Chapter 3
The third morning is much worse than the second. Regulus wakes up to a tooth-aching headache; like the plates of his skull are grinding together, leaving little bone shards in the soft bits of his brain. Even the soft morning light of winter is too much, so moments after he opens his eyes he closes them again and presses his face into the forgiving cool of his pillow.
The next time he wakes up, the soft morning light has given way to a rare, bright afternoon. There are birds on the other side of the window, and he can see vibrant shards of blue through the clouds. However, while his head may feel better, the rest of him does not. His mouth is somehow both dry and tacky, and when he looks in the mirror, his face has taken on the unpleasant puffiness that marks a night spent drinking too much whiskey and not enough of anything else. While a shower helps to remedy it, Regulus feels like half of a human when he trudges down the stairs in his biggest, comfiest sweater and woolen socks so thick they might as well be slippers.
The house is quiet. Silent, almost, except for the tick, tick, tick of the grandfather clock between the base of the stairs and the living room, and the occasional happy thud of a dog’s tail on the carpet. He thinks he must be alone, at least until he gets nearer to the kitchen and a cold breeze sweeps his ankles. The door to the back garden is ajar, and although the sky is bright and there isn’t any snow falling, the air is still frigid. Regulus marches across the tile, across the kitchen rug, across the boot mat and sticks his head outside. He doesn’t have much right to complain in this house, nor to admonish anyone for leaving the door open. He still feels the urge to when he spots James hunched in his house coat against the porch railing.
He bites his tongue, and it’s a good thing he does, because James doesn’t notice him right away, which gives Regulus the chance to really look at him: At the slope of his shoulders where his head hangs, the wild way his hair blows in the winter breeze, the stupid bunny slippers he wears on his feet, and a curious plume of smoke curling away from his right hand.
“James Potter,” Regulus starts. James jumps so hard he knocks his toe into the porch railing and curses loudly. Regulus pays it little mind and carries on, “Are you smoking? On your parents’ porch?”
When James turns around he looks like he’s been caught doing something particularly nasty, head down and brows furrowed like he’s a second away from begging Regulus not to tell his mum.
“Just don’t tell,” James whines when Regulus steps over the threshold in just his socks. He closes the door behind him properly, so the smell of smoke won’t drift inside and give them away. “Mum’s at the shops, dad went to see his sister. They’ll never know.”
“Oh, they’ll know,” Regulus wiggles his fingers anyway, and James deposits the cigarette between them. Effie and Fleamont have a way of knowing everything that happens in this house. The first night Regulus slipped into James’ bed instead of his own the silence at the breakfast table the next morning was thick, and the first time they smoked weed in the shed at the back of the property they were made to muck out the sheep barn for weeks.
Regulus breathes in and relishes the way warm smoke curls in his chest. It hits the back of his throat in a way that nearly makes him cough, he’s out of practice, trying to kick this bad habit. James laughs at him but pretends he hasn’t when Regulus shoots him a narrowed-eyed look.
“Why are you smoking?” He asks around the plume he exhales, letting James have it back. One drag is enough for him, and anyway, this isn’t really about the cigarette. No, his and James’ elbows are close together where they balance on the topmost rung of the railing, he can feel James’ warmth through the scant space between their hips.
“No reason,” says James, shrugging one shoulder.
With James there’s always a reason.
Regulus stands silently, watching a bird at the other end of the yard dip toward the earth. James smokes until the cigarette is a nub between his fingers, ashes it on the railing, gives a discontented grunt and tries to scrub the mark away with his fingers.
Eventually, James breaks his silence to say, “Henry’s off to visit his parents.”
“Oh,” Regulus’ brow furrows. “By himself?”
“Mm,” the sound is non-committal. James lets them both back into the kitchen, where the sudden change in temperature makes Regulus’ skin sting. Looking him up and down, James steps to the stove and sets the kettle to boiling before digging through the pantry to begin the business of lunch. He carves pieces off of a fluffy loaf of fresh bread and slathers each with butter, followed by healthy piles of cheese from the fridge and two slices of tomato. He doesn’t speak again until their toasties are sizzling in the pan. “He hasn’t seen them in a while, he probably just wants to spend some quality time. You know?”
Regulus nods from his perch on a kitchen stool.
James keeps going, his tone a little frazzled. “And I could have asked to go, but you know how the dogs get when they’re left by themselves, and Sirius wanted to take Remus down to the village for an afternoon.” He slides a spatula under the first toastie and flips it over, and then does the same to the other one, pressing down until they sizzle. “And then you’d be all alone here.”
“Me?” The laugh that punches out of him is equal parts incredulous and unwelcome. James gives him an odd look, there for a second and then gone in the next. One sandwich is slid onto a plate and set in front of him with a clatter. Only then does Regulus acknowledge his near-nauseating hunger and chance a glance at the clock. It’s nearly two in the afternoon.
“Yeah, you.” James shrugs again.
“I can fend by myself. I’m alone most of the time.” The toastie is too hot. Regulus peels the top piece of bread off and watches the cheese steam and steam.
“In London? Don’t you have…?” James trails off, but the question is clear.
Regulus frowns at his toastie, closes it back up, and chances a bite. It’s rich and buttery. It singes the top of his mouth, but it does buy him several seconds before he has to say, “No. Nobody.”
“Oh.” The silence feels thick. “Have you…?”
“Are you asking if I’ve been alone for years?” Regulus very nearly laughs. Suddenly the wall behind James is incredibly interesting.
“Suppose so.”
“Mm, well yes. I have.”
“Oh.”
Oh. Oh, oh, oh. For fuck’s sake, he wants to go back to bed.
“You know I’m moving to the city?”
“So you said,” Regulus takes another bite.
“Maybe we could hang out.”
Suddenly, the cheese is difficult to chew. It sits heavily on his tongue and makes him feel a bit ill. Regulus clears his throat, grimaces, manages a swallow.
James always looks so fucking earnest.
“Sure,” Regulus says quickly. “Maybe.”
Sirius is talking, and Regulus isn’t paying attention, as they crunch their way down the snowy driveway. The Potter’s are a decent drive from town, but there’s a shop just down the street that more resembles a farm stand. In the summer they used to walk there for dessert after dinner and have frosty ice cream scooped out of big barrels behind the counter, and now that they’re all adults they’ll sometimes walk there to pick up missing dinner fixings even though it’s nearly as inconvenient as driving into town. It’s still nice out, though, the sun is starting to set and bundled into their jackets it isn’t terribly cold.
“We’re going to get married,” says Sirius.
This makes Regulus pay attention, head snapping up. He stops walking, mouth open and eyes wide until Sirius snorts and shakes his head knowingly. “I knew you weren’t listening.”
“Shut up. I was.”
Sirius bends down and digs into the snow with his bare hands. There isn’t as much on the ground as there was even a day ago, but he finds enough to form a ball between his fists, packing it tight and lobbing at Regulus. It hits him just below the shoulder. He brushes it off and side-steps his attempt at another one.
Now that he thinks about it, though, he isn’t sure why they aren’t married.
“You better soon or you’re going to be ugly and old in all your wedding photos.”
Sirius holds his hand over his heart like he’s deeply offended. His fingers are bright red and shiny with the melted evidence of his snowballs. “First of all, I’m never going to look old.”
“You are,” Regulus says mournfully. “Dad looks old as shit.”
Sirius pulls a face but brushes it off. “I think we will. One day. Soon maybe. He’s gotten all shifty like he might be planning to ask, and he keeps disappearing for long afternoons with Lily.”
“He could be cheating.” He doesn’t even expect the suggestion to make Sirius squirm. Predictably, it doesn’t.
“Right. Remus cheating.”
The conversation dwindles to a natural end, then. Regulus and Sirius don’t spend very much time talking about their love lives. It’s one thing to have gotten used to Sirius and Remus canoodling wherever they go, and another entirely to get over the hurdle of breaching the topic with one another. And anyway, it almost always ends the same way: Sirius will insist that Regulus try to put himself out there and find ‘his Moony,’ Regulus will dodge the suggestion and say he’s just fine on his own, and Sirius will sigh and say, ‘You have to get over it eventually.’ The problem is, he doesn’t actually think he ever will. James left a cavernous hole in his chest, the spindly web of time has tried to close it, but it’s flimsy at best. And then Regulus will see a picture of James on Instagram, or pull open a book that has his notations in the margins, or find a sweater in the back of his closet and remember the last time James peeled it off him, and suddenly it’s gaping again. Loving James is permanent, it’s just a shame that being loved by him wasn’t.
“Grab a basket,” Sirius says, pointing to the short stack of them next to the door. The shop is just a couple of aisles, worn out hardwood floors and rickety shelves full of things that are mostly homemade. In the nicer months, there would be produce along the back wall, where coolers hum, but now it’s just cheese from the dairy down the road. “Fig, you reckon?” Sirius asks, scratching his head next to a shelf stacked full of little glass jars of jam, each with a checkered red lid and white label.
“Mhm. And raspberry.” It’s James’ favourite. Sirius gives him a look.
“What? They’re hosting us all, Monty likes it too.”
They pick up fig and raspberry jam, the good butter, a few wedges of hard cheeses and a beautiful loaf of crusty bread and carry them in paper bags all the way back to the house. All of this is to have a ‘party’ after dinner. Effie calls it a party, even though it’s all the same people who have been here for days, himself and Sirius, Remus, Effie and Monty, James and Henry. They used to invite the neighbors down to play board games over the kitchen table, but they’re too old to make the trip down and to stay up late, so instead Effie will bring them a portion of dinner and make them promise to stop in for tea another day. They’re going to pull boxes down from the attic, Monty will request Monopoly and James will groan loudly and say they ought to play cards instead, they’ll all drink enough wine that they’ll forget about this morning’s hangover and eat enough cheese and bread that they feel sated, if a bit ill. It used to be Regulus’ favourite part of Christmas holidays, sitting hip to hip in the kitchen or the sitting room, watching Monty fight sleep and eventually nod off in his reclining chair by the fire while the rest of them play around him.
This time Regulus feigns illness.
Sirius doesn’t believe him, but can’t question it in front of Effie, who holds the cool back of her hand against Regulus’ forehead.
“It’s just a headache,” he tells her, which isn’t even a lie, really. Since this morning, the ache has lived somewhere at the base of his skull and made the edges of his vision blurry. It’s partially from the whiskey, the stubborn remnants of a hangover. But it’s also partially because James hasn’t ever changed the cologne he wears; he’s worn the same smell since he was fifteen years old and learned that he was supposed to douse himself in the stuff, and today, when he leaned around Regulus to put the canister of coffee up in the cupboard, he smelled different.
He can imagine that it’s Henry’s doing. Henry, good, handsome, wealthy Henry, smelled James’ teenhood scent, wrinkled his nose, and took him down to the shops to pick out something sharp and clean and more acceptable.
Regulus can tell that Sirius is unhappy with him when he leaves with a cup of tea in his hands. He’s supposed to be acting normal and giving Sirius the Christmas he wants for the first time in ages, so alongside the uncomfortable prickle of jealousy in his stomach, there’s guilt, too. But he can’t stop himself from trudging upstairs and shutting himself in his old, familiar bedroom, big light off and curtains open so it’s just him, the moon, and an orange-y bedside table lamp.
By the time Regulus gets out of the bathtub, he doesn’t feel any better. It’s a big, deep thing that lets him sink up to his shoulders, and when he’s feeling particularly indulgent he fills it with fizzing balls of salts and smells. His skin is soft, his hair is still wet, and, like a petulant child, he wishes he had stayed down with the rest of them. It’s well after midnight now and he can still hear the chatter of people a floor below, the occasional loud whoop from Sirius and the following laughter and shushing from Remus. He can imagine Monty is long gone by now, snoring quietly in his chair, unbothered by the noisiness around him.
A knock at his bedroom door makes him jump. He has a thick housecoat tied around his waist, he pulls it a little bit tighter before he opens the door a crack to peek outside, expecting Sirius. But it isn’t Sirius. James smiles in his usual, lopsided way, though there’s a concerned crinkle at the corners of his eyes, not quite hidden behind his glasses.
“Can I come in?”
Regulus, suddenly hyper-aware of his housecoat and his naked legs and the sliver of skin between the fluffy white lapels, freezes. James waits patiently, blinking at him in the dim light of the hallway, until Regulus steps back and opens the door wide, revealing a plate of food balanced in one hand and another cup of tea in the other.
“I figured you’d be hungry,” he shrugs. “You barely ate your dinner.” James strolls in like he owns the place, which he sort of does. Or, he at least has more ownership of this house than Regulus does, even though this guest room has always been his. “You know I desperately wanted this room when I was a kid,” James says as he sets the plate on the dresser. It’s one of Effie’s gaudy Christmas dishes, dark green and decorated with gingerbread men. It’s full of crackers and slices of cheese, pieces of bread pre-slathered with jam, a small mountain of berries pushed all the way to the edge so they’re not touching anything else, except for the honey drizzled on top. Regulus’ stomach growls despite himself. “Mum said it was too small for a kid, but I think she just didn’t trust me to be a whole floor away, thought I’d somehow off myself in the night and she wouldn’t be able to rescue me. It’s got the best view.”
Even now that it’s dark outside, the sparse snow on the ground reflects back the moon and the flood light on the old shed. Regulus joins James by the window where they can make out the garden and an acre or so of empty pasture, everything beyond it blurring into shadows.
“We could swap,” Regulus offers, stupidly. James gives him a sideways look, that same, familiar, lopsided smile on his face. “Bedrooms. I mean, when you moved down here why didn’t you just take this one?”
“Oh,” it’s a bit too dark, but Regulus thinks James might be blushing. “Well, by then you’d already started coming around, and you liked the bench,” he gestures to the window seat, “and the tub,” pointed, raised eyebrows at the robe and the damp hair. “Mine’s just as good.”
James could take it back now. He should, probably. Why should Regulus, ex-boyfriend, not even family the way Sirius is, get the best spare room? Especially when he only shows up every other winter or so. Regulus doesn’t say any of that, they just lapse into comfortable silence, elbow to elbow and looking out at the expanse of garden beyond the window. Eventually, James does reach over to the dresser and hand Regulus a new mug of tea, and then it’s more silence, and more standing, and James should really be getting back downstairs to see the rest of their family party through to the end, except he doesn’t. When he breaks the stillness, it’s to turn toward Regulus instead of the window and say, “Reg…”
“James?” The bedroom door creaks open the rest of the way, the hallway light on now and spilling into the bedroom. Henry, on the other side, regards James with an expression Regulus can’t read.
“Right,” James slaps a hand down on his thigh. Regulus has seen Fleamont do the exact same thing countless times, and wonders if James realizes he’s turning into his father. “Bed, then?”
Henry looks slowly between the two of them, and then nods and says, “Sure.”
At once there’s enough space between them that it feels like miles, James striding across the room and tossing a, “Night, Reg!” Over his shoulder, leaving him alone with his cheese and his berries and his bread and jam and the fresh mug of tea, made up just the way he likes it.
He should go straight to sleep, but the wrong smell James left behind in the bedroom keeps him up until half-past midnight has come and gone, and then it’s creeping into morning. Regulus picks at the plate James left him, finding that he really was hungry; he picks up his book and tries to read it, and when that doesn’t lull him to sleep he takes to scrolling mindlessly through his phone. Normally, he’d avoid looking at James’ socials. But tonight the wound feels particularly raw, so why not rub a little salt in? He’s greeted by the same old profile picture of James and Sirius locked in a friendly embrace, shoulder to shoulder overlooking the cliffs of Moher, and then an endless feed of drinks and food and books and friends and dogs he saw on the streets and interesting birds and busses and beaches and sometimes James himself, smiling alongside someone distantly familiar, but no Henry. There are suspicious little glints of him that Regulus overlooked the last time he took himself down a shameful spiral of James’ social media: A hand here, a shoulder there, a curl on the edge of a picture of the Eiffel tower and evidence of a river cruise taken not by himself, but nothing of Henry’s face. There isn’t a single tag, and Regulus doesn’t find Henry’s Instagram until he takes a shameful scroll through James’ followers. With a deep breath, he taps on Henry’s name, and is met with absolutely nothing. A private account, an artful profile photo, an empty bio.
“Bugger,” Regulus sighs, dropping his phone to the mattress next to him. He isn’t even sure what he was looking for, really.
Out of sheer frustration, Regulus throws the covers off and tucks his feet into the slippers next to his bed. The house will be silent by now, everyone tucked away in their respective beds. He tiptoes down the hallway, deftly ignoring the boards he knows to creak, and clings to the railing as he makes his way down the stairs. He doesn’t know where he’s going, honestly. It’s too cold to take himself for a walk without changing, but maybe a loop around the house will do him good. Or maybe he needs to sit himself down by the fire and drift off there – or maybe a cup of tea, yes, that’s what he needs.
The sound of voices from the kitchen catches his attention just before he rounds the corner, and Regulus slows to a standstill.
“I don’t know why you’re so upset,” James says. There’s an exasperated, slightly panicked note to his voice that sends shards straight through Regulus’ chest. He chances another step closer so he can peer around the corner and frowns at what he sees. James is hunched over the kitchen counter, head between his forearms, next to Henry whose arms are crossed over his chest, lips curved down in a deep frown.
“I’m upset because you were in his room. In the dark! He wasn’t even dressed, James.” They’re speaking in hushed whispers, Regulus strains to make out the entire conversation.
“Right, because I brought him a snack, because he didn’t feel well.”
“Sure,” Henry scoffs. Regulus can hear the eye roll in his voice. “And instead of dropping it off at his door like a sane person you went right on in and hung out just the two of you?”
“Well yeah! We’re friends.”
“Friends,” says Henry, flatly.
“Yes, Hen. Friends. Friends. He’s Sirius’ brother, I can’t just ignore him forever.”
“Mm, mhm. So Sirius and his brother are more important than you and –”
“Stop it Henry, don’t do this tonight.”
“I’m not doing anything!” There’s a frustrated noise, but Regulus can’t tell who it’s come from. And then the floor is creaking and Henry is marching straight toward him. Well, he’s marching straight toward the stairs, but Regulus just so happens to be standing between him and the only path up to his bedroom. In a moment of sheer panic, Regulus does the only thing he can think to do and dives behind the grandfather clock ticking away in the hall. He’s only just slunk into the shadows when Henry rounds the corner and stalks up to the bedroom.
And then it’s quiet, just the sound of the clock and his own breathing, and a shallow, choking sound from the kitchen. The tap turns on, old pipes grumbling, off again, there’s the clink of a glass, a creak of the floor. Every atom in Regulus’ body screams at him to pop out of his hiding place and rush into the kitchen, but Henry’s voice replays over and over again in his head, and for once in his life, Regulus doesn’t want to do the selfish thing. So he swallows the urge and sinks further into the shadows until James rounds the corner and his retreating back has disappeared up the stairs.