Chapter 14
Wednesday morning is slow. I catch a glimpse of Regulus at lunch and his face is hardly cold. I feel my own warmth and redden despite myself. Sirius notices because of course he does.
“What you looking at, got your eye on someone?” I shrug him off but he makes a point of trying to follow my gaze. He looks roughly in the direction of Regulus but doesn’t settle on anyone that I could have been looking at. He drops it and we get back to talking about anything else. After school we have to meet at Ms Mconogalls office to pick up the buckets to go to detention. I carry the bucket for my group as we head out to the gym, this time cleaning the exercise equipment. It's quieter this time probably because Barty isn't interested in doing anything other than staring daggers at me. None of the banter we had last week is there. I finish on one exercise bike and move onto the next walking over to get more water. I bump into someone else reaching into the bucket. I mumble sorry as I look up. Barty's still a cruel disinterested expression on his face. He ‘accidentally’ splashes some water onto me.
“Oi what's your problem?”
“What's my problem?” He snaps and I really don’t want to do this right now.
“Just forget it.” I try
“Nah you forget it, he deserves better than sloppy seconds.” Seconds? I don't even know what he's talking about.
“Better than what, you?” I say quickly. He falters for a second and, oh?! Is that.. Was that a thing? I walk away before this conversation can continue because now the others are looking over. I walked to Mary and cleaned with her until Ms Macgonagall came in to dismiss us. I walk to the bathroom needing to wash my hand. There I found a shaky regulus. I walk over instinctively worried.
“Reg you okay?” His voice is shaky when he tries to speak.
“He- he hates me.” He says it like he's been punched in the gut exhaling sharply. He slumps down on the wall. I shake the water from my hands and walk over to him. Not too keen to sit on the bathroom floor but I do so anyway sitting next to him.
“Who?” I ask probably stupidly, if I had thought for more than two seconds maybe I could have figured it out.
“Sirius.” he lets out another shaky breath.
“That's not- he doesn't, you are brothers” I say knowing how sticky the situation is.
“Sure don’t act like it, you’re the brother he never had, says it all the time.” Yeah he does say that but that's just how we feel it doesn’t lessen the fact that Regulus and Sirius are brothers. “You should see the way he looks at me. I wish he went back to ignoring my existence, one of these days we’re going to say something we regret. Not like we haven’t already done that. It's been over a year.” The last part is smaller with an undertone of unmistakable sadness.
“You could-” I stop myself, knowing not to meddle. “Reg, you two will figure it out someday.” He doesn't look too convinced but lets it go. We stay there, he takes in shaky breaths, calming down slowly. “There you are,” I say, placing my hand on his knee reassuringly.
He jumps up as if he had been burnt, eyes wide.
“Don’t” he says and walks out. I'm left again. I don’t know what I'm doing anymore. I can’t seem to help myself, I want to be near him, there for him. Every time we get somewhere, when he opens up, he storms away. I get up and walk out back into the bustling corridor. Regulus is nowhere to be seen so I walk back to my dorm. Peter Remus and Sirius are in there sitting on the floor between our beds.
“Where were you?” Pete asks.
“We’ve been waiting.” Remus adds.
“Waiting?” I ask.
“We were going to have a movie night, remember?” Sirius’ voice is lacking his usual confidence.
“Oh right, what do you want to watch?”
Sirius lights up as he says, “The picture of Dorian Gray?”
“No we can’t watch the movie til you read the book, I lent it to you.” Remus says.
“I read it.” Sirius says a curious blush creeping onto his cheeks.
“Oh,” Remus says, looking right at Sirius. Remus is always trying to convince one of us to read a book he's reading. The other month he was obsessed with the picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. I saw Sirius start to read it the second Remus lent it to him, not that he would have told Remus that. He was quite enraptured with it as well. I’ve read a few books Remus has recommended and although I’m not much of an avid reader his recommendations are always good.
“Lets watch it then” I say, pulling my laptop from my bag. Peter lets out a small groan but once the movie is on he seems to enjoy it.
The movie ends and it's quite late so we decide to head to bed. Sirius is back to moping about as he brushes his teeth. We finish up and I can’t refrain from asking anymore,
“What's the matter?”
“Huh? Nothing I guess.”
“Oh come on, I can tell when something is the matter so either tell me or I'll throw a pillow at you.” Sure the tactic might not be the most advised but it works nevertheless.
“Just detention, it's so awkward with Regulus and puts me in a bad mood.”
“Awkward? Not confronting or upsetting or-”
“Yeah so, awkward isn’t the word for it, I can’t put it into words. I wanted it to be done, so I moved out. I want to not care.”
“But you can't”
“But I can’t, especially when he's right there and I don’t even have the right anymore to tell him off for getting detention. Or congratulate him for it. No, instead we have to catch each other's gaze and everytime I look away it feels like I'm leaving him all over again.”
“We’ve talked about this, you didn’t leave HIM, you left that abusive household.”
“Without him.” At this I go silent. No matter how many times I’ve comforted him about his brother I can’t seem to find what to say about that.
“Come on, let's go to bed, it's late and we have school tomorrow.” A few minutes pass and we have both been in our beds for a while. I can hear him tossing and turning. I huff out a sigh and turn over to face him.
“Do you want to talk about anything else?”
“It's just something Remus said.”
“You are always saying things to each other, don't think about it, just sleep.”
“It wasn’t about me, it was about you.” Shit what Remus said.
“Are you dating someone?” he can probably see my jaw drop through the dark. “He didn’t really say, just implied. Well, I know you have been, exploring and experimenting since lily-”
“Its okay you can say I’ve been sleeping around.” I let out a strained laugh. The only reason I found myself falling into that pattern was because I was actually upset when Lily and I broke up. I know it's for the best but it was nice while it lasted and I liked the comfortability of a relationship.
“Yeah, well I’d be happy for you if you got into a relationship is all.”
“Thanks, don’t worry if I do I’ll tell you but I'm not in one now.” Saying it washes sadness over me. Regulus and I are friends- ish, that's perfect.
“Goodnight Jamie,”
“Night” I say and try to fall asleep.