6
By true nighttime, something integral has shifted. Regulus wakes first, noticing first his hand in James’ hair. The second thing he notices is his own comfort. This is a touch he isn’t afraid of.
James looks angelic in the low kitchen lighting. Their home is the kind with big windows and lofty, open spaces, so Regulus is used to seeing James in perfect, illuminating lighting. He hadn’t considered how seeing him in low light might affect his view of him. He looks more real, more vulnerable. He’s no longer the sun, just a beautiful man with a smile on his sleeping face.
Regulus loves him so, so, so deeply. It’s choking him.
He tears his eyes away from his sleeping husband when he hears Harry’s faint cry. Nothing short of immediate death could come between him and getting his son in this moment. When he opens the door, Harry’s eyes – Regulus’ eyes – are trained on him immediately. He bounces a little with joy as Regulus leans in and swoops him into his arms.
“Oh, you just wanted to see me, huh?” Regulus jests, helplessly fond.
Harry fucking winks. Regulus nearly drops him in shock.
“Where’d you- what?”
Harry winks a little more aggressively.
“Harry,” Regulus says slowly, “did your father teach you how to wink?”
Harry nods vigorously, still winking.
Fucking Hell, Regulus thinks. I’m raising James Junior.
Part of him is a little bit thrilled at the prospect of being involved in the creation of someone as good and kind as James. It reminds Regulus of his conversation with Sirius earlier in the day.
Fuck you Walburga, Regulus thinks, flinching a little at the idea of cursing his mother, I’m a good father. I’m not what you made me. Not anymore.
A soft smatter of knuckles raps against the door, followed shortly by Mary’s exhausted face. “Figured I might find you here,” she says.
“Why?”
“You’re sentimental.”
“Oh shove off, MacDonald.”
Mary laughs at this. She briefly looks at Harry, then back at Regulus. “Is he… winking?”
Mind you, Harry is still furiously going at it. He’s starting to look more like he’s just got something in his eye.
“James,” Regulus says by way of explanation. This makes Mary laugh.
Before he can lose the courage to ask, Regulus opens his mouth and gets it over with. “You and Emmeline earlier, you looked…”
Mary’s lips thin out. “Oh, yeah. Um…”
“You don’t have to say,” Regulus says because she really doesn’t. If it doesn’t have to do with Regulus’ little life, he pays little mind to it. If it’s hurting Mary, though, he wants to know. He wants to try to help.
“It’s Lily,” she says.
“Isn’t it always?” Regulus snaps. “Sorry. Old habits die hard.” He hasn’t really gotten over that brief stint where she dated Mary and then snapped her heart in two when she picked James. Then, of course, there’s the year they dated before Lily came out as lesbian.
Since then, Regulus and Lily have been… fine. They’re both academics by nature, so there had been a few study sessions together in his sixth year and her seventh, but he wasn’t super fond of her on principle. Principle being the fact that she hurt Mary.
Four years ago, yeah, but still.
“She kissed me,” Mary says, and Regulus isn’t sure he heard her right. “Arya packed up and left and so Lily came over and I made tea and I don’t know, it just… happened.”
“How do you feel?” Regulus says as cautiously as possible.
Mary chokes down a pathetic sound. “She’s too late, Regulus. She was just too late.”
“But you still… want her?”
“Of course I do.”
Regulus can’t imagine what it’s like to love someone so deeply and not be able to have them. If he didn’t have James, If James’ spot was occupied by someone else…
Regulus loves James for James, just as Mary loves Lily for Lily.
Yet she married Emmeline. She found just enough love there to make it official but now…
“What are you gonna do about it?”
“Cry? Put on a face mask, have a little Regulus, Pandora, Mary time perhaps?”
Staring into the face of one of his best friends, Regulus comes up with a better idea.
When Harry, Regulus, and Mary come downstairs, Remus is brandishing two mugs of tea, one of which he attempts to finagle in front of his sleepy, nearly non-responsive husband. James is still sleeping on the floor, so Regulus nudges his shoulder with his foot until he wakes up. If he’s confused as to why he’s waking up on the kitchen floor in the middle of the night, he makes no indication.
“Hey,” He slurs, pushing his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. In typical James style, he’s flashing a grin before Regulus can respond. He just looks so genuinely pleased to see Regulus.
This is one thing Regulus will never have the time to get used to – having someone be glad when he enters a room.
“Mission,” Regulus replies curtly, which is the wrong thing to say because James immediately loses the last couple of years. His face goes slack.
“Where? Who’s hurt? Tell Dumbledore I don’t… I don’t want-”
Regulus remembers what it was like, finding James after the war. A man whose heart of gold was stretched so thin it trembled. Dumbledore had taken a liking to James, so the frequency and difficulty of his missions increased until the end of the war, where they suddenly just disappeared. He hadn’t been able to sit still for days, anxious that there was something he was supposed to be doing.
“Shhh, shhhh. You’re safe, James; it’s just me. Just Regulus.” A moment's pause. “And Mary.”
Mary gives a little three-finger wave.
James slows his breathing then, focusing on the in and out. “Sorry, I- um. Sorry.”
He still doesn’t look like he’s fully back yet, though. It’s not until Harry toddles in and goes straight for James’ arms that he returns.
“What’s the, uh, task?” James asks.
“Mary and Lily. We’re going back to their first meeting.”
“Cool, cool… why?”
“If I told you, I’d have to kill you,” Mary tells him with a deadpan stare. James just chuckles good-naturedly.
“Okay. Sure, yeah, let’s go.”
Mary sees Lily for the first time on the Hogwarts Express. It’s a two second encounter that’s been branded to her memory. Both Lily and Mary had come to the sweets trolley as Muggleborn girls looking to experience the magical world. And, naturally, the chocolate frog Mary had just bought jumped from the box directly into Lily’s hair. Mary, who had been admiring the Dumbledore card she got, was nothing short of mortified. In fact, she dropped the card, turned on her heels, and fucking ran.
“Last Dumbledore card I ever got,” She says, though not wistfully. Regulus is pretty sure that the only use Mary would find for a Dumbledore Card now would be as target practice.
“Did she know it was you?” James asks.
“Never,” Mary admits. “I’m taking this to the grave.”
Regulus doesn’t have it in himself to laugh at that.
Mary isn’t too keen on staying in this memory, so she travels forward at her own pace while Regulus and James decide to stick behind her. Or, rather, travel forward farther than her. To September first, 1972.
The day they met.
James had been restless in that compartment. He loved Pete and Remus, but they weren’t Sirius. No one was.
So, naturally, James searches for him. He runs into some funny things on his way, like a group of kids playing exploding snap in the corridor and a couple going at it in one of the compartments. Various people offer him food or drink. Many extend an invitation to him to join – not the couple, thank Merlin, – but he’s a man on a mission. Sirius. Sirius. Sirius.
When he finally does find Sirius, however, he’s immediately forgotten. He’s forgotten because sitting next to him is someone who makes James stop in his tracks. Regulus.
He’d heard stories before, mostly about Regulus’ affinity for reading or being a smartass, but nothing could have prepared him for their first meeting.
“This is the moment I knew,” James tells his husband. “This moment, when I saw you, that’s it.”
“I hated you,” Regulus replies. “I mean I didn’t, not really, but I thought I did.”
“Didn’t turn out so well for you, did it?”
“No, hatred never really worked out for me,” he agrees.
“So?”
“So what?”
“When did you know?” James asks, and it’s a ridiculous question because they’re staring at it.
“This moment. The second I decided to feel anything about you, I decided to love you.”
“Even if you thought it was hate.”
“Even if I thought it was hate,” he affirms.