little brother
Really, Sirius should have been more prepared. After all, he had seen all of Regulus’ movies and stalked his social media on a semi-regular basis. Sirius should have been ready to see Regulus, but he looked different in person. He was real in person. Regulus wasn’t just an idea or a memory when he was in front of Sirius; no, he was real. Flesh and blood, the same as Sirius’.
And what were the goddamn chances that Regulus was right next to Remus Lupin?
Sirius had shoved the feelings deep inside him until he couldn’t find the traces. He had made it through saying goodbye to Effie and Monty. He had made it through staring embarrassingly at Remus. He had made it through the concert. He had made it through talking to however many people and accepting compliments and job-well-dones. Sirius had made it until the door to his apartment closed.
James had come in for a glass of water before he went to his apartment, and Sirius really didn’t want to be a burden, but he couldn’t control it when every overwhelming emotion stampeded through him.
There was a physical weight on his chest. He couldn’t breathe. Sirius fell against the wall in the entrance hallway and slid until he sat on the ground. If he had felt more stable, he may have laughed about how cinematic it was. Holding a hand at his mouth to contain the sobs so James wouldn’t hear from the kitchen, Sirius sobbed.
He sobbed because it had looked like his brother had seen a ghost. Regulus had seen a ghost because Sirius was dead to him. He had always known this. He had known that when he ran, Regulus would hate him. Sirius had wanted to take him along, but he had been sixteen with nowhere to go. At least Regulus had food and a roof in that house.
“Sirius?” James called from the kitchen.
Taking a deep breath, Sirius pulled himself together. He could go on and cry himself to sleep. James had his parents to go home to. Sirius had already freaked out in front of James today and so many times before. James deserved to go home with his heart light and not have to worry about Sirius any more than he already was.
So, Sirius wiped his face and took a steadying breath. A split second after James laid eyes on Sirius, his face fell. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” Sirius muttered, trying his best to convince himself of that as well as James.
“Don’t bullshit me,” James said, not unkindly but firmly. He stepped toward Sirius until Sirius had to look up to meet his eyes. “What’s wrong?”
Sirius didn’t make it one syllable in before he crashed into James, holding onto him like he had been holding onto his grief for years. Then the sobs started again; this time, Sirius knew he couldn’t pull himself together. He was all loose. Parts of him were around the kitchen, where he had broken apart. Sirius hadn’t been whole in a long time, and the glue was finally drying out.
James didn’t even say a word. He just held Sirius, cradling his head with one hand and rubbing circles on Sirius’ back with the other one. The only thing muffling Sirius’ cries was James’ chest, and his shirt must have been soaked by this point.
Regulus had been in front of him. He was so grown up now. Sirius knew that’s what time did. He had seen photos of Regulus. But when he was before him, all Sirius could think about was how he had missed Regulus growing up. Sirius had missed everything because he had left.
Everything he had done after, every accomplishment he had made, was tainted because to have gotten there, he had to leave. To get everything Sirius had, he had abandoned his only family. And Regulus had stared at Sirius with hate in his eyes. That alone had broken him beyond measure.
Sirius didn’t know how many dozen minutes had passed by the time his tears ran out. Not because he was done crying but because there was simply nothing left in him. He was all cried out. So when Sirius pulled away, he didn’t look at James before he went to get a glass of water.
He just felt so empty.
After chugging two glasses of water, Sirius finally turned to James, who was patiently waiting for him to explain. James would hate him, too, for not telling him about Regulus. Sirius had been keeping secrets for almost a decade. They weren’t small secrets like how he didn’t like licorice, no this was the biggest thing in his life, and he had told no one.
“I have a–” Sirius tried. “I have a–” He couldn’t get the words out. “Reg–”
“What, Sirius?” James pressed him on gently.
Sirius swallowed. His throat was dry again. “Regulus,” he whispered for the first time in years.
“Regulus?” James breathed, staring at Sirius like he already knew.
He stared at the tiled kitchen floor. His hands restless. “I have a… brother, James,” Sirius forced the words out because they would not go willingly, never moving his gaze from the tile. He was ashamed. Oh, he was so ashamed.
“You have a brother?” James echoed. Sirius heard footsteps until he could see James’ legs in front of him. “Sirius,” James said, forcing him to look up. “Is Regulus Black your brother?”
* * *
It took one shake of Sirius’ head for James to freak the fuck out. He had known. James had always known there was something weird in the resemblance between the two of them. James had always known somewhere deep in his soul.
“I saw him, James,” Sirius managed to get out, his voice shaking. “He hates me.”
James didn’t take another second before Sirius was in his arms again. Sirius was very obviously in need of James, so James couldn’t freak out here. He could put a pin in every thought racing through his head until Sirius was at least as close to okay as he could get.
“He doesn’t hate you,” James comforted, but he couldn’t know if that was true. He couldn’t know if Regulus hated Sirius in the way he hated James.
Sirius shook his head against James. “He does. I abandoned him,” James heard against his chest, and he was torn to a million pieces. “He was fourteen, and I left him in that house. Alone. I left him with them. He was a kid.”
The words registered in James’ head only a second before he pulled away an inch so he could force Sirius to make eye contact with him. “Sirius, you were a kid, too.”
“I was older.”
“You were still young.”
Hastily, Sirius pulled away and quickly moved to the living room, where he picked up his remote. He navigated to his purchased movies, where James saw every single movie Regulus had been in. There would be one with his face on it soon. James couldn’t tell him that now. He knew Sirius better than anyone, yet he still didn’t know how Sirius would react. How had James never managed to tell Sirius that his costar was Regulus?
“I never stopped loving him. Every song was about him. He wasn’t a metaphor; he was real.” Tears slid down his face as he looked at James, a couch between them. “And I couldn’t tell you because I was so ashamed for leaving. I should have taken him with me. I should’ve–”
“You couldn’t have known. You had nothing, nowhere to go.”
“But I found you.”
James shook his head. “You didn’t know I was waiting.”
“I should’ve.”
“You couldn’t have,” James urged, then walked to where the remote was because he really couldn’t focus on Sirius with the way Regulus was staring through the screen. “Sirius, you were a child who was terrified, and you needed to get out. So you did it the best way you knew how. You cannot blame yourself for doing the best you could.”
Sirius just looked deflated. “I left him, James. There’s no one else to blame.”
* * *
It was almost morning by the time James got back to his apartment. His eyes were already trying to force him to fall asleep by the time he had his keys in the door. James did his best not to make much noise as he moved through his apartment. He felt like a teenager again, trying to sneak back into his house after whatever he had done during the night. James was just about to head into his room when he heard a door open behind him.
“James?” the familiar voice of his mother asked quietly.
“Hey.” He turned around and saw as she surveyed how he was in yesterday’s clothes and looked particularly disheveled. James saw the conclusions Effie came to. “Mom–”
She lifted her arms in peace. “I’m not going to judge you where you’ve been–”
“I was with Sirius,” he intervened quickly.
Effie stopped just outside the door to the guest bedroom James’ parents shared and closed the door so Monty wouldn’t be awoken. Effie had always been an early riser, and Monty loved to sleep in.
“You were with Sirius this late?” Effie had always had the unnerving ability to see through to truths James hadn’t even hinted at. Sometimes, truths he couldn’t see. “Was something wrong?”
“Um,” he stalled. Maybe it was how tired he was or just the fact that James had never been good at keeping things to himself, but he told his mother everything.
They had moved to the couch in James’ living room at some point and had mugs of tea. James told his mother about how he had met Regulus, how Regulus acted toward him on set, how Sirius had kept the fact that he had a brother from James, and how he felt so stupid not to have seen it. Especially the way he had comforted both of them on the same night.
“And I know I shouldn’t be mad at him for not telling me because I know why he didn’t, but it feels like he didn’t trust me enough,” James ranted.
Effie had a sad type of smile on her face. “I think he trusts you; I mean, he did tell you, didn’t he? But he was just trying not to think about Regulus,” she said, a hand on James’ knee.
“But the movies–”
“It could have been his way of making sure Regulus was okay when he failed at not thinking about him. He said he was ashamed. James, I think he was scared that you’d be disappointed in him, and your opinion is the opinion he values the most.”
“He’s going to hate me when he finds out I’m working with Regulus,” James sighed, rubbing his tired eyes with his hands.
“Are you going to tell him?” There was no bias in those words, no hint of what Effie thought James should have done.
James thought about it for a moment. “I can’t now, can I? I’d be kicking him when he’s down. It’d only hurt him more to know,” he said, searching for answers in his mother’s eyes.
“Sweetheart, it’s going to hurt him no matter when you tell him.”
“So, if I never tell him, he’ll never get hurt?” James joked, but Effie just gave him a knowing look. “I’ll give him a week or two and then see how he’s doing. I don’t want to add more than he can handle,” he sighed.
His mother paused for a moment. “Does Regulus know you’re friends with Sirius?” Effie asked, and James had never thought about that. He reached through his mind for anything that would hint at that, but there was nothing except…
“Do you think Regulus hates me because of Sirius? I mean, there are those articles every few months joking about how we may or may not be brothers. Maybe he hates Sirius, so he hates me by extension,” James rambled, trying to make sense of a chaotic situation.
Effie shook her head. “I don’t think so, James. You said Regulus didn’t run from you at the first moment he saw you in that bathroom. If your connection to Sirius was the first thing that comes to his mind or comes to his mind at all, he wouldn’t have stayed so long, especially if he was breaking down because of seeing Sirius,” she explained. It all sounded like it made sense in the way only she could make difficult things simple.
“Sirius messed up the lyrics, you know? Instead of saying, ‘And my sister’s when I cry,’ he said, ‘And my brother’s when I cry.’ I hope no one noticed, but they probably did.”
Taking a deep breath, Effie nodded. “I noticed. It didn’t surprise me that Sirius has a brother. The way that boy came into our lives, remorseful like he had lost something, and it was clear from the start that it wasn’t his parents or the way his life had been,” Effie said as if it hurt her to see the shape he had been in.
“Why didn’t you say anything if you knew?”
“It wasn’t my place to tell,” she said softly, and then a creaking door in the hallway captured both of their attention.
Monty slowly walked into their view, dragging a hand across his face. “Morning,” he greeted, then walked to the kitchen to start the coffee maker. He groggily made his way back into the living room and paused when he saw James. Monty blinked a few times. “Why are you in the same clothes as yesterday?”
“I was out all night,” James said in response, only thinking about how if his father was awake, then it was really morning. He hadn’t even noticed how the sun had risen. James needed to go to sleep.
This seemed to perk up Monty. “Who was she? Or he? We support you, of course,” Monty exclaimed, more excited than James had seen him in a long time.
James had gotten his love for romance from his father. They both enjoyed extravagant love stories that triumphed over all, and his father had gotten it. James supposed that was why Monty believed in true love because he had it. His parents’ relationship was the reason James continued to believe in love, even when he lived in a cruel world of hook-ups and commitment issues.
Monty had never been quiet about wanting James to have a big love story. James knew that his father just wanted him to be happy, and while he had supported all of the efforts James had put into making his dreams come true, Monty had been worried about how the only thing in James’ life was soccer. He had never said it, of course, but James was able to see it in his eyes. Monty had thought that James was missing out on other aspects of life because of his work.
“Sirius,” James responded, rolling amused eyes at his father’s reaction.
“You and Sirius?” Monty gasped. If he hadn’t been awake before, that had done it.
Effie laughed. “No, Fleamont, get a hold of yourself. James just spent the night at Sirius’ place like best friends do,” she said, and James silently thanked her for not telling Monty about Regulus and Sirius. James didn’t want everyone to know.
“But is there anyone?” Monty asked, hopefully.
“No,” James replied.
Monty gave a disappointed look and went to the kitchen to get his fresh cup of coffee. The moment he had cleared the room, Effie turned to James. “Are you sure?” she asked, eyeing him in a way he couldn’t read.
“Yes,” James insisted, but something in his mother’s eyes told him she didn’t believe him. “I’m going to bed,” he announced, and to no protest from his parents, James went to his bedroom.
After he had stripped all of his clothes besides his underwear and was under his covers, James figured that it was probably a good idea to text Sirius to ensure he was doing alright on his own. James had gotten a few hours of sleep at Sirius’ place, but it wasn’t quality sleep, and his neck hurt from the awkward position he had fallen out of consciousness.
James: Is there anything I can do?
He was about to put the phone on the nightstand and go to sleep when he felt it buzz in his hand. James turned over the phone and saw Sirius had replied.
Sirius: You could always give me Remus’ number.
Maybe it was because James was really very sleep-deprived, or perhaps it was because he felt bad about how Sirius had thought that he couldn’t trust James. Whatever it was that made James forget how Remus was best friends with Regulus was at fault for how James only hesitated for a second before he sent over ten numbers to Sirius and promptly fell asleep.