JAMES

The words Remus had said when I'd come in from the beach echoed in my head long after he'd spoken them. I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, one hand on my chest, the other bent under my head. I wondered why my heart was pounding so hard that I couldn't sleep?

"I think Regulus may... may have a bit of a thing for you," Remus had murmured.

It was only in the replay in my mind that I realized I'd misheard the words.

"A thing?" I'd echoed Remus's words, glancing toward the closed door that was Regulus's room. I laughed nervously. "I don't have a thing for him - what makes you say that?"

Remus had raised an eyebrow (why didn't I realize that I'd misheard him then?) and he'd murmured, "Dunno, maybe the way you both came rushing in here just now blushing like kids?" He slid a marker in his book and got up from his chair with all the characteristics of a man three times his age - wincing and holding his lower back, his knees buckling. I instinctively put out a hand, ready to steady him if needed and he looked at my hand with disappointment. I knew the disappointment was in himself, not me.

"I'm not - blushing -" I said, shaking my head in denial. Even as I blushed.

Remus scoffed. "Alright, except you are and I've seen this look all over you a hundred thousand times, Prongs." He paused and let the words sink in.

I bit my lip.

"Have you written back to Lily yet?" he asked.

"Working on it," I said.

Remus nodded, "You ought to write her back," he suggested, and he turned and limped toward the half-open door of his and Sirius's bedroom. I could see Sirius passed out in the bed, limbs sprawled all over, his arm dangling over the side of the bed, his Queen shirt twisted around his torso. Sirius was a very violent light-sleeper and Remus had a habit of getting back up once Sirius had first fallen asleep to avoid being battered. Once Sirius settled he tended to stay in one position and that's when Remus would rejoin him.

It seemed like a metaphor that I wasn't smart enough to draw the lines between the real life implications and the image, but I knew it fit them somehow.

I got up, rolling from the bed and sitting on the edge. The moonlight filterer through open windows, a breeze fluttering the sheer curtains that hung there, gauzy white things that danced gracefully. They looked like wedding frocks.

I looked over at the small writing desk in the corner of the room, where a half-composed parchment lay, a bright green and blue quill laying across the words in a lame attempt to keep Sirius's wandering eyes off the sheet. Next to it lay the rolled up letter Lily had written me, the seal broken, waiting to be answered. The parchment had been slipped into my palm when we'd said goodbye at the flat before I'd left on the lad's lark, and when I'd slipped my thumb under the rosette shaped seal, the scroll had unrolled long enough to hit the toes of my trainers. I'd stared at it with apprehension, nerves rolling my stomach.

She had a lot to say to me that was easier done in writing than to my face, it appeared.

I'd given myself a day to unwind at the shore before opening the letter again. Sirius had insisted we all go to the city - me doing side along with Regulus, him with Remus - and we'd had a few drinks, a load of local food, and had even danced to music played by a band and surrounded by the locals. Nobody seemed to care that Sirius was hands on Remus, and in the heat of the moment, I'd grabbed onto Regulus and led him off to join in the fun.

But when we'd got back to the cabin, I'd finally unrolled the letter and read it.

"Dear James," she'd started - a solid start, I thought. Usually she called me "love" or "sweetie" or some other pet name, or else she'd joined the club of making puns so she might've written "deer" with a smirk, but she'd gone for the true spelling and my given name and there it was, the opening of a letter already making me over think and panic.

We've been together for some time now - nearly two full years. Can you believe it? They say that time flies when you are having fun and it really has for us. It doesn't seem it's been that long, yet it also seems as though it's been longer - perhaps because it ought to have been? I know it's my fault for having hesitated and put you off for so long, but I know now that we are in it that I was being foolish...

She'd gone on for a time, describing the ways she felt foolish for having turned me down for the majority of the time we'd known each other, how she'd misunderstood my intentions and the way she'd realized after all that time of believing she deserved better that there wasn't anyone better for her than me. She promised that there wasn't any other wizard that she'd rather be with.

I want you to know I'm all-in, James. I see our future like a long and winding road that we get to take an adventure on. We don't know what stops we'll take along the way but I know our destination is a sunset over a far horizon where we'll hold one another's hands as we walk into it together. I know you feel that as well, you said it once - long before I ever had such a vision myself. Don't you recall that time, standing on the Gryffindor table, announcing to the school what you saw for us? Me and you and a load of Potter children in a comfy house with a big yard and a cat named Roger? (Did Sirius give you that name, by the way? Because I'm not sure that either one of us love Queen enough to have named our cat after their drummer on our own?)

Sirius had given me the name, but it had never occurred to me where he'd gotten it. The orange kneazle we'd adopted looked alarmingly like Roger Taylor, though, so I reckoned Sirius must've had a bit of a seer moment when he'd supplied the name during one of my late night dormitory rants about what I wanted for Lily and I in the future.

I stared at the other words, though, and felt sick, despite the light tone of her writing. There was a hidden message laced through all of it, a question that had been throbbing just under the surface of every conversation, every moment spent together for the past six months or so since Petunia and Vernon Dursley's wedding.

Lily had caught the bouquet.

"You're next," everyone had laughed.

But she wasn't.

Alice and Frank had been married next. Then Dorcas Meadowes and Gideon Prewett. Professors McGonagall and Urquart. Hell - even Sirius and Remus had promised such things to each other in the time that had passed since her sister's wedding. Yet I still hadn't proposed.

"When?"

Lily's entire personality had seemed to curve in on that one question that throbbed at the center of her, like a magnetic force field that drew everything about her in. Problem was that the longer she asked the question, the more pressured I felt, and the more pressure I felt about it... well. Something was holding me back, and the pressure seemed to be squeezing the life out of me, like my arms were each tied to a future that I wanted... and both futures pulled me in two different directions.

I had the ring. It was in my suitcase even now, stuffed in one of the pockets meant for shoes, balled up with a pair of socks, and left in the case when I'd shoved it under the bed.

I pushed myself up off the side of the bed and paced.

The beginning of me seeing a future for myself and Lily Evans had started in first year, the moment I stepped into the compartment with a blubbering girl. Her eyes had been so green and so full of the longing to be loved that I'd instantly loved her. She was the first future that I'd ever imagined for myself and she'd been the only one for a long time... but it had, for most of the time I'd dreamed of it, not been her dream. She'd pushed me away so many times that in fifth year I'd finally had to start thinking about other futures that I might want.

And I wasn't the only one who had been struggling about that year with contemplation on what I desired.

"What if I kiss Moony and I realize I'm not --" he hesitated on the word gay. It was such a taboo for his family - for the world, really. Sirius stared at me with wide eyes full of panic. He was sitting at his desk in the Gryffindor dormitory and I was laying on my bed, playing catch-and-release with a golden snitch that I'd stolen from the locker rooms after practice that afternoon. My fingers wrapped around the tiny gold ball, it's wings fluttering against my palm. "I don't want to get his hopes up just to dash them like that. I mean, I think - I think in my head, at least, that it'll be a grand experience, but what if I kiss him and it's just..." he shrugged, "You know. Meh."

"The way you've talked about it for the past year, you'll have it built up so high the expectation of it will always out weigh the reality," I said.

"Yes but I mean, what if I kiss him and it's repulsive?" he made a face and I knew he was thinking of the memory of the time he'd had a go at kissing Marlene McKinnon.

he review of Marlene that he'd given had been: "It was soft and wet and her lips were all slimey with that bloody make-up stuff so that it felt exactly like putting my mouth on the giant squid. In fact, I'd rather it have been the squid because at least the Nigel wouldn't have cried and made me feel like shit when I broke it off. He's a gentleman."

"I want to kiss Moony," Sirius went on with a dramatic sigh, "But I'm so fucking scared that he's a boy and kissing boys might not be my thing."

"So kiss a boy and see if you like it," I'd suggested, shrugging. "If you get off alright with some random bloke, you know it'll be all the better when you kiss Remus, yeah? And if you kiss somebody else with no expectations at all then you're free to think it's repulsive without having any obligations - or crying - from the Kissee. No feeling like shit like you would if you kissed Remus and found out you don't fancy it."

Sirius rubbed his chin and considered that, then - what I hadn't expected - he got up and came across the room to my bed, sitting on the edge of it. "James," he said, "Kiss me."

I'd laughed and the snitch had escaped from my fingers and buzzed away into the fabric of the canopy over my bed. "Excuse me?" I laughed. "Bugger off." I kicked at his hip, trying to push him off the bed.

Sirius's grey eyes shifted to begging - an expression not unlike the one Snuffles gave when I ate in front of him.

"Don't do that," I said, "Bugger the fuck off." I kicked him harder.

"No, really, hear me out, Prongs!" Sirius said and he grabbed my leg, stopping me from kicking him more. "You're bloody good at everything, so surely you're good at kissing, too --"

I hadn't kissed anyone before so I didn't have any reviews to go by at that point.

"-- and who the fuck would I have less expectation for than you? I mean, it's not like you and I would ever be a couple. You're a dumb fuck and I'm an Adonis."

I rolled my eyes. "Certainly not. You require far too much maintenance for my liking."

"See? It's perfect. And the bonus is that I can tell you at least if you're better or worse than Marlene McKinnon and Nigel."

I stared at him, letting it sink in that he was completely serious (and not just because of his name). There wasn't a single joke in his eyes and I felt my throat close up with nervousness. I shifted uncomfortably.

"Kiss me, James," Sirius begged again.

"What? ...now? Here?" I looked nervously at the door. We were alone, but Peter and Remus were only just down stairs doing homework. Either one of them could come up at any moment and then what? What if they walked in while we were kissing? What if they thought -- I shook my head.

Sirius said, "Yeah, why not? Get it over with and all?" He pulled his wand out of the knot of hair on the back of his head, sending the black tendrils pouring down over his shoulders in loose curls created by having been wadded up like that all the time. "Colloportus," he whispered, and the door clicked, a soft glow going 'round the handle as it locked. Sirius looked at me, directly in the eyes, and his voice went low and sultry. "Alright," he said quietly, "Now we won't get interrupted."

I hesitated.

"Please, James," he said. "I have to know."

I laughed nervously and I sat up and slid my legs over the side of the bed so I was sitting next to him. My heart was beating like a drum in my chest and I swear I could feel it in every part of my body... but most especially between my legs.

Why was this turning me on?

"Alright," I murmured, taking a deep breath.

Above us, the snitch buzzed against the canopy, bouncing from one corner of the tightly stretched fabric to another.

The truth was that ever since Remus and Sirius had started flirting about with one another in fourth year, I'd sort of... been wondering about it myself. I mean, not about them per-say, I wasn't really curious about either of them, but in general. I - I was frustrated about Lily, sick of being turned down by her, and none of the other girls at Hogwarts really held my fancy and I'd started to think that maybe... maybe there wasn't another girl for me 'round the castle because there wasn't a girl for me.

"Make it good, Potter," Sirius joked, "My entire sexual orientation will be determined by your performance just now."

"No pressure or anything," I murmured.

Sirius laughed, "Yeah, no pressure."

Tentatively, I reached up, slipping my hands over his cheeks and up into his hair so that three of my fingers went behind his ear, my index in front of it, and my thumb crossing his cheek. I'd seen that in a film once and thought it was really good and had always pictured doing it one day.

I'd never pictured doing it to Sirius Black.

But here I was.

Slowly, I leaned in, our eyes locked as I did, and Sirius tilted his head ever so slightly so when I moved our noses didn't crunch against one another.

You know that thing... that thing where you haven't eaten all day but you didn't realize you were hungry until you took the first bite of your dinner and suddenly you realize that you were actually ravenous?

I mean, as far as first kisses go I really couldn't complain.

Sirius lingered. I lingered. We both just sat there in it, our lips awkwardly pressed to one another - knowing there was likely more we ought to be doing - probably with our tongues, but neither really being bold enough to do that bit - before Sirius finally drew away. He bit my lower lip as he did. Playful.

He raised an eyebrow and a smirk crossed his mouth - the mouth I'd just kissed.

"Well damn, Potter," he'd whispered, eyes sparkling, "You'll have the ladies queued up in no time once word gets around that you kiss like that."

"Don't you fucking dare tell anyone what we just did - ever," I hissed.

Sirius grinned, "Going straight to Teen Witch with my review. It'll make the front page."

"Shut up." I shoved him off the bed and he laughed as he slid to the floor.

"I'm serious."

"You always are."

"It was good."

"You weren't half bad yourself, you wanker," I answered, trying to keep my tone joking.

Sirius grinned all the more. "Perhaps I should call it off with Moony after all? Who needs a Wolfstar when they could have a Prongsfoot?"

"You're disgusting," I threw a pillow at him. "A gods-damned filthy dog."

And Sirius had laughed and transformed and bounded onto the bed, barking and jumping all over me, until there'd come a knock on the door and a shout from Peter Pettigrew, asking why it was locked, and if he could please come in for his transfiguration text book...

Nothing more had ever come of that - in fact, Sirius and I never spoke of it again, not even joking around, and as far as I know he'd never told Remus about the kiss... and I'd certainly never told Evans.

But I'd be a liar if I didn't say I thought about it now and then...

"I think Regulus may have a bit of a thing for you," Remus had said.

I'd be a liar if I said that I hadn't thought of that kiss with Sirius and the way it had made me feel deep in my core when I'd looked at Regulus that night out on the beach.

He'd looked at me at one point when we'd been talking and his eyes had met mine and seen inside of me further than I'd felt seen in such a very long time. Every single muscle in my body had tensed all at once and I'd had to tear myself away from him because if I hadn't... I might've fallen harder than marble stone to the ground and shattered at his feet on the spot.

But he was Sirius's brother.

The brother that sometimes hurt Sirius so deeply that I'd heard him cry himself to sleep in Remus's arms, shaking with tears and sobs and questions of "why?" The brother that had looked directly into his eyes and refused to help him more times than one...

The brother that, for years, Sirius had counted as lost to him.

The brother who had suddenly shown back up in his life, begging for help and asylum, saying that he'd changed, and who had come on this trip without any questions asked by any of us. Except for maybe Remus... Remus had been staring at Regulus with eyes that were ready to either inquisition or kill. Part of me wanted to hold that same contempt, that same grudge, but one look into Regulus's eyes tore my resolve to be angry all apart because there was something so familiar there.

I mean, for one, there was the fact that he looked so much like Sirius. The same grey eyes and high cheek bones, the same pouting mouth and long lashes.

The Black family was nothing if not incredibly aesthetically pleasing.

There was, after all, a reason that I couldn't completely push that expectation-free kiss out of my mind.

And, on a more platonic and enduring level, for years I'd loved Sirius so entirely it had never even occurred to me how deep those feelings ran. I didn't love Sirius "like that" because he was Sirius... he was my best friend and, just as I'd joked about all those years ago, he really was too high maintenance for me.

But Regulus.

There was something different about Regulus, something -- something I couldn't quite name that made my heart jump into my throat and beat triple-fast.

The second reason he was so familiar to me is because he and I had something in common that I didn't have in common with anyone else in my life.

We were over coddled children whose parents had expectations for us that we couldn't ever feel as though we'd fully lived up to. I mean, yeah those expectations were wildly different. I couldn't live up to my parents expectations because they were ever comparing me to an endless potential that reached far beyond my actual human capability. The Blacks' expectations were of a far more sinister nature, wanting their son to become a leader in a sick, magically powered genocide, but -- It produced the same inner workings, the same torture inside. Or at least sort of. At least enough that I could understand him.

And, if I opened myself up to him, he could maybe even understand me.

That was something even Lily Evans had never been able to do.

So it was very hard not to care for Regulus Black.

I'd be a liar if I said I didn't.

And I'd be a liar, too, if I said that I didn't catch him staring at me before, out on the beach, and even more so if I said that I hadn't peeled my shirt off a little slower than I would have done if he hadn't been staring so avidly.

I'd stood in the sea taking deep breaths, trying to calm myself down, wondering if he was watching me, wondering what he was thinking, if he was thinking about me... and what, exactly, he might be thinking about me. I'd splashed the cold water of the sea on myself to neutralize the things I was thinking he might be thinking.

"I think Regulus may... may have a bit of a thing for you."

"A thing?" I laughed nervously. "I don't have a thing for him - what makes you say that?"

I stared at the half-finished letter to Lily that sat on the writing desk.

Not a single word about Regulus anywhere on that parchment.

It didn't feel right telling her about him being there.

Because talking about Regulus would amount to a confession.

"Why haven't you proposed to me yet, James?" she'd asked a week after he'd come to live at the flat with Sirius, Remus, and I - a week after I'd burned the Dark Mark from his skin, an outward symbol of the change he'd undergone on the inside.

"There's a war on, Evans," I'd said.

She'd stared at me. "The war? You're holding back on us getting married... because of the war?"

"Yeah," I answered.

But I hadn't told her that I meant the war that was on inside of myself.

The one that raged every time Regulus's eyes met mine.