Two
Sirius
As Remus gets up to use the loo, Sirius looks around the nightclub to check that all of his friends are still alive and having a good time. He sees Peter, Mary and Lily heading back towards the booth to sit down, laughing breathlessly as they retire from the dancefloor.
Behind them, Marlene and Dorcas are still dancing away, bodies pressed together and hips swaying in unison. After sweeping the club with his eyes a couple more times, Sirius concludes that James is either outside having a smoke, getting off with someone, or dead in a ditch somewhere.
Deciding that the first option is most likely, Sirius slides out of the booth and heads for the fire exit at the back of the room. Though possible, it’s unlikely that James will be getting off with someone, over the last few years James has only ever been with a few people, and Sirius has never known him to be in a relationship. Sirius has always thought it was as though James was waiting for someone specific. As to who, Sirius has no idea.
As he pushes the fire door open, Sirius hears raised voices coming from outside,
“-haven’t seen you in years!” James is in the middle of shouting. Alarmed at such an un-James-Potter-like display of temper, Sirius steps outside to see who could have possibly caused such anguish.
The sight of his baby brother, staring down James Potter outside Sirius’ favourite nightclub, dressed in all black with the burnt out stub of a cigarette in his hand, is enough to root Sirius’ feet to the uneven concrete.
Regulus freezes too when he spots him, eyes averting from James to fall on the brother who was always supposed to protect him. The brother who had abandoned him. The brother who had failed him.
“Reggie?” Sirius’ voice comes out a strangled whisper, he was barely aware he had spoken until his brother’s cold reply,
“My name is Regulus.” He swallows harshly, “No one’s called me Reggie in a long time. Only my brother ever called me that, and I don’t have one of those anymore.”
Regulus pushes past Sirius and throws the door open before storming back inside, leaving Sirius and James standing unnervingly still. Sirius is only able to process his brothers’ words at an impossibly slow rate, and it feels like a knife being slid between his ribs.
It’s James who moves first, bless his bleeding heart,
“Pads, are you okay?” he places a reassuring hand on his best friend’s arm, gentle and patient in the way he always has been.
“Yeah, I think so,” Sirius manages croak out hoarsely, still not moving.
James
Seeing Regulus again had been like seeing a ghost. After all these years, James had convinced himself that he was over everything that had happened between them, but now he felt as though the stitches across his wounds had all been ripped out at once, and all he could do was bleed.
Sirius couldn’t know though, Sirius had never known the things that had happened between his best friend and his baby brother. Sirius had gone through enough pain tonight by seeing him again, by effectively being told he was dead to the brother he had never stopped loving, no matter how much resentment had grown between the two, no matter how many miles had spanned the bottomless gulf between them.
So James pushes his own pain to one side as he leads Sirius back through the club, ignoring the person who roughly brushes past him as he takes Sirius back to Remus at their booth.
“We should get him home,” James tells Remus earnestly as soon as they reach him, “Regulus is here.”
“I know.” Remus says gravely, nodding towards a group a few booths over which Regulus has just joined. For some bizarre reason, Dorcas and Marlene are amongst them.
Sirius, who has remained silent and unresponsive ever since they re-entered the club, finally speaks up,
“Can we please just go?”
Remus and James immediately jump to action, summoning an Uber to meet them outside and saying their hasty goodbyes to the rest of the group.
Once settled in the back of the taxi, Remus intertwines his fingers with Sirius’, a silent signal of support. It feels like an intimate moment, something James shouldn’t be privy to.
“Are you okay Siri? What did he say to you?”
Sirius flinches at the word ‘he’. Remus may have avoided saying Regulus’ name, but it still sits heavy in the air between them.
“He told me not to call him Reggie.” Sirius replies simply,
“Okay,” Remus nods, knowing that there’s something more but unwilling to push his boyfriend in his current state.
When they pull up outside James’ accommodation block he thanks the driver and promises to pay Remus the money for the Uber before climbing out. As the car pulls off, James remains still, alone for the first time since his encounter with Regulus.
Regulus Black. James had almost forgotten the taste of his name, it has been that long since he last said it. He whispers it to himself now, feeling the way his tongue wraps around the letter R. He crouches down on the pavement, suddenly too overwhelmed to move as he’s flooded by memories, scraps of a life he’d once had, torn up pieces of a boy he used to be.
The sunlight cast patterns across Regulus’ pale skin as it filtered through the trees above, James decided then and there that it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
“Where will we live?” Regulus asked suddenly, clearly following on from a thought he’d had as they wandered silently through the woods,
“What?” James couldn’t help but laugh at the random question. He found himself laughing a lot when he was with Regulus, laughing at nothing and everything and all that was in between. He laughed because he felt light, lighter than he had ever felt before, like nothing could be wrong simply because they were together, because they knew they’d always have each other.
"When we are married,” Regulus replied seriously. Always so serious.
James matched his tone, scratching his chin in thought as he pondered the question. “On the outskirts of the city, somewhere we can taste the fresh air. We’ll have a house big enough for our family, but never so big that we feel small in it.”
Regulus smiled at that, he seemed happy with the answer. Regulus didn’t smile much these days, but he smiled the most when he was with James. Maybe their togetherness made Regulus feel lighter too.
“I never feel small when I’m with you,” Regulus paused then, James could tell that he had more to say but he let Regulus have the silence to form the words on his tongue. He needed that sometimes.
Where James was loud and boisterous, with little process between his thoughts and mouth, Regulus was quiet and introspective, taking time to say what he meant. James had always admired that about him.
“My family makes me feel small,” Regulus continued, having taken the time to shape his thoughts, “but you make me feel like I could take on the world.” Another pause. “Sirius did too, once. But now he makes me feel small too, like his dislike for me has shrunk me, like each time he brushes me off I sink a little further into the ground.”
James wanted to weep at the thought that anyone could make Regulus Black feel small, especially when one of them was the first person Regulus had ever loved.
“I hope I never make you feel small.” James told Regulus earnestly as he turned to him, reaching out and dragging him into a slow kiss.
I love you I love you I love you
He sunk the words into the kiss, chanting them in his head like a prayer, hoping Regulus would be able to taste them on his lips.
Crouching on the pavement in his leather jacket and sticky shoes, James can’t help but ask himself if he still loves Regulus. He’s not sure that the feeling ever truly went away, or if it had simply been plastered over by pain and hurt, the sweetness of it drowned out by years of bitter resentment. It's a big question for 11pm.
Fuck, he really needs a cigarette. As James plunges his hand into his one of his jacket’s deep pockets, something that had been stuffed into the top falls to the pavement. It lands gracefully, like a dropped feather from an angel’s wing. James shakes his head, with thinking about Regulus came silly poetic thoughts, he wasn’t sure he had the stomach for poetry anymore.
As he picks up the fallen angel feather, James sees that it’s a folded piece of cardboard, most likely ripped from the top of a cigarette box. Unfolding the cardboard gently, as though it really has been dropped by an angel, James’ heart stops when he sees what’s written inside.
It’s a phone number. Just a phone number, no words, no name. James doesn’t need words or a name to recognise the gentle slope of the handwriting, it was the same handwriting that was carved into his heart after all.
It had been carved in many years ago with a deliciously sharp blade, and James wasn’t sure that the wound had ever stopped bleeding.
Perhaps, James thinks to himself absently, the note had been dropped by an angel after all.