I want you to want to
What if we’re crazy? What if we’re crazy? What if we’re crazy? The question now seems to be the only thing Regulus can think about when sitting next to James in potions. What if we’re crazy?
For the last three days, James has been his smiling happy self. He would smile at Regulus when he got to class, anytime Slughorn would stop talking he would look over at smile, and when he left class he seemed to be slower to pack up his books. Is this all in my head? Regulus asks himself as Sluhorn winds down their lesson for the day. Has he always done this?
What if we’re crazy? Pandora had said. If they were that meant he might not be imagining anything, which was somehow more terrifying.
Today’s Friday, that means that only one more day exists between now and the party. Slughorn closes out his lecture just as the bells ring and Regulus moves to quickly get out of there as fast as he can. Last time he’d been slow James had asked him to a party and since then Regulus has had a very hard time calming his heart rate around him, not that it had been particularly easy before. Luckily for him James seems to have zoned out and by the time he started putting his books away Regulus was already leaving.
Regulus took a sigh of relief when he got out of the classroom. Staying away from James Potter before that party was the best option right now. Ignore it and no one gets hurt.
“Regulus!” James yells from behind him, spoke too soon, he thinks. James runs up behind him. “Hey!”
He was smiling and it took every bit of strength Regulus had not to stare right at him where undoubtedly he could end up smiling too. Just keep walking and frowning, Regulus tells himself, and don’t think about James’ beautiful face or his perfect lips or- No! Why is he still standing next to me?
“What do you want?” Regulus asks, channeling all his strength to keep from falling apart. If this is how he does in a hallway, what the hell is he going to do at a party?
“Nothing,” James answers, reflecting from Regulus’ snark a pure sunshine smile and Regulus once again has the wish that he could just kiss that stupidly happy, beautiful smile. “Just wanted to say I’ll see you at the party this weekend!”
James just kept smiling, Regulus isn’t sure if he said anything else but James walked away still smiling.
Regulus is fucked. He can’t function with a minimum sentence conversation in a hallway, there is no way he can manage seeing James at a party, dancing, drunk, stupid, beautiful. He won’t survive, he’s fucked.
______
“I’m not going,” Regulus says.
“Yes, you are,” Pandora responds. “I’m not going without you.”
10 minutes before the party and Regulus has never heard his heart beat this fast before. James had said to just dress casually. Pandora had on a pale blue short sleeved dress that had this flowy fabric over it, almost metallic like, it went down to her knees and the silver matched the wings on her butterfly earrings. Regulus stuck to plain black pants and a dark green pullover. They were both anxious enough for tonight so they’d promised each other to wear their favorite clothes, the last thing they needed was to be uncomfortable all night. Regulus didn’t want to think about what ‘dress casually’ meant in terms of what James would be wearing.
“This is a bad idea,” Regulus continues, as they walk towards Gryffindor Tower. Barty, Evan, and Dorcas were meeting them there.
“It’s a big party,” Pandora says, as they approach their friends, waiting just around the corner from Gryffindor. “Might not even get the chance to talk with her.”
“Are you talking to me or you?” Regulus asks, noting her use of ‘her’.
“Them,” Pandora clarifies, but Regulus knows she’s focusing on Lily just as much as he’s focusing on James, as they were both trying to forget what those people seem to be to each other. “Besides, we can always just hide in a corner.”
“No, you can’t!” Dorcas says, pushing off from the wall she’d been leaning on, followed by Barty and Evan. “You are going to that party like it is a party! No corners.”
“We can always just leave.” Regulus points out.
“We took your dorm key,” Barty says, holding up Regulus’ keys.
“I can pick a lock.” Regulus says, noting to himself that he needs to start locking his things up.
“We took your wand,” Evan says, holding Regulus’ wand. The two of them looked quite smug while Reg kept his annoyed look on both of them. “Yours too Dora.”
“How?” Pandora questions, as her brother pulls out another wand.
“We’ll never reveal our secrets,” Dorcas says, putting an arm around Pandora pulling her forward, Barty doing the same with Regulus. “Let’s go!”
From the second he walked through the door Regulus could feel his stomach doing somersaults. James wasn’t exactly hard to spot, seeing as he and Lily were already laughing together. Even from the other side of the room his stupid face, his stupid hair, and a stupid bright red sweater that was somehow the most annoying and the most adorable thing he could be wearing, looks perfect. And Regulus is fucked.
Sirius notices their entrance, despite the blasting music and crowded common room. “Hey, Reg,” he says. “Hi, Pandora.” Dorcas had already found Marlene and Barty and Evan had wandered off somewhere. Regulus tried to focus his eyes on his brother but his best friend was right over his shoulder, he could see Pandora doing the same with Lily. He’s quick to move his eyes back to Sirius when James looks over. “Well, enjoy the party, I'll talk with you later.” His brother gave them a quick wave before leaving for who Regulus assumes is Remus Lupin, who is currently failing at pretending not to be staring at Sirius.
Regulus and Pandora floated into the party, trying to avoid the dancing but mostly avoid James and Lily.
____
“Ok, that’s three,” Pandora says, they were standing by a table full of drinks each holding their own cup, the table was just on the edge of a corner so they couldn’t technically be scolded by Dorcas for hiding in a corner.
“Three what?” Regulus asks, taking a sip from his cup, they’d been at the party for just under an hour and he was just starting to feel calm about being in the same room as James Potter.
“Times James has looked over here in the last 5 minutes,” Pandora says, her words send that small feeling of hope back to Regulus’ heart.
“No he hasn’t,” Regulus says, he’d spent the last hour trying to avoid all glances at James.
“Reg-” Pandora says.
“No, Dora,” Regulus explains, “I would know if he was doing that.”
“How? You’ve been avoiding him all night?” She asks, and he can’t lie he had just been thinking about that himself.
“You’ve been avoiding Lily all night,” Regulus retorts.
“Lily didn’t invite me here!”
Regulus stops arguing and allows his eyes the slightest glance over to James who was laughing with Remus on the other side of the room.
“Go talk to him,” Pandora prompts. “I’m going to go dance with Cas, talk to him.” She wanders off grabbing on to Dorcas’ arm and the two of them start dancing.
Regulus seems to not be able to move, Pandora’s gone but as much as he wants his feet to pick up and move him toward James, his mind seems to have other ideas. His stomach feels heavy and he can’t pull his eyes off the other boy but he also can’t move toward him. He’s still stuck staring when Sirius slides up beside him.
“Hello,” Sirius slurs, clearly drunk, at least he’s having fun, Regulus thinks. “Whatcha doing?”
“Nothing,” Regulus says, taking another sip from his drink and pulling his eyes away from James, hoping that his brother was too drunk to notice him staring.
“Ohhh!” Sirius stretches out, like he’s made a grand discovery. “Is this about the crush thing?”
“What?!” Regulus says, feeling an enormous amount of panic rush through him and causing him to nearly spit out his drink. “What ‘crush thing’?”
“James.” Sirius states, as if this is the most obvious answer in the world and he’s shocked that Regulus didn’t know this.
“What?!” Regulus repeats. Did he hear that right? Did his brother really say that? Maybe he’s just more drunk than previously thought. “What are you talking about?”
“What are you talking about?” Sirius says. “I’m talking about James, your crush on James.”
“What?!” That just seems to be the only word Regulus is capable of forming right now. But really how was he supposed to process the fact that his brother knew that he has a crush on his brother’s own best friend!?
“Well you’ve been avoiding my parties for so long, I thought that might have been because of James.” Sirius explains, making little sense the more he spoke, he was definitely drunk.
“How long have you known?” Regulus asks, feeling embarrassed, his brother knows that he likes James. “How did you know?” Millions upon millions of questions were flooding his brain.
“Long time, it was obvious.” Apparently Sirius isn’t very specific when he’s drunk. “Don’t worry I didn’t tell anyone.” That gave Regulus a sign of relief, not that he’d thought his brother would have told anyone, even though he’s drunk Regulus could hear the genuine care in his brother’s voice. “Do you think this chair is sturdy?” Sirius asks, snapping Regulus’ attention away from what he had just learned and over to a random chair Sirius was staring at next to them that truly didn’t seem to really belong in the room.
“It looks like a chair,” Regulus says, only half paying attention to the random chair, still thinking about James.
“Anyway,” Sirius says, forgetting about the chair for a second. “I’m glad you came, see Gryffindor parties aren’t all bad, aren’t you glad I invited you?”
“You didn’t invite me,” Regulus says, James invited him, he feels strangely protective over his hope at the moment.
“Well, yeah I’d said I wanted you to come and it was technically Lily’s idea for James to ask since you’d see him first,” Sirius says, he truly didn’t intent for his words to feel like a hammer in Regulus’ gut, he’s drunk and his attention seemed to be drifting back to the chair. “Team effort, I guess.”
“Right,” Regulus mumbles, becoming less focused on his brother and just staring at his feet. James didn’t invite him. Well, he did but it wasn’t by choice, Sirius had asked him to. Did he even really want him there? No. Apparently Pandora was wrong, he isn’t crazy. James doesn’t love him.
Just as that looming thought enters the foreground of his mind Regulus hears a loud laughing coming from somewhere in the party. James. He’s still talking with Remus and apparently something was utterly hilarious. James meets Regulus’ eyes from the other side of the room and his lips immediately form a smile. No! Regulus decides. James Potter doesn’t just get to smile at him and ‘invite’ him to parties. No, this was over, he isn’t going to torture himself with meaningless delusions anymore. He’s going to tell James how he feels and then he’s never going to talk to him again.
Before his brain could let him think of a coherent plan he was walking towards James and Remus.
“Hi,” James says, as Regulus comes up next to them. Merlin, he’s beautiful, Regulus thinks.
“Remus,” Regulus says, ignoring James and turning to Remus. “You might want to go save your boyfriend, he’s about to die.”
“What?” Remus asks, immediately looking confused, he and James turn their heads until they find Sirius attempting to drunkenly climb up on the previously mentioned seemingly sturdy random chair. “Oh, crap! Sirius!” Remus yells, running off to save his boyfriend.
“Should we help him?” James asks, looking down to Regulus.
“He’ll be fine.” Regulus says. “I need to talk to you.” He grabs James’ arm before he can react and pulls him through the crowd of partygoers. Regulus can feel someone’s eyes on them but he doesn’t care right now.
He pulls James further from the party and into a small alcove in the wall right before the exit painting of Gryffindor Tower. Inside, the music was still audible but most of the people were far away.
“Cozy,” James remarks, smiling and looking around at their surroundings. “What did you want to talk about?”
“Stop that!” Regulus says, already annoyed and fighting the urge to just kiss him right now.
“Stop what?” James asks.
“Smiling like that, stop.”
“Smiling like what?”
“That!” Regulus says, annoyed. “Stop smiling like you’re unbelievably happy to be here.”
“But I am happy to be here,” James says, still smiling. “It’s a party.”
“Not the party,” Regulus says. “Here,” he gestures to the alcove, “with me,” pointing at himself.
“But I am happy to be here,” he gestures to the alcove, “with you,” pointing to Regulus, Regulus smacks his hands away. His emphasis on that last word almost made Regulus believe it for a second. Just a second.
“No, you’re not,” Regulus insists.
“Yes, I am.” James insists unaffected by Regulus’ bitterness. “I invited you here didn’t I? Well to the party, you dragged me here.”
“No you didn’t.” Maybe this wasn’t the greatest idea, being alone in a small space with James Potter isn’t exactly the best way to get let down.
“I didn’t?” James asks, looking confused.
“No you didn’t.” Regulus repeats. What is so hard to understand about this? he thinks.
“I’m sorry, I’m very confused.” James says. “I’m pretty sure I asked you to this party.”
“You didn’t want to,” Regulus says.
“I definitely did,” James says, “considering I asked you.”
“Sirius told you to.” Regulus says and James’ face falls a little in understanding, somewhat.
“That doesn’t mean I didn’t want to,” James defends.
“Yes, it does.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“Would you have asked me if Sirius hadn’t told you to?” Regulus asks, already knowing the answer.
“Well-” James starts.
“See, you didn’t want to invite me,” Regulus cuts him off.
“That doesn’t mean I didn’t want to invite you.”
“You wanted to invite me but you wouldn’t have?”
“Yes!” James says. “I mean no- I mean- I don’t know…I wanted t- I was scared.”
“You were scared? Of what? Me?”
“Yes!”
“So you asked me to a party that you didn’t want me at and wouldn’t have invited me to because you’re scared of me?” Regulus asks.
“No! I did want to invite you!”
“No, you just let me think that.”
“Why would I want you to think that if it weren’t true?”
“I don’t know!” Regulus says, at this point they’re practically yelling and saying so many of the same words Regulus isn’t even sure what they’re talking about anymore but he knows that he’s done letting James Potter mess around with his emotions. “Look,” he starts, just wanting this whole admitting feelings thing to be over already, “I wanted you to want to invite me but you didn’t you just invited me because my brother told you to, it’s fine.”
“It’s not, I really wanted to invite you.” James insists. “Wait… why did you want me to?”
“What?” Regulus asks.
“You said you wanted me to ask you,” James recites. “Not Sirius or Remus, you said you wanted me to want to invite you, why?”
“I-” Regulus starts. Fuck! He thinks, what did I say now?I did not think this through. “Look, just forget it, James.” He needs to get out of here, he’s about 30 seconds away from telling James Potter that he’s in love with him and the clock felt like it was practically crashing to the ground.
“Wait, Reg,” James says, grabbing Regulus’ wrist before he can walk out of the alcove and causing the clock to shatter into a million pieces. “You- you called me James.”
Fuck! Regulus thinks as he lets James pull him back away from the noise again, how did I let this happen again? He blames the small space, James’ hand on his wrist, and how unbelievably beautiful he looks right now. Is he wearing makeup? Regulus thinks, he's so close to him he can almost see some residue of makeup very poorly taken off. Merlin, he’s so beautiful, Regulus thinks.
“I-” he starts, he’s facing James again but James’ hand is still on his wrist, why hasn’t he let go? “Fuck,” Regulus whispers, even though the space is so small he’s sure James can hear him.
“Why did you want me to want to invite you?” James repeats, Regulus can feel James looking at him but his eyes are trailed to the ground because he’s not sure if James is able to hear how loud his heart is beating but he knows if he looks at him he will be.
“I-” Regulus says again. “I wanted you to want to invite me because I wanted to think that you might’ve felt the same way I do.”
“How do you feel?” James asks.
What? Regulus thinks. That wasn’t ‘what is wrong with you?’ or ‘oh, sorry, I don’t’. Of all the things he could have said, of all the things Regulus had imagined him saying, he asked this instead. He hadn’t asked out of genuine confusion, he asked like he was asking for confirmation. Regulus finally let his eyes look at James, who was staring at him impatiently waiting for an answer but not in an annoyed way more in a ‘my entire life depends on what you say’ way.
Regulus was supposed to be getting his heart broken, not filled with hope but everything in James’ eyes did just that. How do you feel? He needs to answer him but how does he feel? Is he just supposed to blatantly say he’s in love with him? Merlin, he’s so beautiful, he thinks.
Regulus then does something stupid, letting his eyes flicker to James’ lips. Then he does something even more stupid.