family line
Sirius Black liked to think about his past less than he liked to talk about it, which he did very rarely, but it made for good music. James was the only person who knew even remotely about his family, but even he didn’t know that Sirius had a brother. He wrote a lot of songs about it, but whenever he mentioned a sibling in his lyrics, his friends heard that it was a metaphor, and anyone else didn’t get an answer. He figured James saw through it; after all, he knew some of the shit Sirius’ parents had gotten up to, but Sirius shut down anytime James tried to approach the topic in the gentle way he always did. James probably assumed that Sirius had a sibling but that they were still in France.
He recalled one time, years ago, when James mentioned Regulus. It wasn’t even a comment about him. He had said, “That new movie Regulus Black is in,” while trying to tell Sirius about the movie he had seen in the theatre a week prior. Thankfully, it had been over the phone, and Sirius had made up some excuse to leave not less than a minute later. Then he had impulsively bought whatever streaming service streamed the movie, and he had watched it on his couch alone.
To be honest, he didn’t even remember what justification he had come up with to watch the movie. He hadn’t even known Regulus was an actor. This was when he was just starting his career. That movie was his breakout role.
Sirius couldn’t have told you what the plot of the movie was. He had waited in cruel anticipation, feeling like he was drenched in ice water and on fire at the same time. The moment Regulus appeared on the screen, he had to pause the movie and study every feature of Regulus’ face. He looked exactly like the thirteen-year-old boy he loved and nothing like him. It had taken him twenty minutes to turn the movie back on, and then Regulus had said his first line with the slightest French accent, and Sirius had broken in two. He had sobbed and sobbed into his blanket.
If he remembered right, it had taken him two weeks to make it through the entire movie. He couldn’t get through three minutes without breaking down. Since that first night, he had seen Regulus’ name goddamn everywhere. He couldn’t go two minutes without an article about Regulus being written or a paparazzi photo being posted.
The problem was that he had never gotten over the initial panic at seeing his brother’s name. He was on the edge of a panic attack every time he saw the seven letters that spelled out Regulus. He had even started seeing his name in places it wasn’t. He had started seeing his brother in the crowds, even though he knew that he wasn’t there. So naturally, his songs had more metaphors than ever.
His first album was pure rock music. He had written every lyric and produced it himself in the closet James’ parents had helped him buy. He had, of course, paid back every cent. After he had gotten some recognition in England, he signed with a record label and visited them in New York. He knew it was a cliché thing, and he was every tourist, but he fell in love with the city. There hadn’t been anything holding him down in London, so he had moved, to James’ pleasure.
While his second album was still rock, there were more pop influences. It had been a record-breaking album, so Sirius had kept experimenting with different types of music. Now, with his sixth album being released in a week, he had tried just about every category of music there was. Albeit, he chose not to write music in all of them. He would never be a rapper, and while he respected Pandora, his close friend, heavily, he would never be able to sing in the folky way she could.
He set the phone that no longer had James’ face on it on the table and walked to the mini-fridge in the room to grab a bottle of water. “James an actor, huh?” he laughed fondly.
Peter grabbed the acoustic guitar at his feet and strummed it mindlessly. “You really didn’t see it coming?” he scoffed, amused. “It’s James we’re talking about here.”
Sirius grabbed his own guitar and dragged his phone across the table until he could pick it up. “He does seem like he’d be a movie star, doesn’t he? He probably will be, though. Give him a few months; he’ll have so many contract offerings that he won’t know what to choose,” he laughed, opening his phone’s notes app to find the lyrics he wrote. They were in the studio for a reason, and James’ call had just been a short break. “So I was thinking the chorus could go something like this.” He began to strum the melody he and Peter had already crafted. “Scattered ‘cross my family line. I’m so good at telling lies. That came from my mother’s side. Told a million to survive. Scattered ‘cross my family line. God, I have my father’s eyes, but my sister’s when I cry. I can run, but I can’t hide from my family line.”
Peter nodded his head in rhythm with the melody. “You have anything else?” he asked because he knew better than to assume by now.
“Pete, you know me; I have the entire song,” Sirius revealed with an upbeat tone. He didn’t stop to think about what the lyrics meant. He had learned to disassociate who the song was about and the song itself. Concerts would have been a mess had he not done so.
Peter laughed, not mentioning the sister comment. “Of course you do. Wanna start with the bridge?” he offered.
With that, the last song that Sirius would impulsively add to his newest album as a bonus track was created. He went home around three in the morning that night to an empty penthouse. It had always been his dream to be able to buy a house without his family’s involvement. Sirius’ second album had allowed him to do just that. He had bought a modest apartment, but then his fourth album was released, which had a few pop hits that went very big, and it had made him arguably one of the most well-known musicians of the age. This came with quite a few obsessed people, and his modest apartment hadn’t had the security features he needed. It was just so big that it oftentimes felt empty. But within a month and a half, he would be on tour again, living out of hotel rooms, so he wouldn’t have to face the vacant rooms of his home.
He pulled the hair tie from his long hair and moved toward the refrigerator to grab something to eat. Once he had reheated leftovers from the previous night’s outing with Peter, he grabbed a book off the large shelves around his television and sat on the couch opposite them. Placing the plate of food next to his leg, he opened the book to the first page. He didn’t have time to read very often, but Mary, one of his closest friends and his publicist, swore this book was life-changing.
Mary was an avid reader, and she spoke of Remus Lupin, her favorite author, very often. The number of times Sirius’ had heard this supposed wizard’s name from Mary, you’d have thought she was in love with him. But Sirius was a loyal friend, so because she had recommended Remus’ books to him a thousand times over the past half a decade, he was finally reading one of them.
It took place in Paris in the 1880s, following a detective attempting to solve a string of murders, and Sirius could not pull his eyes away from the page to even take a bite of his now cold food. He read until his large windows that showed the New York skyline began to reveal the rising sun, and until he finished what he would call the best book he had ever read.
* * *
There was a release party for Sirius’ new album that he was forced to attend at his record label. He was forced to chatter with people and talk about the inspiration for his new album. His inspiration typically stemmed from the same place: his shit family, his newest romantic conquest that typically meant very little to him, but he knew how to overexaggerate and dramatize, and his imagination. While Sirius had dated many people and really liked some of them, and he did write the occasional delusional love song or two, he had never fallen in love. Not truly. He wasn’t sure he wanted to.
After the record label party, there was a small gathering at his place that he had organized. He had been very stingy about who he gave invitations to, so he ended up with five people hanging out in his living room. His sofa was three sides of a rectangle with a large table in the middle, so they all fit very well. There were snacks and booze, and, best of all, actual fun. He had never liked the big parties his label threw every time he put out an album. They reminded him too much of the parties his parents had thrown once.
Marlene McKinnon and Dorcas Meadowes sat in one of the corners of the couch, talking to each other. They were in a band together. On stage, they sang together, but they produced most of their music on their own with the help of Peter occasionally. They were also the openers for his newest tour.
Pandora, an indie singer who didn’t get half the recognition she deserved, was talking to Mary with a drink in her hand. She had won a Grammy for Best New Artist a year ago but had yet to put out any new music since then. She and Sirius had been friends for years, having met at a smaller festival they both played at.
Sirius was about to go talk to Peter, who was typing aggressively into his phone, when there was a knock on the door. He scanned the room, taking a mental count of everyone that was already in the living room. They were the only people he had invited, so he walked to the door suspiciously. He pulled the door open to see a familiar face, and suddenly, he was being engulfed in a hug.
He laughed almost all of the left over air out of his lungs as James squeezed him tighter. “Mate, you’re suffocating me,” he choked out, but hugged James back all the same. It took a couple more seconds before James let go, and Sirius couldn’t help but beam at his best friend.
"Sorry, I got a bit carried away there. I’ve just missed you.” He had a wide smile, and his hair was a little longer than he usually kept it, but it was just as messy as always.
Sirius stepped aside, letting James into the hallway that led to the living room. The others couldn’t see them yet, and Sirius selfishly wanted to keep it that way. Sirius loved James; he really did, and he could easily admit it to everyone but James. He wasn’t the most comfortable when it came to outwardly admitting his feelings to people that he actually cared about.
“I’ve missed you, too.” He studied James and how he stood tall without his crutches. He wouldn’t have known that James’ had lost one of the best parts of his life had his eyes not been emptier than he had ever seen them. “It’s nice to see you standing.”
James closed the door behind him, and Sirius noticed that he didn’t have a bag with him. It occurred to him that he didn’t know how long James had been in New York. “It’s nice to stand,” James joked, placing a hand on Sirius’ shoulder and pulling him into another hug.
“How long have you been here?” he asked, knowing that James wasn’t tired because he knew how James acted when he was jetlagged. He would become adorably clingy, but he would also fall asleep anywhere. No, he had had time to adjust his sleep schedule. He looked well rested.
James rubbed at the back of his neck nervously. “About half a week,” he answered sheepishly.
Sirius smacked James’ stomach with the back of his hand quickly. “You git. You’ve been here four days, and you didn’t tell me?” He acted much more offended than he actually was, but it did hurt a little that he hadn’t been told James was back.
“I’ve been busy with auditions, and I know the album came out today, so I know you’ve been busy, too. I swear I would have told you, but I also know you would have pushed off whatever marketing you’ve been doing to hang out, and I couldn’t let you do that,” James explained, and Sirius hated how well he knew him.
“Auditions, huh?”
James began to smile wider than before, but then shut it down completely. “I do have some news about that, but today’s your day. It can wait until tomorrow.”
Nodding, Sirius accepted his answer even though he was desperate to hear whatever James was withholding, but he also knew that if he argued, he’d get nowhere. The wonders of experience. “Alright, then. Well, the others will be glad to see you.”
They walked into the living room, and the moment Peter saw James, he leapt off the couch and ran toward him. Sirius had to intersect to remind Peter that while James could walk, he was still recovering from his injury. Peter did go in for a hug again; however, this time gentler. Mary was behind him and also hugged James.
Mary and James weren’t as close as Sirius and Mary were, but they had known each other for years at this point because of Sirius. Mary had gone to the hospital along with Sirius to make sure both of them were okay, which he hated because people should have been worrying about James, not how Sirius was taking his best friend losing his dream. They should have focused on the person who lost their dream, but Mary knew Sirius, and she knew he was going through it as well. But by the time James had woken from his surgery, he had shoved all that sadness and anxiousness down and had just been there for him.
Sirius introduced James to Marlene and Dorcas. He already knew Pandora from many of these types of parties. Sirius spent the better part of the night feeling much better than he had before James showed up. A little after two in the morning, people started to trickle out until only James and Sirius remained.
“You staying over?” Sirius asked as he cleaned up the discarded cups on the coffee table.
James helped pick up bottles and take them to the kitchen, where the trash was. “Yeah, it’s probably not a great idea for me to leave. I don’t want to strain my leg too much.”
Sirius nodded, beginning to load the dishwasher so it could run over night. He had finally done some grocery shopping online; of course, he couldn’t go to a grocery store without five thousand people coming up to him anymore. But he wouldn’t complain; after all, this was all he had wished for in life. He wouldn’t take it for granted.
“Hey, so what’s your news?” Sirius asked. “It’s technically tomorrow, so it's not my day anymore.”
James sighed like he didn’t agree with Sirius, but he couldn’t seem to keep the news in, so he folded. “I kind of have a role,” he confessed, looking up at Sirius, who couldn’t stop smiling.
“That’s amazing,” he exclaimed. “What is it?”
Looking at the floor again, James had an embarrassed flush on his face. He was a very confident man, probably the most confident person Sirius had ever met, but the moment it came to actual accomplishments, he was the most humble person you could find. “The love interest in some movie that’s predicted to hit big. I don’t remember most of the details. I just skimmed the email. But I’m going to be an actor, Sirius,” he said it like it couldn’t believe it.
Sirius understood. When his second album broke its first record, he hadn’t believed it. Then, when he had to accept the fact that it had, he thought, Well, if I broke it, then it couldn’t have been that hard. He learned later that it had been that hard, and people actually liked his music. It wasn’t just an unrealistic aspiration anymore. Sirius had gone further than anyone could have predicted, and he still didn’t believe it, even years later.
“You’re going to do great, James. They’re going to love you,” he said, and he meant it with every fiber of his being because he had never met a person who didn’t love James Potter.