I Did Say Yes
Pairing: Sirius/Remus/Regulus
Word Count: 8,805
Rating: NC-17
Summary: AU set during Order of the Phoenix. Sirius is unhappy and Remus wonders if he ought to be able to reach him more. Regulus turns up alive and things begin to change. Written for hp_3somes.
Remus swallowed the last of his cooling coffee. Sirius looked at him as if he expected him to start making his farewell; a look both wary and weary. Remus crossed his arms on the kitchen table and leaned forward, trying to look settled. He looked over Sirius’s shoulder at the bleak kitchen that extended cavernously behind him and thought again that it was strange to be here. Strange to be with Sirius, and strange to be here.
“It hasn’t stopped feeling strange to be back here at all,” said Sirius. “But I think having you here is the strangest feeling. I never wanted anyone to come here back in the day. I keep feeling like Regulus or my parents are about to walk in any minute.”
“Yes,” said Remus, a little more surprised than he should have been to find their thoughts tending the same way. “I remember how firm you were about never letting us come here. It’s felt a little odd for me to see it so belatedly.”
“It took a while for James to get it, why I minded so much about keeping my friends separate. First he said he would win them over. Then he said he didn’t know why I cared about getting on their nerves if I wanted to wind them up anyway.”
James had got it soon enough, as Remus recalled. He had realised how Sirius felt about the matter partly through the way James surrounded any mention of Sirius’s family with the same gallantry as he did Remus’s “furry problem.” Something that was a source of furious shame to the possessor was met by James’s determined attempts to neutralise it as such. James, more than anyone, took Sirius as an individual, on his own terms, without ever thinking of him as that rebellious Black boy who may or may not come to heel in time.
Sirius was probably now technically in the best position he’d yet been in to take stock. Since he’d escaped Azkaban he’d been on the run, living hand to mouth, and now he was, for the present, settled and secure. He had coped well, even taking into account incidents like the knife brandished over Ron’s bed, but in so many ways he had not come to terms with James’s death or the fact that time had passed. And he’d ended up in Grimmauld Place when all this coming to terms would ideally have been happening. The constant reminders of his family, the idea that he was a Black again now, must be helping to drive in one of the consequences of James’s death well enough: there was no one left, not even Remus, who saw Sirius so splendidly and simply as himself alone. There was Harry who, Sirius said, had been ready to come and live with him the first time they met. Sirius didn’t seem to quite understand why, in a lot of ways, there wasn’t Harry, but had mostly come to understand that this was, in any case, so. Remus knew all this, but didn’t know how to talk about any of it. He supposed he wasn’t really convinced that talking could help, or that Sirius would talk back to Remus if he tried.
“Looking at my room made me realise what a teenager I was. Maybe I would have behaved just the same whoever my parents were and it was almost a coincidence that I actually do loathe everything my family stood for,” said Sirius.
“It’s been hard to tell which parts of any of us had really more to do with being so young than anything,” said Remus. Sirius’s face, introspective, almost amused, became graver. “Of course, I have the opportunity to get to know you, at least,” he added.
“You’ve had the opportunity for a while already,” said Sirius.
“Things have been so busy,” said Remus. “But I think we all feel better now that Harry is back at Hogwarts.”
“I don’t.”
“Well. He is safest there.”
“It’s not the time that’s made us different. It’s because it’s not the four of us anymore that we’d have to get to know each other again,” Sirius said, looking at Remus provocatively for some reason, as if he expected him to be offended.
“Well, yes. And the time too.”
Sirius gave up on whatever path he’d been trying to herd Remus down. Sirius always did think of complicated ways to get his own way and give up in favour of a direct, aggressive approach before he’d half begun. “What have you been doing all this time by yourself?” Sirius asked. “Did you get over us? Did you know who you were all by yourself for all that time? Did you grow up into someone completely different?”
Remus had grown sideways rather than upwards, into someone different but who could nonetheless have been predicted. He did know who he was all by himself now; he was the werewolf who never stayed anywhere for long and who had learned not to mind much rather than the boy who’d got a little too lucky and was never quite comfortable about it, always afraid that he’d be thrown out of Hogwarts, that his friends would realise they didn’t want him around. He didn’t want to share that with Sirius. He couldn’t even remember now how well Sirius had really known that boy. “You knew who you were,” he said. “All that time in Azkaban. You kept sane. I thought of that so often.”
“I did,” agreed Sirius. “The memories somehow kept me grounded. Grounded for Azkaban. But memories aren’t enough when you’re out in real life again.”
Remus didn’t know what to say. “Life has been very unfair to you,” he said.
“And to you, it seems like. So how has it been? Have you loved and lost or never loved at all?”
Remus thought about it. “More never loved at all, I suppose,” he said. He’d only come close a couple of times to thinking maybe, if things were different… when he was with someone. He was good at keeping himself to himself, at creating connections that were real but inherently limited.
“Has it been lonely?” asked Sirius, looking keenly at him.
Sirius didn’t go for emotional conversations very often. Remus seemed to remember him always determinedly just out of reach whenever Remus felt the need for a little paddle in feelings-talk, and he definitely remembered that when Sirius did go for them, it was uncomfortable. “Obviously it’s been lonely,” Remus said.
Sirius leaned back and sighed as if in acknowledgement of the hopelessness of things. “You do have a mission to fill the void, at least. How are the werewolves coming along?”
“You’d probably be better at it than I am. Well. Perhaps also more likely to move things too quickly in the wrong company and get killed.”
“But you feel you’re making some kind of progress? You’re so good at making things sound reasonable, you must be.”
“There are some people I don’t think I can put off putting my cards on the table to much longer,” said Remus.
“As for me, I’m keeping house, of course. Not very well. I’ve been avoiding Kreacher as much as possible and he’s stopped dusting.”
“Surely there’s something you can do. Something unrelated to the Order, even, that would be better than nothing.”
“I’ll take a correspondence course in Mermish. To keep me feeling stimulated and everything,” said Sirius. “Oh, you might as well go. If you haven’t got anything nice to say and all that - me, I mean. I’ll only make you feel less like coming again.”
Remus was unable to disagree with him much. Though he hoped he’d come anyway, even if he didn’t feel like it.
*
Sirius remained at the table after Remus left. There was nothing he planned to be getting on with. For all his complaints about his lack of occupation, the days when he wandered around lost in thought passed surprisingly quickly for what they were. Sometimes it felt as if he’d escaped Azkaban to find himself underwater rather than out in the fresh air.
Someone entered the house. Sirius opened his mouth, ready to shout to whoever it was to come and find him in the kitchen.
“Reggie!” he heard his mother’s voice say. He was reminded vividly of his living mother, who in life had had more occasion to use those tones of rich delight than her portrait. “My darling, you’re alright after all! You’re back!”
Sirius’s mouth remained open as he frowned. Who was it out there that had set her off like that?
“Hello, Mother,” a voice said, flat, perhaps a little tired.
Sirius felt cold. He leaned his chin in his hands and gazed at the tabletop as though he was thinking through an abstract problem, though surely he had only moments until they came face to face - unless Regulus snapped back out of existence. He might be rocking a little. A lot of what passed through his mind was crushing disappointment. Why Regulus, of all people, making a miraculous return? The spurt of hope that Regulus might bring something with him to change things, make Sirius’s world better or different, was more surprising.
Sirius could hear his mother’s portrait sobbing with joy, but nothing more of his brother. There was after all no reason to suppose Regulus knew the house was occupied. Part of him wanted to sit tight and wait for his brother to come to him, see him come through the door and come unexpectedly face to face with Sirius. Another part of him wasn’t sure he hadn’t been hallucinating, or felt irrationally that Regulus might be real but somehow become an hallucination if he delayed.
He got up and padded up the stairs. The hallway was empty when he got there. He opened the nearest door, heart racing painfully. It was already ajar but he couldn’t remember whether it had been closed before. He felt sick with disappointment and fear when he found the room empty. He was crazy after all, and worst of all, he knew it. But that train of thought was irrational in itself. He had to continue. He pushed open the door to the connecting room.
Regulus was standing in the middle of the room, looking rather lost. Sirius was almost annoyed by how shocking it felt to lay eyes on him. He had been actively looking for Regulus, after all, even if he had thought he was dead five minutes ago.
Regulus didn’t say “Hello.” He said “Sorry.”
“Hello,” said Sirius. Was the sorry something he’d thought about and meant to say, or was it forced out of him by nerves? Regulus’s fear of Sirius had always coexisted with his adoption of superiority towards him.
“I’m not dead,” said Regulus, and really, he had to be nervous to say anything so stupid.
“So it seems. What the fuck, Regulus?”
Regulus sighed and sank down onto a sofa. He was older. It was strange. Regulus had been frozen and frankly forgotten for so long, and all this time he’d been somewhere, growing into something else. He hadn’t aged like Sirius had, but he had sharp lines bracketing his mouth and he had a generally tired look. He didn’t look unappealing, now Sirius was seeing him through eyes more objective than they ever had been before.
“Did you ever ask Kreacher, really ask, what happened to me? Did anyone?” Regulus asked.
“Kreacher? No. I didn’t, anyway.”
“Really?” Regulus asked. Not a family that makes it hard to fake a death, I have to say.”
Sirius felt discomforted at being lumped in with his parents.
“If people ever really asked him, needing to know either what happened to me or about something else, if they seemed as though they would be worse off for not knowing, he was to tell them - well, tell them the truth except for me dying at the end. But no one got told even that?” He looked disappointed.
“So what was this story we missed out on?” asked Sirius.
“Oh, that’s not important now. Anyway, what happened was first I thought about really dying, and then I thought about everyone thinking I was dead, and then I thought about going back into my life. It was inevitable; the middle idea was so irresistible. And it was the sensible thing to do, too, though I suppose I could have come back when the Dark Lord was out of the way for a while. I meant to, though it’s not as if I had anyone to announce myself to until you escaped. But I put it off and put it off and I’ve only just got round to it.”
“Did you know I’d be here?” asked Sirius.
“I thought it was possible, but I didn’t really expect it. I wouldn’t have thought you’d want to be here, but maybe you don’t have anywhere else.”
“It’s not just me. Well, most of the time it’s just me, but the Order is using the place too.”
“Oh.” They both remembered that the Order was still an awkward point.
“Not bothered by the mass murderer thing, then?” asked Sirius. He didn’t suppose Regulus would have believed that story, though come to think of it he could not quite think why he shouldn’t have.
Regulus looked blank.
“Well, I suppose the company you’ve kept may have inured you to the idea,” Sirius conceded. “But it’s not as if we’ve ever got on, and I’d have thought you might feel a bit tentative about visiting someone who blasts streetfulls of people to bits when they’re annoyed.”
“I knew something was very wrong with that story, and I suppose I hoped that even if that part were true you wouldn’t feel like killing me on sight.”
Sirius narrowed his eyes. He wanted to know how Regulus had interpreted the disaster.
Regulus all but rolled his eyes. “I could never mistake you for a follower of the Dark Lord. And I couldn’t imagine you betraying Potter. I could imagine you losing control when confronting the person responsible. But I wasn’t sure.”
Sirius didn’t much like the idea that Regulus thought he knew him well enough to sort the lies from truth. So many people Sirius had liked so much better, felt so much closer to, had believed he could betray James. “Did you know Pettigrew was a traitor? Before it happened?”
“No. I never made it very far up the Death Eater career ladder. I suppose if I had known I might have sent you a note before I left.”
Fuck Regulus. It was all very well for him to look thoughtful, interested by the idea that if he’d been a better Death Eater he might actually have saved lives.
“So what have you been doing? And what do you think you’re going to do now?” Sirius asked.
“What do you think? If the Ministry realises I’m not dead I’d be a wanted man. I went to live among the Muggles.” He looked up at Sirius with a defiant, defensive look. “It’s easy to worm yourself into this or that profession with a little magic, moving on when the routine gets stale. I only went to wizarding places occasionally, when I’d almost forgotten the whole lot of you existed. I’ve spent more time with Muggles than you, with all your preaching.”
“I’m glad that getting off scot-free allowed you to advance your personal growth. Especially as I’m so well placed to know that Azkaban would have wrecked you. And really, you don’t look like you’ve been skipping through the meadow with the Muggles,” said Sirius, his hackles raised.
“I’ve been alright,” said Regulus. A moment later he said, “It’s just tiring being away from your true self for so long.”
Sirius was reminded of his talk with Remus. It helped to think about the common ground between himself and Remus in a way that thinking about the common ground between himself and Regulus, if there was any, did not.
“And what about now?” Suddenly Sirius had an idea. He’d whipped his wand out and snapped “Petrificus Totalus” almost before he knew it. Regulus fell off the sofa abruptly, flat on his back. Sirius stood over him and looked at his face, still except for the eyes. The eyes darted to Sirius’s own face. They looked exasperated, perhaps, as they rested there. “I don’t suppose by any chance you’ve already reunited with Voldemort? You’d have known when he popped back up, wouldn’t you?” Sirius stooped and rolled up the sleeve of Regulus’s shirt - he hadn’t even consciously noted that Regulus wasn’t in robes. He yanked the sleeve up further, scraping Regulus’s arm, until the Dark Mark was exposed. He traced it with his thumb. “You’d have noticed this turning black again. How did that make you feel, tucked up with the Muggles, ‘away from your true self’? Did you decide to run back to Voldemort? Did you decide the way to get in with him was to kill me, or infiltrate the Order as a spy?” He looked again at Regulus’s still face. It was as likely to tell him the truth as Regulus himself.
He removed the curse and held Regulus’s shoulders down. He felt the change in the body beneath his hands as the potential to move rendered it at the same time more pliant.
“I don’t know how much the Dark Lord really cares about you, to be honest,” said Regulus. “And I’m not Snape or Bellatrix.”
“So you’re a spy?”
“You know I’m not, don’t you?” Regulus said, appealing to Sirius’s rationality in a manner more mild, patient and unconcerned than Sirius liked.
Sirius did know. He didn’t know why he knew.
“I did something when I went away. Either the Dark Lord has already found out about it, or he will in the future, and when he does he will be absolutely…” Regulus could not think of a good enough word. “Enraged. And the reasons why I did the thing in the first place still hold good. I’ve been done with him for a long time. I knew he would come back. It didn’t change anything.”
“Alright. I’ll believe you. Family ties are so important to me, and I’m so trusting.”
Regulus looked at him dubiously before wriggling into a sitting position.
“Do you want to join the Order? I don’t know if you’ll be able to do anything more than I am, which is pretty much nothing, but at least you’d be on hand to fight if - when it came down to it.”
Regulus looked considering, which gave Sirius time to feel he’d been too open. “If I’m allowed to. I doubt it’s just up to you.”
Sirius suddenly realised he’d mismanaged this very badly. Not only was he back in Grimmauld Place, feeling trapped as he had during adolescent holidays, he was going to have Regulus for company, just like the old days.
*
It felt like the old days, but a bizarre, melted version. Here Regulus was sitting round a table with a group including Sirius, Lupin and Snape. It made Regulus feel exposed to have another Death Eater there. They hadn’t spent much time together, but Snape had seen him do things he wouldn’t like anyone else here to know about. He couldn’t tell quite how Snape felt about it - he was never happy, after all. It was only that inscrutability that convinced Regulus that there could be anything in Snape that explained his presence here. Regulus had the impression most of the Order were not so much divided on his inclusion as a controversy, or shocked by his return from the dead, as surprised to be reminded that he had existed at all. Minerva McGonagall seemed the only one who felt some measure of genuine gratification at welcoming him.
Regulus wondered whether he should tell them about the Horcruxes. He wasn’t entirely sure why he didn’t, except that he’d got into the habit of silence. His getting into the habit had been primarily the result of that first shock but perhaps he’d continued in it because he liked having a secret. It made him feel safer somehow, when really it wasn’t that sort of secret at all. Perhaps he should get another secret, so he didn’t feel so attached to this one. His whole existence had been a secret for years, so it was natural that he should feel miserly now that his hoard was so diminished.
The meeting seemed to be ending. Regulus looked up at the people gathering their things together and making concluding remarks, feeling a little apprehensive. He’d be alone with Sirius again once they’d gone, and it was a little early to go to bed. He noticed Lupin hovering awkwardly, holding his cloak rather than putting it on. Regulus hoped he’d stay for a while. At Hogwarts Regulus had always tried to approach Sirius with messages from home when Lupin was around; he associated his witness with a slightly higher likelihood of safety than that of Potter or Pettigrew. Finally Sirius caught Lupin’s eye and indicated that he should sit back down.
Regulus and Lupin politely asked what the other had been doing all these years, though it was obvious that neither really wanted to talk about it. Lupin alluded to a general meanness and a series of temporary situations. He might not have made things so clear as that if he had not been obviously distracted, trying to think whether there was a chance Regulus wouldn’t know he was a werewolf. Regulus did. He’d always taken the Prophet and had followed the news with particular attention since his brother’s escape from Azkaban. When the werewolf teacher employed by Dumbledore was the scandal of the moment, he had been led to think back on his memories, interpreting Lupin anew in the light of this revelation. It had played a part in pulling him back to Grimmauld Place and old times.
“Did you ever think about the Muggle world?” asked Regulus.
“No. Well. I’ve thought about it, often. I wondered if it would be too hard to find something there I could do, that would give me more security. I didn’t think it would be too hard. But I suppose I was too proud. Or prejudiced, myself, even.” Lupin seemed to be forcing himself to answer with scrupulous truth.
“We know you don’t mean wizards are degraded by working with Muggles,” Sirius said. “Or that turning to the Muggle world shows they’ve failed. But in your case, it would be a bit like they’d chased you out and they don’t deserve that.”
Lupin made an odd little ducking gesture that indicated nothing other than a wish to change the subject. “It’s quite a commitment, coming back, joining the Order, when you were removed from the game, as it were,” he said to Regulus.
Regulus tried not to look too uncomfortable; the idea of being accountable again made him feel panicky when he thought about it properly. “I committed myself years ago. Though there has been a long gap. In a way I wish the Dark Lord hadn’t disappeared for so long. I feel we’ve got rusty.”
“The Ministry certainly has got rusty,” said Lupin.
Sirius snorted. “When were they anything else?” He looked over Lupin’s shoulder. “I thought we were going to defeat Voldemort while we were young. Or at least, I thought we might die, but that he would too soon afterwards. I thought the fight was ours. I never thought of any of this.”
“Of course not, it was the future. I’m sure hordes of outlandish things are yet to happen that aren’t occurring to us now,” said Regulus. Partly, he knew, he was irritated by the idea of his brother being so sure of those things while his own ruling passion had been the idea of Lord Voldemort as saviour of wizardkind. They had both been callow and pig-headed, but Sirius had been more right. It was a good thing they’d had nothing to do with each other while Regulus was rethinking things, or Regulus couldn’t imagine that he’d have rethought them.
“I hope Harry hasn’t still got all this on his shoulders when he’s our age,” said Sirius.
“I don’t quite see how it is on his shoulders. I don’t get the way you all talk about him, to be honest. He’s just a kid, a random kid, surely? I mean, I understand why he’s not random to you two, but not everyone else,” said Regulus. The meeting had been littered with references to Harry Potter, and it had begun to bemuse Regulus to irritation.
Lupin sighed. “In one sense you’re probably right and, however much we try to avoid it, we see him too much as an answer to all the mysteries and problems surrounding Voldemort. But also you just don’t understand. Reading the papers aren’t the same as being here. It’s too late now to say he’s just a random kid. He isn’t now.”
“His parents were killed when he was only a year old. He was brought up by Lily’s godawful relatives. How can he not grow up and feel like he has to avenge them?” Sirius demanded.
It occurred to Regulus how very much Sirius would have liked to find out he had parents to be avenged, real parents who weren’t those he shared with Regulus. He felt suddenly sad for all of them, their small failure of a family. “There are many to avenge themselves on the Dark Lord. I daresay it will take many,” he said.
There was a pause. What could they talk about, all three of them together? They seemed to have run out of big talk and how to manufacture small talk? “Did you like teaching at Hogwarts? What was it like, seeing the place from the other side?” Regulus managed, with a feeling of triumphant relief.
All three of them must suddenly have been able and willing to try, because they embarked on a nostalgic evocation of Hogwarts without tripping over the things that had been so awkward at the time, such as Houses. It was generous of Sirius to join in this project of negotiation with its determined lack of self-betrayal on the surface. Regulus knew Sirius could be generous, but mostly from accidental observation. Lupin stayed for quite a while; none of them wanted to leave the self-contained little world they’d created. It was all very self-indulgent and bowdlerised, but Regulus felt brought nearer to Sirius in a novel way. They’d known each other so much through reputation at school. Regulus wished he could have had access to the Sirius who had apparently existed at that time; more genuinely fun, even kinder, than the gratuitously, distressingly offensive Sirius whom Regulus had avoided and complained about to his parents and friends. Regulus went to bed feeling as if his schooldays had been somehow recuperated. He hadn’t thought of them in years. Sirius had told him he was sleeping in his old room, but Regulus didn’t think his own would be a refuge.
*
Remus found himself visiting Grimmauld Place more often. He felt he should, in order to prevent bloodshed, but to his surprise he found it quite enjoyable. When he’d first realised Sirius and Regulus were both going to be knocking around the house without much of an immediate purpose in life, he had wondered if he would be able to ever make himself go there again. But, though he felt treacherous about it, Regulus’s presence seemed to neutralise the awkward aspects of Sirius’s company. Regulus was really more like Remus; adroit at smoothing over social encounters, with an almost slippery mildness Remus didn’t much want to recognise. He sensed a likeness between them in the drifting way they had spent most of their adult life. Sirius could try to draw comparisons between himself and Remus, but ultimately Azkaban was isolating even after escape. Remus couldn’t understand what he had been through and felt an interfering, dividing sense of guilt. Regulus had more and better reasons to feel guilty, and Remus could not help feeling aware that this made being with Sirius easier for him. Sirius also had someone to share an awkward difference with - the lack of active work for the Order. Remus thought that though at first being in the same position as Regulus made Sirius loathe the whole thing more, it did come to console him.
One afternoon Regulus and Sirius had the nearest thing to a row Remus had yet witnessed between them. It was on house-elves; Sirius had casually mentioned that Harry had a friend with some very idealistic, youthful notions about them.
“I wish I had met people with idealistic notions about house-elves when I was at school,” said Regulus. “I hope she represents the next generation.” He went on to explain why, growing more heated. Sirius, sensing some reproach based in his lack of affection for Kreacher, argued hotly in return. Quite what he was arguing wasn’t plain. What was plain was that he had in fact no fundamental argument against protecting elfish welfare, but disliked his family’s house-elves and the idea that Regulus, of all people, might feel ethically superior.
Remus decided that he didn’t need to intervene. Regulus quashed Sirius’s objections skilfully and civilly enough and went on to explain, with obvious sincerity, why it mattered to care about people like house-elves. Sirius, obviously impressed, despite himself, with this sincerity, subsided.
“You have changed, I admit,” said Sirius.
“I have, yes,” said Regulus. “It’s taken coming back here to realise how much. Living in constant flight from adolescent realisations made me feel as if I couldn’t have grown up really. But I did. I’m sure I haven’t changed nearly as much as you think I have, though. You never really knew me.”
Sirius eyed him in silence.
“I presume I knew you less than Sirius,” said Remus, “Since I only just knew you by more than sight. But if you don’t mind my saying so, I think you have changed a lot, in an interesting way. You’re the same, but different. The same container, full of something different.”
“Well, I’d certainly like to think I’ve changed,” said Regulus.
*
Sirius dug it out of Remus that he felt unhappy about transforming in his bedsit. Well, this was such an obvious thing to feel that Remus didn’t know if digging was the right word. But he didn’t want to talk about it. He was back on the Wolfsbane, thank God, which meant he could remain quietly in his room rather than trying to find some way of confining and restraining himself. The unhappiness came not so much from the routinely unhappy business of transforming in itself, even under Wolfsbane, as the fear someone would come in for some unforeseeable reason.
“You should come here,” said Sirius. “There’s so much room. I know you say you don’t get very adventurous when you’re on Wolfsbane, but surely you’d like to run about a bit in a civilised way.”
“I don’t feel the Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix really need a werewolf loose on the premises, and I don’t think Regulus-”
“I don’t mind,” said Regulus, looking surprised.
Remus did mind the idea of Regulus seeing him as a wolf.
“I can keep you in order and you won’t even need keeping in order. Get over yourself; you know it’s the best option,” said Sirius.
It was the best option, on the whole, and Remus decided to make an effort to get over himself. Sirius and Regulus were both being good in their ways, and it seemed only fair that he should try to go against the grain a little too.
*
Regulus obviously sensed Remus’s discomfort and retired to his room early, before the transformation. Sirius and Remus sat in one of the drawing rooms. Remus fidgeted under the tension of anticipation; he’d never been sure if it was an emotional or physiological effect. If possible at these times, he would roll and thrash around on a bed, curling and stretching. He could restrain himself from doing that easily enough, so he assumed it was melodrama. Sirius patted the back of his hand. Remus started and glanced at Sirius, who gave him a reassuring smile. Remus gave himself up for a moment, as he had surprisingly few times since their reunion, to the deep relief of feeling himself known, already revealed and accepted. Sirius, he could tell, was looking forward to the reminder of old times.
That night Remus and Sirius chased each other around the house, their claws scratching the floor. The house was big enough to make pounding up and down its staircases and leaping over furniture satisfying. For once it felt good, even afterwards in memory, to let go of human burdens.
Regulus looked a little wistful at breakfast. They must have made a terrible racket, and it wasn’t as though Regulus could have joined in. Remus hoped he hadn’t felt unsafe. He felt tired and satisfied in an oddly post-coital way that made the dynamic between the three of them seem more awkward to him.
The next night they left the house to roam the streets. Thinking about it later, Sirius must have left the door open. Remus jumped over a startled fox that was already fleeing from them. Remus didn’t think any of the people whose paths they crossed were able to determine that they were anything other than foxes themselves, particularly large and shadowy perhaps. It felt as though the streets, and this time, were theirs.
The next morning Remus was probably obviously weakened, as he thought of it when he was not his usual self. It was Regulus who made the attack, though, funnily enough.
“Why don’t you stay here? It seems silly when we have so much empty space. We ought to be accommodating all members of the Order who don’t have somewhere they’d prefer. And it doesn’t sound as if you have any particular reason to prefer your bedsit.”
“I’m too old to live with friends, rent-free,” said Remus, refusing automatically, though his brain was beginning to wake up and wonder if there was really any particular reason to.
“Think of it more as being a live-in Member of the Order. It’s a terribly important role, Remus, you should feel honoured to be asked to join the ranks of Regulus and me,” said Sirius.
“You can feel free to put the rent you pay now in that tin over there,” said Regulus. “We’ll never look in it or anything, so it’s entirely up to you whether that’s something you want to do with your money.”
Of course, Sirius as well as Remus had lived off James back in the day. He probably was not suggesting Remus do something he’d be too proud for himself.
On the one hand, he wasn’t sure Grimmauld Place with Sirius and Regulus in it was any less problematic than his lonely bedsit. On the other hand, Remus could have lonely bedsits any time he liked.
“Alright,” he said. “But I reserve the right to change my mind.”
*
A lot of the strange awkwardness between Sirius and Remus had gone. Perhaps prolonged exposure had finally done the trick, or perhaps it had something to do with Regulus being there. They’d been such a group, the Marauders, that it being just him and Remus felt like two little balls jangling in the same container but never connecting. Regulus should have had no beneficial effect that wasn’t uniting them against the enemy, but there you were. Sirius hadn’t liked the way Remus and Regulus had found it so easy to establish a tentative friendship, but could not help feeling better when he realised Regulus felt shut out of Remus and Sirius’s deeply established history. And then he felt very silly, finding himself combing through this emotional minutiae. He ought to have more important things on his mind. Yes, he really ought to have more important things on his mind, he thought again hurriedly, as some of the other thoughts he’d been having flashed across his mind.
Sirius was having funny thoughts about Regulus. He didn’t mind those sharp moments of yearning he experienced in Remus’s company. He’d always had them, for James as well, and he’d always been able to let them pass. They skated over the surface of the relationship and left no trace. He felt less comfortable with letting those fleeting pictures of Regulus come and go as they liked. Their sibling relationship was obviously a little strange, but why did it have to become stranger? The original period of dismissive resentment in their youth, followed by the total gap, had led to Sirius regarding Regulus anew with a curious mixture of desires both to reject and clutch at this relic of ties that were never what they should have been. Damn it. He wanted to fuck Regulus. He really wanted to, he admitted to himself in bed, he really did.
Sirius felt for his cock, which he knew was already beginning to get hard. He moved his hand very slowly up and down, because he wasn’t wanking to this. He liked to think of covering Regulus’s mouth with his hand, and Regulus opening his legs for him more than he liked to think of anything else. He imagined that slow, willing spread of the thighs and jerked his hand away. Sirius turned over onto his stomach and clenched his fists, feeling breathless. He would not do this. He could not be that person.
*
“You do seem to be getting on so well with Regulus, considering,” said Remus the very next day, damn him. “Did you have to really try at it, or did it come more naturally than you were expecting?”
Sirius wanted to tell him. Sometimes when he told people things the secret lost its sting and became somehow less true. He wanted Remus to help him.
Remus looked at him in surprise. “Are you alright?” he asked.
“Yeah. I don’t know. I can’t tell how much it was natural or effort. He’s not really the person I remember, which helps.” But of course he couldn’t tell Remus. That kind of thing was unsayable. The only thing worse than thinking it was saying it.
*
Sirius wanked, piously, to Remus. Thinking of a specific other person made it much easier to blot out Regulus.
*
All bets were thrown off when Sirius walked into a room to find Remus and Regulus kissing. They hadn’t been at it long and it had been Regulus’s idea; Sirius could somehow tell from the interested curiosity of the angle of Remus’s neck. Their heads snapped guiltily to face him.
“Don’t mind me,” said Sirius in what he could hear was a cold, hard voice that did not belong to someone who was genuinely happy to mind their own business. He turned slowly on his heel and began to leave the room. He hoped one of them would stop him by saying something, but he didn’t know what.
“Don’t go. He’d rather it was you, anyway,” said Regulus.
Both Sirius and Remus turned to look at him with alarm.
“Well, if you feel like that about it I don’t think there’s any point in my-” said Remus, getting up.
Regulus tugged at him. “I don’t mean I think you would have fucked me while wishing I was Sirius or whatever. But it would be better if he was there.”
Remus and Sirius looked at each other briefly in mutual acknowledgement of the awkwardness of the implications of this. It looked as if maybe they’d both always thought that they would like to sleep together in another world. Sirius hadn’t even been sure until now that Remus was into men. Neither of them liked it being brought up so abruptly and publically. Then they both stared at Regulus because of the other implications.
He knows, thought Sirius in terror.
“There’s one very good reason why both of you can’t sleep with me at the same time, even if I wanted you to. Do you know what it is?” asked Remus, beginning to wax sarcastic.
“I’m denying that it’s a very good reason,” said Regulus. He was clearly determined to give this one good shot, but very nervous. He was being braver than Sirius would have been. “Sirius,” he said, looking directly at Sirius and speaking clearer than ever, “Would like it.”
Remus turned towards Sirius, half bewildered, and half beginning to genuinely question.
“Oh alright,” Sirius said, folding his arms, leaning against the doorframe and dropping his eyes. “I would like it. But it would obviously be a terrible idea and Remus does not need to be involved in this.” They’d both turned out crazy Blacks after all. No wonder he’d never wanted to bring friends home. Just look what happened when he finally did.
“Seriously? You’d really want that?” asked Remus.
“Oh, Remus, shut up. In a very short while we’re all going to pretend this never happened.” Sirius exhaled. “This never happened.”
“You mean you might be interested?” asked Regulus.
Sirius was about to bellow something, but really he supposed Remus deserved to speak after being on the receiving end of such a proposition.
“I shouldn’t be,” said Remus slowly. “I really shouldn’t be, should I? It would mess up your relationship, you’d regret it so much afterwards.”
“I wouldn’t,” Sirius couldn’t prevent himself from saying with Regulus. Remus, he remembered, had always been a little more malleable than his principles suggested.
“I shouldn’t,” Remus said again. “I’ll think about it,” he added, walking past Sirius.
Sirius wanted to shout “For how long?” after Remus, but didn’t. “Well,” he said to Regulus. “You’re sharp, I’ll give you that.”
“So you really do want to?” asked Regulus.
“Fuck’s sake, Regulus, how can you do what you just did without being sure?” He didn’t demand an answer. He caught himself looking down at the floor and pulled his head back up before he said “Yes. I want to fuck you.”
Regulus stood up and held out his arm. Sirius went to him. This shyness turned out to have its own charm, but it was not the triumphant ravishing he’d imagined, insofar as he’d dared to imagine anything. He felt a little hypnotised, as if the room was full of water and they could only drift and sway in it. Regulus drew him in, the arm around his waist. They kissed first with great caution, a mere touch of the lips before drawing back for a moment to listen to the other’s sharp, quick breaths. Then they kissed open-mouthed. It worked, thought Sirius, concentrating on every point at which their bodies met. It worked so well. It had been so long, though. No doubt he was over-impressed. But now he knew that if it felt weird to touch Regulus (and it did) it was only in a good way.
Regulus stepped away. “We’ll see what Remus thinks,” he said.
*
They went their separate ways and now Sirius was faced with a quandary: to wank or not to wank? Remus probably meant he’d think about it for weeks, as no doubt he should, but if he did happen to realise very quickly that he couldn’t resist, Sirius would prefer to go into it as desperately wanting as he was now. He tried to have a nap, so he couldn’t think about it all.
Remus pushed open his door just as he was drifting off. He sat down on the bed and stroked Sirius’s hair. It felt nice. “I always thought you’d have said if you wanted to sleep with me. And you didn’t, so I thought you didn’t,” he said.
“Our friendship was more important,” said Sirius. He saw the wry look on Remus’s face. “I don’t mean I thought sleeping with you would ruin it, just that it was never the right time for me to want to worry about smoothing things over, and making it not ruined, if it turned out you didn't want to.”
“And now it’s the right time for you to worry about the fallout from sleeping with your brother?”
“It’s as good a time as ever. You obviously like the idea, Remus, or you’d have said very clearly that you were completely appalled, and packed your bags,” said Sirius, propping himself up on his elbows.
“I’m weak. It’s not a good thing,” said Remus.
“We deserve to enjoy something relatively harmless for once. We’re all consenting adults. Come on,” Sirius said, tugging at one of Remus’s fingers. “Let go.”
“Alright,” said Remus.
“Really?” asked Sirius.
Remus nodded.
“You go and find Regulus, then.”
“I don’t think we should be in here,” said Remus. Sirius’s room, so redolent of his teenaged self, did not seem a tactful place to commit incest in. “Go and wait in my room.”
*
Regulus, at a loss for something to do with himself, had asked Kreacher to teach him how to make bread, though he’d promised he wasn’t going to take to doing it instead of Kreacher. He was successfully taking out his disbelief in the events that had just taken place on the dough when he heard the rustle of Remus lurking tactfully in the background.
“Oh, Kreacher, I am sorry. I forgot that I needed to talk to Remus about something important. I’ll want to do this again though.”
He turned towards Remus, brushing flour off his hands. It actually was quite annoying that he had to turn up right now.
“So you want to?” Regulus asked him softly by the stairs.
“Yes,” said Remus, and led him by the hand to his room.
Sirius was lying on the bed, his arms crossed under his head. He looked fairly nonchalant, but he hadn’t been nonchalant downstairs. Remus kissed Regulus while he was still appraising Sirius. Remus was so nice. Well, alright, there was a lot of other stuff in there, but still, he was nice, and Regulus found it appealing. It made him both feel protective of Remus and want to be protected by him.
Sirius sat up. He tapped Remus’s leg and indicated he should straddle him, and then that they should grind against each other. Regulus watched them closely. Their every touch of each other, their intent faces, set off sharp warm jolts in his belly. Sirius looked up and patted the bed next to him. Regulus sat down and was kissed, hard this time, with determination.
“Please,” he said, his eyes closed. He wanted so much for Sirius to be hard and determined. He didn’t know why. He’d been hard and determined enough when they were younger, and Regulus hadn’t liked it then.
“I want to see… I want to see Remus suck you off,” said Sirius, trying to decide what he wanted from all the possibilities. He turned to the task of divesting Regulus of his shirt; Regulus guessed from the smile on his face that he would do as he did; he simply pulled and the buttons pinged all over the room.
“Simple pleasures for simple minds,” said Regulus.
Remus stretched out a finger and rubbed Regulus’s now bare nipple. Sirius pinched the other for a moment before nudging Remus off his lap so he could move, undoing Regulus’s trousers and yanking them down his hips with his underwear. When he’d pulled them off altogether, he was at eye-level to Regulus’s cock. He looked at it contemplatively and, as if he wasn’t able to resist, leant in and, wrapping his warm hand around his cock, swirled his tongue around the head a little before letting it fill his mouth properly for a moment. Regulus gasped and Sirius looked up at him, both aware of the tableau that was being committed to memory. Remus reached out and outlined the circle of Sirius’s lips, slipping a finger inside for a moment.
Sirius drew back and Remus knelt down in his place. He lightly massaged Regulus’s balls and rested his thumb on his arsehole before taking his cock, already spit-slick, into his mouth. Regulus concentrated on his stroking of Remus’s jawline to distract himself to some extent from the sensation. He was rocking into Remus’s mouth a little bit; he hoped it wasn’t annoying.
“That’s enough,” said Sirius. Remus gave Regulus one last long hard suck. Sirius pulled Regulus across the bed and rolled him onto his stomach. His cock grazed the bedding when he moved and he had to try hard not to rut into it. He let his legs fall open; he could feel hands pulling them wider apart, and then his buttocks. He felt Sirius’s tongue on his arsehole. Somehow he managed to rim impatiently, as he did so many things, like his every action was for the purpose of furthering some dramatic happening in the next second. It was really too late to back out now, Regulus thought. He knew too much. Such filthy knowledge. He thought, right now, that he would hardly be able to bear the delight of looking back on this. Sirius slid a finger inside him, beginning to pull him open.
“I’m the only one naked, aren’t I?” said Regulus, suddenly realising this lying face down, becoming overwhelmingly aware of his exposure. Sirius pushed another finger in. “Start taking things off, one of you.”
He felt Remus shift on the bed as he obediently started to pull his robes off. Knee-walking closer to Regulus, he brushed his fingertips into the hollow of his back, following the spine first up and then down again to just above the swell of Regulus’s arse. Regulus shivered.
Sirius sat up and began flinging his clothes off in a hurry. “Remus, you get up there by the headboard,” he said.
It wasn’t too difficult to arrange things so Regulus was lying between Remus’s open thighs. As Sirius conjured some lubricant, Regulus smeared the drop of pre-come on Remus’s cock over the crown. Another drop took its place and Regulus put out his tongue to taste. He looked up at Remus, whose gaze was torn between Regulus’s mouth and Sirius, slicking up his cock. Regulus had to bury his face as the thought of Sirius’s cock suddenly overcame him.
It remained buried as Sirius entered him, positioning his cock at the entrance and then thrusting home in one movement. He lifted Regulus’s hips off the mattress, making it easier for him to manipulate his body and control penetration. Regulus thought he had never experienced anything finer than the merciless rhythm Sirius established. He managed to raise his face, which felt damp and flushed, and saw Remus touching himself. Feeling the need to share as much of the joy as he could, he brushed Remus’s hand away, replacing it with his mouth. It was a sloppy blowjob as Sirius sometimes pushed him forward, down onto more of Remus’s cock than he could really take, and sometimes pulled him almost off altogether, but Regulus thought it was doing the job.
Sirius reached round to wank him off. Regulus moaned around Remus’s cock; this was it. He’d only thrust into Sirius’s fist a few times before he was coming, the perfect moment of unbearable pleasure lasting two or three moments longer. Sirius fucked him faster and even harder, continuing to move his hand on Regulus’s cock, the bastard. Regulus let out a noise that was almost a wail at the overstimulation. He scrabbled at Sirius’s hand but he wouldn’t stop. To distract himself he returned to Remus’s cock, which he’d left for a moment. Remus came as soon as he began to suck again. Regulus swallowed quickly, but come still spilled out of his mouth. Sirius groaned; as he wiped the come off his face Regulus could feel the spurt of come inside him.
Regulus allowed himself to relax properly and stretch his limbs even before Sirius withdrew. When he had, Regulus rolled onto his back and looked up at Sirius. Sirius’s hair was damp and tousled, his face flushed and startled. He looked at Regulus wide-eyed. Regulus held out his arms and Sirius leant into the embrace, picking up Remus’s hand and holding it against his cheek as he did so.
They made themselves comfortable lying side by side, Sirius in the middle. Regulus closed his eyes for a moment. He could feel the come leaking out of him. Sirius’s come.
“We can do that again, can’t we?” asked Remus.
“We’ll probably do it again later today,” said Sirius. He was holding Remus’s hand again. With his other hand he reached for Regulus’s.
“I’m so glad I did this,” said Remus in a low, fervent voice.
Word Count: 8,805
Rating: NC-17
Summary: AU set during Order of the Phoenix. Sirius is unhappy and Remus wonders if he ought to be able to reach him more. Regulus turns up alive and things begin to change. Written for hp_3somes.
Remus swallowed the last of his cooling coffee. Sirius looked at him as if he expected him to start making his farewell; a look both wary and weary. Remus crossed his arms on the kitchen table and leaned forward, trying to look settled. He looked over Sirius’s shoulder at the bleak kitchen that extended cavernously behind him and thought again that it was strange to be here. Strange to be with Sirius, and strange to be here.
“It hasn’t stopped feeling strange to be back here at all,” said Sirius. “But I think having you here is the strangest feeling. I never wanted anyone to come here back in the day. I keep feeling like Regulus or my parents are about to walk in any minute.”
“Yes,” said Remus, a little more surprised than he should have been to find their thoughts tending the same way. “I remember how firm you were about never letting us come here. It’s felt a little odd for me to see it so belatedly.”
“It took a while for James to get it, why I minded so much about keeping my friends separate. First he said he would win them over. Then he said he didn’t know why I cared about getting on their nerves if I wanted to wind them up anyway.”
James had got it soon enough, as Remus recalled. He had realised how Sirius felt about the matter partly through the way James surrounded any mention of Sirius’s family with the same gallantry as he did Remus’s “furry problem.” Something that was a source of furious shame to the possessor was met by James’s determined attempts to neutralise it as such. James, more than anyone, took Sirius as an individual, on his own terms, without ever thinking of him as that rebellious Black boy who may or may not come to heel in time.
Sirius was probably now technically in the best position he’d yet been in to take stock. Since he’d escaped Azkaban he’d been on the run, living hand to mouth, and now he was, for the present, settled and secure. He had coped well, even taking into account incidents like the knife brandished over Ron’s bed, but in so many ways he had not come to terms with James’s death or the fact that time had passed. And he’d ended up in Grimmauld Place when all this coming to terms would ideally have been happening. The constant reminders of his family, the idea that he was a Black again now, must be helping to drive in one of the consequences of James’s death well enough: there was no one left, not even Remus, who saw Sirius so splendidly and simply as himself alone. There was Harry who, Sirius said, had been ready to come and live with him the first time they met. Sirius didn’t seem to quite understand why, in a lot of ways, there wasn’t Harry, but had mostly come to understand that this was, in any case, so. Remus knew all this, but didn’t know how to talk about any of it. He supposed he wasn’t really convinced that talking could help, or that Sirius would talk back to Remus if he tried.
“Looking at my room made me realise what a teenager I was. Maybe I would have behaved just the same whoever my parents were and it was almost a coincidence that I actually do loathe everything my family stood for,” said Sirius.
“It’s been hard to tell which parts of any of us had really more to do with being so young than anything,” said Remus. Sirius’s face, introspective, almost amused, became graver. “Of course, I have the opportunity to get to know you, at least,” he added.
“You’ve had the opportunity for a while already,” said Sirius.
“Things have been so busy,” said Remus. “But I think we all feel better now that Harry is back at Hogwarts.”
“I don’t.”
“Well. He is safest there.”
“It’s not the time that’s made us different. It’s because it’s not the four of us anymore that we’d have to get to know each other again,” Sirius said, looking at Remus provocatively for some reason, as if he expected him to be offended.
“Well, yes. And the time too.”
Sirius gave up on whatever path he’d been trying to herd Remus down. Sirius always did think of complicated ways to get his own way and give up in favour of a direct, aggressive approach before he’d half begun. “What have you been doing all this time by yourself?” Sirius asked. “Did you get over us? Did you know who you were all by yourself for all that time? Did you grow up into someone completely different?”
Remus had grown sideways rather than upwards, into someone different but who could nonetheless have been predicted. He did know who he was all by himself now; he was the werewolf who never stayed anywhere for long and who had learned not to mind much rather than the boy who’d got a little too lucky and was never quite comfortable about it, always afraid that he’d be thrown out of Hogwarts, that his friends would realise they didn’t want him around. He didn’t want to share that with Sirius. He couldn’t even remember now how well Sirius had really known that boy. “You knew who you were,” he said. “All that time in Azkaban. You kept sane. I thought of that so often.”
“I did,” agreed Sirius. “The memories somehow kept me grounded. Grounded for Azkaban. But memories aren’t enough when you’re out in real life again.”
Remus didn’t know what to say. “Life has been very unfair to you,” he said.
“And to you, it seems like. So how has it been? Have you loved and lost or never loved at all?”
Remus thought about it. “More never loved at all, I suppose,” he said. He’d only come close a couple of times to thinking maybe, if things were different… when he was with someone. He was good at keeping himself to himself, at creating connections that were real but inherently limited.
“Has it been lonely?” asked Sirius, looking keenly at him.
Sirius didn’t go for emotional conversations very often. Remus seemed to remember him always determinedly just out of reach whenever Remus felt the need for a little paddle in feelings-talk, and he definitely remembered that when Sirius did go for them, it was uncomfortable. “Obviously it’s been lonely,” Remus said.
Sirius leaned back and sighed as if in acknowledgement of the hopelessness of things. “You do have a mission to fill the void, at least. How are the werewolves coming along?”
“You’d probably be better at it than I am. Well. Perhaps also more likely to move things too quickly in the wrong company and get killed.”
“But you feel you’re making some kind of progress? You’re so good at making things sound reasonable, you must be.”
“There are some people I don’t think I can put off putting my cards on the table to much longer,” said Remus.
“As for me, I’m keeping house, of course. Not very well. I’ve been avoiding Kreacher as much as possible and he’s stopped dusting.”
“Surely there’s something you can do. Something unrelated to the Order, even, that would be better than nothing.”
“I’ll take a correspondence course in Mermish. To keep me feeling stimulated and everything,” said Sirius. “Oh, you might as well go. If you haven’t got anything nice to say and all that - me, I mean. I’ll only make you feel less like coming again.”
Remus was unable to disagree with him much. Though he hoped he’d come anyway, even if he didn’t feel like it.
*
Sirius remained at the table after Remus left. There was nothing he planned to be getting on with. For all his complaints about his lack of occupation, the days when he wandered around lost in thought passed surprisingly quickly for what they were. Sometimes it felt as if he’d escaped Azkaban to find himself underwater rather than out in the fresh air.
Someone entered the house. Sirius opened his mouth, ready to shout to whoever it was to come and find him in the kitchen.
“Reggie!” he heard his mother’s voice say. He was reminded vividly of his living mother, who in life had had more occasion to use those tones of rich delight than her portrait. “My darling, you’re alright after all! You’re back!”
Sirius’s mouth remained open as he frowned. Who was it out there that had set her off like that?
“Hello, Mother,” a voice said, flat, perhaps a little tired.
Sirius felt cold. He leaned his chin in his hands and gazed at the tabletop as though he was thinking through an abstract problem, though surely he had only moments until they came face to face - unless Regulus snapped back out of existence. He might be rocking a little. A lot of what passed through his mind was crushing disappointment. Why Regulus, of all people, making a miraculous return? The spurt of hope that Regulus might bring something with him to change things, make Sirius’s world better or different, was more surprising.
Sirius could hear his mother’s portrait sobbing with joy, but nothing more of his brother. There was after all no reason to suppose Regulus knew the house was occupied. Part of him wanted to sit tight and wait for his brother to come to him, see him come through the door and come unexpectedly face to face with Sirius. Another part of him wasn’t sure he hadn’t been hallucinating, or felt irrationally that Regulus might be real but somehow become an hallucination if he delayed.
He got up and padded up the stairs. The hallway was empty when he got there. He opened the nearest door, heart racing painfully. It was already ajar but he couldn’t remember whether it had been closed before. He felt sick with disappointment and fear when he found the room empty. He was crazy after all, and worst of all, he knew it. But that train of thought was irrational in itself. He had to continue. He pushed open the door to the connecting room.
Regulus was standing in the middle of the room, looking rather lost. Sirius was almost annoyed by how shocking it felt to lay eyes on him. He had been actively looking for Regulus, after all, even if he had thought he was dead five minutes ago.
Regulus didn’t say “Hello.” He said “Sorry.”
“Hello,” said Sirius. Was the sorry something he’d thought about and meant to say, or was it forced out of him by nerves? Regulus’s fear of Sirius had always coexisted with his adoption of superiority towards him.
“I’m not dead,” said Regulus, and really, he had to be nervous to say anything so stupid.
“So it seems. What the fuck, Regulus?”
Regulus sighed and sank down onto a sofa. He was older. It was strange. Regulus had been frozen and frankly forgotten for so long, and all this time he’d been somewhere, growing into something else. He hadn’t aged like Sirius had, but he had sharp lines bracketing his mouth and he had a generally tired look. He didn’t look unappealing, now Sirius was seeing him through eyes more objective than they ever had been before.
“Did you ever ask Kreacher, really ask, what happened to me? Did anyone?” Regulus asked.
“Kreacher? No. I didn’t, anyway.”
“Really?” Regulus asked. Not a family that makes it hard to fake a death, I have to say.”
Sirius felt discomforted at being lumped in with his parents.
“If people ever really asked him, needing to know either what happened to me or about something else, if they seemed as though they would be worse off for not knowing, he was to tell them - well, tell them the truth except for me dying at the end. But no one got told even that?” He looked disappointed.
“So what was this story we missed out on?” asked Sirius.
“Oh, that’s not important now. Anyway, what happened was first I thought about really dying, and then I thought about everyone thinking I was dead, and then I thought about going back into my life. It was inevitable; the middle idea was so irresistible. And it was the sensible thing to do, too, though I suppose I could have come back when the Dark Lord was out of the way for a while. I meant to, though it’s not as if I had anyone to announce myself to until you escaped. But I put it off and put it off and I’ve only just got round to it.”
“Did you know I’d be here?” asked Sirius.
“I thought it was possible, but I didn’t really expect it. I wouldn’t have thought you’d want to be here, but maybe you don’t have anywhere else.”
“It’s not just me. Well, most of the time it’s just me, but the Order is using the place too.”
“Oh.” They both remembered that the Order was still an awkward point.
“Not bothered by the mass murderer thing, then?” asked Sirius. He didn’t suppose Regulus would have believed that story, though come to think of it he could not quite think why he shouldn’t have.
Regulus looked blank.
“Well, I suppose the company you’ve kept may have inured you to the idea,” Sirius conceded. “But it’s not as if we’ve ever got on, and I’d have thought you might feel a bit tentative about visiting someone who blasts streetfulls of people to bits when they’re annoyed.”
“I knew something was very wrong with that story, and I suppose I hoped that even if that part were true you wouldn’t feel like killing me on sight.”
Sirius narrowed his eyes. He wanted to know how Regulus had interpreted the disaster.
Regulus all but rolled his eyes. “I could never mistake you for a follower of the Dark Lord. And I couldn’t imagine you betraying Potter. I could imagine you losing control when confronting the person responsible. But I wasn’t sure.”
Sirius didn’t much like the idea that Regulus thought he knew him well enough to sort the lies from truth. So many people Sirius had liked so much better, felt so much closer to, had believed he could betray James. “Did you know Pettigrew was a traitor? Before it happened?”
“No. I never made it very far up the Death Eater career ladder. I suppose if I had known I might have sent you a note before I left.”
Fuck Regulus. It was all very well for him to look thoughtful, interested by the idea that if he’d been a better Death Eater he might actually have saved lives.
“So what have you been doing? And what do you think you’re going to do now?” Sirius asked.
“What do you think? If the Ministry realises I’m not dead I’d be a wanted man. I went to live among the Muggles.” He looked up at Sirius with a defiant, defensive look. “It’s easy to worm yourself into this or that profession with a little magic, moving on when the routine gets stale. I only went to wizarding places occasionally, when I’d almost forgotten the whole lot of you existed. I’ve spent more time with Muggles than you, with all your preaching.”
“I’m glad that getting off scot-free allowed you to advance your personal growth. Especially as I’m so well placed to know that Azkaban would have wrecked you. And really, you don’t look like you’ve been skipping through the meadow with the Muggles,” said Sirius, his hackles raised.
“I’ve been alright,” said Regulus. A moment later he said, “It’s just tiring being away from your true self for so long.”
Sirius was reminded of his talk with Remus. It helped to think about the common ground between himself and Remus in a way that thinking about the common ground between himself and Regulus, if there was any, did not.
“And what about now?” Suddenly Sirius had an idea. He’d whipped his wand out and snapped “Petrificus Totalus” almost before he knew it. Regulus fell off the sofa abruptly, flat on his back. Sirius stood over him and looked at his face, still except for the eyes. The eyes darted to Sirius’s own face. They looked exasperated, perhaps, as they rested there. “I don’t suppose by any chance you’ve already reunited with Voldemort? You’d have known when he popped back up, wouldn’t you?” Sirius stooped and rolled up the sleeve of Regulus’s shirt - he hadn’t even consciously noted that Regulus wasn’t in robes. He yanked the sleeve up further, scraping Regulus’s arm, until the Dark Mark was exposed. He traced it with his thumb. “You’d have noticed this turning black again. How did that make you feel, tucked up with the Muggles, ‘away from your true self’? Did you decide to run back to Voldemort? Did you decide the way to get in with him was to kill me, or infiltrate the Order as a spy?” He looked again at Regulus’s still face. It was as likely to tell him the truth as Regulus himself.
He removed the curse and held Regulus’s shoulders down. He felt the change in the body beneath his hands as the potential to move rendered it at the same time more pliant.
“I don’t know how much the Dark Lord really cares about you, to be honest,” said Regulus. “And I’m not Snape or Bellatrix.”
“So you’re a spy?”
“You know I’m not, don’t you?” Regulus said, appealing to Sirius’s rationality in a manner more mild, patient and unconcerned than Sirius liked.
Sirius did know. He didn’t know why he knew.
“I did something when I went away. Either the Dark Lord has already found out about it, or he will in the future, and when he does he will be absolutely…” Regulus could not think of a good enough word. “Enraged. And the reasons why I did the thing in the first place still hold good. I’ve been done with him for a long time. I knew he would come back. It didn’t change anything.”
“Alright. I’ll believe you. Family ties are so important to me, and I’m so trusting.”
Regulus looked at him dubiously before wriggling into a sitting position.
“Do you want to join the Order? I don’t know if you’ll be able to do anything more than I am, which is pretty much nothing, but at least you’d be on hand to fight if - when it came down to it.”
Regulus looked considering, which gave Sirius time to feel he’d been too open. “If I’m allowed to. I doubt it’s just up to you.”
Sirius suddenly realised he’d mismanaged this very badly. Not only was he back in Grimmauld Place, feeling trapped as he had during adolescent holidays, he was going to have Regulus for company, just like the old days.
*
It felt like the old days, but a bizarre, melted version. Here Regulus was sitting round a table with a group including Sirius, Lupin and Snape. It made Regulus feel exposed to have another Death Eater there. They hadn’t spent much time together, but Snape had seen him do things he wouldn’t like anyone else here to know about. He couldn’t tell quite how Snape felt about it - he was never happy, after all. It was only that inscrutability that convinced Regulus that there could be anything in Snape that explained his presence here. Regulus had the impression most of the Order were not so much divided on his inclusion as a controversy, or shocked by his return from the dead, as surprised to be reminded that he had existed at all. Minerva McGonagall seemed the only one who felt some measure of genuine gratification at welcoming him.
Regulus wondered whether he should tell them about the Horcruxes. He wasn’t entirely sure why he didn’t, except that he’d got into the habit of silence. His getting into the habit had been primarily the result of that first shock but perhaps he’d continued in it because he liked having a secret. It made him feel safer somehow, when really it wasn’t that sort of secret at all. Perhaps he should get another secret, so he didn’t feel so attached to this one. His whole existence had been a secret for years, so it was natural that he should feel miserly now that his hoard was so diminished.
The meeting seemed to be ending. Regulus looked up at the people gathering their things together and making concluding remarks, feeling a little apprehensive. He’d be alone with Sirius again once they’d gone, and it was a little early to go to bed. He noticed Lupin hovering awkwardly, holding his cloak rather than putting it on. Regulus hoped he’d stay for a while. At Hogwarts Regulus had always tried to approach Sirius with messages from home when Lupin was around; he associated his witness with a slightly higher likelihood of safety than that of Potter or Pettigrew. Finally Sirius caught Lupin’s eye and indicated that he should sit back down.
Regulus and Lupin politely asked what the other had been doing all these years, though it was obvious that neither really wanted to talk about it. Lupin alluded to a general meanness and a series of temporary situations. He might not have made things so clear as that if he had not been obviously distracted, trying to think whether there was a chance Regulus wouldn’t know he was a werewolf. Regulus did. He’d always taken the Prophet and had followed the news with particular attention since his brother’s escape from Azkaban. When the werewolf teacher employed by Dumbledore was the scandal of the moment, he had been led to think back on his memories, interpreting Lupin anew in the light of this revelation. It had played a part in pulling him back to Grimmauld Place and old times.
“Did you ever think about the Muggle world?” asked Regulus.
“No. Well. I’ve thought about it, often. I wondered if it would be too hard to find something there I could do, that would give me more security. I didn’t think it would be too hard. But I suppose I was too proud. Or prejudiced, myself, even.” Lupin seemed to be forcing himself to answer with scrupulous truth.
“We know you don’t mean wizards are degraded by working with Muggles,” Sirius said. “Or that turning to the Muggle world shows they’ve failed. But in your case, it would be a bit like they’d chased you out and they don’t deserve that.”
Lupin made an odd little ducking gesture that indicated nothing other than a wish to change the subject. “It’s quite a commitment, coming back, joining the Order, when you were removed from the game, as it were,” he said to Regulus.
Regulus tried not to look too uncomfortable; the idea of being accountable again made him feel panicky when he thought about it properly. “I committed myself years ago. Though there has been a long gap. In a way I wish the Dark Lord hadn’t disappeared for so long. I feel we’ve got rusty.”
“The Ministry certainly has got rusty,” said Lupin.
Sirius snorted. “When were they anything else?” He looked over Lupin’s shoulder. “I thought we were going to defeat Voldemort while we were young. Or at least, I thought we might die, but that he would too soon afterwards. I thought the fight was ours. I never thought of any of this.”
“Of course not, it was the future. I’m sure hordes of outlandish things are yet to happen that aren’t occurring to us now,” said Regulus. Partly, he knew, he was irritated by the idea of his brother being so sure of those things while his own ruling passion had been the idea of Lord Voldemort as saviour of wizardkind. They had both been callow and pig-headed, but Sirius had been more right. It was a good thing they’d had nothing to do with each other while Regulus was rethinking things, or Regulus couldn’t imagine that he’d have rethought them.
“I hope Harry hasn’t still got all this on his shoulders when he’s our age,” said Sirius.
“I don’t quite see how it is on his shoulders. I don’t get the way you all talk about him, to be honest. He’s just a kid, a random kid, surely? I mean, I understand why he’s not random to you two, but not everyone else,” said Regulus. The meeting had been littered with references to Harry Potter, and it had begun to bemuse Regulus to irritation.
Lupin sighed. “In one sense you’re probably right and, however much we try to avoid it, we see him too much as an answer to all the mysteries and problems surrounding Voldemort. But also you just don’t understand. Reading the papers aren’t the same as being here. It’s too late now to say he’s just a random kid. He isn’t now.”
“His parents were killed when he was only a year old. He was brought up by Lily’s godawful relatives. How can he not grow up and feel like he has to avenge them?” Sirius demanded.
It occurred to Regulus how very much Sirius would have liked to find out he had parents to be avenged, real parents who weren’t those he shared with Regulus. He felt suddenly sad for all of them, their small failure of a family. “There are many to avenge themselves on the Dark Lord. I daresay it will take many,” he said.
There was a pause. What could they talk about, all three of them together? They seemed to have run out of big talk and how to manufacture small talk? “Did you like teaching at Hogwarts? What was it like, seeing the place from the other side?” Regulus managed, with a feeling of triumphant relief.
All three of them must suddenly have been able and willing to try, because they embarked on a nostalgic evocation of Hogwarts without tripping over the things that had been so awkward at the time, such as Houses. It was generous of Sirius to join in this project of negotiation with its determined lack of self-betrayal on the surface. Regulus knew Sirius could be generous, but mostly from accidental observation. Lupin stayed for quite a while; none of them wanted to leave the self-contained little world they’d created. It was all very self-indulgent and bowdlerised, but Regulus felt brought nearer to Sirius in a novel way. They’d known each other so much through reputation at school. Regulus wished he could have had access to the Sirius who had apparently existed at that time; more genuinely fun, even kinder, than the gratuitously, distressingly offensive Sirius whom Regulus had avoided and complained about to his parents and friends. Regulus went to bed feeling as if his schooldays had been somehow recuperated. He hadn’t thought of them in years. Sirius had told him he was sleeping in his old room, but Regulus didn’t think his own would be a refuge.
*
Remus found himself visiting Grimmauld Place more often. He felt he should, in order to prevent bloodshed, but to his surprise he found it quite enjoyable. When he’d first realised Sirius and Regulus were both going to be knocking around the house without much of an immediate purpose in life, he had wondered if he would be able to ever make himself go there again. But, though he felt treacherous about it, Regulus’s presence seemed to neutralise the awkward aspects of Sirius’s company. Regulus was really more like Remus; adroit at smoothing over social encounters, with an almost slippery mildness Remus didn’t much want to recognise. He sensed a likeness between them in the drifting way they had spent most of their adult life. Sirius could try to draw comparisons between himself and Remus, but ultimately Azkaban was isolating even after escape. Remus couldn’t understand what he had been through and felt an interfering, dividing sense of guilt. Regulus had more and better reasons to feel guilty, and Remus could not help feeling aware that this made being with Sirius easier for him. Sirius also had someone to share an awkward difference with - the lack of active work for the Order. Remus thought that though at first being in the same position as Regulus made Sirius loathe the whole thing more, it did come to console him.
One afternoon Regulus and Sirius had the nearest thing to a row Remus had yet witnessed between them. It was on house-elves; Sirius had casually mentioned that Harry had a friend with some very idealistic, youthful notions about them.
“I wish I had met people with idealistic notions about house-elves when I was at school,” said Regulus. “I hope she represents the next generation.” He went on to explain why, growing more heated. Sirius, sensing some reproach based in his lack of affection for Kreacher, argued hotly in return. Quite what he was arguing wasn’t plain. What was plain was that he had in fact no fundamental argument against protecting elfish welfare, but disliked his family’s house-elves and the idea that Regulus, of all people, might feel ethically superior.
Remus decided that he didn’t need to intervene. Regulus quashed Sirius’s objections skilfully and civilly enough and went on to explain, with obvious sincerity, why it mattered to care about people like house-elves. Sirius, obviously impressed, despite himself, with this sincerity, subsided.
“You have changed, I admit,” said Sirius.
“I have, yes,” said Regulus. “It’s taken coming back here to realise how much. Living in constant flight from adolescent realisations made me feel as if I couldn’t have grown up really. But I did. I’m sure I haven’t changed nearly as much as you think I have, though. You never really knew me.”
Sirius eyed him in silence.
“I presume I knew you less than Sirius,” said Remus, “Since I only just knew you by more than sight. But if you don’t mind my saying so, I think you have changed a lot, in an interesting way. You’re the same, but different. The same container, full of something different.”
“Well, I’d certainly like to think I’ve changed,” said Regulus.
*
Sirius dug it out of Remus that he felt unhappy about transforming in his bedsit. Well, this was such an obvious thing to feel that Remus didn’t know if digging was the right word. But he didn’t want to talk about it. He was back on the Wolfsbane, thank God, which meant he could remain quietly in his room rather than trying to find some way of confining and restraining himself. The unhappiness came not so much from the routinely unhappy business of transforming in itself, even under Wolfsbane, as the fear someone would come in for some unforeseeable reason.
“You should come here,” said Sirius. “There’s so much room. I know you say you don’t get very adventurous when you’re on Wolfsbane, but surely you’d like to run about a bit in a civilised way.”
“I don’t feel the Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix really need a werewolf loose on the premises, and I don’t think Regulus-”
“I don’t mind,” said Regulus, looking surprised.
Remus did mind the idea of Regulus seeing him as a wolf.
“I can keep you in order and you won’t even need keeping in order. Get over yourself; you know it’s the best option,” said Sirius.
It was the best option, on the whole, and Remus decided to make an effort to get over himself. Sirius and Regulus were both being good in their ways, and it seemed only fair that he should try to go against the grain a little too.
*
Regulus obviously sensed Remus’s discomfort and retired to his room early, before the transformation. Sirius and Remus sat in one of the drawing rooms. Remus fidgeted under the tension of anticipation; he’d never been sure if it was an emotional or physiological effect. If possible at these times, he would roll and thrash around on a bed, curling and stretching. He could restrain himself from doing that easily enough, so he assumed it was melodrama. Sirius patted the back of his hand. Remus started and glanced at Sirius, who gave him a reassuring smile. Remus gave himself up for a moment, as he had surprisingly few times since their reunion, to the deep relief of feeling himself known, already revealed and accepted. Sirius, he could tell, was looking forward to the reminder of old times.
That night Remus and Sirius chased each other around the house, their claws scratching the floor. The house was big enough to make pounding up and down its staircases and leaping over furniture satisfying. For once it felt good, even afterwards in memory, to let go of human burdens.
Regulus looked a little wistful at breakfast. They must have made a terrible racket, and it wasn’t as though Regulus could have joined in. Remus hoped he hadn’t felt unsafe. He felt tired and satisfied in an oddly post-coital way that made the dynamic between the three of them seem more awkward to him.
The next night they left the house to roam the streets. Thinking about it later, Sirius must have left the door open. Remus jumped over a startled fox that was already fleeing from them. Remus didn’t think any of the people whose paths they crossed were able to determine that they were anything other than foxes themselves, particularly large and shadowy perhaps. It felt as though the streets, and this time, were theirs.
The next morning Remus was probably obviously weakened, as he thought of it when he was not his usual self. It was Regulus who made the attack, though, funnily enough.
“Why don’t you stay here? It seems silly when we have so much empty space. We ought to be accommodating all members of the Order who don’t have somewhere they’d prefer. And it doesn’t sound as if you have any particular reason to prefer your bedsit.”
“I’m too old to live with friends, rent-free,” said Remus, refusing automatically, though his brain was beginning to wake up and wonder if there was really any particular reason to.
“Think of it more as being a live-in Member of the Order. It’s a terribly important role, Remus, you should feel honoured to be asked to join the ranks of Regulus and me,” said Sirius.
“You can feel free to put the rent you pay now in that tin over there,” said Regulus. “We’ll never look in it or anything, so it’s entirely up to you whether that’s something you want to do with your money.”
Of course, Sirius as well as Remus had lived off James back in the day. He probably was not suggesting Remus do something he’d be too proud for himself.
On the one hand, he wasn’t sure Grimmauld Place with Sirius and Regulus in it was any less problematic than his lonely bedsit. On the other hand, Remus could have lonely bedsits any time he liked.
“Alright,” he said. “But I reserve the right to change my mind.”
*
A lot of the strange awkwardness between Sirius and Remus had gone. Perhaps prolonged exposure had finally done the trick, or perhaps it had something to do with Regulus being there. They’d been such a group, the Marauders, that it being just him and Remus felt like two little balls jangling in the same container but never connecting. Regulus should have had no beneficial effect that wasn’t uniting them against the enemy, but there you were. Sirius hadn’t liked the way Remus and Regulus had found it so easy to establish a tentative friendship, but could not help feeling better when he realised Regulus felt shut out of Remus and Sirius’s deeply established history. And then he felt very silly, finding himself combing through this emotional minutiae. He ought to have more important things on his mind. Yes, he really ought to have more important things on his mind, he thought again hurriedly, as some of the other thoughts he’d been having flashed across his mind.
Sirius was having funny thoughts about Regulus. He didn’t mind those sharp moments of yearning he experienced in Remus’s company. He’d always had them, for James as well, and he’d always been able to let them pass. They skated over the surface of the relationship and left no trace. He felt less comfortable with letting those fleeting pictures of Regulus come and go as they liked. Their sibling relationship was obviously a little strange, but why did it have to become stranger? The original period of dismissive resentment in their youth, followed by the total gap, had led to Sirius regarding Regulus anew with a curious mixture of desires both to reject and clutch at this relic of ties that were never what they should have been. Damn it. He wanted to fuck Regulus. He really wanted to, he admitted to himself in bed, he really did.
Sirius felt for his cock, which he knew was already beginning to get hard. He moved his hand very slowly up and down, because he wasn’t wanking to this. He liked to think of covering Regulus’s mouth with his hand, and Regulus opening his legs for him more than he liked to think of anything else. He imagined that slow, willing spread of the thighs and jerked his hand away. Sirius turned over onto his stomach and clenched his fists, feeling breathless. He would not do this. He could not be that person.
*
“You do seem to be getting on so well with Regulus, considering,” said Remus the very next day, damn him. “Did you have to really try at it, or did it come more naturally than you were expecting?”
Sirius wanted to tell him. Sometimes when he told people things the secret lost its sting and became somehow less true. He wanted Remus to help him.
Remus looked at him in surprise. “Are you alright?” he asked.
“Yeah. I don’t know. I can’t tell how much it was natural or effort. He’s not really the person I remember, which helps.” But of course he couldn’t tell Remus. That kind of thing was unsayable. The only thing worse than thinking it was saying it.
*
Sirius wanked, piously, to Remus. Thinking of a specific other person made it much easier to blot out Regulus.
*
All bets were thrown off when Sirius walked into a room to find Remus and Regulus kissing. They hadn’t been at it long and it had been Regulus’s idea; Sirius could somehow tell from the interested curiosity of the angle of Remus’s neck. Their heads snapped guiltily to face him.
“Don’t mind me,” said Sirius in what he could hear was a cold, hard voice that did not belong to someone who was genuinely happy to mind their own business. He turned slowly on his heel and began to leave the room. He hoped one of them would stop him by saying something, but he didn’t know what.
“Don’t go. He’d rather it was you, anyway,” said Regulus.
Both Sirius and Remus turned to look at him with alarm.
“Well, if you feel like that about it I don’t think there’s any point in my-” said Remus, getting up.
Regulus tugged at him. “I don’t mean I think you would have fucked me while wishing I was Sirius or whatever. But it would be better if he was there.”
Remus and Sirius looked at each other briefly in mutual acknowledgement of the awkwardness of the implications of this. It looked as if maybe they’d both always thought that they would like to sleep together in another world. Sirius hadn’t even been sure until now that Remus was into men. Neither of them liked it being brought up so abruptly and publically. Then they both stared at Regulus because of the other implications.
He knows, thought Sirius in terror.
“There’s one very good reason why both of you can’t sleep with me at the same time, even if I wanted you to. Do you know what it is?” asked Remus, beginning to wax sarcastic.
“I’m denying that it’s a very good reason,” said Regulus. He was clearly determined to give this one good shot, but very nervous. He was being braver than Sirius would have been. “Sirius,” he said, looking directly at Sirius and speaking clearer than ever, “Would like it.”
Remus turned towards Sirius, half bewildered, and half beginning to genuinely question.
“Oh alright,” Sirius said, folding his arms, leaning against the doorframe and dropping his eyes. “I would like it. But it would obviously be a terrible idea and Remus does not need to be involved in this.” They’d both turned out crazy Blacks after all. No wonder he’d never wanted to bring friends home. Just look what happened when he finally did.
“Seriously? You’d really want that?” asked Remus.
“Oh, Remus, shut up. In a very short while we’re all going to pretend this never happened.” Sirius exhaled. “This never happened.”
“You mean you might be interested?” asked Regulus.
Sirius was about to bellow something, but really he supposed Remus deserved to speak after being on the receiving end of such a proposition.
“I shouldn’t be,” said Remus slowly. “I really shouldn’t be, should I? It would mess up your relationship, you’d regret it so much afterwards.”
“I wouldn’t,” Sirius couldn’t prevent himself from saying with Regulus. Remus, he remembered, had always been a little more malleable than his principles suggested.
“I shouldn’t,” Remus said again. “I’ll think about it,” he added, walking past Sirius.
Sirius wanted to shout “For how long?” after Remus, but didn’t. “Well,” he said to Regulus. “You’re sharp, I’ll give you that.”
“So you really do want to?” asked Regulus.
“Fuck’s sake, Regulus, how can you do what you just did without being sure?” He didn’t demand an answer. He caught himself looking down at the floor and pulled his head back up before he said “Yes. I want to fuck you.”
Regulus stood up and held out his arm. Sirius went to him. This shyness turned out to have its own charm, but it was not the triumphant ravishing he’d imagined, insofar as he’d dared to imagine anything. He felt a little hypnotised, as if the room was full of water and they could only drift and sway in it. Regulus drew him in, the arm around his waist. They kissed first with great caution, a mere touch of the lips before drawing back for a moment to listen to the other’s sharp, quick breaths. Then they kissed open-mouthed. It worked, thought Sirius, concentrating on every point at which their bodies met. It worked so well. It had been so long, though. No doubt he was over-impressed. But now he knew that if it felt weird to touch Regulus (and it did) it was only in a good way.
Regulus stepped away. “We’ll see what Remus thinks,” he said.
*
They went their separate ways and now Sirius was faced with a quandary: to wank or not to wank? Remus probably meant he’d think about it for weeks, as no doubt he should, but if he did happen to realise very quickly that he couldn’t resist, Sirius would prefer to go into it as desperately wanting as he was now. He tried to have a nap, so he couldn’t think about it all.
Remus pushed open his door just as he was drifting off. He sat down on the bed and stroked Sirius’s hair. It felt nice. “I always thought you’d have said if you wanted to sleep with me. And you didn’t, so I thought you didn’t,” he said.
“Our friendship was more important,” said Sirius. He saw the wry look on Remus’s face. “I don’t mean I thought sleeping with you would ruin it, just that it was never the right time for me to want to worry about smoothing things over, and making it not ruined, if it turned out you didn't want to.”
“And now it’s the right time for you to worry about the fallout from sleeping with your brother?”
“It’s as good a time as ever. You obviously like the idea, Remus, or you’d have said very clearly that you were completely appalled, and packed your bags,” said Sirius, propping himself up on his elbows.
“I’m weak. It’s not a good thing,” said Remus.
“We deserve to enjoy something relatively harmless for once. We’re all consenting adults. Come on,” Sirius said, tugging at one of Remus’s fingers. “Let go.”
“Alright,” said Remus.
“Really?” asked Sirius.
Remus nodded.
“You go and find Regulus, then.”
“I don’t think we should be in here,” said Remus. Sirius’s room, so redolent of his teenaged self, did not seem a tactful place to commit incest in. “Go and wait in my room.”
*
Regulus, at a loss for something to do with himself, had asked Kreacher to teach him how to make bread, though he’d promised he wasn’t going to take to doing it instead of Kreacher. He was successfully taking out his disbelief in the events that had just taken place on the dough when he heard the rustle of Remus lurking tactfully in the background.
“Oh, Kreacher, I am sorry. I forgot that I needed to talk to Remus about something important. I’ll want to do this again though.”
He turned towards Remus, brushing flour off his hands. It actually was quite annoying that he had to turn up right now.
“So you want to?” Regulus asked him softly by the stairs.
“Yes,” said Remus, and led him by the hand to his room.
Sirius was lying on the bed, his arms crossed under his head. He looked fairly nonchalant, but he hadn’t been nonchalant downstairs. Remus kissed Regulus while he was still appraising Sirius. Remus was so nice. Well, alright, there was a lot of other stuff in there, but still, he was nice, and Regulus found it appealing. It made him both feel protective of Remus and want to be protected by him.
Sirius sat up. He tapped Remus’s leg and indicated he should straddle him, and then that they should grind against each other. Regulus watched them closely. Their every touch of each other, their intent faces, set off sharp warm jolts in his belly. Sirius looked up and patted the bed next to him. Regulus sat down and was kissed, hard this time, with determination.
“Please,” he said, his eyes closed. He wanted so much for Sirius to be hard and determined. He didn’t know why. He’d been hard and determined enough when they were younger, and Regulus hadn’t liked it then.
“I want to see… I want to see Remus suck you off,” said Sirius, trying to decide what he wanted from all the possibilities. He turned to the task of divesting Regulus of his shirt; Regulus guessed from the smile on his face that he would do as he did; he simply pulled and the buttons pinged all over the room.
“Simple pleasures for simple minds,” said Regulus.
Remus stretched out a finger and rubbed Regulus’s now bare nipple. Sirius pinched the other for a moment before nudging Remus off his lap so he could move, undoing Regulus’s trousers and yanking them down his hips with his underwear. When he’d pulled them off altogether, he was at eye-level to Regulus’s cock. He looked at it contemplatively and, as if he wasn’t able to resist, leant in and, wrapping his warm hand around his cock, swirled his tongue around the head a little before letting it fill his mouth properly for a moment. Regulus gasped and Sirius looked up at him, both aware of the tableau that was being committed to memory. Remus reached out and outlined the circle of Sirius’s lips, slipping a finger inside for a moment.
Sirius drew back and Remus knelt down in his place. He lightly massaged Regulus’s balls and rested his thumb on his arsehole before taking his cock, already spit-slick, into his mouth. Regulus concentrated on his stroking of Remus’s jawline to distract himself to some extent from the sensation. He was rocking into Remus’s mouth a little bit; he hoped it wasn’t annoying.
“That’s enough,” said Sirius. Remus gave Regulus one last long hard suck. Sirius pulled Regulus across the bed and rolled him onto his stomach. His cock grazed the bedding when he moved and he had to try hard not to rut into it. He let his legs fall open; he could feel hands pulling them wider apart, and then his buttocks. He felt Sirius’s tongue on his arsehole. Somehow he managed to rim impatiently, as he did so many things, like his every action was for the purpose of furthering some dramatic happening in the next second. It was really too late to back out now, Regulus thought. He knew too much. Such filthy knowledge. He thought, right now, that he would hardly be able to bear the delight of looking back on this. Sirius slid a finger inside him, beginning to pull him open.
“I’m the only one naked, aren’t I?” said Regulus, suddenly realising this lying face down, becoming overwhelmingly aware of his exposure. Sirius pushed another finger in. “Start taking things off, one of you.”
He felt Remus shift on the bed as he obediently started to pull his robes off. Knee-walking closer to Regulus, he brushed his fingertips into the hollow of his back, following the spine first up and then down again to just above the swell of Regulus’s arse. Regulus shivered.
Sirius sat up and began flinging his clothes off in a hurry. “Remus, you get up there by the headboard,” he said.
It wasn’t too difficult to arrange things so Regulus was lying between Remus’s open thighs. As Sirius conjured some lubricant, Regulus smeared the drop of pre-come on Remus’s cock over the crown. Another drop took its place and Regulus put out his tongue to taste. He looked up at Remus, whose gaze was torn between Regulus’s mouth and Sirius, slicking up his cock. Regulus had to bury his face as the thought of Sirius’s cock suddenly overcame him.
It remained buried as Sirius entered him, positioning his cock at the entrance and then thrusting home in one movement. He lifted Regulus’s hips off the mattress, making it easier for him to manipulate his body and control penetration. Regulus thought he had never experienced anything finer than the merciless rhythm Sirius established. He managed to raise his face, which felt damp and flushed, and saw Remus touching himself. Feeling the need to share as much of the joy as he could, he brushed Remus’s hand away, replacing it with his mouth. It was a sloppy blowjob as Sirius sometimes pushed him forward, down onto more of Remus’s cock than he could really take, and sometimes pulled him almost off altogether, but Regulus thought it was doing the job.
Sirius reached round to wank him off. Regulus moaned around Remus’s cock; this was it. He’d only thrust into Sirius’s fist a few times before he was coming, the perfect moment of unbearable pleasure lasting two or three moments longer. Sirius fucked him faster and even harder, continuing to move his hand on Regulus’s cock, the bastard. Regulus let out a noise that was almost a wail at the overstimulation. He scrabbled at Sirius’s hand but he wouldn’t stop. To distract himself he returned to Remus’s cock, which he’d left for a moment. Remus came as soon as he began to suck again. Regulus swallowed quickly, but come still spilled out of his mouth. Sirius groaned; as he wiped the come off his face Regulus could feel the spurt of come inside him.
Regulus allowed himself to relax properly and stretch his limbs even before Sirius withdrew. When he had, Regulus rolled onto his back and looked up at Sirius. Sirius’s hair was damp and tousled, his face flushed and startled. He looked at Regulus wide-eyed. Regulus held out his arms and Sirius leant into the embrace, picking up Remus’s hand and holding it against his cheek as he did so.
They made themselves comfortable lying side by side, Sirius in the middle. Regulus closed his eyes for a moment. He could feel the come leaking out of him. Sirius’s come.
“We can do that again, can’t we?” asked Remus.
“We’ll probably do it again later today,” said Sirius. He was holding Remus’s hand again. With his other hand he reached for Regulus’s.
“I’m so glad I did this,” said Remus in a low, fervent voice.