Only the Brave

Chapter 21: Boyfriends

The first half of November slips by quietly. It's stolen nights behind the mirror, kisses and hands and ragged breathing. Not as often as they'd like, but as often as they can make it happen. It's not enough, never enough. But it is, and Regulus thinks that's better than nothing. He complains about it to James endlessly, for the principle of it all, but he's loving it. Secretly. Pathetically. Embarrassingly. But he is.

To their shared dismay, they're both busier than they'd like, so they don't meet each other as often. It's also harder now it's by the mirror because it's close to the infirmary and that corridor tends to see a lot of foot traffic. Regulus desperately wants to find a new place for them, now that the owlry roof is a death trap of sleet and rain and biting wind.

All in all, in the first two weeks of November, they see each other only five times. This is not okay with Regulus, but it can't be helped.

Those five nights are discovery. Regulus keeps trying to tell himself to be more careful, to hold more back. He wants this, but it's got an expiration date and he cannot forget it.

He can't.

He can't.

And yet, he does.

Something happens to him when he's in the presence of James. Like the walls he's built to protect himself from the world are no match for the hazel eyes of a boy that doesn't hesitate to bare his very soul for Regulus to see.

It's not balanced—James definitely shares a lot more than Regulus does. But he doesn't seem to mind and takes every morsel of information Regulus gives and commits it to memory like it's precious. Regulus, despite his reservations, is helpless faced with the relentless shine of James.

Regulus teaches James more about muggles and James shocks the living daylights out of Regulus by bringing a little list of things he'd like to know more about. James did research. For Regulus. So they could have more in common. Regulus has to smoke two cigarettes back to back to recover from the sheer adorable-ness of it all.

James asks about Regulus' favourite song almost every time they meet, and he gets coy about it. He's not ready to tell James what it means. What the song is about. Why he let it slip when James asked that time on the roof. It's too much, too soon. A weakness Regulus shouldn't have admitted to. And so, it becomes a kind of game where James tries to catch Regulus off guard to get him to repeat the title, and Regulus simply doesn't.

They do agree that it's early days but that they're not seeing anyone else. James is a little bit appalled Regulus even has to bring it up, because he thought they'd already kind of agreed it when Regulus had told him about the horrible things he'd do for him. Secretly, Regulus is fucking elated about this. James is his, and his alone. For a time, says a voice in his head. Regulus suffocates it viciously.

If anyone had told his eleven-year-old self this would one day happen to him, he would have melted into a puddle and never recovered.

Despite all their talking, they don't touch on anything heavy. The deep, deep stuff that could make the other go running. Not even on Sirius' birthday, when James shows up super late and quite drunk because he insisted he still wanted to kiss Regulus goodnight. Regulus doesn't tell him he climbed to the roof alone despite the weather and talked to the star that's his brother for hours, and James doesn't tell him that Sirius went to bed so inebriated he asked James why Regulus didn't love him before he passed out.

They simply don't. Not yet. This is conscious, at least on Regulus' part because he feels like they need to take a break from it. What's the point in doing this insane thing, this beautiful thing he's doing with James even though he shouldn't, if he's going to spend the entire time being miserable? No. Time's limited, and as such they should make the most of it.