chapter xxii
James Potter loved Sirius Black.
He didn’t love him like Sirius loved Remus, but he thought it was just as strong, maybe even stronger. He and Sirius were inseparable; not like a single piece of paper that just had to be cut to come apart, but like two pieces of tissue paper glued together with super-double-extra strength glue. If someone tried to tear them apart, they would both be completely mangled. They’d be torn up, parts of each stuck to the other.
James trusted Sirius with everything, and he knew it went both ways. When Sirius was freaking out about liking Remus, James was there to tell him again and again that being gay was completely fine, even good because it helped fight overpopulation. When Sirius got accepted into his childhood dream college, close to where he had lived, James had helped Remus find scholarships and Peter find accommodations so the four of them could all go together, because they had already bonded too much to drift apart.
When Sirius learned that his younger brother-he-had-thought-was-a-sister never tried to contact him because their parents said he was dead, James held Sirius while he cried and screamed, endured hours of yelling so Sirius wouldn’t take his anger out on himself. When Sirius asked if his little brother could move in after the school year, so he never had to see their parents again, James started looking for three-bedroom apartments to fit them all, because Regulus and Sirius were both the types to need their own, private safe spots.
When he finally made an offer on the loft, to rent it for a few years, James noticed something. He knew he would do anything for Sirius, had proved it time and again. But he didn’t always like how it made him feel.
Getting yelled at by his best friend, even though James knew it wasn’t really about him, even though he knew he was being a good friend, hurt. Staying up for days on end because Sirius couldn’t safely be left alone left James tired and blank, though he didn’t really care as long as his best friend was safe. But James didn’t mind doing what he knew Sirius needed this time, though he would be moving in with a very complicated individual, a highly messed-up person he barely knew.
Part of why he didn’t mind was that he could tell how much good it was doing Sirius, could tell how much mending the relationship was helping, even with how exhausting it could be.
Another part was that he thought Regulus deserved safety, too, and he knew that would never be found with the Black parents. Regulus was barely an adult, he’d fall back into the scared, cold kid in that house, the man he had been when he saw Sirius at the Bistro, almost identical to the boy James had taken from that house years before.
The third part was the first secret James had ever kept from Sirius: he didn’t just care about one Black brother.
—
Sirius Black loved his brother.
Things were complicated between them, but Sirius was certain now that he always had loved and always would love his little brother.
It had been hard, even painful, to grow closer to Regulus when he would be going back to their parents, when they probably saw him as everything Sirius never was, when Sirius wasn’t sure who he’d meet once the summer was over, because he knew what that house could do, he knew how much it could distort an insecure mind.
But that wouldn’t be happening.
Regulus was going home with Sirius, not to the house with their parents.
It was the first time any family had ever chosen Sirius, picked him instead of someone or something else, someone or something better. It was odd for Sirius to realize how much being chosen meant to him, especially once he’d fully conceptualized that Regulus had never actually abandoned him in the first place. It was odd to be wanted by his own blood and to realize how much he wanted that.
Sirius had resented Regulus for a while after the first time he saw him again.
Mainly because he was a ‘him.’
Sirius had nothing against his brother being trans, didn’t mind having a brother instead of the sister he’d imagined. He didn’t have anything against it, except for what it meant about their family, their parents.
Regulus looked like he’d been a man for years, like he’d had HRT or maybe even a surgery. Sirius had never considered that their parents didn’t know, because nobody could ever possibly look at Regulus and see “Ursa.”
That meant that, when it was Regulus, their parents were fine with it, maybe even supportive. That meant that Sirius was the problem, that it wasn’t difference or non-conformity that Walburga and Orion hated, but their older son. It meant that Regulus was better than Sirius for them, was what he could never be, and that was unfair.
By the time he acknowledged his resentment, Sirius had seen that Regulus was very far from okay. He’d seen that he was mentally ill, that he was damaged and traumatized and completely shattered. But their parents had still kept him.
Sirius knew that leaving had been his choice, but it was the same either way. Walburga and Orion kept one son while getting rid of the other, and Sirius would never be the one they’d kept.
He couldn’t tell anyone that, not even James, whom he trusted with everything. But he was scared, scared that maybe James would realize it too, would realize that Sirius wasn’t worth keeping. He couldn’t tell James, but it was tearing him up inside, the horror of being less than second choice. And so Sirius turned to the person he always turned to when he didn’t know what to do, someone who’d never met Regulus, who couldn’t compare the two of them and find Sirius wanting.
For almost three hours on his boyfriend’s birthday, Sirius had called Euphemia Potter.
She’d picked up immediately, and at the first word from her voice, Sirius broke down, just like he always had. Euphemia was good in all the ways that Walburga was bad, and Sirius had loved her from the first moment he saw her. Despite everything, despite his flaws, she had loved him right back.
And so Sirius told her everything, told her of his fear of being dragged back to that house through his brother, told her of his shock and guilt that Regulus had thought he was dead, his almost-hope when he realized that that meant his brother hadn’t left, then his self-loathing when he realized it had been on him to reach out again, but he never had. Sirius told his mom - his real mom - about everything, laid his dark, rotten, tangled emotions bare for her to dissect.
Like always, she had patiently untangled them, offering Sirius compassion where he would always have expected punishment. She had let him tell her everything, as messy and unclear as it was, and then she had fixed it, just a little bit. Because she had reminded Sirius that he couldn’t be jealous of Regulus - because jealousy was what it had been - because he knew their parents, he knew that house. No matter how much they may have preferred Regulus to Sirius, it was better out than in. Regulus was trapped while Sirius was free, even if he was somehow “better.”
Effie gently reminded Sirius that Regulus was almost definitely not “better.” He was obviously hurt, broken in a way only their parents could break a person. He was nobody to be jealous of.
That aside, Euphemia reminded Sirius of how much he loved his brother, how much he always had. She advised him to think of how they had been during childhood, how he and Regulus would always protect each other, how they would have done anything for the other. She advised him to try to remember how he had felt, because it seemed like maybe that hadn’t changed.
At Effie’s request, Sirius had spent the entire time Remus was off at brunch with Peter, who was enjoying having his own cash to burn from being an RA, remembering how he had mapped out stars with his little brother, focusing on Ursa the Bear and Sirius the Dog. He remembered them sneaking each other food when Sirius “hadn’t earned dinner” or Regulus “was getting too big for a young lady.”
He let himself get lost in the past, the good and the bad of it. He let himself dwell on Regulus’s issues, letting them be proof that the younger Black brother was no better than the elder.
He hadn’t realized he was drinking much at Remus’s party, but he felt like he needed it to keep sane. And then, as if out of thin air, Regulus was in front of him, hovering awkwardly behind James. And something was different, but Sirius was okay with that. He felt the sudden, seemingly irreproachable need to tell Regulus everything that had been on his mind, their childhood and the proof that Regulus wasn’t someone to be jealous of, how they always protected each other and could be big, gay disappointments - or a small gay disappointment in Regulus’s case - to their parents together, because Sirius remembered Regulus’s first kiss.
It had taken Sirius quite a while to fix the mistakes he had made that night.
It all felt so far from where they were. He was lying in the same bed as his bloodied, broken brother, who was curled into him like he was his last safe place, who had agreed to move in and leave their parents. Sirius knew - promised himself - that he’d never make that big mistake again.
—
Regulus Black was on an island of peace, lying with his brother, knowing his friends weren’t far. He intended to make that island his home.