the house is massive. it’s two stories — shorter than grimmauld place — and spans almost an entire cliff side. the exterior, horizontal paneling like the muggles adore, is a sterling white smelling of fresh paint. the shutters and the shingles are a lovely powder blue, and the front door a vibrant cyan, and the windowsills filled with self-caring flowers, the entire house is closed in by a deck painted the same powder blue as the shutters and shingles, and it’s got two sets of stairs leading to both the front and the back entrance.
it stands in ballintoy — a nice cliff side town in northern ireland — far from the prying eyes of muggle villagers, yet not far enough to make a trip to the shops impossible. there’s only one floo in the home — a fireplace against the far wall of the massive sitting room, adorned with odd trinkets and trophies from a shared childhood. there aren’t many of them to decorate with, in all honesty, but it’s a homely touch.
the walls in most of the rooms are the same powder blue found on the exterior. the carpet in the bedrooms is a stony grey, and the hardwood in the other portions of the house are a deep mahogany. the bathrooms — all three of them — hold bathtub-shower combinations of white tile with black metal framing. the counters in the kitchen are the same black as the ones in the loos, and the sinks are the same white ceramic with black metal for the tap. there’s a game room upstairs and a library on the ground floor. a basement drenched so firmly in wards that it almost blocks in the fumes from the potions meant to brew there. an attic holding every conceivable piece of furniture and dark artifact from grimmauld place.
it’s a massive house. the lawn outside is just as large — it stretches the same distance in every direction, bordered by three boulders and a massive willow tree. just beyond the tree is a cliff that drops off abruptly into a rocky valley, and beneath that is the town of ballintoy.
sirius walks the grounds with a sort of knot in his chest. the air smells of sea salt and just the slightest hint of floral essence from the planters in the exterior windowsills. there are so many shades of blue contrasting with the deep cerulean of the ocean and the vibrant green of the plant life around. echoing in the distance is the sound of waves crashing against rock and marine birds cawing and villagers bustling about their mundane lives.
the house is perfect, in sirius’ opinion. he’s not even sure why he’d built it. it’s been years at this point since he’d last discussed it with his broody little brother — they’d been six and seven, and they’d drawn up blueprints with the writing utensils they’d hidden in the attic. sirius had wanted a townhouse, only in shades of yellow and orange compared to the dreary black and emerald of grimmauld place. he still hasn’t gotten that townhouse, but he’s got a flat with the man he adores more than life itself. he’s sure the townhouse may come later.
regulus’ house, the one he’d drawn up blueprints for at six years old, stands proudly in front of sirius. he blinks back the tears in his eyes and exhales shakily.
he hasn’t seen regulus in nearly a year now, not since the defeat of voldemort. not since regulus had stormed into the potters’ and destroyed the dark lord in their entryway. he’s not sure exactly why he’s been avoiding regulus — though he has an inkling of a feeling that the main issue is the mark on his left forearm. it’s hard to look at it, even now, even when his brother had gone through hell and returned with the dark lord’s head on a metaphorical spike.
he supposes an entire home built from the grass up should suffice as a decent enough apology. he still hasn’t quite learned how to do those yet, but he is making an effort.
regulus is meant to arrive within the hour via port key, if the little git actually follows through with it. merlin knows if sirius were in his shoes, he’d toss both the letter and the accompanying portkey into the nearest fireplace and be done with it. he’s got hope in his little brother, though. he’s got hope for their relationship, even after all the bloodshed and heartbreak that’s perspired between them.
sirius takes a seat on the front steps, and he waits. and waits. and waits. he waits until the sun has joined the horizon, and then waits a little longer, turning the house key over in his trembling fingers.
he hasn’t managed to shake the tremor in his left hand in the years since his mother has used the cruciatus against him. it still shakes and jerks, sometimes violently enough to turn over an entire cup of tea. sometimes violently enough to toss a quill clear across the room. he wouldn’t change a thing, though — he’d gladly take all those curses to the chest if it meant sparing regulus, again and again, forever and ever, because regulus is always, always his little brother.
he waits another hour past the time frame he’d given regulus, long enough for the town’s lights below to dim. long enough for crickets to sing their songs in the back garden. long enough for the stars to wave hello. and then he waits longer.
he waits and waits and waits, and regulus doesn’t come. he waits until he gets uncomfortable, and then he curls up as padfoot and slumbers on the front steps. he waits until the sun rises, and then he turns back into sirius and he waits some more.
at this point, he knows regulus isn’t coming. he clutches desperately at the key and stares at the horizon where the sun has begun its rounds of hellos and good mornings. he rests his elbows on his knees and hangs his head and fucking weeps. he weeps for the little boy who’d taken his first steps toward sirius. he weeps for the child who couldn’t pronounce s sounds until he was eight. who couldn’t tie his shoes without kreacher’s help until he was nine. who cried when he was tired and crawled into bed with sirius at night and spoke french like it was some secret language between brothers. the boy who’d lost his first tooth and showed it to sirius with glimmering eyes and a gap between his front teeth. the boy who hadn’t grown into his ears until he was nearly thirteen.
he weeps and weeps and weeps for that little boy, and for that little boy’s big brother, who loves him so much it feels like he might burst with it. he cries for the big brother still trapped and screaming in his chest, begging for his little brother and begging for nights in the bay window and begging to just let me hold him again, please please, i’ll do anything to hug my baby again. he weeps until the sun kisses the clouds overhead, until the village resumes its jovial chatter, until his stomach screams for lunch and his tongue is almost dry. and then he sits and he stares and he turns the key over, again and again, forever and ever, until he’s sure to turn to stone on these very porch steps.
“you’re still here.”
sirius’ head jolts up. the big brother inside his chest wails with relief that he’s sure shows on the outside because regulus is here. regulus came. my baby is here.
regulus is taller than he’d been at fifteen, now standing well over sirius’ head and broadened by lean muscle and sporting stubble on his chin to mark that he’s a man now. his hair is longer than sirius has ever seen it — curling around his biceps now, messy and unkempt and speaking volumes louder than the aged bags beneath his eyes and the rumpled robes around his torso ever could.
sirius looks at his brother, now twenty-one and shadowed by the weight of the world on his shoulders, and he sees that six-year-old with the missing tooth crying over laces he can’t tie. in this grown man’s face, he sees the face of a precious infant wrapped up in baby blue blankets, staring up at him with big grey eyes and cheeks chubbier than a cherub’s.
“i told you i would be,” sirius punches out. regulus inclines his head in a way that allows his hair to hide his face, a gesture sirius knows is meant to hide a smile.
“so you did,” regulus hums. he sounds just as fractured as sirius feels on the inside. because on one hand, this is the man that joined an army of supremacists and killed people like his friends and tortured muggles for sport, and on the other, this is the little boy he’d taught sign language so they could communicate through silencing charms.
regulus looks up then, and his eyes go wide and misty like they do when he’s seconds from breaking. he looks to sirius with something like reverence wrapped up in those stony grey irises, and takes a staggering step back.
“you didn’t,” regulus says, his chest visibly heaving. sirius laughs wetly, holding up the key he’d kept in his hands for hours. it shines in the low light of the setting sun.
“i did,” sirius says. regulus huffs a disbelieving laugh, his eyes darting between the house and sirius. “i even got the showers, and the mirrors, and the oddly specific collector’s item wizard’s chess set you wanted for the game room.”
“oh,” regulus huffs. sirius softens under the weight of his little brother’s astonishment. he looks gentle, the way he did when he was eight and sirius had snuck him a biscuit from the kitchen for his birthday, looking at sirius with that same unmasked glimmer of awe.
“i got it all, reg,” sirius says around the lump in his throat. regulus nods, looking a bit dumb with the haze over his eyes and the way his hands haven’t moved from where they hover over his chest. regulus is frozen, the way he always used to do as a child when he couldn’t make a decision. his eyes bounce around the same, too, planning path after path inside that ginormous brain of his.
“i-” regulus says, then abruptly cuts off. he shakes his head and his jaw tightens, the muscle there fluttering beneath rapidly flushing skin. even that is an echo of their childhood — reg had always clenched his jaw when he was trying not to cry. sirius may weep again.
the man standing before him, looking at him with such molten care in his gaze, is the same little brother he’d loved once upon a time. they’ve got the same hair, the same face, the same mannerisms, so they must not be much different. the regulus he’s seeing now is not the regulus beneath their mother’s thumb. this regulus is not that regulus. his tongue isn’t barbed, his words not set to kill, his hands not clenched to fists and his spells not warped to curses.
this is the gentle boy who loves cats and adores kreacher and writes poetry about the sun and the grass. this is the weepy little tot who cries when he’s tired and sticks his hands in sirius’ jumpers because his fingers are cold and tries to give kreacher a scarf because his shabby old clothing looks drafty. he looks at this regulus and he sees his little brother — always, always his little brother.
“would you like to see the inside?” sirius asks, extending the arm holding the house key. regulus staggers forward a step and accepts the little gold trinket, gazing at the house and at sirius with a sense of worship on his face. “furniture’s a little mismatched, but i figured you wouldn’t mind much.”
“i don’t,” regulus says breathily. they enter the house together, coming across the shaggy red rug in the entryway and the painting of the sea beside the door, and move into the sitting room, sporting a mismatched couch and armchair and a bookshelf piled high with all of regulus’ favourite books from their childhood. regulus spins as he moves through the house, taking in every room with the eagerness of a small child, and visibly releases a breath through every doorway.
the sun setting in the distance casts a soft orange glow across mahogany and powder blue and slate grey. it leaves a stain on the black countertops and the white sink, and in tandem, the tears drying on regulus’ face leave a permanent mark on sirius’ insides. the big brother in his chest pounds at his ribs, crying for his little brother, crying to be released and to love and to hold and to cherish.
it’s as regulus moves into the master bedroom — filled with jane austens and charles dickens’ and shakespeares, adorned by portraits of life and of death and of everything in between, piled high with wool throw blankets and knitted quilts from remus’ mother hope — that sirius acknowledges the truth he’s known all along.
that big brother was never trapped. it’s never been a prisoner of his hardened affection, made slave by his hatred of his baby, because he’s never hated regulus. never, not for a single moment. regulus has always been and always will be the center of the universe, in any way that regulus will allow it. if it means to hold and to kiss and to protect, he’ll do it. it means to hate and to curse and to ignore, he’ll do that too.
however regulus wants him is how he’ll get him, because there is nothing sirius wouldn’t do to appease his baby brother. if regulus told him to jump, he’d ask how high. if regulus asked him to cry, he’d weep for days. if regulus asked him to fight, he’d charge in with weapons drawn acting every bit of the soldier he is for regulus. if regulus asked him to die, he’d splay himself out and expose his throat like a good sacrifice.
“thank you,” regulus whispers meekly. he tugs sirius into the shortest hug known to man, and for a moment, it feels like coming home. sirius feels every bit of homesickness he’s ever felt cured within this odd touch of arms and chests, in this awkward display of unsureness and fear and vulnerability. he feels every ounce of love for his brother surge to his throat and lodge itself there.
every breath he takes is for regulus. every beat of his heart is for regulus. everything he has ever done and ever will do is for regulus, and he understands that now. he understands and he accepts and he gives regulus the key to the house he’d built for him. he holds out a hammer and a nail and a proposition for a future. he cups his palms and within them rests a thousand puzzle pieces, a thousand possibilities, every chance regulus could ever take on him. he holds his heart in his fingers and gives it back to regulus, because it was regulus’ to begin with and he’s not sure what to do with it anymore.
because regulus is always, always his little brother and there is absolutely no universe where his bones aren’t carved with his name.