Chapter Text
Burmingham was on fire when James left. The sickening stench of burnt rubber and pressure treated wood stung his nose and rose high into the sky as though it was as desperate to escape the city as James was. His lungs were weighed down with the stuff, it was almost as heavy as the lead weight that now sat in the place where his heart used to be.
All the same, James tore through the harried, panicked streets and out into the country side.
With not one look behind him.
He wouldn’t survive that look back. Wouldn’t survive taking the chance of seeing Regulus thin, ragged form shoeless in the middle of the street.
As is, James was leaving a splintered piece of himself behind… no, not a piece. He was leaving his entire soul in Bermingham. Every ounce of love he was capable of feeling had been left on the floor of his dingy flat, scattered carelessly amongst Regulus used syringes.
James knew he wasn’t worth much, someone with a life as shitty as his was proof of how much the devil must love him, but he knew he was worth more than watching another loved one die.
He was the reckless one. He was the shadow that crept through an empty flat, not Regulus. Regulus was his fucking sun, because that’s what stars were, and it was only now that James realized stars weren’t meant to be caught. They were bright, blinding gleams of hope, cast so far out into the cosmos that he had no hope to ever reach them with his bare hands.
Hope burnt like the sun, like a hot pipe or a burner lit beneath a screaming kettle. James had pressed his hand flat to the harsh licking flames of Regulus, hoping he would warm James’s frozen heart…bring some light to his dark meaningless life.
He left burnt and battered and broken and if he had stayed he would have forgiven him. He would have begged, fucking begged, for each lick Regulus had to give him.
James would have watched Regulus die, then he would have taken to the warf regency and thrown himself into the frigid water. It wasn’t like he planned it, he just knew that’s what would happen. The realization slapped him like an open palm the moment he walked through the door to their flat, chest aching, tape pulling on the course hair of his chest as the bandage covered his bullet wound.
It took ten months for James Potter to make it to London.
After walking out on Regulus and Barty, hearing the whimpering cries at his back and the crunching glass beneath his feet, he knew he was likely to destroy the first person he found wandering the city alone.
It could have been a fight, or a fuck, maybe both. Maybe he would have blown so much coke he died for real this time… James wasn’t sure, all he knew was that no matter how stable he looked walking out of that flat, he was one wrong look away from ending it all for good.
So, he rode, for days and days, and shitty small town to shitty small town, taking whatever quick dirty job, he could find in order to save money for petrol. He was a bar back his first month, so close to the Bermingham that he could have walked back to the Flat he once lived and kicked Barty in the arse one last time, but he didn’t. He worked and sweat and drank for free.
Tossing back a shifty unless some sweet bird or grinning bloke liked how the sweat clung to the curls of his hair, or how the scars on his knuckles from one-to-many fights were stark against his sun kissed skin.
He hadn’t fucked a woman since he was a young teen, when the girls home across the way from the orphanage he was tossed into would throw love eyes through their own barred windows.
Back when James had only late night fumbling with his mates because going all the way was queer. No one looked twice when a malnourished, dirty haired bird slipped through the bars of their window, having climbed up the fire escape or shimmied up a cracked drainpipe.
He didn’t even think the matron cared in the end, only knocked extra loud or walked with lead feet on the nights those soulless teens would come together to feel something other than abandonment.
These nights were much the same, as James took the soft hand of a gigging girl that had bought him drinks all night. She would bite at his neck as he gripped her hips, calloused fingers much to rough, but that’s what they wanted. His danger, his scars and the way he wouldn’t look at them during, though they would beg him to.
Like they thought they were an exception to the rule. Something Special.
He couldn’t look, not because they were women, not even because he didn’t truly want them, but because every bobbing head became Regulus. Their brown eyes would transform into Reggies grey soulless ones. Their thrusting hips in the dark dingy light would turn into his beautiful silhouette as they lay atop the roof of his old flat. Perhaps it was James torturing himself just a little more, because at least with his eyes closed they didn’t sound like him.
Skin was skin in the dark, and James had something he needed to forget. Someone he needed to forget, though knew it wouldn’t ever be possible. That bloody man, the touch starved anguished man who breathed into his neck and left bite marks on his soul.
James was far to rough with the men he fucked. Though they seemed to want that as well, it was harder with blokes, their grip was tougher and their teeth more sharp, though in the end fucking just didn’t feel right anymore.
Fighting kept him sane.
He was kicked out of the bar after propositioning a bird and her boyfriend, she seemed into it, but he wasn’t queer. James showed him just how hard a faggot could punch, likely broke the bastards jaw but he didn’t stick around long enough to find out. Just quickly fucked off to the small, one room flat above the bar itself and grabbed his hidden stack of banknotes and took off on his bike into the night.
From there James slept beneath the stars. The damned stars he used to look up into for comfort. Now he could only see regret blinking back at him.
He bloody hated the stars.
Some days were easier than others, some days his anger pushed him closer to London, out of the curving back roads and onto the most direct path, but other days it was like leaving all over again. He would wake up beside someone he didn’t remember falling asleep with and groan Regulus name. Only their skin didn’t feel the same. The heavy weight of their arm over him tugging on his bullet wound like it had just been inflicted.
Then the pain was all consuming, a jumbled mess of shoving the spray up his nose and watching Regulus gasp back into consciousness.
Of James watching Tom bloody Riddle bleed out before him, of James catching that bullet for Regulus and still…and still returning back to the flat to see that everything he’d just done was worthless.
Maybe James had been to hard on Regulus. The man never asked James to kill his boss…never asked James to free him from the clutches of a psychopath so that the two of them could be free.
So that no one would ever touch Regulus against his wishes again…No one had asked him to do that.
James did it all on his own.
Tore his own soul to pieces in the name of obsession…not love. James could live through losing his obsession, he couldn’t live through losing the only man he would ever love. He forced himself to remember that. Nine months was nine months, it was unnatural obsession, limerence, a trauma bond, nothing more.
Never more.
Six months on his journey to London, James met a man named Thomas. He lived on a farm, tending sheep and offered James a place to stay for the week and some spare pounds for gas if he would work.
James stayed for over a month.
He wasn’t sure why, the man was older, probably older than his own parents would have been if they’d lived, but James felt alive in the monotony of hard work. In the monotony of that farm hardened man who shared beer with him by the fire and rolled his own cigarettes. He taught James how to fix the motor on his bike, how to change the oil and rethread the belts when they came loose on a bumpy road.
He showed James how to paint. Thomas had a studio set up in the back of his barn, and early in the morning, or late at night when the moon was full and cast a glow on the back hills, Thomas would sit at his easel and roughly sketch before pulling the thick colors together.
James wasn’t very good, not at first. Instead of painting he would take a loose sheet of paper and sketch with a piece of discarded charcoal. There was something about the mess of creation that felt real. Something about manipulating darkness instead of the light that made waking up each morning worth it.
He was also the first person James let kiss him in…fuck…years. They didn’t fuck, not all the way at least. Dirty hands and wandering lips beneath the guise of too much whiskey. It wasn’t about sex, which made it worse when James woke up one morning to see Thomas’s son back from University.
The boy was older than him, and suspicious and though Thomas said James could stay…practically begged him not to leave while he pressed soft kisses to his chin in the back of the barn, wet paint on his overalls, James had to go.
This wasn’t the place for him.
But it had settled something in his soul, and for that James would always be grateful.
There were nights from then on that James felt more productive, though there were still moments when he would drink to much and scream into a moonless sky, when the gleaming stars were so bright that he hoped his wailing and cursing would go straight back to Regulus.
Because it had been nine months since he had left, which was the same amount of time they were together, and James knew Regulus must have been dead.
The day he realized he had been gone for nine months he picked a fight with the biggest, drunkest bastard and lost. He woke up in hospital two days later with a stitched up, split through his eyebrow which was bound to leave a nasty scar, and a concussion so bad he wasn’t allowed to leave for a week.
All the hospital did was remind James of killing Tom, of that nurse who snuck him out the back door with a sneer of gratitude. He stayed until they removed the heart monitors, until he could stand without the world spinning around him. He stayed until he could find his hidden (Still) dirty clothing and carefully pull them on over the healing cuts and the yellowing boot marks on his torso.
Then he was gone, motorbike flying into the night, taillights like streaks of falling stars as he finally made his way into the streets of London.
The stars were indeed brighter in London, one in particular went by the name Sirius Black. James met the bloke his second month in London while pissed off his ass and trying to find a quick fuck.
Sirius was beautiful, tall with lean muscles like he’d never had to fight for anything in his life. They would have fit well together, James thought after they split a cigarette on the stone wall outside of a pub. The man even let his fingers linger just this side of too long as they passed the smoke back and forth, but James couldn’t get over the similarities to the very man he was trying to escape.
In fact, James nearly ran the first time he caught sight of that flowing black hair, thinking Regulus had somehow made it to the one place James had thought to escape.
But it wasn’t, the longer he looked the more differences he saw. Sirius had piercings on his face and golden dangling jewelry adorning his ears all the way up along with black tattoos that peaked out from the sliver of stomach that showed beneath his sheered top.
His face was masculine, a wide jaw and muscular thighs, he most definitely wasn’t Regulus, and though for the first few hours they drank and smoked James had the oddest sense of Déjà vu, eventually it passed and James chalked it up to lingering agitation.
The two had been inseparable since.
Sirius pushed James in the same way that Barty had been complacent. Sirius was always moving from one venture to the next and James was happy to keep his cluttered mind occupied, sweeping out the cobwebs that were Regulus and his dirty needles and dead eyes.
A month into their friendship, James had one of his infamous breaks. One that normally ended him in the er or fucking until he was so unsatisfied he begged for the hard stuff, for just one night anyways.
James was leaning over the railing of Sirius fourth floor Flat, cold rain beating on his back and sopping down his shaved head. He loved his longer hair, but so had Regulus, and every time he thought to deeply of the man, he took a razor to his scalp instead of his wrists.
James called that progress.
Yesterday he shaved his head, but today the itch was still there and the razor was still shining on the bathroom counter with a pair of scissors ready to pull it apart.
“Wanna fuck?” Sirius lit a cigarette as he leaned out the window. James curled back over the railing and saw Barty in Sirius, saw a man who would drop to his knees not because he wanted to suck James off, but because he knew it would pull James back in from the brink.
“I don’t bottom, Black.” James shrugged and Sirius shot out a laugh, smoke sifting up through the slits of metal and dissipating in the heavy droplets streaking down.
“You know I’m vers.” Sirius slid his body out into the rain.
“I’m not fucking you.” James took the cigarette from his friends lips and sucked till the cherry peaked nearly an inch. “You look-“
“Too much like your ex, I know. Bloody wanker ruining it for the rest of us.” Sirius whined, taking the stick back with a side eye and flicking it over into the street below after a fat droplet sizzled the end.
“Wasn’t my ex, we never dated…I don’t wanna talk about em.” James closed his eyes. “If you’re ganna do anything, push me over the edge or punch me in the face.”
“James, Death Wish, Potter at it again.” Sirius leaned over the edge beside him, the rusted metal groaning beneath their combined weight.
“Sirius, needy whore, Black desperate for my attention. I should get you a fucking collar.”
“Yes daddy.” Sirius said with a wide grin that tore the fight right out of James, and that made him panic. It was like bloody Regulus all over again. James pushed off the side and tore down the creaking metal stairs, much to the despair of Sirius who chased him with a riotous laughter.
James had made it to his bike, slipping onto the wet seat and jerking it to a start by the time Sirius grabbed the back of his shirt and threw his leg over as James was taking off.
The parallels were endless, but James made sure to keep his distance. To keep Sirius at an arms length, even though the man would steal into his bed in the middle of the night and sit on the counter painting his nails while James showered off the last random encounter and the tail end of his buzz.
Every day they grew closer, intimate in a way that James never thought he could, with or without sex.
So, when Sirius grabbed onto the loop on the back of James jeans and leaned so far back he nearly spilled them onto the pavement, James let himself imagine love for just a moment. What love could have been like, had be not been this person.
They stopped beneath an underpass eventually, soaked to the bone. James pulled out two cigarettes and placed them into his mouth waiting for the light.
Only it didn’t come.
He tore one from between his teeth and passed it over to Sirius who smirked and put the stick between his lips. He lit it with closed eyes and a smirk before passing the lighter to James.
James didn’t see Regulus in Sirius after that. The coincidences that piled up in the beginning, their names both being stars and that black hair and their beautiful faces, but that was it. James was looking for Regulus in everyone he met, at least in the beginning.
It was a few months until James had another slip. It had been the longest he’d kept a job in years, stocking shelves overnight for a grocer. Sirius found a gig as a bar back and was prospering and paying most of their rent while James got by paying their meager food bill.
Only that itch came back, and instead of stocking shelves, James grabbed as many cartons of cigarettes as he could shove into his backpack and lit one up in the center of an aisle before leaving the front doors open and stalking into the night.
He slept with the first bird who asked him to buy her a drink, pressed into the wall of the women’s lav, he closed his eyes and just felt. The scratching nails and the moaning that he eventually covered with the palm of his hand weren’t enough.
He didn’t come, he rarely did now a days and instead left for the next bar. A gay club he and Sirius frequented and took two pretty boys into the same stall. One pulled out a small white baggy melted together at the seam and raised an eyebrow.
James stumbled back into his Flat at sunrise with a black eye and blood trailing down his nose. Sirius was asleep in James bed and didn’t wake when James crashed down beside him, fully clothed and with his boots still on.
Sirius bunked off work the next day, and the two men spent the night with their noses in a bag and a cigarette between their fingers until they realized the damn thing had burnt down to the filter.
There was never judgement nor fear. Sirius wasn’t into drugs like James, and only tagged along when James got an itch, suggesting that instead of molly or e they buy a small bag and split it. If James was feeling content enough with only him for company, they would drink and smoke until there was so much fog in the Flat the downstairs neighbors would bang on the ceiling.
Then the two would moan and scream each others name while slamming their boots and elbows onto the floor.
“Fuck me ass, Sirius! Just like that!”
“Your whole fist, James, you know what I like!”
They would scream the worst obscenities until the landlord eventually tossed them onto their asses. It was a year into living in London, that James and Sirius found themselves homeless.
It wasn’t anything James hadn’t been through before, but Sirius seemed a bit out of sorts, as though the bench they slept on in the park wasn’t good enough.
It was only then Sirius began to talk about his family. How he had run away the minute he turned eighteen, when his father had tried to get him into the family business of extortion and money laundering and sketchy bullshit.
His mother was an enabler and an abuser, and the long gash that traveled down Sirius back had been the final straw in him leaving. He tried to get his brother to leave as well, a boy a year or two younger than them, but he wouldn’t go. Sirius was sure he’d taken his place as heir to the most noble house of Black and followed in his fathers tainted footsteps.
“Probably got some nibbling’s around somewhere.” Sirius pulled a drag of the spliff as he twirled around a lamppost. “Proper pointy little gits that turn their nose up at ya.”
“How longs it been?” James asked taking a sip of his bottle before swapping the half empty glass for the burning weed cigarette.
“Since I’ve last seen ol’ Reginald?” James nodded and Sirius blew out air before taking a deep drink. “Years. Four or five at least.”
“Blokes unforgivable?” James managed to say on a deep intake of smoke. Sirius shrugged.
“Family’s nothing more than stale blood.”
“Blood replenishes.” James felt his head nod back as the high began to hit.
“Could have been a professor with your smarts, you know that?” Sirius grabbed James by the arm and the two twisted around in a circle, the high spiraling James into a cozy little nest as Sirius plopped them down onto a bench hidden beneath the trees.
“So could you have, Lord Black.” James smirked, eyes closed and though he was still he felt the world swirl around him.
“Wish I would’ve found you before your mystery lover.” Sirius admitted as his head fell into James lap. James twisted his fingers through the locks that ran past the mans shoulders, scraping against his scalp and listening as he purred a contented sound.
“No, you don’t.” James whispered. “I was a cunt, still am.”
“Tell me about ‘em. You never do.” His voice was a bit slurry, and James thought the two of them were pissed enough to not remember this in the morning. It had been years since Reggie after all…what was one night to remember out loud.
“I was just out of jail.” He started and Sirius sat up faster than James expected, nearly knocking their heads together.
“Blimey mate, you are a fuck up huh?” James ran a knuckle down into his friends shoulder until he relented and flopped back into his lap. “Sorry, sorry, won’t say anything again.” He made a show of locking his lips with an imaginary key and James sighed.
He wanted to tell Sirius everything…how he fell so deeply in love that he killed someone, stabbed a knife through the bastard over and over again…but that was too much…There were unforgivable things in life, and though James had no doubts he had made the right decision in ending Tom Riddles life, it was an entirely different entity to explain that to someone else. So, he settled for the closest parallel to his truth.
“I was a junky when I was younger, got clean and never touched H again, Yeah.” Sirius brows furrowed but he nodded all the same. “Me and a buddy had a job go bad years later, poppin off a jewelry store went wrong and I was in holding for a few months, but got off on time served. When I got back my buddy had found a new roommate, someone to take over my half of the rent.”
“My pretty twin.” Sirius said fondly and James hit him again in the chest. The man curled inward in fake pain before pulling out a carton of cigarettes, lighting one to pass between the two of them as James continued.
“He was a junky, track marks all down his arm but he was sharp and pointy and looked at me like he wasn’t quite dead yet.” James smiled sadly as Sirius pressed the cigarette to his lips, he took a drag and exhaled after holding it for far to long. “I got him sober and we fucked around for a few months.”
“How many?”
“Hm?” James felt the high from before catching back up.
“You were ‘just friends’ for how long.” James let the silence of the night cradle his ears before he spoke. Listening to the loud rumblings of the city, the cars and taxies, people shouting and the clatter of fallen metal, of trashcans of whatnot. It would be so easy to close his eyes and imagine he were back with Reggie, back in Birmingham and fucking that beautiful boy on the roof of their flat.
“’Round nine months.”
“Shite…” Sirius huffed out a plume of smoke. “Then he relapsed?”
James nodded.
“I had to leave on business for a few days.” Sirius gave him a look that James returned, let the man think it was another job or jail or hooking, whatever. So long as he didn’t think he was a killer. “Anyways, I came back and he was just as many days deep into H again.”
“Barely waited for you to leave before shooting up.”
“Yeah…that was the problem. Promises and promises.” James felt the anguish bubbling back up. “Promises that he would never do it again, promises that he loved me, promises and promises, but his fucking actions proved that I was always one broken promise away from finding him dead in our bed.”
“No offense…and don’t take this the wrong way but…” James looked down at Sirius with distrust but waited for him to continue. “You haven’t been the most…stable, have you?”
“I’m not a fuckin junky.” James spat, a bit of a slur in his voice.
“Not saying what you’ve done is worse, but how many times have I found you all fucked out on Molly or E or a bottle down and shaking so bad you can’t stand. Beaten and bloody and concussed and still aching for more.”
“’S different.” He lied.
“Is it?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?” Sirius reached up and cupped James chin. “Why is your boyfriend.-“ James shot him a look. “Sorry, your ‘friend’.” He used air quotes. “Why Is your friend relapsing less forgivable than you fucking everybody you can touch or taking every pill offered to you in the Loo?”
“Because I loved’m more than myself. He was better than that, better than me. He was bloody smart and if it wasn’t for fucking drugs and the bastard he worked for he would have been someone great…and if I had to see him with stuck up arms one more time I would’ve relapsed myself.” James had never said it out loud before. The real reason he had to leave.
It was so easy to fall back into that life. One needle, one baggy and he could forget fucking everything.
“Yeah…Yeah alright.” James let Sirius combine their fingers, lacing them together to lay on his chest.
They found a place the next week. One that sat near the River Thames not far from Kings College. James wasn’t sure if Sirius remembered their conversation from that night but he never brought up James’ past again.
It was like a flip had been switched from then on, one that pushed the two into getting their act together. It was slow going, one year at a time, Sirius got his bartending license and worked like a dog, coming home near dawn most mornings. The pay was good, and Sirius seemed to love working and talking and being in the buzzing atmosphere of a college pub.
James had a rougher go, he cut down on drinking, stopped the pills and had a hell of a time sleeping through the night until he felt like a human again. It was almost like…No…James had stopped thinking about that. Actively stopped thinking about the past and the burn marks on his arms and legs and the bullet hole through his chest.
The one that Sirius’s eyes would linger on each time James was without a shirt, yet never asked, even when they were so high his thoughts came out in one continuous stream of consciousness.
It was nearly three years to the day James left when he got a job. When the doodling he’d been doing since he met Thomas had turned into something…more.
Sirius eventually found his hidden slips of paper and scraps of napkins and lamented on how good they were. How he could be an artist if he really wanted to be.
James didn’t… he wasn’t creative enough to be an artist, but still Sirius insisted until one day he brought home a tattoo gun. Traded someone at the bar for it in exchange for another few rounds.
James gave himself his first tattoo on the inside of his thigh. A small deer skull with fucked up antlers that bled far to much because of how drunk he was. The next morning, Sirius asked why he had tattooed a fork on his leg, which led to a lengthy explanation on the difference between the prongs of a fork and the antlers of a deer and James somehow came away with a brand new nickname.
Prongs.
Which sort of felt like a relief, like he was a different person. James began to tattoo more and more, himself and Sirius, putting animal paws on his friends shoulders and skulls trailing down his own outer thigh.
By the time James had perfected a solid line and shading, able to freehand a wolf by only looking at a picture as he scraped the needle against the space between Sirius shoulder blades, he knew this was what he wanted to do.
He applied to eight apprenticeships. Five were taking on. Three liked his work. But only one saw something special in the way he drew. Saw the anger in his eyes and how it translated into gritty realism.
He was a far throw from being considered a professional and would barely be getting pay for the endless hours of work he put in, but for the first time in three years, James felt like everything would be alright.
The next year was a whirlwind of chaos and stability all mixed into one fucked up pile of life. Sirius became manager of the pub he worked at and James was nearing the end of his apprenticeship.
It was a little hole in the wall called Unforgivables, owned by a man his age named Evan Rosier, who had inherited the store from his predecessor and was quickly gaining the shop traction.
He was a fantastic boss, a bit rough around the edges but James liked that. He took a chance on James and was far to understanding when he came into work late with a black eye or skipped out early when that itch to be destructive hit. After a year of working together, Evan had corralled James into allowing the man to tattoo him when the impulses for destruction became to strong.
It worked (most of the time), which was both a fortunate and unfortunate fact since now James was so heavily tattooed that he could barely see the burn marks on his skin any longer. It was only the feel of his puckered skin below that reminded him that the roses and Lilys hid something.
As it came upon his fifth year away, his fourth year living in London and second year working at Unforgivables. James felt like a new person…
Well not new, he still rode through rainstorms with a hissing cigarette and no helmet, but he was covered with a colorful barrage of ink on his skin instead of scars and cuts and bruises and burns. It had been over a year since he’d purposefully thought of Regulus and though dating hadn’t come easy, he was seeing someone steadily.
If you could call hooking up every Saturday after working all day ‘steady’.
It wasn’t like they were in a committed relationship. James couldn’t stay celibate for six fucking days a week, but Marcus knew that.
Sirius would work until dawn every weekend then fuck off to his boyfriends Flat off Campus. He was dating some Posh fuck who’d just gotten his masters in English Lit when he wasn’t wrist deep writing Novels, with which he was apparently quite a popular author in the Mystery Genre.
Remus was a decent bloke. He kept Sirius honest and though he and James still rarely spoke of the past, he could hear that proper lilt and watched as his friends manners improved (reverted) the longer they dated.
James was just waiting for the day that Sirius split. Waiting for him to tell James that he was nothing. Worthless, a drunk druggy who would never amount to anything.
It was a bad day.
James realized far to late. One of those days when he cut out early and flew through the streets on his bike going home. He knew Sirius would be out until Monday and Marcus, the man he had a standing appointment with, had already called the shop asking if they were still on.
James knew he would show up later. Bottle of Whiskey and a carton of cigarettes, though he didn’t smoke the damn things. It was like payment before James tore into him, biting at the back of his neck and gripping onto his short blond hair like it offended him.
Last week Marcus mentioned being exclusive. That ‘they had been fucking for four months now and it was about damn time’.
James took to the Trig Lane stairs and smoked one cigarette after the next until the sun fell far past the horizon and he knew Marcus had been knocking at an empty Flat for hours. The rush of the water mingled with a hiss of paper as the cherry burned its way down.
He stayed longer, soaking up the shadows until his pack ran empty and the bullet hole in his chest began to ache. He’d covered it up by now, not explaining when Evan asked what the fuck had happened. His boss still bitched the entire time he tattooed the lion, with its bushy mane and its bottom paw that held the circular scar in its palm…
So maybe he had thought about Reggie once or twice…
This was for him and no one else. Not Sirius or Remus, not Evan…not Marcus who somehow held out hope that one day James would wake up and see what a catch he was. James was sure he was, Marcus was attractive and kind, clean and had a good job. But he wasn’t…he could never be…
And though it had been five bloody years, James still wasn’t able to look someone in the eyes and tell them he loved them.
Not even Sirius, the man winged about it every time they drank, lamenting his love for James and comparing it to a winter rose or a bloody needle in a haystack or something like that. Remus was jealous in the beginning, thinking the closeness between the two was something more. That they had once dated or fucked or were still fucking. But he’d been proven wrong time and time again.
James wasn’t sure if Sirius told Remus about his past, but there were some nights when the three of them got together for a drink or a night on the town. When James was a tad fucked out and Sirius was far to accommodating, that Remus would just watch him.
Not in Pity or embarrassment at the speed his mouth tore into someone who cut them off or made a snide remark. It was more like he was cataloguing James, taking into account each action and reaction and trying to make sense of them in his head.
James didn’t like being watched, but he let Remus get away with it. Because he made Sirius happy. And Sirius being happy made James happy.
James rode home from the River and stomped up the third floor walk up until he saw a spread of take away thrown and piled at the bottom of his door. Guess Marcus waited…There was curry smeared on the door itself and the distinct strong smell of spices that James loved. He stepped over the mess and unlocked the door, leaving it for tomorrow. All it did was make him hungry.
James grabbed the vodka he’d hidden in his dresser along with a sketch pad and pencils and tucked his body below the window that led out onto the metal balcony. The glass was cracked and a strong gust jostled and clinked the shards as James drank and smoked the crushed pack of cigarettes he’d left on the ledge.
His birthday as coming up, only a few weeks away. Sirius wanted to make a proper affair of it. There was something about twenty eight that felt…monumental. James was closer to thirty than twenty and it wasn’t as though he could continue giving attention to the demons from his past.
His finger traced along the tattoos on the top of his hand before he sighed and pulled out the sketch pad and began to draw. He did so in silence, the cigarette in his hand leeching a thin trail of smoke as he rubbed at the graphite and smudged a thick line out.
It was twenty minutes before he realized he was drawing Regulus. Not the last night he saw him, but the time before. When they took to the roof and the man hovered above him like the most beautiful star in the sky.
James drew him as shadows, only the odd curl of his hair and the shape of his body against a backdrop of stormy black. He wondered how Reggie would have looked at 28, would his facial hair have thickened and darkened or would he barely be able to grow a goatee still. Would he still have that slim dancers built, that lithe muscle that was impressive in the most unexpected of ways, or would he have finally begun to eat right and gain weight that bulked him out and tore his height up to the sky?
James flipped onto a new sheet and took a sip out of the bottle, a bit of colorless liquid leaking out to wet the page in coin sized droplets.
James turned them into balloons, high flying hot air balloons that joined the twinkling stars and took him somewhere new. Someplace where a man he only knew for nine months hadn’t destroyed his life for the next five years. Because how could you mourn somebody that had been dead longer than you’d known them.
The bottle hit the wall before James knew it had left his grip.
He flipped back to the pervious page and tore out the drawing of Regulus. He held his cigarette to the bottom corner, watching as the cherry singed the edges before eventually engulfing the entire page in a rapid moving fire.
He watched Regulus burn like Riddle had.
James let it hit his fingers and barely flinched as the ash settled into his lap.
In the distance, James heard shouting. It got closer, the voice deep and angry before a slamming fist began to beat on the wood door of his flat. His name was shouted amongst a barrage of other curse words.
“I know you’re bloody in there your motorbikes out front.” Marcus shouted through the lock. “Open up or I’ll fucking wreck it.”
James stood in silence, vodka dripped from the wall and glass crunched beneath his trainers as he opened the door and looked over at the man who stood with arms crossed and a sneer a mile wide.
“Care to explain yourself?” He asked, tapping his foot on the heap of takeaway between them.
“No.” James ground out before reaching out and grabbing the front of Marcus’ jumper to pull him into the flat. They were starkers before they reached James room, and instead of bringing the man into his space like he normally did, he pushed him to the couch and tangled his fingers in those dyed blond locks before roughly sliding into the mans mouth.
Who did not complain, only moaned around his length.
Maybe he would make it official with Marcus, he thought looking down at the man, head thrown over the edge of the couch as James fucked into his throat.
Maybe one day he would love Marcus, love the man who saw him as he was. Fucked up beyond repair and instead of trying to fix him, shouted right back and stood his ground. He was the closest thing to satisfied James had been in…
He swallowed, shoulders tensing back as Marcus gripped himself and began to move, a silent request for reciprocation. James pulled out with a rough tug and grabbed his shoulder, flipping Marcus around and onto his stomach.
“You going to fuck me, babe?” He moaned as James pressed himself up behind, the vapors of Vodka echoing from his mouth against the mans back as he bit into his shoulder blade and reached around, shoving two fingers into Marcus mouth.
He wanted to love Marcus. He wanted to see nothing when he looked into the night sky, nothing when his burn marks started hurting for no reason, nothing when the ache of his bullet wound reminded him of the hollow point of Regulus eyes. He needed to stop mourning a phantom, a ghost, a bloody poltergeist that grabbed him by the throat every time he was close to happiness.
“Yeah, baby. I’m going to fuck you.” James reveled in the heated groan as he stretched Marcus. His teeth grazing the mans back as he pressed a kiss to his heated skin.
“Did you kiss me?” He turned his head, chest heaving. James didn’t answer, just spat down onto his hand below and added a third finger. Marcus groaned. “Lube in my pocket.”
James used his other hand to search the ground for Marcus discarded. James slicked himself up after finding the thin packet and with a hard press, exchanged his fingers for his cock, the thick ring running through the head of his cock glistening with lube and light cast in from the street lamps outside.
“Ok…” He whispered into Marcus neck, still slick fingers gripping into his hip bones as he kept himself still, seated at the hilt while Marcus adjusted.
“Okay what? Don’t make me think right now, James.”
“We can date, be exclusive and all that rot.” His words were more of a mumble than a declaration, but they froze Marcus all the same. The man looked over his shoulder and gripped James hair with an awkward twist of his arm. James let him pull his face forward until their lips locked.
He wouldn’t spend another nine months not kissing a man who wanted him. Wouldn’t let another nine months go by when there was a man right here willing to give him the world.
James slid his tongue into Marcus mouth while pulling out slowly.
He would try.
He had to try.