.”

It’s like every ounce of willpower Remus ever had suddenly seeps out of him and back into the earth from whence it came as he slumps against Regulus, suddenly feeling more tired than he had ever been in his life.

Regulus mutters a curse as he guides Remus out the bathroom and onto the couch, muttering about symptoms and signs and other things Remus can’t be bothered to listen to.

“Fuck, Rem stay awake, I need you to answer some- Rem stay awake, Remus wake up!”

The couch cushions are the most comfortable surface Remus has ever come in contact with, and he can’t help it, he falls right asleep.

Chapter Text

Sirius is having a good dream, a rare occurrence, something involving comfort and a feeling of home he definitely never got from his first house, the warmth of a hug from Euphemia, the satisfaction of a good grade on an essay, a place to return to that is safe.

The blaring of his phone startles him out of it.

Blindly reaching for the device on his nightstand, he pulls it toward him, swiping blindly as he presses the phone to his ears, not bothering to open his eyes as he asks slightly aggressively, “What?”

A tinny voice floats through his sub-optimal speakers, “Wow, what a kind way to greet your boyfriend.”

He pulls the phone back, squinting at it through sleep-blurry eyes as he reads the name on the screen, “Remmy?”

“Well that’s just sickening.”

It doesn’t sound like Remus, which is odd, considering they’re calling from his phone.

“Who is this?”

“Regulus, keep up with the program, did you fall on your head during practice one too many times?”

“Um,” he knows Regulus vaguely, a sick sense of dread starts crawling into his bloodstream, “What’s going on?”

Before Regulus can answer, his door bursts open and James rushes in, “Mate, Reg just texted me, get up we have to go to the hospital!”

What the fuck is going on.

Head still foggy from his sleep but quickly clearing, he mangages to mutter a mostly coherent sentence that basically reads as what the fuck before Regulus finally fills him in, “Remus had an episode, he’s in the hospital.”

The whole night is a blur.

He talked to someone on a help hotline, a woman who had a very soothing high pitched voice, and then he turned around and opened the door to emergency paramedics.

Remus’s skin had been paler than the white moon his illness had allegorical ties to.

He remembers riding to the hospital in the emergency vehicle in patches: Remus’s arm, a flash of white against the creamy background of the truck, dangling off the side of his mat as someone did chest compressions, the blur of lights outside as they sped past traffic, a faint ringing in the background that overshadowed the own buzzing in his head, a brunette kneeling in front of him and shining a light in his eye, asking him questions he couldn’t bother to listen to, much less answer, stepping off the car as the rest of the people left him in the dust, whisking Remus off to do non-car-confined procedures most likely.

He’s pretty sure he texted James something, at a loss of people to inform.

He remembers sitting in the waiting room, an uncomfortable blue chair digging into his back as his eyes flitted across the walls, taking in the hanging photographs without really recognizing anything.

A photo of a dog barking reminded him of Sirius, who he should probably call, after who knows how long, the barking reminding him of Sirius’s bark-like laugh.

He’s pretty sure he manages to have a semi-coherent conversation with him that ends with the man on the way.

He can’t really remember, it should bother him more than it does that he can’t really remember.

Remus in hospital.

Cld u come?

James didn’t even realise he had Regulus’s number, though he did remember getting it from his coach when they set up the whole ice-skating training in the first place.

It seems like ages ago.

It’s been a little over a month.

He drives Sirius to the hospital, the man could barely hold his own phone, his hands shook so badly.

Maybe he ran a few red lights, if he did, nobody pulled him over for it, maybe people could sense the absolute panic emanating from every inch of each of the members in the car.

They make it to the fifteen minute away hospital in seven minutes, it’s probably a new speeding record.

There are white walls and whiter floors and blinding doors and Regulus stands out like a sore thumb.

He sits in a chair, leg bouncing steadily that makes James sick just watching, gaze millions of years away as he stares at the wall. He stands out in the room in his black Cigarettes After Sex shirt that pillows around his hips in a way that promises at least three sizes too large for him, baggy sweatpants hiding what James knows are toned legs from years of skating.

James feels out of place in this hospital, the silence clinging to the walls and seeping into every single member in the waiting room, an eerie stillness that settles into James’s bones and makes him ache.

Regulus looks so pale in the room, the off-white walls have sucked the life right out of them and James wants to hug him, just hold him until all the colour returns to his already unusually pale face.

It’s weird, different than the crushes he’s had in the past, different than the fierce protective streak that runs through him when Sirius is upset, different than the rushing urge to comfort a friend when they’re upset. The feeling in his chest when he looks at Regulus is something completely and totally new.

It’s a headrush, like he just got off a rollercoaster that goes upside down and sideways and all over the place.

He’s dizzy, his visions blurry, and it isn’t tears, because Regulus doesn’t cry, he just doesn’t, it’s not something he does, especially not twice in one month.

And then James is in front of him, and Jesus, if this is how he sees without his glasses on, Regulus feels sorry for him because he’s missing out on fundamental features.

With his eyes as blurry as they are, he can’t make out the golden specks in James’s eyes, nor the small freckle on his cheek next to his eyes. Even with his blurry vision, he can’t mistake the worry in James’s expression as he takes him in.

He thinks he manages to mumble the boy’s name, but it’s all static ringing in his head, a constant backwash of panic thrumming through his mind, he didn’t do something, he didn’t get to Remus in time. 

It will be his fault if his best friend dies.

James’s hands are on his shoulders, thumbs rubbing back and forth in the most soothing contact of his life.

James says something, a murmur, a whisper Regulus couldn’t even dream of hearing even if he hadn’t been listening to ringing in the back of his mind.

Then James’s arms were around him and it became infinitely better than the contact on his shoulders, like the arms around him were wading through the fog in his head and sucking it out. 

Maybe it’s okay, maybe it's not, all he knows is that he wants to stay here, in this spot, forever.

Sirius can’t think, he can’t move, he can’t breathe, vertigo making the room spin like he just stepped off a rocking boat.

Somewhere in this hospital Remus is dying or in pain or something worse and it’s killing him even more than leaving that fucking house he grew up in.

Remus could be dying and Sirius can’t remember what the last words he said to him were.

Maybe it had been positive, Sirius had been planning for months to forgive him formally (had he invited him on that date yet?), but maybe it had been negative, a lashing out to push him away before he decided to leave.

Those were his specialty.

And it’s awful, it’s crazy, it’s stupid.

What if Remus thinks he hates him?

James can’t bring himself to pull away.

Regulus is trembling slightly in his hold, a tremor that starts in his shoulders and moves through his upper limbs and rattles the boy like a tree in a storm.

Practically vibrating with the shaking boy in his arms, James guides him back down to his seat, noticing the slight swaying, like the boy is moments from falling asleep, and rubs a comforting thumb back and forth across his shoulder, slinging an arm around him.

Sirius has managed to collapse in a seat near them, close enough that James can reach with his free arm and grab the older boy’s hand to rub comforting circles on.

Here in this moment, James doesn’t think about what it means to be in a hospital waiting for news on his friend, he doesn’t think about the ache in his chest at the sight of his best friend and his hopefully-future-boyfriend, he doesn’t think about Remus, who has always been nothing but kind to him.

An arm around a shoulder, two hands intertwined, like a child’s sleepover where everyone’s a cuddling mess of limbs.

James doesn’t think.

Remus probably hates him, and it’s all Regulus’s fault.

He’s an awful friend, a horrible friend for prioritising anything over him, for being in any way glad to be here, but James is warm and hasn’t bothered him beyond wrapping an arm around him, which hardly bothered him in the slightest.

He can’t think past the terror running through his veins, he wants to answer Sirius’s questions, give James some comfort because he definitely looks shaken, but he can’t bring himself to move.

Remus’s name is a mantra in his mind, the boy’s pale skin tattooed against the backs of his eyelids, his shallow raspy breaths still ringing in his ears.

He had been nearly seizing by the time the medics got there, and by then Regulus had been full on panicking.

Maybe if he had listened when Remus has instructed him on what to do during a relapse, or if he had done more research on Lupus besides bothering to make fun of him for having a similar last name, they wouldn’t be in this catastrophical situation.

A nurse walks in the room, brushing in through the staff only door as she stares at a clipboard and Regulus perks up like he has the last six times a nurse has walked in the room to update family on a patient.

The nurse looks up, gaze running over the room as she takes in all the people sitting inside.

“Mr. Black?”

Two boys stand up.

Regulus is beyond fucked.

Chapter Text

Regulus steps forward to get information from the nurse, she hands him a clipboard and asks him to fill out Remus’s medical history. 

There isn’t any updates yet about Remus’s condition, the doctors are working frantically, but it’s too early to tell.

It’s been almost three hours, how much time does it have to be for it to be on time to tell?

He wants to scream. 

“Your last name is Black?”

Sirius looks confused, eyebrows furrowing above his eyes like they did as a kid when he couldn’t decide whether to be mad or upset. 

Regulus can barely get sound out past the lump of his shrivelled heart in his throat, “Did you not know? My last name is on like four of my sweatshirts as well as in my email, have you not been checking your weekly updates.” Thankfully his voice has been trained since a young age to stay steady even in the middle of a panic attack, he could go all day. 

Regulus can see the worlds colliding in his brother’s mind, “I-Do you happen to have any relation to the Noble House of Black?”

Regulus would laugh if he could remember how to make his lungs work, how to think past the pounding of his heart in his ears. 

“Please, we weren’t noble, some old long dead cousin married a duke of the royal family and caused the entire family tree to develop a superiority complex.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“That I’m related to you? No offence but please take full offence, it’s none of your business and honestly not a time I look back on fondly. Yes, I remember you, it doesn’t matter.”

His voice is cold and biting to his own ears, too loud in a too small room for two Blacks to be in, stars trying to explode outward without enough space to do so. 

Sirius steps back slightly, completely stunned, “I- How-“ his expression shifts, the boy finally deciding on an emotion: anger. 

“Are you spying on me for my mother? You can tell that rotten bitch that no matter what she does, I will never return, I’m a legal adult, I can do what I want.”

His anxious, traitorous heart is fluttering faster than a racing butterfly, his head feels foggy, stomach whirling like he might throw up. 

Out of all the conclusions Sirius could have come to, he doesn’t know why this one hurts the most, like he would ever betray his brother like that, would ever side with his mother over him.

You already have before a little voice in his head points out it would be staying quite in theme. He pushes that thought way the fuck back before he has a panic attack and instead focuses on a responce that can steer the conversation away from how closely related him and Sirius may or may not be.

“Please Wallaburga couldn’t give less of a shit about you, she still has the little spare, and for all I know, she’s dead. I haven’t exactly kept in touch,” he says airly, not as calm as he would like, but indifferent enough to pass over the slight tremble of his fingers, the small tremor in his legs. 

Sirius steps back as if physically struck, “Don’t you talk badly about my little Reggie, she’s many things, but never a replacement, her life has more worth than that.”

Regulus doesn’t know whether to cry at the sentiment or the misgendering, he settles for not crying at all because he’s a big boy that shouldn’t give a shit whether or not his brother loves him. 

He can’t help it, he needs to know more, “What does it matter to you? Last I heard, you two weren’t on the best of terms.”

Sirius doesn’t so much as flush with anger as he does purple, “That doesn’t concern you, nor is it any reason to not treat someone with basic human dignity.”

Wow, okay, so Regulus is a sore subject. 

He can physically see Sirius both gearing up to punch him and holding himself back, so it's not a surprise that James jumps in before he can open his mouth again. 

“Regulus, sit down and fill out that sheet,” he says, eyes darting around nervously as he steels.  himself, turning to his non biological brother, “Sirius, take a walk.”

The man himself opens his mouth to protest, but James cuts him off with a look, “A walk.”

His voice is so demanding it makes Regulus want to get up and run around the building, so it isn’t a surprise Sirius takes off without protest this time. 

Regulus keeps his head down, hands still trembling slightly as he clenches his fists to make it unnoticeable, silently beginning to fill out the paper. 

He can feel James staring at him, his gaze practically pushing against his head, and he does his best to ignore it as he racks his brain for any information Remus told him ever. 

Nut allergy? No

Bad heart history? He’s pretty sure Remus’s dad had a heart attack in Remus’s childhood, but he’s also pretty sure Remus’s bio dad left when he found out his son had been born “defective.”

He leaves that one blank

Antibiotic allergy? He has no idea, he doesn’t exactly start conversations with his friend by asking what kinds of medicine will kill him, though it would be a good thing to know when he inevitably messes up and has to kill Remus and bury his secrets with him. 

Blood type? Regulus doesn’t even know his own blood type, does it make him a horrible friend that he doesn’t know anything?

What if Remus needs a blood transfusion and dies before getting it because the doctors don’t know his type, his death will be Regulus’s fault for being a bad friend. His inevitable death is already probably Regulus’s fault for daring to come near him with his streak of bad luck in any kind of relationship. 

Everything today has been his fault, Sirius is probably never going to talk to him again, James will follow suit and probably tell his coach that Regulus isn’t compatible with the team. That coach will tell his coach and he’ll be marked as a problem working with others and his entire career will be ruined. 

Remus will finally realize what a fucking disappointment he is and follow Sirius to the ends of the earth on Sirius’s motorcycle, riding off into sunsets and all that jazz as Regulus starves in the streets because nobody wants to employ and problem textbook rich kid with mommy and daddy issues. 

James places a hand on Regulus’s wrist, making him aware of just how much he is shaking, his shoulders crumbling with the weight of his failure, pushing into his ribs and turning all his organs into a failing mess. 

“Love?”

Regulus tries his hardest not to look up, focusing his blurry vision on the sheet in front of him, trying to remember the last time Remus had a small episode. 

James’s hand moves up to cup the back of his neck, his thumb unconsciously circling in small soothing motions that make Regulus nearly crumble. 

“Love, nobody’s mad. Sirius just gets fiery and needs to walk away sometimes, it isn’t your fault.”

Regulus’s lip (the traitor) starts to tremble and he can barely contain the loud sob as his shoulders jerk forward silently in an aborted motion.

He turns to bury his face in James’s shirt as he sobs silently, letting the older boy comfort him while he falls apart. 

After all, it should have been expected, stars without enough room to explode turn inward and tear themselves apart. 

Regulus doesn’t just cry, he implodes. 

Sirius remembers the last time he saw his sister Reggie. 

(Not the last time he saw Regina Black, that woman had not been his sister)

The last real time he had been with his sister, the one who would hide cookies under the table to save for him later and would paint his nails even when their mom yelled at him for it, had been the day he left home for his first year at boarding school.

Reggie, unlike most things in life, would not be following along, and while most kids would find a sense of freedom in that, like a burden had been cut free and now they could fly, Sirius felt like his wings had been clipped.

Reggie had been sad for weeks leading up to this day, the day Sirius would board a train and not look back until Christmastime. There had been no way for Sirius to comfort her, not when he felt like his entire life, his entire world, had been ending in slow motion since he found out he’d be leaving in September.

He’d be gone for almost three months without contact, besides letters, too young to have a phone, and he knows better than to ask, better than to assume that any letter he writes will ever land in his sister’s scraped up palms.

They had run amok yesterday (or at least that’s what their mother called their exploration of the park) and because of that, they had climbed so many trees that Reggie’s delicate hands were scratched from all the bark they had scrambled against.

Sirius had climbed higher but Reggie had climbed faster, unable to stomach large heights but still naturally better at it, a skill that came from the flexibility of all the ice skating exercises she did.

Reggie had that breathless look on her face, the same one mirrored on Sirius’s after a hockey game, like nothing could tether her to the ground, and yet, as always, even then, Sirius felt like he could see the shackles resting on her shoulders, hidden in her eyes.

A part of Reggie had always been held back, nailed to the floor, and Sirius could never figure out what it was that even he didn’t know.

That breathlessness stuck to her like the residue of a night out the next morning, Reggie’s smile, while sad, more emotive than normal, less of her locked away than usual in the presence of their parents.

In Sirius’s eyes, it made Reggie seem smaller, more like she had been when they were young, vulnerable and afraid of the little things, and yet, he still would be walking away in less than ten minutes without a glance back.

When Sirius looks back on his goodbyes, every goodbye he’s ever had in this goddamn train station, even the ones in his third year when their parents stopped accompanying them, even when they started happening the night before in his fourth year because his parents wouldn’t let Reggie accompany him to the station, he still can’t fathom how he had been able to walk away.

How could he leave Reggie alone, with these evil people who pick you apart and make reality feel thin, mouldable by anyone rich enough?

He would never have a bigger regret than his last goodbye, a goodbye in their front yard that marked the last time he would probably ever see his sister.

He could recognize that now, could see the similarities between Regulus and him and wonder why he hadn’t seen it before, that Regulus had the same nose as his grandfather, the same curl pattern as his mother.

Of course they’re related, Regulus unconsciously, just like Sirius (loathe as he is to admit it), oozes of old money upbringing, though Sirius is better at hiding it.

He should know by now that any old money family is probably connected to the Blacks in some twisted way.

He doesn’t know why this makes him feel so betrayed, he didn’t even know Regulus that well, though in recent practices it had seemed like Regulus had been making an effort to get to know him better, most likely because Sirius had started unofficially dating his best friend.

Would Regulus not have made the effort if they weren’t somehow related? How long had Regulus even known? Probably from the first moment they met.

Shoes thump silently against the ground, light steps that match the same sound of Regulus’s feet when he walks to the supply closet, the same cadence of Reggie’s sock clad feet padding across his room.

The similar sound makes Sirius curl up tighter in his little corner, he found a wing that’s under renovation and thoughtlessly ducked under caution tape, wading through dust and equipment until he found a nice, relatively clean corner.

How Regulus found him here, he has no idea.

It’s been nearly an hour since he stormed out, and he’s moved past burning rage at the comment towards his sister to ashamed numbness, curiocity slowly coaxing him back to the waiting room, but guilt at his outburst keeping him firmly stuck in his little hiding spot.

“Sirius?”

Regulus calls out quietly into the dark room, and Sirius could stay quiet, let Regulus keep walking and return when he’s ready, pretending none of this happened like Regulus did with their genetic relationship.

It’s not the same, he knows it’s not.

He speaks up.

“Yeah?”

His voice cracks, brittle on the edges and absolutely giving away that he had cried. Reggie used to be able to ugly sob and sound and look fine two minutes later, like she hadn’t cried out her lungs on Sirius’s shoulder once in her life, much less a minute ago.

Regulus approaches, coming closer and closer to Sirius’s corner until he’s standing next to him.

It’s silent for a few moments, quiet the way that things are before tension boils over and someone starts yelling, but Sirius is too tired to yell, and Regulus looks it too.

Instead of yelling, or maybe kicking him a bit, Regulus bends and slowly sits on the dusty floor like he’s sitting on lava. He looks like he’d rather be anywhere else, and yet he’s here, sitting next to Sirius in quiet contemplation, not leaving him alone.

Sirius could start crying.

His eyes drift down to Regulus’s hands, the only part of him that’s moving, watching as the boy picks at the sides of his nails compulsively, pulling and scratching at the skin.

After a few seconds of silence, they both try to speak at the same time, an aborted sound that dies in Sirius’s throat as he takes in the expression on Regulus’s face, more emotive than he’s ever seen him.

Suddenly Sirius’s voice box ceases to exist, so he nods towards Regulus to show him that he should probably speak first.

Regulus looks like someone is pulling the words out of his mouth, “I, I always meant to tell you one day.”

“That we’re related?”

He could have stabbed Regulus with a blunt knife and the boy would probably look less pained than he did now, “No- I mean yes, but, no.”

The words ignite a spark in his chest, in his lungs, he feels aggressively sad, like he might start crying and then punch something, “What do you mean?”

He isn’t looking at him anymore, Sirius notes numbly, Regulus is instead staring intently at the ground, the picking at his nails getting faster.

“Do you- do you know how our family feels about-” Regulus’s face screws up, he pauses for a moment before forcing the words out, “about the, y’know, community?”

“What does you being gay have to do with us?”

Regulus shakes his head, gaze darting up to meet Sirius’s eyes, “I’m not-” he looks away again.

“You’re not gay? Mate I’ve seen you kiss my male platonic soulmate, I’m pretty sure you’re not straight.”

Regulus shakes his head again, “No I am gay.”

“Then what are you not?”

“I’m not-well we aren’t-”

Sirius has seen people speechless before, that isn’t Regulus, he knows exactly what to say, but he’s dreading the outcome.

Something in the back of his mind wonders dimly when he got so good at reading the emotions of a practical stranger, he didn’t even know the guy’s favourite colour.

“We aren’t just related.”

Sirius feels his heart stutter in his chest, wonders for a moment if  he might have to rush back downstairs and be admitted for a heart attack.

He barely realises he’s speaking, “What?”

It’s like he puts it all together the split second before Regulus says it, like he had been waiting for the confirmation for weeks and finally had it, like the slope of Regulus’s nose, almost identical to his own, was the final piece in a puzzle. 

Reggie had always hated her full name, always hated girly things, had always felt just slightly separated from Sirius, like there would always be a piece of her Sirius wouldn’t understand. 

Regulus takes a deep breath, “Your sister is a transgender man. I’m a transgender man. I also happen to be your brother.”

Sirius looks up and Reggie’s eyes stare back at him. 

Chapter Text

James remembers the first time he had a panic attack.

Sirius had just showed up at their house, bruises all over him as his mother looked over him and James suddenly couldn’t breathe, like all the air in the room had been sucked out, leaving an endless void of lung sucking air.

Excusing himself from the room had been quite easy, seeing as everyone had focused on Sirius, but calming himself down had been harder.

Yeah, sometimes James got anxious and panicked about little things, but he had never before been completely unable to breathe like he suddenly found himself now.

It took a while in the bathroom, digging his nails into his palms and counting the amount of seconds in between each gasp of breath for air before he could make his lungs function normally again, longer still before he could put a name for the mostly random and off-chance occurrences of fear.

Longer still before he managed to tell someone about it.

He still hasn’t really told anyone about it.

And it’s fine, it’s really honestly, truly, completely fine. Everyone around him has it so much worse than him, Sirius is still suffering from the after-effects of an abusive childhood, and James’s parents are wonderful, perfect role models of what the ideal parents should be.

Remus is struggling in the hospital with a medical condition, and James is perfectly healthy and happy surrounded by loved ones.

Regulus is…very obviously in a constant state of smothered struggle that James wants so desperately to help out with, and James can recognize and process his emotions better than most.

So what if sometimes he gets so anxious he digs his nails into his palms just to have something that is real, so what if sometimes he panics so much he can’t breathe, there should be nothing wrong with him, there is nothing wrong with him compared to everyone else.

He can’t bear to bring himself to complain about his own meagre problems when it’s so obvious everyone around him is struggling with real tangible problems, with real causes and meanings behind their mental illness.

It’s not fair for him to ask his friends to be strong when they’ve had to be strong for so long, James has never truly had to be strong, not like them.

So he’s resigned himself to a life of bathroom panic attacks and silent anxiety, who cares, it could always be so much worse.

Yeah, he shouldn’t compare his sprained ankle to someone’s broken arm, but he’s not really hurt, just inconvenienced, and everyone around him has been through the ringer when it comes to life and have just barely managed to claw their bleeding practically lifeless corpses out the other side.

All pain is the same, but James isn’t in pain, just a minor twinge every once and a while.

Perfectly manageable. 

James tries once again to remember how to breathe in the bathroom of the hospital, lungs dragging out truly pathetic scratchy heaves as he splashes his face with water, bitten nails bluntly piercing the palms of his hands.

It’s awful, truly, and he can barely stand it, but it's also much less worse than whatever it is that Sirius is going through right now, than the breakdown Regulus just had on his shoulder.

He slides to the floor, trying to ground himself like he’s seen in articles as he reminds himself that it will pass, that he will be able to breathe again.

It seems so trivial when he isn’t having an attack, like his mind forgets how wretchedly awful it is, especially when it’s been so long since he’s had one.

He had one the day he met Regulus, nearly two months ago, and the time has tricked him into believing that it really isn’t all that bad.

He’s dying, all alone in this dirty bathroom stall and there’s nothing him or the hospital can do about it.

Eventually, he does calm down, practically forcing himself out of respect for Sirius, who ran off an hour ago and he needs to go find. He should probably also apologise to Regulus for rushing off to the bathroom moments after Regulus finished crying, but he’d rather spare himself the scathing look he’ll get when he sees him again.

It’s self preservation or something.

He thinks in his post-attack haze that it’s slightly poetic he’s in the one place that’s entire purpose is to help people in distress and he didn’t even ask for help when he needed it.

That one metaphor about only being able to help yourself if you ask for it or something like that, he’s too tired to fully berate himself right now.

Maybe it’s fate that Regulus and Sirius walk into the waiting room the moment he walks out of the bathroom, it’s definitely fate that a nurse walks out to call any friends or relatives of Remus almost immediately, James is too tired to care either way.

Remus is asleep, but his presence in the room feels like the only thing between the mind-crushing awkward tension and whatever clear space they have right now, so James isn’t going to push it by asking about Sirius’s red-tearstained face, or Regulus’s pale, withdrawn, borderline insecure glances toward Sirius every five seconds.

Sirius hasn’t acknowledged them, so James follows his lead and ignores the glances too.

Maybe it’s the wrong move or maybe it’s the perfect move, but either way, the room fades into a soft silence as Sirius holds one of Remus’s hands and Regulus, on the opposite side of the bed, holds the other.

It’s foolish and silly and so stressful, but almost every person James’s age that he loves is in this crappy little hospital room and he can’t help but smile.

Regulus is awful at waiting.

You’d think someone that spent half their childhood waiting for their brother to come home from boarding school would have more patience, but it just never developed.

Regulus has been in a constant state of impatience at every minor event that requires preparation or some type of wait since the age of seven and it apparently hasn’t changed.

That impatience surfaced when a pale, tear-stricken Sirius practically begged between sobs for Regulus to give him time to process, time to figure out how the news makes him feel without the worry for his boyfriend piling on.

Regulus agreed and Sirius had pulled away from the hug.

His brother hasn’t looked at him since, Regulus can’t remember the last time he touched him before that.

Remus looks like a child in his hospital bed, practically drowning in the thin sheets piled over him, hair twice as thin as it had been this morning and skin a pale, sallow colour that showcases the veins and such underneath.

It’s like they’ve all aged three years since Remus had been brought to the hospital, but if that’s true, Remus has aged twenty.

Regulus doesn’t know how to feel about it, how to feel at all without breaking down into tears, so he pushed back every emotion he has and stops feeling at all, ignoring every stimulus around him and shutting his emotions into the back of his mind, vision becoming dazed and far away, like he’s watching his life through a tv screen.

He watches himself take Remus’s hand, can’t even feel the undoubtedly rough skin under his own, can’t feel the chair at his back or the ground beneath his feet.

Can’t feel, can’t feel, can’t feel, can’t feel.

Sometimes when it gets like this, Regulus wonders if he even can feel at all.

Sirius still won’t look at him, Regulus can’t feel anything at all at that fact.

Time passes in an unacknowledged way, it could be days or just minutes between entering the room and Remus waking up, but it doesn’t matter, but no matter how much time has passed, Remus does wake up.

The moment he sees his best friend’s brown eyes, it’s like something turns on in Regulus and the rush of relief and happiness makes him dizzy, like a pound had been wrapped suffocatingly tight around his chest and he hadn’t even noticed until it suddenly fell away.

Nurses step in and out, some of them ask questions, most of them just check Remus’s vitals silently.

The room is a bustle of light, like Remus waking up suddenly reignited the fire in Sirius and James, their uncharacteristically withdrawn natures suddenly gone as they grin and laugh and get Remus to join in on the fun.

Regulus watches them (mostly Sirius) and wonders if, in a different life, one where Sirius asks Regulus to run away with him and Regulus says yes, they would have ended up here anyway.

Chapter Text

Remus gets released on a Monday.

It’s the most anticlimactic hospital he’s ever had and it almost makes him angry that all this revealed so fucking much.

He hadn’t even been in the hospital for a full week and yet his entire life has been blown up, and it’s not even his fault. He couldn’t have helped it if he tried.

Regulus helps him back to the apartment, neither of them talk about how they haven’t seen Sirius or James since three days ago when Remus woke up.

Maybe the hospital visit knocked something loose in Remus, because he can no longer handle the crushing, debilitating weight that is Sirius ignoring him.

He doesn’t know why it’s hit him so hard now, Sirius has definitely been hot and cold with him before, but now it feels less like relationship fear and more like anger that he never told the man he’d probably die before his fifties.

The unfairness of it all makes Remus want to shout until his throat is hoarse. How come his lifespan is shortened? How come his life is consistently tainted with the knowledge that he’s going to die first?

He has an incurable disease that has a 35% chance of killing him before he reaches forty-five, and suddenly everyone’s afraid to become friends with the diseased kid because they don’t want the pain of mourning a dead friend when he inevitably kicks it.

It isn’t like Remus intended on keeping it from him, but how does one slip into conversation that they have a disease and will most likely die before the majority of the population?

Yeah, if he’s closely monitored for the rest of his life and is extremely careful, he’ll probably make it to his eighties, but what’s the point of life if you can’t live?

They sit on their shitty couch in their living room in silence, Remus staring at the books on the coffee table while Regulus stares at the floor.

There’s tension between them that hasn’t ever been here before, even when Regulus first admitted he hadn’t always been a boy and Remus admitted he had a deadly disease, they had never felt so close yet far apart before.

Remus opens his mouth to say something, anything, to bridge the gap between them, fix whatever awkward tension had been brewing since Remus woke up.

Regulus beats him to it.

“I told Sirius about…about his and I’s…relation.”

It takes him a moment to piece together what the hell that means in terms of anything.

He’s pretty sure his heart just stopped.

 Suddenly Regulus’s abnormal silence (and he’s usually quite quiet anyway) makes so much sense. It’s not Remus’s fault, and it’s not Regulus’s either. Sirius is just a dimwit that doesn’t know how to healthily process emotions.

It’s probably why Sirius and James are both ignoring them, Sirius is processing and probably knows Remus knew and kept it from him (not like it had ever been his secret to share) and James also stayed away out of respect and solidarity for his friend.

After more silence than either boy is truly comfortable with, Remus finds his voice again, “How’d that go?”

Regulus shrugs, still staring at the floor, “He hasn’t talked to me since and he asked for space, but I haven’t been fired from my teaching position with the hockey team so I’ll see him soon I suppose.”

Something visceral twists around Remus’s heart, pulling in a painful way at the expression on Regulus’s face. He’s never seen the boy look more dejected, like he knows exactly how this will end and is dreading the eventual consequence.

Heart aching for the boy, Remus scoots slightly closer on the couch, “And…” he’s hesitant to ask, he knows how precarious their relationship had already been even before Sirius got involved, “James?”

Shrugging again, Regulus says, “I told Sirius he could tell James if he wanted to, hadn’t been quite in the mood to relive it twice. He hasn’t reached out yet.”

Judging by Regulus’s expression, he doesn’t expect the guy to reach out at all. Personally, Remus thinks that’s bullshite. He’s seen the way James looks at Regulus, no man would be able to completely give that up.

Laying a gentle arm over Regulus’s shoulders, Remus says “Give it time, the guy really likes you.”

“Yeah,” Regulus breathes out, looking away from the floor to the wall on the opposite side of Remus, “I’m sure he does.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“Whose fault is it then? Cause it’s not your fault I lied to Sirius, it’s not Sirius’s fault he left an abusive situation that I only ever made worse, it’s not James’s fault he has a crush on the worst excuse for a human being that ever-”

“Don’t talk about yourself like that,” Remus says, “You’re my best friend, and I don’t take that title lightly. I wouldn’t befriend just any random guy off the street now would I?”

Sighing, Regulus leans into Remus’s touch, tucking himself against his side, “What if he doesn’t like me anymore because I’m trans?”

“If it really matters to James than you and I have severely misjudged the character we thought he is.”

That earns him a laugh, “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

“Now that we’ve established that I’m always right, can we please move on to a conversation that isn’t completely theoretical? Because agonising over this isn’t helping either of us.”

Regulus laughs again, “Wanna play cards?”

Sirius doesn’t know how he never saw it, how he could have been so willfully ignorant to the fact that his little sibling would be around Regulus’s age and running around uni somewhere out of his parent’s clutches.

Whenever he thought about Regg-Regulus he had always assumed he would just stay under their parent’s thumb until the end of time.

It had never occurred to him truly that they had been apart for longer than they had truly been together, that Regulus had grown into his own person, someone who no longer could be controlled by his parents.

And Sirius hadn’t been there 

He remembers, back when he still lived in that awful house, and he had known he would run away but didn’t know when yet, he had begged Reggie to join him, Reggie had been as close to tears as he had been in years as he refused, saying he couldn’t.

And yet he got out anyway.

Some stagnant part of Sirius is angry, raging. Why hadn’t he been enough for his brother to get away, how come he had to do it on his own.

If Reggie had always known he’d get out anyway (because there’s no way he hadn’t at least planned his escape for a year at minimum) why wouldn’t he have jumped at the chance to come with Sirius?

Sirius’s mind is spinning, unable to come to conclusions past all of the signs that should have pointed Sirius as a child into realising he had a little brother.

He almost hates his younger self a bit for how much he pushed femininity onto Regulus, living vicariously through the makeup the other one got to wear.

How had neither of them realised the other had been queer?

Now that he thought about it, Reggie had dropped hints as a child that he knew Sirius liked boys, but Sirius had been too dense and in the closet to recognize it.

Reggie probably knew Sirius liked cock better before Sirius himself did.

And that makes him feel inadequate. What kind of brother is he? He never even noticed all of the signs his little brother dropped, because the guy certainly hadn’t been subtle around him.

Reggie had obviously wanted Sirius to know, but hadn’t had the courage to tell him himself, and Sirius had been too pigheaded to see it past the haze of jealousy he had harboured for the woman with such different expectations of life than his parents had for him.

A vicious cycle, one that Sirius had gleefully perpetuated, and as they grew up and time went on, it’s obvious now why Regulus pushed him away.

Sirius had practically been begging for it, unintentionally malicious and blaming Reggie when he lashed out. He knew his brother, so how had he let their relationship get so strained? How had he mindlessly hurt him for so long without realising?

And he’s still hurting him.

He can’t be mad at Regulus for not immediately telling him, it’s his story to share when and where he sees fit, Sirius has no right to demand it of him. And he’s sure he’s making Remus miserable, but his entire life has just been flipped upside down, everything he thought about both Reggie and Regulus has changed and his mind doesn’t know how to come to terms with it.

He’s been mentally going over every single interaction he ever had with Reggie for days, and all the little quirks and little annoyances are so obvious now in a way they had never been before.

He had just been a boy, but he had mindlessly hurt his little brother.

Sirius knows that James is going nearly crazy with the need to see for himself that Regulus is okay, that he needs reassurance that both Remus and Regulus are healthy, Sirius needs that reassurance too, but he isn’t ready to face his brother yet.

Remus knew, and Remus kept it from him, lied to him, and that does hurt a little bit, not that Sirius is mad he had been lying about a secret that hadn’t been his to share, but he still lied, and Sirius doesn’t know how or even if there is anything to forgive for that.

The whole thing is a confusing mess of emotions in his mind and he doesn’t know what to do with it all, he thinks he might go insane trying to reason with himself.

He can hear James pacing back and forth in the bedroom next to his, and he can’t help it, he feels guilty for making James side with him.

Yes, James is siding with him out of his own choice, but Sirius still feels guilty for coming in between their already unstable budding relationship.

He needs to figure this out, talk it out with somebody, and the only person he really sees fit to do that with is Regulus.

Problem sort of solved? He has to talk to Regulus.

It’s easier said than done.

Chapter Text

Regulus has had a really big week.

He outed himself to his brother and his brother’s best friend whom he’s had a crush on for years, and he had to watch his friend struggle in the hospital without any sort of support system.

Now, he has a meeting with the head of activities, Slughorn, to go over his plan for the Spring season training before competitions start.

He’s exhausted.

Honestly, he can’t remember the last time he slept for more than two hours, and he’s a worried mess over who his brother is going to tell about his past, which has dredged up all sorts of interesting memories for him to visit in his dreams.

In summary: it’s been a long week.

He’s already a little late getting out the door, having spent ten minutes picking out an outfit that looks professional and mature, and the moment he swings his door open to rush out, he comes face to face with Sirius Black, hand raised to knock.

Regulus freezes for a moment as the brothers stare at each other before he realises that he’s already running late for the most important meeting of the semester.

Snapping out of his daze, he pushes past Sirius, “If you have something to say, you better be okay with walking and talking because I’m already running late.”

Pausing at the end of the hallway, he turns to see his brother frozen, still staring at him, “Well? Are you coming or just going to stand there like a loon?”

It’s slightly amusing to watch his brother restart like a computer before frantically scampering after him.

He purposely doesn’t leave the door open behind him, and when the heavy glass slams in Sirius’s face, he mentally chides his inner child for feeling satisfaction from the action.

Eventually, Sirius catches up to him on the street, “Reggie-”

Flinching, he corrects, “Regulus.”

Sirius looks dumbfounded for a moment, “Er, right, Regulus, I just wanted to talk-”

“Is that not what we’re doing?”

A small part of him feels bad for how short he’s being with Sirius. He isn’t mad at the guy, there’s just a lot of conflicting feelings that rise in him when he sees Sirius’s face.

It’s a very punchable face.

Maybe he’s petty, maybe he’s being unfair, Regulus doesn’t quite care. He’s spent the last few months ignoring every uncomfortable emotion that rose in him at the sight of his brother and suddenly it’s like he’s feeling it all all at once.

He speeds up his pace.

“Regulus!” Sirius exclaims from behind him, “Will you please slow down and talk to me!”

Sighing, Regulus slows down again, letting his brother catch up, “Okay,” he says, refusing to apologise, “Let’s hear it.”

Taking a deep breath, Sirius says, “I’m not mad at you for not telling me, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Something in Regulus relaxes, feels better at the reassurance, which is stupid considering that he doesn’t care what his brother thinks.

“Well you have no right to be mad anyway, I don’t owe you anything.”

Sirius shakes his head, “I know that! Obviously I know that. I just- I’m sorry okay?”

He says it like he’s angry he hasn’t ever said it before now, and Regulus could probably count on one hand the amount of people that have apologised to him in this life, and before now, Sirius hadn’t been one of them.

Something inside Regulus cracks, the little boy that stood at the window every day to wait for his older brother to get home, the teenager that would sit in his room and stare out the window, promising himself that if he saw Sirius pass buy he’d grab all his things and leave with him this time like he should have when the boy originally asked.

“You- why are you apologising.”

Sirius looks so sad, more sad than Regulus has ever seen him, like someone killed his dog right in front of him, “Reggie.”

Tears well in his eyes at the name, and Regulus knows he can see them, “Don’t call me that- you can’t call me that!”

“What? Your name?”

“It’s not-” it’s like his ribcage is breaking open, his organs melting out of his chest and onto the street, “I’m not that person anymore.”

“You aren’t my little brother?”

And that, right there, the simple acknowledgment, the gender affirming, from his brother. 

He knew Sirius would accept him if he told him, but never in a million years had he allowed himself to think about what it would feel like to hear someone from his childhood, from someone who never knew him as a boy, acknowledge what he truly felt like on the inside.

“I-” he chokes, words catching in his throat at the open, earnest expression on Sirius’s face, Regulus’s own face scrunches up as he tries not to cry, “You can’t just-”

His voice breaks off pathetically, and Regulus stands in the middle of a busy street, and cries.

Sirius looks hilariously lost for a moment and it makes Regulus giggle wetly through his sobs, wiping his face desperately as his shoulders shake his whole body with rib wracking sobs.

Eventually, Sirius gets with the program and wraps his hands and wraps his arms loosely around Regulus’s shoulders.

“I didn’t mean to-”

“Oh do shut up.”

Chuckling, Sirius wraps his arms tighter around Regulus, making the odd embrace they have into a real hug as Regulus hesitantly wraps his own arms around the slightly taller boy.

From against his chest, Regulus feels more than hears Sirius deflate, letting out a loud and content sigh, “I missed this.”

“Trying to smother me?” Regulus asks sarcastically.

“Hugging my little brother.”

Of course, that just makes Regulus cry more, which results in Sirius panickedly apologising like that would fix anything until Regulus swats him on the back of the head enough that the thickheaded man takes a hint.

Eventually, Regulus manages to calm down enough to walk and cry, one of Sirius’s arms slung around his shoulder as they walk to the train station.

It feels right, healing and perfect in a way nothing truly has since Sirius ran away, and Regulus feels better than he has in years.

They get on the train together, and once sitting the rest of Regulus’s tears dry up, leaving only embarrassment about outwardly crying in public, plain sight no less.

The mostly peaceful silence they have going on lasts for about half the train ride before Sirius speaks up, “Is Remus mad at me?”

Shaking his head, Regulus responds without looking at Sirius, “He understands why you haven’t been by. Mostly he’s worried you’re mad at him.”

Sirius shakes his head, running a hand through his hair, “Nah, couldn’t be mad at him if I tried, and I did try.”

Regulus narrows his eyes, “He really likes you, you know?”

Sirius gives a small, secret smile and states like he’s talking about the weather, “I’m going to marry him one day Reg, I can feel it.”

The statement (because it is a statement, a surety, a constant in every universe) should make Regulus feel sick, make him panicked and afraid.

It just makes Regulus feel happy.

Regulus smiles, nearly beaming as he turns to look at Sirius, whispering, “I think…I think I forgive you.”

Tilting his head in confusion, Sirius opens his mouth to ask what he’s talking about no doubt, Regulus doesn’t give him the chance, “I never really had before, for you leaving you know? And not dragging me with you. Even when I first saw you on the team, it made me sick, I had just moved on, not forgiven. I think…I think I’m there now.”

It’s Sirius’s turn to burst into tears in public now.

Regulus is even worse with comforting that his older brother is, but it’s near instinct at this point to help his brother, cheer him up, a stagnant instinct that he hadn’t even realised had lingered all these years.

Sirius cries into his shoulder as Regulus mumbles forgiveness and apologies over and over again, and if his face is still wet when they reach the station, neither boy mentions it.

Regulus steps off the train with something brewing under his skin, in his heart. 

He steps off the train, arm in arm with his estranged brother who is the best family he’s got and he just knows.

They have a lot of talking ahead of them, but they’re going to be okay.

Chapter Text

Sirius reaches out to ruffle his hair after a walk one day. Everyone in the room freezes when Regulus flinches back harshly, eyes darting around like a caged animal for a baited thirty seconds before his shoulders relax.

It’s like the entire room froze, Sirius staring at him wide eyed with his arm still extended. James and Remus have frozen from their positions on the couch, their heads turned to stare at the interaction even as their bodies stay tilted towards each other as a result of their previous conversation.

James is the first to break the icy silence as the Black brothers stare at each other.

“Maybe-”

“Not now James.”

Regulus trembles slightly, shoulders caving inward towards his ribs like that will protect his heart from beating out of his chest.

“You know-”

“James,” Sirius says warningly, shooting a glance at his friend as he moves slowly towards Regulus, hands raised non threateningly.

“Sirius went to therapy for years after leaving your house.”

Regulus’s nostrils flare as he whips his head toward James, anger flaring hot in his chest the way it does when he gets defensive.

“I do not need-”

Tuesday afternoons have become designated for Regulus to sit on a dingy little couch and talk about his stupid little feelings to a woman that definitely needs to be paid more.

It’s silly and dumb and the icy glass edges that have been settling in his stomach ever since he first entered his house as a child begin to cool, settle into something that isn’t so jagged and is kinder.

Taking his broken glass and making it into a stained glass window.

His therapist would probably like that metaphor.

He opens his email in June, two weeks after the semester has ended, and finds an offer from a professional skating league.

Spending his summer skating between watching mock hockey games between James and Sirius at the little rink across the street from James’s childhood house.

James comes to every single one of his competitions, signs in sparkly letters and paint all over his face, Sirius next to him screaming and cheering so loud at the end of routines that Regulus fears for a moment he’ll get kicked out.

It’s the first time anyone’s ever come to see him skate.

Something thaws and warms in Regulus’s stomach, another addition to his stained glass window.

He takes three extra tests and bypasses multiple classes, entering his second to last semester early and catching up to James and Sirius’s grades.

James calls him his little smart cookie and when they move in together it seems natural, an easy conclusion when both their roommates decide to move in together.

They are very firmly not defining their relationship, but the hockey team asks to hire him again and when one of the freshmen asks for Regulus’s number, James wraps a friendly arm around the guy's shoulders and whispers into his ear until his face goes very, very white.

Everything feels good in the world.

Regulus fumbles with the keys to his apartment, trying to shove open the door with his shoulder as he balances the boxes in his hands.

Coming into the foyer, he can hear James in the kitchen bustling about, probably panicking over his salad again, and he throws his keys into the heart shaped key holder James’s nurse friend got them as a housewarming gift.

Hardly a housewarming gift when their apartment consistently froze Regulus’s toes and fingers off.

James peeks his head into the doorway to greet him with a peck as he takes the pink box from his hands, moving it back into the kitchen with him.

At first it had been scary to think about moving in with his boyfriend, but they’ve been dating for years and it felt natural by the time they moved in.

Regulus’s skates sit perfectly next to James’s hockey gear in their closet, and his books on mechanical engineering rest perfectly in between James’s Spider-man comics.

Their lives mesh together so well it’s hard to imagine a time Regulus didn’t live with James.

James who is currently in the kitchen panicking.

“Love, did you pick up the balloons? Sirius loves balloons, I can’t believe I forgot-”

Regulus cuts him off with a kiss, sliding an arm around his waist as he stands next to him, “It looks fine.”

It looks more than fine, their spread of half made- half bought buffet with all of Sirius’s favourite foods, the fancy French cuisine from Regulus’s childhood next to potato chips and ice cream stretching across the entire back wall of their apartment. Their bar is stocked with more alcohol than Regulus has seen in one place since Remus’s twenty-first birthday celebration and streamers are haphazardly strewn everywhere.

An adequate representation of who Sirius is as a person.

“Fine? Just fine? It can’t be fine, it has to be more than-”

James has reached hair pulling levels of stress, levels of which are concerning to every normal person going about their day around him, much less his own boyfriend.

“Great even, it looks great,” Regulus says with an eye roll, unable to understand how James could be so stressed over what Sirius is clearly going to love.

James groans, running a hand over his face, “He’s gonna hate it.”

Regulus nudges him in the ribs, smiling slightly, “His best friend and brother organised it, how could he hate it.”

It would be comical how James lights up like an inflated balloon, but Regulus knows how stressed he is. Unexplainably excited isn’t always the best option for an ADHD man.

As James bounds off to add more streamers to the wall probably, Regulus grins at the man’s back, hopelessly endeared by this awkward man that somehow skated through all of his defences and wiggled his way into Regulus’s heart.

It’s like your safe space being a living breathing person that sleeps with his mouth open and gets too passionate about Queen.

Sometime after the designated time, Sirius finally arrives at his own party. Regulus has been laying in wait so long that all his limbs have the prickly fuzzy feeling one tends to get when they fall asleep, and he spends the first ten minutes of the party stumbling around as he tries to regain feeling in his appendages.

Sirius had beamed when he saw Regulus, aeons better than the weird standoffish period that preceded group therapy, and individual therapy, and family therapy.

Overall, lots of psychology.

They don’t fight anymore, unless it’s over something regular siblings fight over, and Regulus might not ever get over the fear of Sirius walking back out of his life again at any moment, but Sirius somehow stays firmly glued to his side.

They’re a silly group, Regulus thinks as he watches all his friends laugh and drink in one place, under his roof.

They’re a stupid, haphazardly glued together mess of tape, but they’re family.

It’s more than Regulus has ever had in his life