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It took James Potter a minute to realize it was not his morning alarm going off, but the phone in the hotel room was ringing. The teammate he was sharing a room with groaned, rolling over and covering his head with a pillow.
James rubbed his eyes, glancing at the clock that read 3:37.
“Hello?” he answered groggily.
“James? That you?”
James bolted up in bed, reaching over to turn on the lamp.
“Sirius, is everything okay?”
“What? Yeah, well…yeah, no everything is fine.”
“Then why are you calling me at three in the morning?”
“Three in the? Oh shit I forgot about time zones again.”
James let out a sigh. His football team had been touring the United States for the past couple of weeks, and Sirius could not for the life of him remember that James’s sleeping schedule was out of whack.
“It better be important Pads, we got a match tomorrow,” James said, glancing over at his annoyed roommate.
“James, I don’t know how to tell you this.”
“Tell me what?” James asked impatiently.
“Regulus is getting married.”
James froze. Regulus was…Reggie was…
“James? Are you okay?”
“I…t-t-to who?” James stuttered as the air made its way back into his lungs.
“My parents arranged it. It’s an old friend of the family, we haven’t seen her since we were little.”
“...her?”
“Yeah.”
The gears in James’s head were spinning. It was making him nauseous. “But Regulus doesn’t even like girls?”
“...yeah.”
Something was terribly wrong. Regulus, in his own words, had never even looked at a girl in that way. At least he hadn’t when they were young. When they were together.
“Pads you can’t let this happen.”
“James, I’ve been arguing with him for the past bloody two hours since he called saying he’s getting fucking married!”
“Regulus is agreeing to it?”
His roommate in the opposite bed let out a few expletives. James ignored him.
“Regulus wants it, apparently,” Sirius sneered into the phone. “He said it doesn’t matter that he’s not attracted to her, he just wants to continue the Black line and Constance can give that to him. But that’s why I am calling you, James.”
James felt the muscles in his body tense up as he considered for the first time why Sirius would be calling him at three in the morning with news of Regulus’s impending wedding.
“...Pads…”
“If you just talk to him-”
“I can’t-”
“-and he realizes that you still love him-”
“I can’t-”
“-then he will forget this ridiculous notion-”
“SIRIUS I CAN’T.”
The other end of the line went silent. His roommate yelled, “For fucks sake James!”
James squeezed his eyes shut.
“Pads, I can’t call Regulus. I haven’t spoken to him in three years . And we didn’t end on a particularly good note. I can’t just call him out of the blue, asking him to break his engagement. That’s not fair to him. I won’t do that to him.”
A palpable silence filled the line.
“...he still loves you James.”
“You don’t know that,” James said quickly, “You barely talk to him.”
“Why else would he call me, telling me about a wedding that I am not even allowed to attend?”
“I don’t know…because you're his brother?”
Sirius let out a huff of frustration. “It’s like you said, James, I barely talk to him. He does not give two shits if I know what’s happening in his life. I am, however, his only line to you .”
James stared at the ugly yellow wallpaper adorning his hotel room wall. The pattern swam before him as he pushed away any sliver of hope that Sirius was right.
Although they had broken up three years ago, James had never quite been able to properly move on. He always blamed it on the fact that he was busy with football, but as his mother so nicely pointed out, everyone else on the team seemed to have no problem in keeping a healthy dating life.
He had known that Regulus had probably moved on long ago, but the suddenness of this marriage announcement had hit him like a brick wall. And the fact that it was to a woman assured James that Regulus was only going through with marriage to please his family.
“Sirius, I have to go. Topher is going to kill me.”
“...okay. But if you change your mind, do you know the manor’s number?”
“Yes,” James replied, the number having been burned in his memory since that first summer.
After hanging up with Sirius and muttering a brief apology to his teammate, James lay in bed unable to stop the thoughts swirling in his head.
James had been paired as Sirius Black’s roommate the first year James attended boarding school at age 11. A year later Sirius’s brother began and James first became acquainted with Regulus. From the very first meeting, James found himself being fascinated by the younger Black, but it wasn’t until he was 14 that he realized it had developed into a crush. During a silly game of spin the bottle at the age of 16, James kissed Regulus. The kiss ended up being a little more than a friendly peck as the others had been leading James bolting from the room to the hallway. Regulus followed and James was forced to admit his crush. Regulus, who admittedly never thought of James as more than his brother’s annoying friend, was intrigued that the school’s football star was interested in him. A few days later Regulus agreed to one date to see how things went.
That date led to the rest of school being filled with stolen kisses in the corridors and sneaking into each other’s dormitories past curfew. After leaving school, James started his professional football career. Regulus went to university to study a year later. Despite the differing schedules, James and Regulus made it work…for a while. If you were to ask James at 20 what their future looked like, James would have said that they were going to get married one day. But in the next year, things took a sharp turn.
James was signed over to the biggest team in England and they had high hopes that he was going to be their next star player. Regulus was deep into his studies, leaving very little time dedicated to their relationship. They became more distant from each other until it accumulated into a blow out fight. There was a lot of shouting and swearing and at the end they came to the conclusion that it wasn’t going to work out unless one of them quit their respected paths, which neither was willing to do. And with that, James’s relationship of five years walked out the front door of his flat with a cardboard box of his things.
The image was still imprinted on his brain, three years later as he lay in the dark staring at the ceiling.
The alarm went off a few hours later, James having secured little sleep after the phone call.
He wanted to talk to Regulus.
But the wedding was the next day, and it was doubtful anything would be able to stop it now, let alone an ex-boyfriend Regulus had when he was in school. Three years in your twenties meant much more than five in your teens.
He wanted to to talk to Regulus.
But even if James were to call the house, it was doubtful Regulus would hear James out. Regulus was never one to speak on the phone, preferring face-to-face conversations. Even when James would call the manor during the summer, desperate enough to hear his boyfriend’s voice that he would pretend to be a school friend named Lars, Regulus wouldn’t tell him anything he deemed important, choosing to wait until they saw each other in the fall. No, it wouldn’t work.
He wanted to talk to Regulus.
The only way Regulus would maybe listen, was if they talked face to face. And that wasn’t plausible, because they had another match he wouldn’t be able to miss in two days time and flying halfway across the world and back for the slight chance he could talk Regulus out of getting married was a ridiculous idea.
Plus if he were to get on a flight to London, that one may or may not be leaving later that night around nine according to the lady he talked to that worked at LAX, it would put him arriving in the country hours before the wedding giving James virtually no time to become presentable and get to Grimmauld Place before they headed to the venue.
And if he got to Grimmauld Place? He would be killed by the Black family before he could get Regulus alone.
No, there was no stopping Regulus’s marriage.
It made James sick.
He felt nauseous as the warm-up practice started. He almost immediately embarrassed himself during the first drill by whiffing the ball. Then during a battle for possession, James lost his balance and fell to the ground. He half-felt like staying there.
“Are ya good mate?”
James looked up to see the team captain jogging towards him. James took his extended hand to help him to his feet.
“Yeah, just got a lot on my mind I guess.”
“Your ex is getting married, right?”
“Wha-?”
“Topher told me. Told us to blame you if he plays like shit.”
James shook his head. “Sorry. I just-I thought I was going to marry him, you know?”
“How long didja date the lad for?”
“Just shy of five years, we started dating when I was 16.”
Mack whistled. “That long, eh? Don’t blame ya for being torn up ‘bout that.” The captain put his arm around James’s shoulder, and the two started walking back towards the locker room.
“Listen, Sid will have my head for this...but this game doesn’t really matter. It’s a friendly. No pressure to perform well. Just enjoy playing, get ya mind off things.”
It was of little comfort to James, who knew their coach would have very different ideas, but he tried to take solace in the words anyway.
Things went wrong from the very first whistle. James was not on his game. He was missing passes, overshooting the goal entirely, and elicited a yellow card before the ten minute mark. Half-time came and he found himself being berated by multiple coaches for his performance. He settled down in the corner, putting on the headphones to his walkmen to drown out the glares from his teammates and hopefully his own thoughts.
A tap on the shoulder brought his head up to see the general manager staring down at him. He put his headphones down, ready for another shout.
“Listen kid. I’m going to cut you a deal. You finish this match playing like you actually want to be on this fucking team, and I’ll let you leave for London after. You can miss the final match next week.”
“I-what?” James sputtered, “You’ll let me-?”
“I’ll tell them you had a family emergency. But only if you fucking improve your game. You look like absolute shit out there.”
James stood up, going to embrace the man but opting at the last minute to go for a firm handshake.
“Yes sir.”
A new energy surged through him as he reentered the stadium. With thoughts of Regulus on his mind, James was unstoppable and had a hat trick before the final time was called. He didn’t even stop to wave to the crowd, running straight to the locker room to get his stuff. He could clean himself in the airport bathroom, right now he had a plane to catch.
….
The flight to London was unbearably long, as self-doubt and questions of his own sanity filled him. He didn’t even know if Regulus would be willing to speak to him without slamming the door in his face.
It took incredibly long to deboard, and James was well aware that the time to the wedding was nearing. He wasn’t even sure where the wedding was going to be located, so as he left the airport, he stopped at the phone booth to call the Black Estate. He figured he would be able to gain the location somehow without alerting the family that it was James on the other end of the line. However the phone rang and rang, James finally hanging up in defeat that no one was home.
Calling Sirius would be no help; Regulus would not have given him the address of the venue. Most of James’s friends probably were not invited.
James thought of the neatly written wedding invitation that had sat on his counter for months before picking up the receiver again.
“Hello, operator? I’d like to make a call to Pandora Lovegood in uhm…London I guess.”
The universe continued to be on his side as there was only one Pandora Lovegood living in London. The number rang for an excruciating ten seconds before he heard a familiar male voice on the other end.
“Lovegood residence, this is Barty speaking.”
“What the f-? Barty, it’s James. James Potter.”
“No fucking way! James Potter? What are you calling the Lovegoods for?”
“I need to speak to Pandora; that’s her new surname, right?”
“Sure is, Jamie boy. Little Panda got married!” and then in a more hushed voice, “to a right old kook if you ask me-”
“What are you doing there then?”
“Oh you know how it goes: you tell your old man you're gay and he cuts you off and times are hard so you and your boyfriend have to move in with his sister and her new husband….hey, you wouldn’t happen to be calling about a certain wedding that is hap-?”
“Barty? Whose on the phone?” James heard a female voice say.
“James Potter!”
“WHAT? Give it to me?”
After a brief scuffle, Pandora Rosier’s voice came through.
“James, is it really you?”
“Hey Pandora, congrats on the nuptials.”
“Thank you, and you on your football career. James, are you calling about Regulus?”
James fiddled with the phone cord. “Yeah. Sirius told me he’s getting married.”
“Oh thank the heavens, and you are going to talk him out of it?!? Oh James, that is such wonderful news! When he told us he was having an arranged marriage, we all tried to convince him out of it but you know how Reg gets. He only ever would listen to you anyways-”
“Pandora, I just want to speak with him…I couldn’t live with myself if I let him go through with this without at least trying. But no one is picking up at Grimmauld-”
“Oh they won’t be there. The wedding is in Brighton.”
“In Bri- why the fuck is it in Brighton? Aren’t you going to miss it, it starts in two hours!”
“Well you see, she’s from Brighton… and we weren’t exactly invited. Reg said that his parents didn’t want us to attend, because of us losing our status. Ev and I left years ago. Reg was rather embarrassed having to tell us, of course I understood his reasoning completely. Barty was quite livid.”
“I’M HIS BEST FUCKING FRIEND,” James heard in the background.
“Yes, well, anyways I do know where the ceremony is taking place. It’s at a church, maybe you could call-?”
James shook his head to himself. He knew that it was hopeless. He had flown across the Atlantic for no reason.
“Thanks, Panda, but even if I get ahold of Regulus instead of someone else, he wouldn’t take the call.” James took a defeated breath in. “I am in London for a few days, care to catch up over tea?”
There was silence on the other end of the line, before Panda said softly, “He still loves you James.”
James gave out a pained laugh. “Sirius tried to convince me of that too.”
“He does. He’s never said it, but we all know it. He has a box of your stuff still, I saw it when I was helping him move places half a year ago.”
“He-? What?”
“I didn’t mean to snoop, I honestly thought it was going to be a box of manuals or something. But it was all you. Photos of the two of you, letters you wrote, the sweatshirt you gave him to wear at school.”
“He watches every match,” Barty’s muffled voice came, “Either on the tele or on the radio. He even has some recorded on cassette. We had to listen to an Arsenal match on our guys trip to Scotland.”
“He wouldn’t let us change it, even though you played like shit!” came another voice from the background.
“That was Ev,” Pandora said, “Our point is, he still loves you, even though he would rather die than admit it.”
James’s heart was pounding as he digested this information. He didn’t want to get his hopes up, but what his former friends had just shared had given him a sliver of hope. He glanced at his watch, seeing it read 1:02.
“The train is about an hour and a half to Brighton, yeah?”
He heard loud whooping from the other end of the line.
“Atta boy Potter, go crash that wedding!” Barty shouted.
“Get our boy back!” Evan added.
“Hour and a half,” Pandora confirmed, and he could feel her smiling through the phone. “Good Luck James.”
….
If James thought the plane ride from Los Angeles was long, it was nothing compared to the less than two hour jaunt to Brighton. His leg restlessly bounced as he stared at the passing country. Every twenty seconds or so he would check his watch.
“Are you okay, love?” an elderly lady asked him.
“Yes,” James assured. “Just a bit nervy is all.”
As the train pulled into the station, James had jumped up and was the first one out the door as soon as it opened. He hailed the first taxi he saw. The time read 14:51.
“St. John’s Church please,” he practically shouted at the driver, as he threw his gym bag in the back seat with him. “As quick as possible.”
“That’ll be an eight mile drive,” he said, “Twelve quid.”
“Yes, yes I’ll pay whatever. Extra even, I need to stop a wedding.”
“Yes sir,” the driver said, hitting the gas as they pulled out of the parking lot. James nervously avoided any further questioning from the man, drumming his fingers nervously on his leg and watching the seaside town go by.
Disaster struck when they hit a back-up of cars.
“Is there another way?” James asked.
“Not one that won’t add another ten minutes to the time.”
A clock rang out the hour.
“Fuck. How can I get there on foot?”
“Just a mile ahead, on the right.”
“Thank you,” James said, stuffing a twenty in the man’s hand as he jumped out the door. He slammed it shut, taking off in a sprint.
He was well aware that he was probably not the most clean looking gentleman as he ran towards the church. He was, afterall, still wearing the street clothes he had thrown on after he left the match. He had been able to buy some deodorant before the plane boarded, but now as the summer sun beat down on him, he wasn’t sure if it was still being effective.
The church came into view on the horizon, and James still ran faster.
He didn’t have time to stop and think about what he was about to do. He had only been planning to talk to Regulus before the wedding: make sure that he was alright. But ever since Regulus’s friends told James that his ex really was still in love with him, all rational thought had gone out the window. James needed to stop this wedding from happening.
He jumped up the stairs, three at a time, throwing open the doors to the church. He found himself in a small entryway with a frightened looking elderly man holding programs.
“Black wedding in those doors?” James puffed, out of breath from what had to be his fastest mile time to date.
The elderly man nodded. “You’re James Potter?”
“Yeah,” James said, walking towards the doors.
“Wait! Mr. Potter, uhm sir. The wedding has already started.”
“Oh they are expecting me,” James said. The man looked at James’s outfit. James held his hand out for a program, and the baffled gentleman handed him one.
“Thanks.”
James turned back to the door, taking a deep breath. He could hear a priest talking within. He tried to gauge where they were at in the ceremony. Through the thick wooden doors, he heard the words, “ if anyone should object-
“Oh fuck!” James said, pushing the doors wide, and very loudly, open. He severely overestimated how heavy they would be, because the handles slammed against the walls in an echoing thunk .
Every pair of eyes turned to look at him. James Potter stood, dripping in sweat, hair disheveled, and glasses askew in the doorway. And there was Regulus; holding hands with a dark haired young woman, frozen in place, staring at the intrusion.
“Uhm, I do,” James said to the dead silent chapel, “I…uhm…I object.”
The priest looked between the two at the altar, and when neither said anything, asked James “On what grounds?”
“Regulus!” Walburga Black hissed at her son, “What is the meaning of this?”
Regulus didn’t appear to hear her, his eyes tracking James as he slowly made his way up to the front.
“On the grounds that I, uhm, I can’t in good conscience let this wedding happen.”
A gasp rippled through the room.
“Will someone get him out of here!” Walburga snapped to no one in particular. But everyone else seemed rooted to their seats, watching the scene play out.
When James finally stood in front of the altar, Regulus’s hands let go of his bride to be. She herself didn’t look upset, but intrigued as to why a football star was crashing her wedding.
“Reggie,” James said, “I…I can’t let you do this. You never wanted this kind of life. The whole society thing with a manor and a wife. I mean, I suppose you might want that now, I know it’s been awhile since we talked….but I know at least you don’t want a wife, no offense,” he added to Constance. A ghost of a smile crossed her lips. Regulus, however, was still watching James with a frozen expression of shock.
“You deserve to be happy, Reggie. And although I know it might not be with me…I would love it to be with me but I understand if it’s not-”
“You came.”
James watched as a tear slipped down Regulus’s cheek. James stepped up onto the altar, wiping the tear away with his finger.
“Of course I came, Reggie. I love you.”
Regulus grabbed James by the head, pulling him into him in a bruising kiss. All James could do was grab at Regulus’s hips to keep himself from melting into the floor. If it wasn’t for the loud screaming of Walburga Black, James might have done just that.
“Run with me,” James said, pulling back suddenly. Regulus nodded, and James grabbed Regulus’s hand in his and pulled him into a sprint down the aisle, past the scandalized crowd, and out the front door where a taxi sat.
“Hey! Thought you might need a getaway car!” the driver shouted. James grinned as he opened the back door, pulling Regulus in after him. The car sped off just as an angry Walburga Black came out the church doors, yelling after them.
James let out an exasperated laugh as they left her figure in the rearview mirror.
“James,” Regulus said, pulling his attention back to the runaway groom. “How are you here?”
“Sirius called,” James said, as if that answered the question.
“Okay, but I thought you were in America? They said on the radio that you had a family emergency, that’s why you weren’t playing today.”
“This was a family emergency,” James replied, rubbing his thumb against the younger boy’s wrist. He felt that Regulus’s pulse was still racing. “My future family was at stake. We can’t have three kids like we talked about if you are married to some other hen.”
A smile broke out on Regulus’s face, one that only James was lucky enough to receive.
“Can you say it again?” Regulus asked eagerly, “That you still love me?”
James leaned over, kissing Regulus in a far less aggressive kiss than their first one at the church.
“I love you, Regulus Black. I have never stopped loving you. And nothing will ever make me stop loving you.”
Regulus leaned his forehead against James’s. “I love you too James Potter. I have never stopped.”
“This is so sweet,” said the forgotten cab driver, “Where am I taking you two though?”
“The train station?” James asked, “Shall we go back to London? Or do you have anything here you need to get?”
“No,” Regulus replied, “I have everything I need.”