Black Rose [Regulus Black]

Sandra didn't even bat an eyelash as Reg entered her house, partly because she was applying eyeliner so it would be dangerous to do so and because she'd grown accustomed to having him enter whenever he wanted.

"Where are you going?" he asked, watching her do her eyeliner. He remembered a time where Sirius had experimented with their mother's eyeliner and dragged him into it. Of course, there were the shrieks of horror that Mother let out when she saw her children looking like crazed robbers, but it was still a fun time.

"A party my friend told me about," she replied, putting on a pair of earrings.

"You mean a ball?"

"No, silly," she giggled. "It's just a casual outing, people won't be wearing ballgowns and suits."

He couldn't imagine a party where people weren't wearing ballgowns and suits, it was something he'd seen his entire life. As though she'd heard his thoughts, she turned to face him with a sinister smile on her face.

"Say, Reg..." she said slyly.

"Absolutely not."

"Please? You're going to have tons of fun, I'm sure you'll love it."

"Only in your wildest dreams, it's not going to happen."

One hour later, he was dancing with Alessandra as she screamed the lyrics of the song in his ear. Muggle parties were wild things, with no etiquette or decorum. People had no filter (and in some cases, no clothes), and he didn't mind it at all.

"This is fun, isn't it?" she yelled, laughing as he dipped her slightly with a wild grin on his face. He laughed drunkenly, feeling free for the first time in ages. It wasn't like he hadn't ever consumed alcohol before, it just felt a lot more liberating this time seeing as he didn't have a need to remain civilized for the time being. 

Two hours later, he also joined the shirtless part of the club, too busy drinking more vodka to notice her checking him out shamelessly.

The next hour, they were both grinning as they roamed the streets of London hand-in-hand, with Alessandra pointing out certain landmarks and the anecdotes she associated with them.

"And that is a tattoo parlor," she pointed at a place that was crowded even though it was nearly midnight. "I remember when this one girl in my orphanage got a tattoo on her arm, oh, Mrs. Richards lost her head. I'm thankful I didn't go with her when she invited me, I'd have been reduced to ashes by the time Mrs. Richards was done with me."

"Let's get one," he said randomly, his speech slurred.

"Huh?"

"A tah- tahth- whatever those are called."

She giggled. "Tattoos?"

"Yes, those. Let's get them." If he was sober, he wouldn't have dreamt of getting a tattoo in a million years. But, at the moment, he was so drunk that he saw four copies of everything, so getting a tattoo on his skin seemed like a perfectly rational decision.

Why not? Nothing could go wrong with printing something incriminating permanently on your skin for everyone to see and judge. Nothing at all.

"What will you even get?" she asked, completely invested in the idea.

"We'll see," he mumbled, turning to her and watching the way the moonlight bathed her features. "You're pretty."

"Thank you. You're pretty too," she beamed, too far gone to fully comprehend what he'd just said.

"Thank you," he said politely. "Shall we?"

"Yes, we shall," she looped her arm through his and they both strutted into the tattoo shop.

Despite being thoroughly pissed, they still had the sense to Confund people into allowing them to move up in the line. They were standing at the very front of the line when a random thought popped up in Sandra's head.

"I'm surprised you found your shirt."

"My...shirt?" he asked, not knowing what a shirt was in that moment.

"Yeah, you'd taken it off, remember? And then you entered the large, scary crowd and danced with that girl who looked like she was seconds away from taking you away and having her way with you."

"You seemed to be paying a lot of attention to me," he smirked at her, and she felt that strange tug that sent her heart plummeting into the pits of her stomach.

"Don't flatter yourself, I wasn't paying attention to you because you were shirtless-"

"I didn't say anything about me being shirtless. Unless, of course it was the attribute you were focused on." he grinned, leaning down closer to her. He had no idea what he was doing or why he was doing it, but the alcohol's grip on his brain was too firm and it just seemed...right.

"My, aren't we bold," she teased back, tilting her head up and placing her hands on his chest. She had no idea what she was doing either, but she knew it was something she'd been wanting for a while. If she was sober, she'd probably be a hot, blushing mess. Thankfully, she wasn't sober, so she had this newfound confidence, and she felt like it was the same for Reg too.

"It's in my blood, love."

She yanked him down by the collar of his shirt and kissed him, completely forgetting that they were in the middle of a tattoo parlor. He'd also conveniently forgotten to remember that tiny fact, choosing to wrap one arm around her waist and entangle the other in her hair.

Kissing Regulus Black felt like a fantasy to her. It felt like the glorious steps to recover from an addiction, except she felt like she was drowning deeper and deeper in addiction as milliseconds passed. He kissed her like it was their last day on earth together, he kissed her as though it was a farewell yet an introductory welcome. It felt like light she'd seen after a billion years, like oxygen she was deprived of, like the last drops of water on Earth. It felt like she was drunk on something other than alcohol, and she loved it.

They were interrupted by someone clearing their throat, and quickly turned around to face the tattoo artist.

"What tattoo would you like?" he asked promptly, looking so done with the world.

Oh. The tattoo.

It completely slipped Reg's mind that they also had to pick a tattoo.

"What do you have?" Sandra asked, tucking her hair behind her ear and picking up the available designs.

"They know about dragons and unicorns?" Reg muttered as he flipped through sketches.

"I think I'll take the rose," she announced, picking out an image of a small rose. "I want it to extend from the base of my thumb to my wrist."

"Yeah, what she said," he mumbled, not as coherent as she was.

"It shouldn't be too big though."

"That's not what she said," he laughed like a teenage boy using an immature innuendo, which he technically was. He was a teenage boy using an immature innuendo.

The tattoo artist was probably cursing his choice of profession as he ushered them into chairs.

Nearly an hour later, they both had dainty black roses printed near their thumbs, covered by a layer of bandages.

"We have matching tattoos," she grinned, using her right hand to grab on to his, causing them to awkwardly twirl around.

"Yeah. Tattoos of matches...for our friendship."

"Our friendship!" she cheered. They both childishly raised their arms to tap their elbows together, recoiling when a sharp shock-like sensation ran through their hand and made it numb.

"I'm sleepy," he announced suddenly.

"Then sleep."

"I can't sleep in the middle of the street," he whined.

"Don't be a whiner, Reg," she said sternly, then dissolved into a fit of giggles. "Get it? Because you drank wine too?"

He glared at her. "Not funny."

"Well, I don't think we can apparate. Apparate. Apparition. That's a funny word. Doesn't it also mean ghost?"

"Yeah, yeah, shine a light."

"What?" she turned to him, wondering if it was some sort of song lyric.

"You're a witch, right?"

"That's not a very nice thing to say!"

"Fucking hell," he groaned, cursing himself for not carrying a wand. "Light, use your magic, shine a light."

"What song is that from? Who sang it?"

⚜

The next morning, he groaned and turned away as the sunlight shone in his eyes, giving him a splitting headache.

Kaleidoscopic lights. Laughter. Alcohol. Blonde hair. Mirthful yells. Tattoos. Kisses. More laughter.

He rubbed his eyes to clear his bleary vision as he turned to scan his surroundings. His grey eyes fell on a pair of green ones, and his widened slightly. "Sandra?"

"Yep. I don't remember a thing from last night."

"I feel dead. It feels like someone used a Beater's bat to crack my skull open."

She flicked her wrist and the curtains automatically closed, alleviating the pain in both of their heads. "Where are we anyways?"

"Not my house," he muttered. The decor was too light, a sharp contrast to the dark wallpaper and accessories in his house. And, if his mother saw him sharing a bed with Alessandra, he wouldn't even be alive to make that observation.

Speaking of...

"Do you get the feeling that something happened last night?"

She held up her wrist. "The fact that we have matching bandages makes me think so, but I'm not taking mine off yet. It's probably there for a reason."

"No, but something else?"

"I do recall you taking off your shirt, if that's what you're asking," she mumbled, too tired to even feel shy about it.

"But it's something important."

"Important like proposing to someone you don't even know by accident?"

"No, but it's something to do with the topic."

"Is it like good important or bad important?"

He frowned. "A mixture of both."

She sat up straight, instantly collapsing back down as a blinding pain tore through her head. "I have an idea. What if you slept with a woman in the bar, and now she's...you know, pregnant? I mean, it does take a bit of time to actually be pregnant, but it could be your intuition. Fatherhood could be a good thing, you know, a bonding experience. But depending on the way you look at it, your mother would be so angry about it and you might not be prepared to be a father since you're only eighteen."

"How are you thinking so much? It hurts to think." He rubbed his forehead. "And no, I'm fairly certain I'd remember sleeping with someone."

"Just like you remember getting a bandage on your wrist?"

He paled, and she'd have laughed if she didn't feel so horrible. "Relax, Reg, I think you're just overthinking."

He didn't argue, but still felt like there was something he'd done, something important.

⚜

He slowly shut the door as he began to slip off his shoes, trying to be as quiet as possible. What were the odds of his mother not knowing he was home? Kind of slim, but even then, she wouldn't necessarily know he was with Sandra. He could just lie.

"Where have you been?"

It felt like his tongue had been coated in lead and surrounded in a large block of ice, and he completely forgot how to string two syllables together.

"Out."

"I know that," his mother snapped. "Where?"

"To see Barty. Crouch, you know, son of the-"

"I checked with him, you weren't there."

"And after that, I went to visit Narcissa, because she's-"

"I sent her an owl, she said she hasn't spoken to you in weeks."

"Then the timing of your owl must have been unfortunate. I probably visited after the owl came by, so she doesn't know."

"You went to see that girl again, didn't you?"

 "Does it really matter where I was, Mother?"

"Yes," she hissed, her voice growing louder as the ringing in his ears grew stronger. "It does matter where you were, because you are the Heir to the Ancient and Most Noble House Of Black. It matters because our family has been great for decades, and now we're in a critical period where we have no heirs other than you. You're running off to do Merlin knows what while I struggle to come up with an option that will help our house. IT DOES MATTER, BECAUSE I WILL NOT HAVE MY OWN SON BECOMING DISOBEDIENT, JUST LIKE HIS DISGRACE OF A BROTHER. DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH WORK YOUR FATHER AND I PUT INTO MAKING OUR FAMILY PROSPER? WE SPENT THOUSANDS OF GALLEONS ON YOU, YOUR UPBRINGING, YOUR EDUCATION, AND YOU DARE TO THROW IT AWAY LIKE THIS? YOU DARE THROW ALL THIS AWAY, CENTURIES OF BELIEFS AND HARD WORK, ALL FOR SOME PIECE OF-"

He fainted, the pain far too much for him to handle.

⚜