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“…Head Boy and you’re not supposed to be getting detentions.”
Evan’s voice was grating on his last nerve, and James curled his hands into fists. It wasn’t as though he had tried to get the bloody detention, after all. But what the hell was he to do? Let Regulus continue to insult Sirius like that? If he hadn’t stepped in, it would have been a lot worse.
“You’re supposed to be a role model for the other students.”
James turned to her slowly and gave her a tight smile. “Thank you, Evans. I wasn’t aware of my role here as Head Boy.”
“You can be as sarcastic as you want, Potter,” Lily said as she flipped a lock of hair over her shoulder, “but I’m still only half convinced Dumbledore hadn’t got into some manky pixi wine or something when he appointed you.”
James pursed his lips, not because he disagreed with her, but because he was bloody-well tired of listening to her whinge. The worst part was, he was going to be in detention for the next three hours with Regulus Black, who was increasingly antagonistic every time he was around James. So it would be by some miracle alone that it didn’t escalate into something worse.
They would be scrubbing out cauldrons for Slughorn, of course. As the entire altercation happened right outside the Slytherin dungeons. Sirius deserved the detention, if he was telling the truth, but James knew he could shoulder it far better than his best friend.
So he tucked his wand into his pocket, and left the Common Room.
The walk to the dungeon felt like a walk to the gallows in a way. James had to control his temper, control his frustration. He could not let Regulus get the best of him. Part of him wanted to take the teen by the front of his robes and shake him. Demand to know what the bloody hell had happened.
James had always known Regulus would do better by his parents than Sirius. He wasn’t as reckless, wasn’t as disastrous. Didn’t crave to upset them, the way Sirius did. But Regulus wasn’t as soft as Sirius liked to claim, nor was he as cruel. Or at least, he hadn’t been.
Years before, before Sirius had run away to live with James, sometimes he’d visit the Black brothers over the summer hols, when their parents went away. Regulus never ratted them out—even convinced their house elf to keep his mouth shut about James. And in return, James and Regulus would chat on nights Sirius wanted to roam the London streets with Remus, and James wasn’t up for it.
James would show Regulus muggle things, and listen to Sirius’ records and go through his things and they’d laugh. James would sometimes bring muggle sweets—something he’d developed an affinity for—and the younger Black seemed to like just as much. They had their own, quiet secrets of the summers, and then…
It had all gone downhill. Regulus started hanging round with dark wizards. James heard tell of rumours when he was home, about some wizard gaining power, recruiting straight out of Hogwarts. James could see Snape going that way, but he’d hoped…oh Merlin he’d hoped that Regulus might not be swayed.
He was sixteen now though. Just into his sixth year. And James was terrified. Of him or for him, though, he wasn’t sure yet.
He made it to the Potions’ classroom and found Regulus already there, sat at a desk waiting on Slughorn’s instruction. The squat, short wizard showed up in bedclothes and a floppy hat, looking thoroughly put out.
“Potter I never expected…but I trust you can manage the detention on your own, being that you are Head Boy,” Slughorn said, a slight hiccup to his words saying he’d likely already been into a brandy or two. “Can I trust you both to get along? I’m not keen on robbing my house a chance at winning the Cup this year, my boy.” He directed this last bit at Regulus who turned up his slightly more pointed nose, and gave a sharp nod.
Slughorn gave James’ arm a pat on his way out, and the door slammed.
James dropped his face into his hands for a moment, then said, “What say you take one end, I’ll take the other. We don’t have to speak.”
“You’d like that best,” Regulus accused as he slid from the stool and marched over to a stack of cauldrons.
James blinked at him. “What do you want me to say, Black?”
Wincing at the use of his surname, Regulus said nothing as he thunked the top cauldron at his feet, and knelt down to begin scrubbing. James watched him, his profile. He was gorgeous—some thought not nearly as gorgeous as Sirius, but it was because, James was certain, they didn’t know him the way James did. The quiet, unassuming beauty of him.
Something James had discovered in his fifth year. When the crush had began, and abruptly ended when Sirius had run away and Regulus took to taunting and hexing them in the corridors. His heart had been shattered into pieces then. Though it was now, slowly, being put back together.
“What are you staring at? You don’t expect me to do all the work, do you?” Regulus muttered.
James snapped back to himself, then got to work on his own. The manual labour did enough to distract him, though several times he glanced up, and a few of those times he was sure Regulus had been staring at him. He wanted to say something, to beg him to stop the path he was on. But he didn’t know how to begin, and he’d seen how those talks had gone when Sirius had tried it.
James couldn’t bear that cold, uncaring, unfeeling glower on himself.
He bit his lip, then scrubbed until a particularly vicious bit of—well he wasn’t sure what, but it was sharp and solid—cut into his hand. He let out a cry, lifting his hand to see a stream of blood, and he sat back. Looking round for something to stave off the flow, he startled when a dry flannel clamped down on the side of his hand with warm pressure. He glanced up into the impassive face of Regulus, and said nothing.
Then, “Thank you.”
Regulus merely grunted, but didn’t let go, and James said a quiet prayer under his breath he wouldn’t stop.
“I think it’s…alright now,” James said after too long a time. Nearly half an hour gone, and they hadn’t made a dent in even one cauldron. The last thing he needed was a second detention.
Regulus pulled his hand away suddenly, as though James’ had gone too hot, and he swiped it over his robes. “Whatever, Potter. If you’re sure.”
James felt his throat tighten as he peeled away the flannel, and tried not to look over at Regulus who was getting back to his own cauldron. One down, and another started.
James stared at his cut and wished he had something to put on it. Instead he swapped hands, and began scrubbing again.
“You know, I didn’t mean to hex you,” Regulus said after another twenty minutes had passed. “I was going for Sirius.”
James stare at him, then laughed, unable to stop himself. “I know that, you twat. I took the hex on purpose.”
Regulus stopped scrubbing and stared. “Why?”
“Because if you’d hit Sirius, he’d have got you back worse than I did. And I don’t think either of you need that right now. Besides, think of what would be happening if the pair of you were in detention together.”
Regulus pulled a face, then sighed. “Right well.” He fell silent, and got back to work.
An hour and thirty gone, and James stopped, flinging his cauldron to the side, and he reached into his pockets. He had a couple of mars bars, and he told himself he hadn’t brought them on purpose, but he also knew what a lie that was. All the same, he rose, crossed the room, and sank to the floor next to Regulus. Stretching out his legs, he held one of the bars out, and watched Regulus’ fingers twitch for it.
“Oh go on, I brought it for you,” James said. “It’s been a while since I had someone to share with. For all Sirius loves muggle shite, he thinks their sweets are rubbish.”
Regulus rolled his eyes, but grabbed the mars bar and sank down next to James, backs pressed to the desks behind them. They opened their chocolate in tandem, and stole glances at each other as they ate. The tension seemed to melt as fast as the chocolate bar did, and before James even realised it, they were shoulder-to-shoulder.
Their knees touched, then calves. James laid his leg flat, and when Regulus mirrored him, he hooked his ankle round the Slytherin’s, almost daring him to say something, daring him to pull away. Regulus didn’t, though, and James let out a breath he’d been holding deep behind his ribs since he stepped through the classroom door.
When he looked back over, he noticed a dark smudge in the corner of Regulus’ mouth, and without really thinking, he reached out and swiped it with his thumb. He felt a hot puff of air as Regulus gasped, and James’ entire left side of his body went tense with a sudden want to deepen the gesture. To touch more. To give in to what he’d been wanting for so long.
Instead he shoved his thumb into his mouth and licked the smear of chocolate off.
“James.” The word came out like a whisper, and James became profoundly aware it had been a very, very long time since Regulus called him by his first name.
James looked down at their feet, still twisted together, and thought they looked good like this. “Don’t go with them,” James said, his voice all-but begging. “Don’t. Reggie.”
Regulus sucked in his breath, turning his face away. “Don’t ask that of me.”
“Why not?” James demanded. He shifted, turning toward Regulus, barely restraining himself from grabbing hold. “There’s help.”
“Not for me,” Regulus said miserably. “Not…not from them. You don’t understand how many there are in my house. My parents aren’t but they…they think it’s the right idea. And Sirius has run off and I…” He stopped, choking on his words. “You’ll be gone next year. And I’ll be alone.”
James wanted to vow he wouldn’t go. He’d purposefully fail all of his NEWTs, he’d take on some menial post to stay on so he could make the promise and keep it. “Dumbledore will help you.”
Regulus barked a laugh. “Dumbledore helps himself, James. I might be sixteen, but I’m not an idiot.”
James wanted to argue, but it was hard to when he knew deep down it was true. “I don’t want to lose you. If you go with them, you die.”
“And if you go against them, so do you,” Regulus challenged.
James abandoned all pretence and propriety, and reached out, closing his hand lightly in the front of Regulus’ robes. “You don’t think I’m sturdy enough, is that it?”
“I think you’re so brave you’re reckless, and you still think you’re impervious to harm. Even when I best you in the corridors,” Regulus said. Then he reached up, impossibly slow and tender, and caressed James’ face. “I don’t want you to die. I want to pretend like all of this isn’t happening. I want to kiss you and hold you and sneak you into my dorms and into my bed. I want to kiss you in front of Sirius just to piss him off. I want to see a future there—but I don’t.”
James stopped caring. He pulled Regulus close, and their noses brushed together and when he spoke, his lips brushed against the Slytherin’s. “I do,” he breathed. “I do see a future, but not if you continue this…reckless shit. I want all those things. I think I’ve been half in love with you since fifth year and…”
James’ words stopped when Regulus kissed him. His lips were slightly chapped, and very dry, and he tasted of chocolate. And his tongue was warm when it swiped against James’ bottom lip, and it was dominant and demanding when James opened underneath him.
Regulus groaned, crawling into James’ lap, straddling him with a maddening pressure just there and he kissed him and kissed him and kissed him. When they broke apart, breathless and gasping, James held him tight about the ribs as though if he let go, it would all go straight to hell.
“Please,” James begged.
Regulus held his cheek. “I can’t. You don’t understand, James. I’m not…I don’t…there’s nothing else for me.”
“But you don’t even believe in that rubbish,” James begged, not letting him go, even as Regulus tried to pull back. “Reggie, you don’t.”
“There’s going to come a time when you realise what we believe in, and what we have to do, don’t matter.” Regulus dipped his head in and kissed him again, furious and terrified. “I love you too, you know. And we could have been something really good.”
Then he was up, and running, and James didn’t have it in him to get him back. To make him finish the detention. He wouldn’t take points. He wouldn’t be able to even look at him again. Not after that.
The next morning Regulus was not at breakfast, and James stared at his own food in defeat. It was over.
He had lost.
***
James heard the crack of someone’s arrival, and upon throwing open the door, he hadn’t been sure what to expect. Moony, maybe, who’d been off on a mission. Or Sirius, who had been drowning his sorrows of missing Remus in shitty muggle alcohol.
Maybe Lily who didn’t know what she wanted out of all of this, but had been on her own to find herself.
He hadn’t expected to find a half-dead, water-logged Regulus Black being held up by a house elf. His head was lolled to the side, breathing shallow, covered in what looked like strangulation marks. He was gasping and babbling nonsense, and clutching something in his fist.
James dragged him inside, shutting the door, setting the wards, and got him dry with a charm. Kreacher stood by, looking as worried as his pinched, wrinkled face would allow, as James forced several potions down Regulus’ throat.
Eventually grey eyes cleared and he spoke with his injured throat. “Dumbledore,” he gasped. He shook whatever it was he had clutched in his fist. “Please. Jamie.”
James ran to the fire, and within moments his lounge was flooded with Order members. He was shuffled away from Regulus, and asked to make tea. He did. Regulus was suffering the effects of a brutal potion, and it was touch and go.
Sirius arrived at some point, holding tight to James because no one had seen Regulus in some time and they all thought the worst, really. Either deeply involved with the Dark Lord there was no hope for him—or dead.
Eventually Dumbledore left, triumphant and brighter than James had ever seen them. Everyone was instructed to stay inside. Regulus was left to Sirius and James’ care. Sirius couldn’t bring himself to go up—James couldn’t blame him really, and he took tea to the first bedroom, and crept inside.
Regulus was barely awake, one eye cracked open, breathing heavy and recovering. When James came to the bedside, a trembling hand reached out and grasped at him.
“You were right.”
James set the tea down, then knelt beside the bed and eased Regulus’ hand out of his robes, and twinned their fingers together. “I usually am. About what, though?”
“There was a future. I saw it. And I acted. I thought I was going to die—it was worth the risk to know that at least you’d live through it but…” He stopped, his voice failing him, and he cleared his throat. “I saw us.”
James reached out, brushing his fingers through Regulus’ hair. “You’re alive. You made it.”
Regulus let out a small, painful sounding laugh, and he leant into the touch. “Gorgeous. I ever tell you that, Potter? You’re gorgeous.”
James chuckled, and unable to stop himself, leant down and pressed a kiss to the tip of Regulus’ nose. “You never did. As far as I can recall.”
“Then I’m glad I lived long enough to make sure you heard it once. From me.” Regulus’ eyes fluttered closed for a minute, but his breathing was even. He was out of the woods now. “I…you…”
“Shh. Sleep,” James said. When he tried to stand up, Regulus grabbed on tight, making a distressed noise in the back of his throat.
“Stay. Please, please stay. I was so alone. So alone. I don’t want to be alone.”
James hesitated, then lowered himself to the bed and let Regulus curl himself up against his broader chest. His arms came round the younger man, holding him tight, and he kissed his temple. “You’re not alone. You aren’t. Never have been.” He kissed him once more, feeling Regulus go lax in his arms. “Never.”