Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He always thought he would die with blood in his mouth. His own, or someone else’s—either way, when he imagined it, the tang of iron was always there. Strange, now, to taste nothing but dust on his tongue.

He gave the last bullet to the horse. How long ago—yesterday? Longer? Stupid, maybe. Sentimental. But he couldn’t bear to watch it, the sweat-soaked heaving, the bloodied flank. The animal eyes, black with pupil and fear. He pressed the Colt to its forehead, and he pulled the trigger.

BLAM!

Stupid.

Sirius would say it was stupid.

But Sirius isn’t here. Regulus is alone, beneath a sky so big and so dark that he half-wonders if he’s already dead. He thought he was walking, but he’s not—he’s on his knees, and when did that happen? Surely, if his legs gave out, he would have noticed it.

He’s so tired.

You run, Reggie.

You run, and you keep on running.

His hands are in the dirt. The grass. Down on all fours, like an animal. Like a horse. All pupil.

Sirius, he thinks, as the ground sways up to meet him, Sirius, I don’t think I can run anymore.

Regulus rolls, flat-backed in the grass, panting. Tongue a desert, dirt in his teeth. He searches the sky for a pinprick, for a light, for anything. The air smells like a storm, and he can’t tell the night from the clouds. There’s no moon. The stars are hiding.

Sirius, he tries to say, Sirius, I don’t think…

His eyes slide shut. The dark is just the same. Regulus drifts, and he doesn’t feel it when the sky splits like rotten fruit, when the rain comes down to wash the earth clean.

He doesn’t feel anything.

*  *  *

He gasps himself awake, lungs aching, adrenaline already kicking his heart into his throat. Regulus scrambles, jerking reflexively—but there are no restraints, and his arms go flying, tangled in blankets and smacking hard into the wall. And the wall, it’s—it’s wood, rough-hewn, none of the sterile tile, and he’s not—he doesn’t know where—

“Woah, woah, hey there,”

The voice is as rough as the walls, deep and rounded and warm at the corners. Regulus jerks upright, head snapping around, eyes darting like a cornered animal as he tries to get his bearings.

He’s in—a house. A house he’s never seen before. Small, stove-heated, wood walls and wood floors, simple and entirely unfamiliar. There’s a table in one corner, a chair, a chest. The bed that Regulus is sitting on appears to be the largest piece of furniture occupying the space, with innocuously delicate carvings on the bedposts, tiny bears and eagles and pine trees decorating the wood. The mattress is lumpy, uncomfortable, but the blanket he’s tangled in is a well-loved quilt, soft and colorful and heavy, smelling of woodsmoke.

There’s another chair, beside the bed. A man. Pine-sap skin, earth-turned eyes. The unruliest hair that Regulus has ever seen, wild, frizzy curls that jump from his scalp and brush at the stubble on his jaw. He has his hands raised, palms flat, the way you’d approach a startled horse.

The horse.

The bullet.

BLAM!

“Hey now,” the man says, low and steady, “You’re alright. You’re safe.”

It’s a trick, Regulus thinks, immediately, it’s a trick, it’s a—

He fumbles at his waist, but his belt is gone—his shirt is gone—where’s his—he needs—

“Looking for this?” asks the man. He leans down slow, lifts the Colt from the floor, the familiar scratched handle flat in his palm.

Regulus doesn’t think—just moves, lunging out of the bed before the man can point the gun at him, knocking him out of his chair and slamming him into the floor, pressing one arm to the man’s throat and using the other to pin his wrist, to go for the gun—

There’s a horrible, ear-splitting snarl, inches from Regulus’s face. When he looks up, a massive black dog has risen from where it must have been lying at the foot of the bed, hackles raised as it growls.

“Down, Padfoot,” the man chokes out, struggling beneath him to get Regulus’s arm off his throat, “Down, boy—it’s alright—”

The dog continues growling, but it doesn’t move. The man manages to get his hands on Regulus’s shoulders, calluses rough and warm against bare skin, pushing him back—but it’s less of a struggle and more of a hold, firm strength that Regulus knows he can’t overpower with his body still trembling on the brink of exhaustion, adrenaline the only thing keeping him upright. He clutches the gun in his hand, and the man doesn’t try to take it from him.

“No need for all that,” he grunts, not sounding upset so much as gently chastising, “I was going to give it back.”

“Who are you?!” Regulus hisses, heart pounding, “Where am I?!”

The man beneath him huffs, eyes creasing at the corners as he—smiles?

“Name’s James,” he says, “And you’re in my house. You can thank Padfoot for that—he’s the one that found you, out there in the storm. I’d shake your hand, but…”

“No, where—I mean—” Regulus squeezes his eyes shut, briefly, still clutching the gun. He can feel a headache coming on, the familiar pounding between his temples. “What state?”

When he opens his eyes again, the man—James—is watching him, brows pulled together in a question.

“Montana,” he says, after a moment, “’Bout a day’s ride from Butte, give or take.”

“Montana,” Regulus mumbles, half to himself. James continues to stare up at him, watching his face.

“I take it you’re not from around here?”

“I—no, I—”

James squeezes his shoulder, lightly, and Regulus realizes that they’re still touching—that he’s practically straddling the man, half-pinning him to the ground, and the dog is still watching them suspiciously, though it’s no longer growling. He flinches away, scrambling back, grabbing one of the bedposts for support when he’s hit with a wave of dizziness as he tries to stand. His fingers slide over the carved animals, tracing the tiny grooves.

“Woah there,” James pushes himself to his feet, still moving slowly, palms up like he’s dealing with a skittish animal, “It’s alright—why don’t you just take a seat, yeah? Let me get you some water…”

“I—I’m sorry, I…” Regulus squeezes his eyes shut again, trying to think past the pounding in his skull. “You said you…found me…something about a storm?”

There’s a canteen pressed into his hand, dented tin. Regulus flinches at the cold metal, but then quickly accepts, drinking so fast that some of the water spills over his chin, down his neck.

“Like I said,” James replies, a note of amusement in his voice, “Padfoot’s the one that found you. Barking his head off out there in the rain, weren’t you boy?”

When Regulus opens his eyes, the dog has come to sit beside James, tongue lolling as the man scratches behind his ears. James smiles down at the mutt, warm and fond, and then turns back to Regulus.

“You were in bad shape,” he says, raising a brow, “Lucky Pads found you when he did. We brought you in, dried you off as best I could…” James eyes him, up and down, and Regulus is suddenly very aware of his bare chest, his uncovered arms—he tucks his forearm tight to his side, still holding the gun.

“Seems like you’ve come a long way,” James finishes, still scratching absentmindedly at the dog’s ears. Its tail thumps against the floor. James smiles down at it, then lifts his gaze back to Regulus. “Anywhere in particular you were headed?”

Regulus swallows. He can still taste the dust in his throat. He can still feel the full-body ache of riding, endless riding, days of running and running and running until the horse gave out and Regulus had no choice but to put a bullet in its head.

BLAM!

“Hey—no need to look like that,” James lifts his hands, amicable, “Didn’t mean to be nosy. Folks ‘round these parts know a thing or two about minding their business. I was just askin’ in case there was somewhere I could help you get. Like I said, we’re about a day’s ride from Butte, if you’re lookin’ to go that way.”

“No,” Regulus breathes. You stay out of the cities—d’you hear me, Reg? You stay away, and you run—

“Alright then.” James smiles at him. He has a broad mouth. Soft. “Well…sun’ll be up soon. Tell you what—why don’t you get some rest? I’ve got things to tend to out at the barn, but you’re welcome to stay here, s’long as you need. Get some rest, and come find me once you’re up, and I’ll rustle us up something to eat. Sound alright?”

Regulus nods, mutely. He’s still holding the empty gun in one hand, the half-empty canteen in the other. James nods, still with that soft smile, and heads towards the door. Padfoot follows him, glancing back at Regulus once with a huff.

James is halfway out the door before Regulus comes back to himself enough to open his mouth, blurting out,

“Wait!”

James turns. The sun is just beginning to rise outside, sky turning a muted shade of grey.

“I…” Regulus swallows, looks down at his hands. “Thank you.”

When he looks back up, James is smiling. 

“Get some rest,” he says.

*  *  *

When Regulus wakes, there’s a needle in his arm. It was a trick—he knew it was a trick—and he can smell the tile, and Sirius is there, pressing down on the plunger, and it doesn’t make sense because Sirius wouldn’t—he would never—

“It’s okay, Reggie,” he says, in his big-brother voice, “This won’t hurt. It’s okay.”

Regulus tries to scream, but they’ve shoved the leather bit between his teeth, strapped him down so tight he can’t even turn his head. Sirius smiles, and Regulus watches his own veins darken as the syringe empties under his skin.

“It’s okay, Reggie. It’s okay. We’re God’s chosen.”

Regulus wakes up.

He’s not in the lab. He’s in an unfamiliar house—wood walls, wood floors. Carved bedposts. The quilt.

James, he thinks, deliriously, as it all comes crashing back.

The sun is up now, early autumn sunshine pouring through the windows. Regulus looks out the nearest one and sees a sky so blue it hurts his eyes, endless and unyielding.

He takes a breath.

He brings his legs up to his chest, curling inwards, presses his forehead to his knees. He squeezes his eyes shut, and he takes another breath, and another, and another, until he no longer feels like his chest is about to cave in.

He’s safe.

He needs to believe that he’s safe.

Regulus shoves the dream to the back of his mind. The canteen is still beside the bed, so he reaches out for it, trying not to look at his forearm. He pours the water down his throat in an attempt to assuage the painful clench of his empty stomach. Once the canteen is empty, he drags himself out of bed, wincing at the constant twinge of sore muscles. James has left his shirt hanging over the back of a chair to dry, along with his belt and holster. Regulus dresses quickly, replacing the Colt in its rightful spot and then staring down at his empty hands. He allows himself to realize, for the first time, just how little he left with—nothing but the clothes on his back and the gun on his hip. He has no money, no bullets, nowhere to go. He doesn’t…well. If he’s honest with himself, he never really thought he’d make it this far.

Montana. Now that he’s here, he has no idea what to do.

His stomach growls.

Regulus steps outside, squinting against the onslaught of sunshine. From the outside, the house looks small, modest and neat. The kind of place that his mother would sniff at and call quaint. The barn isn’t difficult to spot; it’s the only other building on the property, save what seems to be a small outhouse, and the only building in sight at all for miles. If this James fellow has any neighbors, Regulus certainly can’t see them—there’s nothing to the east but rolling, grassy hills and nothing to the west but scattered woods that grow gradually thicker, condensing beneath a craggy mountain peak.

It doesn’t feel real. Regulus can’t stop pressing his fingers to his forearm, glancing around obsessively like he could wake up at any moment back in that chair.

He hears James before he sees him. There’s a slow, steady thwack coming from around the back of the barn, and when Regulus follows the noise he finds James with his sleeves rolled up, shirt sweat-soaked, hands wrapped around an axe. He brings the blade down a few more times before he notices Regulus, not looking up until the log he’s chopping has split.

“Oh!”

James loosens his grip on the axe, letting it hang in one hand as he uses the other to shove his spectacles up from where they’ve slid down his nose, “Sirius, you’re awake!”

Regulus freezes, alarm bells going off in his head.

“What did you just call me?”

James squints, still breathing hard from exertion. “Er…Sirius?”

The name lands like a gut-punch. Regulus’s voice is low when he responds, cold. Venomous.

“How the hell do you know that name?”

“Hey,” James frowns, raising his free hand as though in surrender, “There’s no need to take that tone. Saw it carved on your gun,” he nods towards the holster on Regulus’s hip, “Just put two and two together.”

Regulus releases a breath, heart settling back into a normal rhythm. Right. The gun.

“It’s an unusual name,” James continues, voice falling back into its usual amicable tone now that Regulus is no longer glaring at him, “The dog star, right?”

Regulus swallows.

“It’s not my name.”

“Oh.” James blinks, looking thrown for a moment. His eyes fall to the gun again, and there’s a question there—but he doesn’t ask it, just shakes his head and smiles. “My apologies, then. I jumped to conclusions. Lily always used to scold me for that.”

Regulus doesn’t ask who Lily is. He’s still shaken, trying not to get stuck on the cheerful way James had said, Sirius, you’re awake! He doesn’t realize that the silence has stretched itself thin until James shifts a bit, clearing his throat.

“Right. Well, uh…you got a name? Something I can call you?”

Regulus blinks.

“Reg.”

“Reg,” James repeats, drawing out the single syllable like he’s letting his mouth get used to it. “That short for something?”

“Does it matter?”

Regulus winces at his harsh tone immediately, cursing himself for snapping—acting so goddamn defensive is just going to raise suspicion. But to his surprise, it doesn’t seem to bother James; the other man just laughs, eyes crinkling at the corners, shooting Regulus a bemused grin.

“S’pose it doesn’t,” he concedes, wiping a bead of sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. “Well, Reg. I’m James Potter. Nice to meet you.”

“We’ve already met,” Regulus says, stupidly. He moves his eyes away from the sweat-dampened curls that are sticking to James Potter’s neck.

James laughs again, as if he finds Regulus’s blunt tone and complete inability to hold a normal conversation endearing rather than off-putting. Regulus supposes, with a grim sort of self-deprecation, that if the man lives out here with only a dog for company, anyone who can string a few words together probably seems like the world’s most eloquent conversationalist.

“Well, nice to meet you again, then,” James declares, still grinning. He props the axe against the stump that he was using to chop wood, wiping his hands perfunctorily on his jeans. “Say, are you hungry? I was just about to start in on lunch.”

Regulus’s stomach answers for him, growling so loudly that it can be heard even with the space between them. His face heats with embarrassment, but James just laughs.

“I’ll take that as a yes. Come on—let’s get you some food.”

Food is eggs and potatoes, cooked in an iron skillet, unseasoned and smashed all together. Regulus inhales it, eating so quickly it’s almost embarrassing. But James just seems pleased that the food is appreciated.

“Lily used to say I couldn’t cook worth shit,” he shares, smiling as he takes a bite of his own eggs. It’s that name again—Lily. Regulus still doesn’t ask who she is; an ex-lover, an old flame—it really doesn’t make a difference. He has no desire to learn anything more about this man’s life than he has to.

Instead, he swallows, pausing only long enough to mutter,

“She was right,”

Before shoving the next bite of food into his mouth. It’s a bad habit, making snippy little comments under his breath, and one that Regulus used to get into trouble for. But James only laughs, startling him, and Regulus wonders again how starved for human company this man must be. He could probably spit on James’s boots, and he’d still act like he found it charming.

It’s disconcerting. Regulus has never been charming—that was always Sirius, with his easy smiles and his bright laugh and his saccharine voice. Regulus only ever learned how to copy, trying desperately to imitate the nonchalant façade with which his brother faced the world, and even then he constantly had to remind himself to smile, or nod, or laugh at the appropriate times. He certainly hasn’t had the energy to keep up such an act since he woke up in fucking Montana, and yet James is responding for all the world like Regulus’s natural abrasiveness is the epitome of amicability. No one’s ever just been…nice to him before, without requiring something in return.

Regulus doesn’t think he can trust it.

He also doesn’t think he has much of a choice.

“So,” James clears his throat, snapping Regulus out of his thoughts. He shifts a bit in his chair, resting his elbows on the table—bad manners! hisses a voice in the back of Regulus’s mind, automatic. He tries not to flinch.

“I don’t mean to pry,” James says, slowly, “But…well, can I ask how long you mean to stay?”

Regulus feels his heart start to kick in his chest, cold sweat prickling on the back of his neck. Right. Of course. He’s still—there’s still this, he’s still here, and he can’t just expect to stay in this cabin forever and pretend that the rest of the world doesn’t exist.

“If there’s somewhere you’re trying to go, it’d be my pleasure to help out. I’ve got a horse in the barn…”

Keep running.

You run, and you keep on running.

But where? Where does he go? Sirius didn’t tell him this part—didn’t tell him what to do once he got out. Regulus wonders, with a feeling like a twisting knife in his gut, if maybe that’s because Sirius never expected him to get out, either. If they both secretly, silently, thought he’d stay stuck there forever.

Where am I supposed to go, Sirius? Regulus thinks, desperately, angrily, I can’t keep running forever. I can’t.

“Hey.”

Touch shocks Regulus back into his body—a warm palm, heavy and rough and callused. James is leaning forward, arm stretched across the table, using his hand to cover Regulus’s own.

“Listen,” James says, after a moment of tense silence, “I…I hope I’m not overstepping, but…well, it’s just that I’ve seen folks in trouble before.”

“I’m not in trouble,” Regulus says, automatically, yanking his hand away. He curls into himself, arms crossed over his chest, shoulders hunched. James blows out a breath, sighing as he leans back in his own chair, studying Regulus with a tiny furrow between his brows. After a moment, he removes his spectacles, rubbing a hand over his eyes and down his face before he replaces them.

“Alright,” he says, nodding, “No trouble. Got it.”

Regulus remains silent, staring down at the table in front of him. He doesn’t like the way James is looking at him—like he’s something to be solved, a math problem or a jigsaw puzzle.

When Regulus doesn’t speak, James sighs again, which makes Padfoot—who’s lying on the floor by his feet—prick his ears and huff, as though imitating the sound.

“Look,” James says, voice soft, “It’s just me out here on the farm. Padfoot’s good company, but he’s not much help—and with winter coming, I could use an extra pair of hands.”

Regulus looks up, slowly. James is watching him, face open and friendly.

“I couldn’t pay you,” he says, “But there’s a loft in the barn, got a cot and a couple extra blankets. And my cooking might be shit, but I’d keep you fed. If you’re willing to work for a bed and three square meals, I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t stick around. Least ‘til you figure out where it is you’re going, and how it is you’re gettin’ there.”

Regulus swallows. Keep running, Sirius said, don’t stop.

But he’s so tired.

He’s so, so tired.

“I’ve never worked on a farm before,” Regulus says, haltingly. James grins.

“First time for everything, right?”

Regulus knows this is pity. He knows it. Part of him recoils at the thought, wanting to insist that he doesn’t need any fucking charity. That he’s fine on his own.

Instead, he forces himself to uncross his arms, to unlock his jaw.

“Right.”

*  *  *

It’s just temporary. That’s what Regulus tells himself. He’ll stay here until he gets his bearings, until he figures out where to go—and then he’ll be gone; he’ll keep running, just like Sirius said. He’ll probably have to steal the horse to do it—a gentle palomino named Minnie who nickers softly and sniffs at his hand when James introduces them—and Regulus does feel an uncomfortable twist of guilt when he imagines stealing from James, who’s already done so much for him. But he can’t let himself feel indebted, no matter the kindness he’s shown—at the end of the day, Regulus can only look out for one person, and that’s himself. That’s the only way he’ll make it, if he wants to survive.

“Sorry for the dust,” James coughs a bit, making his way up the wooden ladder. The loft is small, with just enough room for another wooden chest and the promised cot. There are bits of hay scattered on the floor, and a fine layer of dust over everything. James smiles apologetically.

“Been a bit since I’ve come up here. Blankets in the chest should be clean, though—why don’t you pull a few out.” He moves over to the cot, grabbing the dusty blanket that’s already laying atop it and folding it up in his arms.

“Thanks,” Regulus murmurs, kneeling down to open the chest. James continues to talk behind him, an ongoing stream of chatter.

“Looks like Crookshanks has been sleeping up here—you might have to share with him. Big old cat, you can’t miss him; he likes to come around and antagonize Padfoot, but he’s a sweetheart once you get to know him…”

Regulus doesn’t say anything, letting James prattle on about the apparent rivalry between his dog and his cat as he opens the chest. It creaks a bit, hinges slightly rusty with disuse, but James was right—the blankets inside appear clean and devoid of the dust layering everything else. Regulus grabs the one on top, expecting it to be a full-sized quilt—but the cloth pulls up much too quickly, falling open in his hands, and it becomes clear that isn’t the case.

This blanket is small, hardly longer than Regulus’s torso. It stretches between his hands, clean and only slightly worn, with just the very beginnings of fraying at the edges. It was obviously made with care, painstakingly stitched and patched with colorful bits of red and yellow cloth, bright and cheerful, reminding Regulus of summer sunshine on ripe cherries.

It is, so clearly, a child’s blanket.

A baby blanket.

James has gone silent. Regulus turns, and finds the other man staring at the blanket in his hands, eyes glassy and faraway.

“Um,” Regulus blinks, feeling horribly uncomfortable—like he’s intruding on something he’s not meant to see. “I—sorry, it was…”

James seems to snap out of whatever trance he’s in, shaking his head quickly, plastering a smile back on his face.

“No—no need to apologize! I, ah…forgot that was in there.” He laughs, a rough, strained sound. “Why don’t you, um, put that one back? I mean, obviously that’s not going to be big enough for…um, yeah, just—stick it at the bottom, there should be others in there you can use…”

“Right—yeah, okay.”

Regulus folds up the blanket quickly, using one arm to pull out the next quilt in the pile and placing the baby blanket gently back into the chest. When he turns around, James is still standing there, frozen, horrible smile painted awkwardly across his face. Regulus clears his throat.

“Oh—er, sorry,” James shakes his head again, finally looking away. “I…well, I suppose I’ll leave you to get settled in. Just—if you need me, just give a shout. Odds are I’ll hear it.”

He starts back down the ladder, filthy blanket tucked under one arm, and Regulus clears his throat.

“Did you…need help with anything? Today?”

James furrows his brow for a moment, looking confused—then he smiles, a genuine one this time, and shakes his head.

“Oh—nah, don’t worry about that. Just get some rest for now. I’ll wake you up bright and early tomorrow, show you the ropes then.”

“Okay,” Regulus mumbles, not sure what else to say. James nods, once, and then disappears down the ladder. Regulus stands still, waiting until he hears the creak of the barn door opening and closing before he finally releases a breath.

The cot is uncomfortable, lumpy and hard. But the blanket is soft, and Regulus sighs as he spreads it out, reaching down to pull off his boots before he lies down. He stares up at the sloped ceiling of the barn, trying to get used to the smell—animal and hay and earth and dust and wood. It isn’t silent; the horse is stabled, and there’s a cow, and a few chickens pecking around on the floor. They provide a constant backdrop of noise, clucking and rustling and snuffling and chewing.

It's good. It’s different. A far cry from the sharp antiseptic smell of the lab, the clean tile. Regulus lifts and lowers his arms, repeatedly, just to feel the movement, unrestrained. He turns his head from side to side; he wiggles his feet. He reminds himself that he’s safe—or at least, as safe as he’s going to get. For now, at least, he can breathe. He can relax. He can rest, or try to.

There’s a sudden creak of the floorboards, and Regulus sits up abruptly, heart pounding. He finds himself staring down at a horrible, squashed face, beady yellow eyes, and tangled orange fur. The cat freezes, glaring at him suspiciously. After a moment, it lets out a low hiss.

“Sorry,” Regulus mutters, watching it warily, “S’pose I stole your bed.”

The cat meows, a scratchy sound, and takes a step closer, sniffing at the cot. Regulus sighs, scooting over.

“Come on,” he pats the blanket beside his hip, “I don’t mind sharing.”

The cat—what did James call it? Crookshanks. Crookshanks meows again, jumping imperiously up onto the cot. It’s heavy enough that Regulus can feel the weight of its landing, cot sagging slightly where the cat sits.

“Jesus, you’re an ugly bastard, aren’t you?” Regulus muses, sticking out a hand for the cat to sniff. It hisses again, and Regulus rolls his eyes.

“Oh, shut up,” he mutters, “You’re not intimidating me. I’ve had to deal with worse than a cat scratch, I can tell you that much.” He raises a brow, hand still extended, and after a moment the cat leans forward to sniff. It meows again, nipping at his fingers, and Regulus just sighs.

“Well, you’ll just have to get used to me,” he says, leaning back on the cot and folding his arms behind his head, “Because I’m not moving.”

The cat stares down at him with its beady yellow eyes, looking supremely offended that its favorite napping spot has been stolen. Regulus just yawns and shuts his eyes, listening to the quiet sounds of the barn. After a moment, he feels a point of weight on his stomach—when he opens his eyes, Crookshanks is digging a paw into his side, slowly clambering on top of him.

Regulus can’t help it—he wheezes out a laugh as the cat settles on top of him. It’s heavy—must weigh at least fifteen pounds—but there’s something grounding about the weight, the heat and soft fur. The cat glares at him as it makes itself comfortable, kneading at his shirt and then curling up on top of his stomach as though daring Regulus to try and move.

“Alright,” Regulus sighs, closing his eyes again, “Suit yourself.”

By the time he falls asleep, the cat has started to purr.

*  *  *

Working on a farm, it turns out, is hard work. Regulus supposes he should have expected this; still, it’s hard to believe, the way there always seems to be something that needs to be done—some animal that needs to be tended, some vegetable that needs to be picked or watered or pruned, some door hinge or fence post that needs fixing. For the first week, Regulus is almost completely useless, needing James to follow him like a shadow and talk him through each task step by step. It makes him feel childish, and stupid, and helpless.

So he learns. He learns quickly. He doesn’t complain, no matter how exhausted he gets, until James admonishes him to sit down and drink water and take a goddamn break once in a while, Reg, jesus! James laughs when the chickens terrorize Regulus, and smiles when he manages to milk the cow on his own for the first time, and complains when Crookshanks favors him, insisting that Regulus must have cast some sort of dark magic to get that cat to like him. Regulus sniffs and scratches between Crookshanks’ ears, the way he likes, and says that a magician never reveals his secrets—and James laughs, and…

And there’s this.

There’s James.

They don’t talk. Not really—not about anything that matters. James doesn’t ask Regulus about his past, and Regulus returns the favor. The baby blanket stays tucked in the chest, and the mark on Regulus’s forearm stays covered, and neither of them brings up the fact that Regulus still hasn’t said where he’s going, or when he’s leaving.

But each morning, James throws open the barn door, shouting,

“Rise and shine!”

And Regulus groans as he drags himself down the ladder, grumbling and complaining, and James laughs and reaches out and ruffles his bed-head, mussing up his hair even more, and Regulus lets him. Regulus milks the cow and listens to James whistling as he feeds the chickens, addressing each of them by name—because somehow, inexplicably, he can tell each and every one of them apart. They spend their days working, side by side, James smiling that heart-aching smile and chattering on and on about nothing and everything, laughing at each and every one of Regulus’s snide comments, golden and bright and cooking the most horrible meals that Regulus has ever eaten, until Regulus banishes him permanently from his own stove—or tries to, but that just leads to James sitting at the little table in the evenings while Regulus cooks, whittling or mending or feeding Padfoot scraps, goading Regulus into bickering with him and crowing triumphantly every time he manages to drag a smile out of Regulus’s perpetual frown.

It’s dangerous. Regulus knows that. The heat blooming under his skin when James smiles at him, or brushes sweat-dampened curls out of his eyes, or rubs his hand across the stubble perpetually shadowing his jaw. The guilt always follows afterwards, a sticky curl behind the heat that has Regulus shrinking into himself, forcing his eyes away, wincing at the horrible shriek of his mother’s voice in his skull.

Filth! Sin! Abomination!

How would James look at him, if he knew? Would that bright smile curl into disgust, into horror? Would he recoil, knowing that he invited Regulus into his home like a cancer, a rot that boils with want, with the desire to spread and consume?

But Regulus has nowhere to go, can do nothing but swallow his shame and draw back. It doesn’t matter—James will never know this piece of him. James will never know any of the pieces of him, except for the tiny sliver Regulus has deemed safe enough to show. He’s determined to keep the other man at arm’s length, determined not to grow too attached—after all, there’s only one way this can end.

Keep running.

Don’t stop running.

And yet, weeks pass. Regulus regains his strength, and tells himself every night that this will be the night he leaves—Minnie trusts him just as much as James now, and Regulus would only need to guide her out of the stable, a thief in the night, and disappear.

But he doesn’t.

He stays.

He just—he can’t help it. He feels safe. Safe, for the first time since he can remember. Instead of looking over his shoulder, always watching the horizon for signs of riders—intruders—pursuers, coming to return him to his rightful place—he finds himself watching James. For those smiles, yes, but also for the negative space between; the times that those brown eyes will flicker, or go glassy, or get stuck on some distant spot where Regulus’s eyes can’t follow. The more time Regulus spends with him, the more James’s infallible cheer seems less like naivety and more like strength. Regulus doesn’t have to know what James has suffered to recognize the signs of suffering—to see the marks left behind, the fading bruises of life’s battering. But like a bottle broken and cast into the sea, he hasn’t allowed the grit to sharpen him. Instead, he’s become something softened and solid, seaglass in the sand, bright and beautiful.

It would be easier, Regulus thinks, if he wasn’t so beautiful.

Time passes. Regulus crawls up the ladder at night, and tells himself that he’s going to leave. In the morning, he wakes to James’s voice, and an orange cat yawning on the bed beside him.

It’s not until winter is looming, threatening cold like Regulus hasn’t known in years, that he finds the graves.

*  *  *

Soon, it will be too cold for Regulus to stay in the barn. They haven’t talked about it, but there’s no wood-heated stove in the loft—and even the thick pile of quilts that he’s begun to sleep under won’t be enough to keep the chill out as winter tightens its grip.

Regulus is trying not to think about it. The dropping temperature feels like a deadline, a reminder that eventually—soon—he’ll have to leave. To keep running; to find somewhere new to hide.

Despite his best efforts, he finds himself thinking about it as he rides Minnie out to the edge of the property. On horseback, it’s easier to imagine it: kicking his heels in and spurring her on, galloping into the distance without a goodbye.

He doesn’t, of course. Not now. Right now, he has a fence to fix.

They’ve been working on it, slowly, over these past weeks. James’s property is bigger than Regulus initially thought, spanning upwards of twenty acres. He doesn’t use most of it, keeping fairly contained to the land immediately surrounding the house and the barn. But he lets the animals out to graze, and because of that, he’s been working on reinforcing the fence surrounding the property. It’s a simple construction, homemade and wooden, and parts of it have fallen into disrepair over the years. But with so much else to do, fixing it has always seemed to fall by the wayside.

Since Regulus began helping out, James has taken advantage of the extra pair of hands to get more work done on the fence. Sometimes, he’ll leave Regulus to tend to things on the farm, riding out to the edges of the property with Minnie. Other times, he’ll ask Regulus to go—of course, he first had to ride out with Regulus and spend an afternoon showing him exactly how one goes about repairing a fence. Regulus still flushes when he remembers that afternoon, thighs pressed together in the saddle, chest to back, the sweat that dripped from James’s forehead down his neck…

He tries not to remember it too often.

(That’s a lie.)

Today, James is hanging back at the barn, but he asked Regulus to ride out to the northeast section of the property to check on the fence there. In the saddlebags, Regulus has all the tools he’ll need—hammer, nails, twine. There’s the axe that James uses for chopping wood; since he’ll be out at the edge of the woods, they both figured it would make more sense to gather what he needs himself, rather than trying to haul out an armful of logs—though one of the saddlebags is loaded with a few smaller pieces of wood, just in case. James doesn’t think he’ll need to replace any of the fence, but if he’s wrong and it’s rotted through completely Regulus will just fix what he can and tell James upon his return that they need to spend time chopping fresh wood to bring out.

Regulus is nearly at the northeast corner of the fence when his eye snags on something in the grass. He tugs on Minnie’s reins, slowing her trot, turning her around. They walk back a few paces, and Regulus stares down at the thing that’s caught his eye.

It’s a grave. Two of them, by the looks of it. They’re old enough to be grown over with grass, but the stones marking them are unmistakably headstones—though homemade, from what Regulus can tell, flat rocks gathered from the surrounding land, words roughly carved by hand.

LILY EVANS POTTER

HARRY POTTER

That’s it. There are no dates, no epitaphs—nothing but the names. That name—Lily.

The baby blanket.

Beneath him, Minnie nickers softly. Regulus swallows, and nudges her with his heels, and goes to fix the fence.

That night, James builds a campfire. Regulus grumbles, and complains, and insists that it’s too cold outside for James’s nonsense—but the other man just laughs, tossing him a quilt and patting the grass beside him and insisting that Regulus keep him company.

“I want to show you something,” he says, and Regulus glares at him as he sits down.

“What?”

“Not yet,” James says, lightly, “It’s too early.”

“Too early?”

Regulus levels him with an incredulous gaze. It’s well into the night—the sun set hours ago, and Regulus was yawning his way up the ladder to his loft when James burst into the barn and pulled him back out. But his disbelief doesn’t seem to have any impact—James only smiles cryptically and settles back on his elbows, looking perfectly comfortable despite the chill in the air. Regulus sighs and wraps the quilt tighter around his shoulders, trying not to let his eyes get caught in the firelight dancing on James Potter’s face.

“How was the fence?” James asks, after a few minutes of nothing but crackling firewood to punctuate the silence between them. Regulus stirs.

“What?” he blinks, eyes getting stuck for a moment on the way the orange glow of the flames sinks into James’s skin, “Oh. Fine. No major damage. Just needed a little reinforcement.”

James hums, a rumbling sound deep in his chest, smiling that soft, sleepy smile that Regulus has come to associate with mornings—hair mussed up from sleep, yawning as he rubs at his eyes…

Regulus looks back at the fire, watching the flames eat through the logs.

“I saw the graves,” he says.

He doesn’t know why he says it.

“Oh,” James breathes, like he’s just been punched in the stomach.

Stop looking at me like that, Regulus thinks, wildly, You shouldn’t be looking at me like that.

“Right. Um…guess I should’ve warned you about that.”

James shifts in the grass beside him, but Regulus doesn’t look away from the fire. He breathes in, out.

“Sorry,” James says. Regulus hugs his knees a little tighter to his chest.

“No—it’s.” He swallows, not sure how to salvage this. He didn’t mean for James to…apologize. Fuck’s sake.

“It’s fine.”

They’re quiet again. One of the logs in the fire snaps, eaten through the middle by the flames, sending up a flurry of glowing orange sparks that dance in the air.

“You can ask about them, you know.”

When Regulus turns, James is watching him, eyes steady and flame-lit and dark. They’re sitting so close, only a hand’s width between them.

Why are they sitting so close?

“Who are they?” Regulus croaks, clearing his throat as he turns away. Again. James blows out a breath, leaning back.

“My wife,” he says, “And my son.”

Regulus knew that—he already knew that. Or figured it, at least. He doesn’t know why he asked. He doesn’t know why he needed to hear James say it.

“You don’t wear a ring.”

James hums, sounding more thoughtful than anything.

“No, well. I s’pose we were never really married, in the traditional sense. Hard to find a church that would take us, considering…who we were. Not that it mattered—not to us. Didn’t make it any less real.”

Considering. Regulus doesn’t think he needs to ask James what that means. He thought things were supposed to be better up north, for people who look like James, but…well. He supposes that was a naïve thing to think, in the first place. If there’s one thing Regulus learned growing up, it’s that things might look different in different places, but the ugliness under the surface is often just the same.

“Lily was a force of nature,” James continues, voice thick with love and pride, “Never met a woman so hard-headed in my life…think I just about fell for her the moment I laid eyes on her. Of course, she told me it’d never work between us, but…” he grins, smile stretching wide across his face, and casts a mischievous look at Regulus, “I can be stubborn, too.”

Regulus swallows, not sure why there’s a lump in his throat.

“And Harry?” he whispers.

The smile on James’s face fades, turning to something more bittersweet.

“Harry…” he murmurs, the single word cradled so carefully on his tongue that it’s all Regulus needs to know how much James loved his son.

“He was a miracle,” James sighs, tilting his head back to look at the stars. “Our miracle. Lily—she didn’t think she could get pregnant. Doctor told her a while back that it wasn’t possible. So when she did…” James shakes his head, blowing out a breath. “I was terrified. We both knew it wouldn’t be easy, but she was determined—told me she was having that baby, come hell or high water. And she did. She was so—strong.” His voice cracks, just the tiniest bit, and he falls silent for a moment. Regulus doesn’t push, giving James time to collect himself before he continues.

“Our son…he had her eyes. Green; so green you can hardly imagine it. Best-behaved baby I ever met; hardly ever cried, and he was always smiling…I remember his laugh. Like bottling sunshine. Lily used to sing to him at night, and he’d fall right asleep…”

James’s voice trails off, lost somewhere in the past. Regulus waits, but he doesn’t come back, eyes glassy and distant as he stares up at the stars. There’s a fist inside Regulus’s chest, squeezing tight around his heart. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen this much love in one person.

“What happened to them?” he asks.

James blinks, and comes back down to earth.

“Fever,” he says, “Got ‘em two years ago.”

Regulus feels sick.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, not trusting himself to say anything else. James turns to face him, and Regulus has to fight the urge to retreat—to turn away.

“I was angry,” James tells him, “For a long time. A long time. But I’m not so angry anymore.”

Regulus swallows.

“Why not?”

James shrugs, and smiles—a sad smile, but a smile, nonetheless.

“It’s the risk we take, isn’t it? With love. You love something that much, you have to be ready to lose it one day. Life’s not permanent—but love is. It’s all we get to keep, when the time comes.”

Regulus thinks about grey eyes, shaking hands cupping his face.

You run, Reggie.

You keep running.

“Oh!”

James sits up, suddenly, looking east. Regulus turns, following his gaze.

“There—do you see it?”

James leans closer, so close that Regulus can feel warm breath tickling his ear. Their shoulders touch as James lifts a hand, pointing towards the horizon.

“Right there…it’s rising now.”

“What is?” Regulus asks, breathless, far too aware of the heat emanating from the man pressed against him.

“Canis major,” James murmurs, voice low, still pointing towards the distance. “And….right there. D’you see it?”

Regulus sees it. A bright spot on the horizon; the brightest star in the sky.

Sirius.

He swallows, convulsively. He lifts a hand, rubbing at his eyes, trying to make his voice sound less choked as he asks,

“Why are you showing me this?”

When he opens his eyes, James is watching him, eyes as dark as the sky above them.

“Your gun,” he says, voice still pitched for the space between them, quiet and intimate, “I—I don’t know what it means to you, but I thought…”

Regulus shakes his head. He doesn’t know what to say—the words thank you get caught in his throat, stuck behind the lump he’s trying desperately to swallow. So instead, he reaches out—impulsively, maybe, and foolishly, definitely—but still. He reaches out, and James doesn’t move when Regulus takes his hand, callused palm warm where he wraps his fingers around it.

They sit together, and they watch Sirius rise in the sky.

Chapter Text

“S’pose you’ll probably need to move soon,” James says, and Regulus nearly drops the basket of eggs that he’s carrying.

“What?”

James wrinkles his nose, throwing another handful of feed onto the ground for the chickens before jerking his chin towards the loft.

“Be too cold in here, pretty soon. Won’t be much use to me if I wake up one morning and you’ve froze to death.”

Regulus tightens his hold on the basket, trying not to let the panic show on his face. Of course, he knew this was coming—it’s not like he was expecting James to let him hang around forever; eventually, they both understood that he’d need to move on. And of course, with winter sinking its teeth deeper into autumn’s neck every day, Regulus knew that the chill in the air meant a looming deadline. Obviously, he can’t just keep living in this barn for the rest of his life, and obviously he knew that, and obviously he knew that he’d need to find somewhere else to go for the winter—but he just. He thought. He’s not ready to—

“Oh, come on, don’t look like that!” James nudges his shoulder, grinning, and Regulus startles so hard he nearly drops the basket again. He stares determinedly at the smooth shells of the eggs, mortified, but James only laughs.

“Promise I’m a decent roommate. Better than old Crookshanks, at least…”

Regulus blinks, swallows, looks up.

“Sorry, what?”

“Well, I guess since you’ve got him under your spell he’s been decent enough, but I reckon I’m not much worse. Cabin can be a bit of a tight fit in the winter, makes me feel a little stir-crazy, but it’s sure as hell warmer than sleeping out here.”

“The….cabin?”

James gives him a funny look, raising his eyebrows.

“Did you hit your head coming down the ladder this morning?”

“Sorry, I just—you’re saying I should move into your house? With you?”

“And Padfoot,” James adds. The mutt is currently standing at the bottom of the ladder to the loft, barking at Crookshanks.

“You want me to move into your house,” Regulus repeats, just to make sure that he’s hearing correctly.

“Am I speaking another language?” James shoots him an exasperated look, “Where else would you move?”

As soon as he says it, realization breaks over his face, and he pauses, awkwardly, before saying,

“Er…unless you had somewhere else you were planning to go?”

You run, Reggie.

You run, and you

“No,” Regulus answers quickly, stumbling over his words, “Sorry, that’s—no, I was just…I don’t want to, um. Intrude.”

James just watches him for a moment, a bemused smile stretched across his face, before shaking his head.

“Come on, Reg—you really think I’m gonna just let you freeze out there in the barn? Plenty of room in the house for one more person; don’t be stupid.”

You don’t even know me, Regulus wants to say, You don’t know anything about me. You don’t even know my real name.

But he doesn’t. He rolls his eyes, and follows James out of the barn, and tries to ignore the aching twinge of his heart inside his chest. The matter is settled. They let it drop.

Except the sun sets early now, and the temperature drops quickly, and when Regulus stands from the table that night once they’re finished eating and moves to head back to the barn, James asks,

“Where are you going?”

“Um…”

Regulus hesitates next to the door, words suddenly stuck in his throat. James rolls his eyes and throws another log into the stove, saying,

“Come on, Reg, I thought we went over this? It’s too damn cold out there. Just stay inside.”

“Right,” Regulus swallows, still hovering near the door. “Should I just, um…d’you have a quilt I can use, or…”

James gives him an incredulous look. He turns, pointedly, to look at the bed, then turns back to Regulus without saying a word.

“You…want me…to sleep…in your bed?”

“Unless you’d rather sleep with Padfoot on the floor.”

Hearing his name, the dog lifts his head, tongue lolling. Regulus grimaces.

“Well, where are you going to sleep?”

“Do you need to borrow these?” James asks, tapping a finger against the wire frame of his spectacles, “That bed’s big enough for two.”

Regulus assures himself, firmly, that the heat on his face is just from the excess warmth emanating off the stove, and not because he’s so flushed that he probably looks as if he’s forgotten how to breathe. He opens his mouth, then closes it, trying to figure out what the hell he’s supposed to say in this situation. James is acting as if this is all normal—there’s no way this is normal, right?

Right?

“Christ, Reg, you’re gonna hurt my feelings,” James chuckles, shaking his head. He yawns as he begins to move over to the bed, stripping off outer layers without a single ounce of shame. “Come on—d’you want the side closest to the wall or further away?”

“I—I don’t care,” Regulus mutters, turning to look at Padfoot. The dog cocks its head, tongue still hanging half out of its mouth. It almost looks as if it’s grinning, as if to say I know what you’re thinking about. Regulus glares at it.

“Suit yourself,” James says, easily. He moves back into Regulus’s line of sight, blowing out the candles left burning on the table, and Regulus finds himself grateful for the shadows that swallow the flames. It’s not as if there’s a reason for him to be feeling this way; James is still fully dressed, clad in drawers and a long-sleeved undershirt, no more skin showing than usual. But it’s the knowledge of how little cloth lies between them—if Regulus were to reach out and touch, there would be nothing but one flimsy layer of woven thread, so easily peeled away...

Sinful! Depraved! Abomination!

He moves his eyes down to the floor, disgusted with himself. James is trying to do something nice for him, and Regulus is already ruining it just because he’s too weak to control his own mind.

“You can leave your things on the chest,” James tells him, dragging him back into the present. There’s a smile in his voice when he says, “Unless you were planning to sleep in your clothes.”

Regulus clears his throat.

“Right.”

The only light left in the room is a single oil lamp, burning on the small and slightly crooked table beside the bed. Regulus moves over to the chest, stepping as far into the shadows as he can get, and listens to the rustle and creak as James climbs into the bed. Outside the window, the stars are bright pinpricks of light. Sirius rises early now, and Regulus can see him out there, shining. He tries not to think about what the real Sirius would say—how stupid Regulus is being, how selfish. How he was supposed to keep running.

But look where that got you, Sirius, he thinks, and the sudden burst of vindictive resentment burns enough of the anxiety in his chest away that he manages to crawl halfway into bed before he freezes again.

James cracks an eye open. He left his spectacles folded on top of his clothes, and without that protective layer of glass his gaze feels heavier, sharper, as inescapable as quicksand or a whirlpool. The slope of his nose is uninterrupted. His mouth looks different in lamplight. Softer.

“Blow out the light, will you?”

Regulus blows out the light.

In the dark, he can hear James breathing. He can feel the subtle shifts of the blanket, the slow rise and fall of the other man’s chest. He can feel heat. Heat like a body, heat like a fire, heat like a burning log in the stove. Heat like a fever, crawling under his skin and into his throat, heat like his own blood is trying to kill him.

“You alright?” James asks.

He’s speaking softly, no more than a murmur, but this close the sound rings in Regulus’s ears, ricocheting down his spine.

“I...”

Regulus steels himself, trying to stop from grinding his teeth. He lies flat on his back, arms folded stiffly over his stomach, not looking at the man beside him as he says,

“I...have nightmares. Sometimes.”

“Think everybody has nightmares sometimes, Reg.”

Regulus grimaces. “Most times,” he adds, haltingly, voice clipped, “What I mean is...most nights. I have nightmares. So. I just thought you should...know that. In case I wake you.”

James is quiet for a few moments, and Regulus has to fight the urge to turn and face him—to search in the trembling moonlight for any indication of what he’s thinking on his face. But then, just when Regulus is certain he’s about to get kicked down to the floor with Padfoot (which really, all things considered, might be the safer arrangement anyway), James murmurs,

“Lily used to have nightmares. When we first got married.”

“…oh.”

Regulus stares up at the ceiling, unmoving. He doesn’t know what else to say.

“Yeah. So what I’m saying is—don't worry about it. Nothing I haven’t dealt with before.”

“Right.”

He can feel the movement as James shifts beside him, turning over, and in Regulus’s peripheral vision he can see the other man propping himself up on his elbow. Regulus stiffens, unintentionally holding his breath as James peers down at him with a sleepy smile.

“Besides,” he wiggles his eyebrows, “This quilt is actually magic. Cures bad dreams.”

Regulus snorts. “I don’t think it works that way.”

“Oh, it does. Trust me.”

Regulus doesn’t respond, so James sighs as he settles back down, folding his arms behinds his head.

“It worked for Lily,” he says, softly. And then,

“Worked for me, too.”

Regulus doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say to that. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do—what’s normal, what’s expected here. He didn’t want to start a conversation, but somehow letting those words hang between them in the air feels worse than the alternative. So he opens his mouth, and he grasps for the first words he can think of.

“Did you make it?”

James shifts a bit, glancing over at him.

“Hmm?”

“The quilt,” Regulus clarifies, keeping his eyes glued on the ceiling, “Did you make it?”

“Oh.” James chuckles, more a huff of air than anything, and shifts again, turning to face the ceiling as well. “No. My pa’s the one that made it.”

“Ah.”

Regulus doesn’t ask anything else, but apparently he doesn’t need to, because James keeps talking anyway.

“His mother—my grandmother—she was a seamstress. Told me he used to help her out a bit, growing up, least ‘til he got old enough to work. But then some recruiter came along, told him about a job in America that could make him rich. And he came here.”

There’s a sour note to James’s voice that Regulus has never heard before, a bitter twist to his words.

“Pa figured he’d save up money, send some back home or use it to bring his family over. But then he got here, and they had him living in a tent, working damn near fifteen hours a day on those railroad tracks, paying him half of what they paid the white folks. Charging him for food, water, the goddamn clothes on his back. When they tried to strike, the company cut off all food, all supplies, starved ‘em out.”

James sighs, rubs a hand over his face. Regulus watches the movement from the corner of his eye, hardly breathing as he listens to the other man speak.

“Never did see his mother again. By the time he had the money saved to bring her over, government had already banned Chinese immigrants. And then they extended it in ‘92, fuckin’ Geary Act…”

Regulus remembers hearing about the Geary Act, vaguely. Remembers seeing something or other in the papers. But that was years ago, back when the only thing he ever had on his mind was his studies. Back when he could stick his nose in a book and get lost in the siren song of undiscovered knowledge, keeping his head so far buried in the pages that he never thought about what that knowledge might be used for, once discovered.

“Anyway,” James continues, “He still remembered how to sew. After he met my ma—after they found a place where they could settle down, where folks would leave ‘em alone, where they could build a life for themselves…he started making quilts. Used to say he put love into every stitch, so nobody sleeping under something he made could ever dream a bad dream.”

Regulus succumbs to the urge to look, just once, turning his head ever-so-slightly on the pillow. Beside him, James has his eyes closed. There’s a small, soft smile on his face, like he’s hearing his father’s words in his head.

“So like I said—magic quilt. Just give it a few days and you’ll be cured, I guarantee.”

James cracks open an eye, and Regulus looks away quickly, heart pounding.

“Right,” he whispers, half-choking on his own voice, “Magic. Got it.”

James sighs again, which turns into a yawn.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, voice sleep-heavy and slow, “Didn’t mean to ramble on. Don’t get much of a chance to talk about my family these days.”

“It’s fine,” Regulus breathes, listening to the quiet rustling as James pulls the quilt up a bit higher. “Um. You said your father…worked for a railroad company?”

“Mmhm.”

James yawns again, and Regulus waits for him to finish before whispering,

“Do you…remember which one?”

“Hmm?” James already sounds half-asleep. He’s shifted to lie on his side, and he mumbles into his pillow, “Oh, yeah. Continental United.” He yawns again, drifting off, barely legible as he mutters,

“Fuckin’ bastard…Orion Black.”

*  *  *

The quilt does work, as it turns out. Not the first night, or the second—Regulus wakes up in a cold sweat, dragging his mind out of the swamp of half-formed images; the horse’s black eyes, the syringe’s black liquid, his brother’s black hair, falling down past his shoulders, tangled by the wind. He jerks awake, moving before he can think about it, pressing trembling fingers to his forearm.

But somehow, inexplicably, James’s promise proves to be true. There’s still work to be done on the farm, even as snow begins to blanket the hills, and Regulus spends his days chopping firewood and collecting eggs and learning how to mend clothes. He’s so exhausted by the time the sun sets that any lingering awkwardness begins to fade after the first few days, until Regulus is stripping down and crawling into bed each night with the same unselfconscious ease as James. Something about the ache of sore muscles makes it easier to quiet his mind, allowing the satisfying exhaustion of his body to drag him down into sleep each time he closes his eyes. As the days get shorter and the nights get colder, the dreams begin to fade into nothing more than a confused blur of color and sound—and then, eventually…nothing. Regulus sleeps deeply, dreamlessly, for the first time in his life that he can remember. In the mornings, James has to shake his shoulders to wake him.

It's understandable, then,  that Regulus begins to hate crawling out of the bed, abandoning the safety of that quilt. Montana winter is a hell the likes of which he’s never experienced, wind so cold it bites and snow that soaks into everything, freezing cold and damp. During the day, the sun reflects mercilessly off the carpets of white, blindingly bright. At night, darkness falls so completely that Regulus can hardly see his own hands in front of his face. Standing in the doorway of the cabin makes him feel like a man marooned on an island, hidden away in an oasis of light and heat that flickers, nothing more than a single candle’s flame in the vast ocean of the landscape.

He borrows every piece of clothing that he can from James, layering shirts and sweaters and extra pants and mittens and wool scarves that scratch at his neck. James makes fun of him, joking that he’ll have to make a trip into town just to buy more wool. But it’s not until they begin to run low on both oil and candles that James actually loads up Minnie’s saddlebags and prepares to make the ride over to Butte.

“I don’t like this,” Regulus says, for the hundredth time, as he watches James swing himself into the saddle. James rolls his eyes, leaning down to double check the straps on the saddlebags.

“I’ll be fine,” he insists (also for the hundredth time), “I’ve made this trip before.”

“In the middle of winter?”

“Yes, believe it or not.”

Regulus folds his arms, staring out at the unending blankets of snow. There isn’t even a visible road to follow; not this far out, at least. James promises that there is, in fact, a well-worn dirt path that he normally follows. But at this time of year, it’ll likely already be covered—and with the sun setting as early as it does, there’s no telling if he’ll even be able to make it to Butte before dark…

“Reg,” James says, and Regulus’s eyes snap back to the horse. James smiles from atop the saddle, reassuring and slightly bemused, as though he genuinely doesn’t understand why Regulus is making such a fuss.

“I’ve made this trip a million times. And so has Minnie. We can handle it, alright?”

Regulus huffs, looking back out at the snow.

“I’ll be back tomorrow night,” James says, reaching for Minnie’s reins, “I can trust you to take care of things around here while I’m gone, can’t I?”

For a moment, those words ring inside his head—can’t I?

I can trust you, can’t I, Reg?

And it’s James there, in the saddle, preparing to leave, but he’s someone else too—a boy with a sharp smile and dark hair, grey eyes like looking into a mirror, hands tight on Regulus’s shoulders as he says,

I can trust you, Reg. Can’t I?

Like a ghost, a mirage image, superimposed in the snow. Regulus can see him, can hear him, two voices, both leaving. For just a moment, he can’t breathe. For just a moment, he looks at James, and all he can see is the leaving—always leaving. Always Regulus, standing, alone in a doorway, watching someone else say goodbye.

“Reg?”

The mirage dissipates. The light shines on the snow, hurting his eyes.

“Yeah,” Regulus answers, quickly, aware that he’s gone quiet for too long. He blinks rapidly, searching for a place to put his eyes where it will hurt less. “Yeah, ‘course you can.”

James grins—white teeth, white snow, white hair of Minnie’s mane. He tugs the reins, and the horse begins to move, turning in the snow.

“Wait!”

James pauses, hesitating, body twisted in the saddle as he looks back. Regulus swallows.

“Promise you’ll come back?”

It’s a stupid, childish question. He knows that. And meaningless—he knows that, too. Knows that promises are so often meaningless, and it doesn’t matter how many you make. Sirius promised that he would come back. Regulus knows how that turned out.

He still asks it. He still needs to hear James say it, just once.

James smiles at him, that same helplessly charmed smile he’s been wearing since the day they met, as if Regulus isn’t being stupid, or silly, or childish at all.

“Promise,” he says, without hesitating. “I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

Regulus nods, and watches James disappear into the snow.

*  *  *

The quilt doesn’t work that night. Regulus sleeps fitfully, tossing and turning, the nightmares creeping back into his unconscious mind like a spreading smoke. He dreams a leather gag in his mouth, leather cuffs at his wrists. He dreams Sirius, smiling and then not, dreams a mark on his arm that keeps spreading, dreams his mother’s gentle hands and fervent voice. We’re God’s chosen, sweet boy. My sweet, sweet boy.

When he wakes, arms flailing, it’s the middle of the night. The moonlight is weak, barely a whisper on the windowsill, and it takes Regulus a moment to remember where he is. He brings his hand to his left forearm, pressing fingers into the skin. In the dark, it feels just the same as the skin on the opposite arm.

There’s a quiet scuffling from the ground, a gentle huff. When Regulus looks down, eyes adjusting to the shadows, he sees Padfoot sitting beside the bed.

“He’s coming back,” Regulus whispers. The dog huffs again, ears drooping, and rests its chin morosely on top of the quilt.

“Oh—all right. C’mere.” Regulus grunts, scooting over, and he can hear the swish of Padfoot’s wagging tail as the dog clambers on top of the bed, snuffling at the quilt.

“Lie down—Padfoot, no—lie—”

The dog barks, stepping on Regulus with one of its massive forepaws as it leans down to lick his face. He shoves it away with one arm, trying to shield his face with the other as he yelps,

“Stop—that’s disgusting! Padfoot—lie down!”

The dog finally settles, curling up on top of the quilt with an offended huff. Regulus sighs as he lays back down, finding himself shoved over to the side of the bed closer to the wall.

When he wakes again, it’s morning, weak sunshine filtering through the grey clouds overhead. Regulus drags himself out of bed, unused to the still quiet without James’s voice booming, Rise and shine! He goes through the motions of morning routine, trudging out to the barn to milk the cow, to feed the chickens. He tends the farm, as he promised he would, though by the time he finally sits down to eat lunch he’s bone-tired, exhausted from doing both his own chores and James’s. Regulus has no idea how the other man managed, living out here all on his own.

As the sun begins to set, inching its way gradually towards the horizon, Regulus finds himself turning, again and again, to scan for any signs of a rider. The sky purples like a bruise, mottled and ugly; still, there’s no sign of James. It’ll be dark, soon—too dark for Regulus to see anything at all in the fields of snow. Even so, he keeps looking, unable to stop himself from turning every few seconds to sweep the landscape with his gaze.

It's not until the sun has slipped down beneath the earth, with nothing but a tiny sliver of orange light left on the horizon, that Regulus finally sees something. He squints, staring hard, as the familiar form of a horse trots into view. Relief floods his chest, muscles relaxing as he heaves a sigh—and then his heart contracts, again, as Minnie moves closer, the vague outline solidifying into something clearer.

Because when Regulus looks, it’s just Minnie that he sees.

Just Minnie.

No James.

He’s running before he can think about it, Padfoot on his heels, snow crunching beneath their feet. Minnie nickers, softly, as they reach her. She’s breathing hard, walking with a bad limp—she can’t have come very far, not favoring her right foreleg like that. And yet when Regulus scans the snow behind her, there’s nothing but her own tracks left behind.

Her tracks.

The sun slips beneath the horizon.

Okay, Regulus thinks, okay.

He takes Minnie’s reins, guiding her back to the barn as quickly as he can. Padfoot follows him the whole while, whining softly, sniffing at the saddlebags. Once Regulus has got Minnie safely away, he rushes back to the cabin, grabbing the lantern James sometimes uses when he needs to check on the animals at night and pouring the last of their lamp oil into it. His fingers are shaking as he strikes the match.

Outside, the sky grows steadily darker.

Regulus drags the quilt off the bed, folding it up and tucking it under one arm. It’s awkward; bulky and difficult to carry, but James can’t be far. He can’t be. He has to be nearby.

Padfoot barks, hovering near the doorway, head cocked. Regulus raises the lantern grimly, bracing himself against the cold.

“Come on, boy. Let’s go find him.”

The tracks are clear enough in the snow, but it’s dark out now—nothing but the shallow starlight and a sliver of moon to see by. Regulus’s arm begins to ache from lifting the lantern, holding it straight out in front of him as he follows the tracks. He squints down, stepping carefully, moving as fast as the snow will allow. Padfoot moves beside him, sometimes running ahead and then darting back, barking as if in encouragement. Regulus is glad for the company, if only because it means he doesn’t have to weather the cold alone.

It’s not until they’re in the woods that they find him, following the tracks to where they tangle near the edge of a slope, a mess of movement. Regulus nearly slips in his hurry; there’s a slick patch of ice, just beneath the snow, impossible to see. Minnie must have stepped wrong too close to the incline, gone down hard…

“James?” Regulus calls, voice cracking through the silence of the night. “James?!”

From down the slope, outside the range of his lantern, there’s a groan—faint, and weak, but definitely there. Padfoot goes careening down immediately, scrambling through the snow, and Regulus curses as he follows him.

“James? James?”

He lifts the lantern, and Padfoot barks, and—there. He’s propped himself up against a tree, but his eyes are closed, and his legs are splayed in front of him, and—oh.

“Shit,” Regulus hisses, snow crunching as he falls to his knees. Padfoot sniffs at James’s face, nudging at him with his nose. James peels one eye open, squinting in the lantern light.

“Reg?”

The break is bad. Regulus can see that right away—right tibia, pants torn and skin bloody where bone pokes through like a bleached knife’s edge.

“Fuck,” Regulus whispers, “Fuck, fuck, fuck…”

“Missed you too,” James mumbles, but the smile he tries to crack turns into a pained grimace as Regulus begins to feel carefully around the site of the break. After a moment, he stands, grabbing the lantern.

“I’ve got to splint this,” Regulus says, words rushed, “I’ve got to set the bone and splint your leg before we move you, otherwise it could just make things worse…”

“What?”

“Padfoot—stay.”

The dog is already curling up beside James, looking as though it didn’t have any other plans.

“Reg, wait—”

He’s off, moving deeper into the woods, scanning desperately for something he can use. He’s not sure how far he goes before he finds it—a branch thin enough to snap, but sturdy enough to stabilize. Regulus sets the lantern back in the snow, using all the force he can muster to break the branch and stripping away the small twigs attached. He follows his own footprints back to James, who looks more awake the second time Regulus kneels beside him in the snow. That’s a good sign—if he were already hypothermic, he’d be falling asleep.

“Here,” Regulus strips off his mittens, passing them to James, “Bite down on these.”

“What are you—”

“This is going to hurt.”

“Reg, wait—what are you doing?”

Regulus tears his eyes away from the break, dragging them up to James’s face. He’s still in pain, obviously, brow furrowed and mouth twisted out of shape. His eyes are wide, dark, all pupil.

He’s afraid.

Regulus forces himself to take a deep breath. He can’t allow his own panic to make him turn frantic—what James needs right now is a steady hand, someone calm and comforting and solid. Doctors are supposed to reassure their patients, to make people feel safe.

“Don’t be scared,” Regulus says, gently. “It’s going to hurt, but I know what I’m doing. I’m going to get you home. Okay?”

James stares at him, for a moment, searching his face. But then he nods, and leans back, and sticks the wool mittens in his mouth, fisting one hand in Padfoot’s fur. His breaths grow quicker, shallower, as Regulus positions his hands over the break.

“Ready?” Regulus asks, trying to steady his own breathing, “On the count of three. One…two…”

James screams as he pushes the bone back into position, fresh blood running rivers down his shin as the tibia disappears back beneath the skin. His leg is no longer bent, but it’s still bruised, still swollen, still broken. Regulus needs to clean the wound, to wrap it properly, to stitch the skin—but he can’t do any of that here, with his fingers already growing numb from cold.

“Okay,” he whispers, “Okay, it’s alright, it’s okay,”

He positions the branch alongside James’s leg, unwrapping the scarf from his neck and using it to create a makeshift splint. He unwraps James’s scarf, too, for extra security. James lets him, leaning heavily against the tree, face shining with sweat and tears that catch the light of the lantern.

“Almost done,” Regulus murmurs, moving one thumb without thinking to swipe the tears away. “I promise.”

Once he finishes wrapping the broken leg, he sits back on his heels, pulling the mittens gently out of James’s mouth. They’re spit-soaked on the outside, but still warm enough on the inside, and better than nothing against this cold.

“You’re too heavy for me to get you up the slope on my own,” Regulus says, with only the slightest tremor in his voice. “I need you to walk. Do you think you can do that?”

James glances down at his leg, once, then back up at Regulus.

“Yeah,” he chokes out, “Yeah, I think I can do that.”

He screams when Regulus helps pull him to his feet, screams again when they take their first step away from the support of the tree. Regulus has James’s arm around his shoulder, supporting at least half of his weight—still, the struggle up the slope is brutal, snow soaking through their mittens and slipping beneath their feet. By the time they reach the top, James is crying, face twisted in pain. Regulus lowers him down, and he collapses, panting as Padfoot whines and sniffs at his face.

“Okay,” Regulus says, breathing hard, “Okay, hang on…”

He has to go back down the slope to grab the quilt where he’s left it, then crawl back up. By the time he gets back to James, he’s already exhausted, every muscle in his body aching—back, arms, legs. Still, he spreads out the quilt in the snow, panting,

“Get on.”

“Reg,” James groans, weakly, “What are you…?”

“I’m taking you home,” Regulus insists, through gritted teeth, “Get on the fucking quilt, James.”

James doesn’t say anything else, wincing in pain as he drags his body on top of the quilt. His splinted leg sticks straight out, ankle hanging off the edge, while the unbroken one lies bent beside it. Regulus lifts the edge of the quilt, and begins to drag.

It’s slow. Excruciatingly slow. The snow is slippery, but it’s still uneven, creating friction that Regulus has to fight against. And it’s an awkward arrangement, trying to make sure James doesn’t slip off; it’s impossible to keep from jostling him, and Regulus feels a pang of guilt every time James hisses or groans in pain. He can’t lift the lantern and drag the quilt at the same time, so he has to keep pausing to raise it and check that he’s still following the tracks. His arms are screaming, muscles overworked and burning, protesting every step of the way.

But he keeps going.

Step by step, he keeps going.

Regulus has no idea how much time has passed when they finally, finally make it back to the cabin. Inside, it’s cold; in his rush, Regulus didn’t think to add more logs to the stove, and the fire’s burned out. He curses, leaving the lantern on the table—the flame is flickering low; it’s a miracle that it’s even still burning. He’ll have to check Minnie’s saddlebags to see if James managed to buy more oil.

First, though, he has to get James inside. It’s been a long time since he’s made any noise, even a noise of pain, and Regulus’s heart seizes inside his chest as he crouches down beside him.

“James?”

He doesn’t move. He’s still breathing, chest rising and falling shallowly, and Regulus tries to focus on that as he reaches out to put a hand on the other man’s shoulder.

“James?”

This time he stirs, eyes fluttering open, scanning the star-freckled sky before landing on Regulus.

“Mm?”

“We need to get you into bed. Can you stand? One more time? We’re almost there, I promise.”

James nods, slowly, and Regulus bends down to get an arm over his shoulders. James releases a punched-out breath as they stand together, leaning so heavily on Regulus that he nearly stumbles—but he grits his teeth, forcing his exhausted muscles to bear the weight.

Just a little further.

Just a few more steps.

James groans as he collapses on top of the mattress, and Regulus hurries over to the stove. First thing’s first; he’ll need light, and heat, if he’s going to treat James’s leg. He stokes the fire to life, then moves to dig through the chest at the end of the bed, pulling out a clean linen shirt and searching until he finds the small pouch where James keeps the extra needles and thread that he normally uses for mending.

By the time he moves back over to the bed, James appears to have fallen into a fitful sleep. Regulus considers leaving him that way, wondering if it’s possible that he’d just sleep through what comes next—but it turns out that he doesn’t have to decide, because James stirs at the sound of the chair scraping across the floor when Regulus drags it over, rolling his head to watch as Regulus arranges the supplies he’s gathered on the bedside table.

“What’re you doing?”

“I need to sew up your leg.”

Regulus shoves a bottle of whiskey into James’s hands, who nearly drops it in surprise. He looks down, then back up, bleary-eyed and blinking.

“For the pain,” Regulus tells him. James hesitates for only a moment before he unscrews the bottle and begins to drink.

He does surprisingly well as Regulus unwraps the makeshift splint, discarding the scarves and the broken branch on the floor. But once Regulus begins to cut away the cloth surrounding the injury, James can’t help flinching—it’s impossible to extricate the leg without jostling it. By the time Regulus has finally managed to free the injury from the obstructing cloth, leaving James’s leg bare from the knee down, James is sweating again, hands shaking as he lifts the bottle to take another swig.

Regulus begins to cut the linen shirt into strips, giving James a break and taking a moment to study the wound. It was a clean break—that much they can be grateful for. But the skin where the bone broke through is already red and inflamed. If it gets infected…

“What are you doing?”

“Washing my hands.”

“Why?”

“So I can clean the wound.”

“Won’t they just get dirty again?”

Regulus grits his teeth, sitting back down in his chair and beginning to gently wipe away the blood and dirt surrounding the gash.

“If they’re not clean when I touch the wound, it could get infected. Haven’t you heard of germ theory? Louis Pasteur? Joseph Lister?”

“No,” James winces, one hand white-knuckled in the sheets, the other clutching the neck of the whiskey bottle. “Should I have?”

Regulus huffs, keeping his attention on the injury. “It’s only modern science,” he mumbles, “The reason behind disease. Microscopic organisms, pathogens called germs, they infect us and make us sick. You have to kill them to prevent disease.”

“By washing your hands?”

“Yes.”

“So…you’re telling me there’s—ah—” James flinches, and Regulus presses one hand to his knee to steady his leg.

“Hold still.”

“You’re telling me there’s…tiny bugs—”

“Germs—”

“Living on your hands—”

“They live on everyone’s hands, not just mine—”

“And you have to kill ‘em so they don’t get into my leg and make me sick?”

“Sure, James.”

“Is that to kill the germs, too?” James nods at the needle that Regulus is holding carefully over a candle-flame.

“Yes. Now shut up and drink your whiskey.”

James does, mercifully, fall silent, save for pained hisses and wounded noises that slip through his gritted teeth as Regulus sews up the cut on his leg. As he snips the thread, James collapses back onto the pillows, releasing a deep, shuddering breath.

“It’s not over yet,” Regulus tells him, grimly, “I still need to wrap and set the leg.”

James groans, weakly. His shirt is soaked through with sweat, hair damp and plastered to his forehead. Regulus feels a pang of empathy, and reaches up without thinking for the hand that’s gone limp on the bed. He covers James’s fingers with his own, squeezing lightly.

“Almost done,” he promises, “Just hold out a little longer.”

James nods, eyes moving down to their intertwined fingers. Regulus withdraws his hand.

He wraps the wound tight with his makeshift bandages, then forces himself back outside to the barn, where they’ve left a few extra pieces of wood intended for fence repairs. Regulus picks two that look to be about the right size, hauling them back in and collapsing into his chair to start whittling them down to size. James turns his head to watch, careful not to move his leg.

“Where’d you learn this?” he asks, words bleeding together slightly thanks to some combination of the pain and the exhaustion and the alcohol in his system.

“You taught me,” Regulus answers, without looking up, “Remember?”

“Not whittling,” James insists, lifting one hand and waving it lazily through the air. “I mean…this. How to sew someone up and…germ theory.”

Regulus hesitates, knife hovering in the palm of his hand. Then, without looking up, he returns to his whittling, keeping his voice nonchalant as he says,

“I used to study medicine.”

He can practically feel James’s interest pique. It’s the first time, in all the months they’ve been living together, that Regulus has ever spoken about his past.

“Studied…at, like, a university?”

Regulus tightens his grip on the knife.

“Yeah.”

James is staring at him. He can feel the weight of those eyes, heavy and warm as embers.

“You’re a doctor, then?”

The knife falters, for a moment, and Regulus curses under his breath as he nicks his thumb.

“No.”

“But you—”

“I wasn’t able to finish my studies. Now hold still—I need to splint your leg.”

James doesn’t ask any more questions as Regulus secures the wooden splints on either side of his shin, using the homemade bandages to wrap the leg a second time. But Regulus can feel eyes on him the entire time, burning, liquor-glazed and somehow all the more dangerous for it.

“There.”

He leans back, surveying his handiwork. All wrapped-up and properly splinted, the leg doesn’t look nearly as bad as it did when they first arrived. Still, Regulus is going to need to check the wound in the morning, to look for signs of infection. James has a small collection of herbs dried out on a shelf in the cabin,  and there are more in the barn—ones that Regulus foraged, on autumn afternoons when he wanted to be alone, spent picking through the outskirts of the woods and collecting anything he recognized from the pictures he used to study in his books. He knows for certain there’s some mint, some coneflower stems, some comfrey…

“Hey.”

Regulus looks up, and that’s a mistake. It’s a mistake because James Potter is still looking at him, in the dancing firelight, with those woodsmoke pupils, with those earth-turned eyes. And it’s late, and they’re exhausted, and it must be a trick of the light—but Regulus could almost swear that the way James is looking at him is something sacred. Like a man who’s just discovered god, walking into a church and kneeling down at the altar to pray.

“Thank you,” James says, earnest, amen, “You saved my life.”

Regulus doesn’t think that he has ever wanted to touch somebody so badly in his life. Which is ridiculous, because for the past few hours he’s done nothing but touch James—he’s dragged the weight of him like a stone up a mountain, he’s found the open edges of his body and stitched them back together, he’s pushed his very bones back into place. He has already known this man, inside and out, knows the way that he looks when he sleeps and when he laughs and when his features twist in pain. Regulus knows the song James whistles when he chops wood and the voice he uses when he speaks to his dog and the way dirt catches in the creases of his hands. Regulus knows everything there is to know about James, and it’s not enough, and it doesn’t matter, because he’d need only to ask for James to tell him anything else that his heart desires. His favorite color in the Montana sky—where he was born, how he ended up here—what it was that made him fall in love with his wife, and what he did with that love once he lost her. How he can keep living, and breathing, and smiling, knowing there’s a stone in a field and a baby blanket folded in the loft of his barn. Whether he knows what he’s doing when he looks at Regulus that way—whether he knows that his eyes are hellfire, and embers, and the loveliest, most terrifying heat in this unending January cold. How when he looks at Regulus like that, it turns him into a stained-glass window of a man.

You run, Reggie.

You run, and you keep on running.

Regulus clears his throat.

Regulus looks away.

Regulus opens his mouth, and says,

“I guess that makes us even, then.”           

Chapter Text

The snow has already melted by the time she shows up. The sun’s doing its job, shining bright in that big blue sky, and the ground has been muddy and damp for weeks. It makes Regulus nervous; James’s leg has healed slowly, much to his chagrin, and he still moves around with a limp. Mud’s better than ice, but both give Regulus visions of James stepping wrong on the wet ground, slipping and breaking his neck. James says Regulus worries too much, but that only means James isn’t worrying enough.

They’re in the barn when she arrives, which is the only reason that she’s able to take them by surprise. Padfoot’s distracted with Crookshanks, and James is distracted with the chickens, and Regulus is distracted with the cow. He doesn’t even hear the familiar creek of the door hinges—not until Padfoot’s playful barking changes to a growl.

Regulus turns so fast that he nearly kicks over the bucket of milk. There’s a woman at the door, pushing it open, stumbling inside. Her skirts are torn, stained. Her hair, once piled and pinned on top of her head, lies in disarray, long, tangled strands tugged free and hanging like unspooled thread. Crookshanks hisses and disappears up the ladder to the loft. Padfoot bares his teeth, voice one long, continuous growl rumbling from the back of his throat.

“Emmeline?” James asks.

Regulus is going to throw up.

“James, stay back.”

“No, I know her—”

“James—”

The blood vessels in her eyes have already burst, staining them red, and she staggers forward with that slack-jawed, hungry gaze that sends Regulus careening back in time. The grasping hands, the lurching gait—it’s all so familiar. So familiar. He was a fool to think he’d ever escape this. A fool to think there was any place in the world he could run where he wouldn’t have to see this again.

“Emmeline?”

She moves forward, unsteady, stretching hands out towards James, and he’s not moving away. He’s not moving away.

“Emmeline, can you hear me?”

“James, she’s Fevered! Get back!”

“I know that!” James snaps, “You think I don’t know what Fever looks like?”

Emmeline moans, a choked gurgle. A chorus of matching groans echoes from Regulus’s memory.

“Get away from her!”

“Maybe we can help her! You’re a doctor, Reg—”

“There’s no helping her!”

He’s across the barn, and he’s moving, but James is moving, too—he’s taking Emmeline’s arms in his hands, holding her wrists as she struggles and snaps her jaw, trying to free herself.

“Emmeline? Can you hear me?”

He’s going to get himself killed, Regulus thinks, Oh god, he’s going to kill himself.

“You can’t save her, James! Stop it!”

“We have to try, we can’t just—”

“Move!”

“Reg, wait—”

Regulus doesn’t wait. He shoves James as hard as he can, shouldering him aside, and stabs forward with the pitchfork in his hands. It catches the woman through the neck, center prong piercing clean through. Blood runs rivers down to her shirt, the world’s brightest ruby necklace. From somewhere behind Regulus, James makes a choked noise, like it’s his throat that’s been torn open.

“Reg—” he gasps.

“Grab my gun.”

The woman is still moving, stretching hands forward as she grasps for Regulus like a hungry child. But he braces his arms, using the pitchfork to keep her at bay. The struggling only tears at the wound through her neck, widening it. Her mouth opens and closes, soundless save for the clicking of her teeth.

“You didn’t even try to help her,” James whispers.

“She was already dead.”

“You don’t know—”

“I do know, James. It’s what the Fever does. She was dead when she walked through that door.”

James doesn’t respond to that. Padfoot is still growling, and the woman is still struggling, and Regulus’s arms are beginning to ache.

“My gun, James,” he repeats, through gritted teeth. It’s right there, holstered on his hip—but he can’t risk letting go of the pitchfork to grab it. “James.”

Finally, James moves. But he doesn’t reach for the gun; instead, he wraps his own hands around the handle of the pitchfork, steadying it.

“I’ll hold her.” His voice is gruff.

Regulus releases his hold only when he’s certain that James has a good grip. He steps back, and watches the other man’s knuckles go white. James is staring straight into the woman’s blank eyes, mouth pressed into one thin line. He looks like he might be sick.

Regulus unholsters his gun. He raises it, cocks it, aims. The only thing he’s ever asked James to bring him from town was more bullets.

BLAM!

Her head bursts like a summer cherry, overripe and rotten. James drops the pitchfork, and the woman’s body crumples. Padfoot stops growling.

It’s quiet.

“Fuck,” James gasps.

Regulus counts backwards from twenty in his head, still aiming his gun. He keeps it pointed, ready, finger on the trigger. You can never be too careful—not when it comes to the Fevered.

“Reg, put the gun down.”

Ten…nine…eight…

“Reg!”

Seven…six…five…

“She’s dead, alright?! Just—put down the goddamn gun!”

In all the months they’ve lived together, James has never raised his voice. Never—not once. But right now it’s loud enough to fill the barn, a harsh edge to it that Regulus doesn’t recognize, a stone thrown with intent to bruise. When Regulus turns, there’s something flinty in his eyes, a heated anger that sparks like tinder set aflame. James looks like he wants to hit someone.

Like he wants to hit Regulus.

Three…two…one…

The woman doesn’t get back up. Her blood puddles on the floor, dark and thick.

“Did she bite you?” Regulus asks.

“No.”

“Let me check—”

“She didn’t fucking bite me, Reg, okay?!”

Regulus swallows, staring down at the blood. The door to the barn hangs open, and the spreading puddle catches at the sunlight like something hungry, far too pretty of a red to let itself go to waste.

“I’m sorry,” Regulus says, even though he’s not. He doesn’t know why there’s a horrible, twisted knot in his stomach, cinching tighter with every clipped word that falls from James’s lips.

“It’s not—” James deflates, abruptly, shoulders sagging as the anger leaves his body like so much dissipating smoke. “No, I’m sorry. You just…did what you had to.”

That doesn’t make it any easier to look at, Regulus thinks. When he turns to James again, he sees that baby blanket tucked at the bottom of a chest, two headstones sitting side by side at the very edge of a field.

“You knew her?” he asks, trying to soften his voice into something gentle. James nods.

“She used to work with Lily,” he murmurs, eyes glassy as he watches the blood sink into the dirt. Then something changes, resolve flaring to life like a struck match as his jaw hardens, as his gaze returns to earth. James turns and moves over to the ladder, climbing up to the loft like a man on a mission.

“James?” Regulus asks, drifting behind him. Padfoot is still standing next to the ladder, though he’s whimpering instead of growling now. Regulus pats his head distractedly, craning his neck to peer up into the loft.

“James?”

He comes back down with a blanket in his arms, marching over to the body.

“What are you doing?”

“Help me with this.”

“What are you doing?”

“We need to take her body back.”

Regulus stares, watching as James crouches down and begins to wrap the bloodied mess of a woman in his blanket.

“What?”

“So they can bury her.”

“I—what?!”

James grunts, trying to heft the body himself. “Grab the cart, we’ll hook it up to Minnie.”

“James—wait, just—hang on.” Regulus pulls him back, wrapping both hands around his bicep to tug him away from the corpse. James is breathing hard, eyes beginning to take on that flinty look again.

“If she’s Fevered, what d’you think it’s like where she came from?” Regulus asks, trying to keep his voice steady, “There could be an outbreak.”

“All the more reason to go, if there’s folks that need help.”

“That’s not—you could get hurt, James. You could get sick.”

“She’s a human being, Reg!” James snaps, tearing his arm out of Regulus’s grasp. He glares as he moves back to the body, where the blood’s already soaking through the blanket. “She deserves to be buried. The people who knew her, who cared about her—they deserve to know what happened to her.”

“You can’t just leave me here again!” Regulus insists, words bursting out before he can stop them—a tinge too desperate, the memory of James in the snow with his own bone piercing through his skin far too vivid.

But James doesn’t budge, only brushes past Regulus to grab Minnie’s saddle.

“Then you can come with,” he says.

*  *  *

Stay away from the cities. That’s what Sirius said—one of the last things he ever said to Regulus, before ducking out the door with the familiar scratched-up Colt at his hip. Stay away from the cities.

It’s too risky, the cities. Too many eyes and ears, no telling which ones lead back to the Black family networks of information that span across half the country—along with their goddamn railroad tracks. Regulus Black is a fly in the web of a spider, all too aware that any sign of struggle could trigger the thread that will lead to his doom.

But he couldn’t let James go alone. Not after what happened last time. Not without knowing what they might be riding into, what kind of outbreak may have made its way across the city. After all, everybody knows that where there’s one Fevered, there’s always more.

It’s a sick kind of relief when Regulus sees the smoke. They catch sight of it while they’re still a few miles out, the thick black haze of a bonfire rising like a temple pillar into the air. As they get closer, they can smell it; the stench of burning flesh. Regulus would think that it would be familiar to him by now, but it still makes his stomach turn, every time. He can’t help the breath of relief that escapes him when James nudges Minnie off the main road, deliberately giving the smoke a wide berth, avoiding any path that will lead them past the fire.

All things considered, the city’s in pretty good shape. Whatever outbreak swept through looks to be pretty much handled by now; there’s the usual wear and tear, broken windows and doors half-shattered, bloodstains smeared in dirt and over walls, the odd body or two with flies buzzing around slack mouths. But on the whole, Butte seems to have handled the outbreak downright efficiently. The streets are still mostly empty—typical, after the Fever sweeps through a town—but the people they do pass are cleaning up with the weary, dead-eyed resignment of those who have done this before, and know that they’ll do it again.

Regulus doesn’t pay much thought to where they’re going until James takes them past the main strip of the town, avoiding the road with the churches and houses and sheriff’s office. He guides Minnie to the opposite side of the city, where the windows are shuttered and the dust feels somehow grittier, and realization dawns slowly on Regulus as Minnie trots past saloons and gambling dens.

They stop in front of a two-story house with a sign over the door that reads PANDORA’S BOX. James slides from the saddle, stumbling only slightly when he lands with too much weight on his bad leg. He straightens up, looping Minnie’s reigns around one of the posts on the porch to secure her. After a moment, Regulus slides down, too. He glances back at the cart hitched to Minnie, the body wrapped in a stained blanket.

James stomps up the front steps, knocks on the door.

Silence.

He knocks again, closed fist, rattling wood. There’s the faint sound of quick footsteps, then a high, irritated voice.

“We’re closed, you idiot! Come back later!”

“I need to speak with Pandora,” James calls back, fist still pressed against the door, “Tell her I’ve got one of her girls!”

There’s another series of footsteps, a bit of muffled shouting. James waits, hands loose at his sides. Regulus keeps his own hand hovering at the holster on his hip, lingering next to Minnie as he watches James up on the porch. After a few minutes of waiting, the door swings open.

The woman standing in front of James looks like she could be on her way to the opera, or a dinner party. She’s dressed fashionably in a gown with wide shoulders and a tightly cinched waist, wine-stain red. A tangle of glittering jewelry hangs heavy around her neck, and the rouge on her cheeks and lips contrasts starkly with the white-blonde of her hair and brows. She eyes James up and down, plucking a lit cigar from her lips to blow smoke into his face.

“Potter.”

“Pandora. Always a pleasure.”

“Hm.” She takes another drag on the cigar, raising a single brow. “Whisked away another one of my girls, have you?”

Something flickers over James’s face—a slight tightening of the jaw, a minute hardening in the eyes. But it’s gone as quick as it came, and his voice is soft as he says,

“Emmeline wandered onto the farm. Figured you were probably missing her, that you’d want to know what’d happened.”

Pandora glances over his shoulder, expressionless as her eyes fall on the body in the cart.

“You killed her,” she says, flatly, gaze returning to James, “That’ll cost you, Potter. You know what kind of an investment I make in my girls.”

James sighs, weary, rubbing a hand over the stubble on his jaw.

“Come on, Dora,” his voice is soft, reasoning, “I doubt she would’ve been making you any more money, state that she was in.”

Pandora stares at James for a long time, lifting the cigar again and taking her time as she inhales. Regulus can feel himself growing anxious, twitchy—he shouldn’t be here, in the city. He’s ready to dump Emmeline’s body on the doorstep and drag James onto Minnie so that they can both just leave.

But James weathers Pandora’s stare without batting an eye, features neutral as he waits for her to exhale her lungful of tobacco. Regulus gets the feeling that there’s something else lying under their words, a conversation they’ve already had many times before.

“You’re a good man, Potter,” Pandora tells him, finally, “But that just means you don’t know the things that a bad man will pay for.”

Enough. Regulus is sick of this conversation, sick of the way it turns his stomach. He steps forward.

“I killed her,” Regulus says, hand resting on his gun, “So if you’ve got a problem with that, you can take it up with me.”

Pandora’s eyes fall on him, glittering, cold and sharp as ice. A small smile curls at the corner of her lips, though there’s no kindness or warmth to it.

“What’s this?” she muses, tapping ash from the end of her cigar, “Another little lost lamb?” her eyes jump back to James, smile twisting into something sharper, more private. “You certainly do have your habits, don’t you, James? This one isn’t nearly as pretty as Lily, though…”

Regulus has heard enough. He grits his teeth, voice grinding out from the back of his throat as he calls out,

“Come on, James. We’re going.”

“Just—hang on a second, Reg,” James lifts a hand, turning back to Pandora, “I brought her back because I thought you’d want to bury her.”

Pandora laughs, sharp and quick, a dart thrown at a board.

“Bury her?” she tuts, giving James a patronizing look. “Come now, Potter, you know as well as I do that there’s only one church that would take her. And they’re certainly not going to give her a grave.”

From the town center, smoke rises, thick and dark. Only one church that would take her…

Regulus needs to leave. He needs to get out of here, now.

James isn’t able to stifle the anger completely, this time. There’s a spark of it in his voice, in the hands that curl into fists as he grits out,

“I didn’t bring her back here just to give her to the damn death eaters.”

No no no no no

“Really?” Pandora lifts a brow, “Because they’re the ones who’ve been collecting the bodies. Look—you’re just in time.”

No.

Regulus whirls around, and sure enough—there are two of them, moving quickly down the street, silent as a tomb in their starched black robes. Cold sweat beads along Regulus’s forehead, crawls like ants down his spine. Sirius was right. Stay out of the cities.

“Peace be with you, brothers!” One of them calls out, lifting his hands in greeting. He nods to Pandora, “Sister.” She exhales a stream of smoke in his direction.

James moves down the porch steps to stand beside his cart, hovering protectively over Emmeline’s body.

“Evening,” he says, warily, arms folded over his chest. Pandora leans against the doorway, wearing an amused smile that does nothing to touch the hollow tomb of her eyes.

“We see you’ve brought the remains of one of the Lost,” says the second death eater—he’s a bit shorter than his companion, with darker hair. “Please, allow us to take it off your hands.”

“No need for that,” James says, gruffly, “We’ll bury her ourselves.”

The death eaters exchange a glance. They continue to smile, placidly, but there’s a sharpness to their gazes as they eye the body in the cart.

“It is an affront to God’s chosen to bury those who have strayed from His light alongside them,” says the shorter one, voice slightly strained. “Please, allow us to dispose of the body as He commands.”

“And how exactly does He command?” James asks, eyes blazing, “You think God wants you to throw away the bodies of anybody who ever got sick like they’re some sort of garbage?”

“We burn the Lost as He wills it, as they will burn in the fires of hell—”

“Oh, please! They’re human beings. They deserve a little respect, no matter how they died!”

“James,” Regulus murmurs, quietly, “Just give them the body.”

“No!” James insists, still glaring at the death eaters, “I’m not going to let them—dispose of her, like she never even mattered, just because they think some disease is God playing favorites—”

“James—”

“The Fever is God’s will,” hisses the taller death eater, smile replaced with a pinched scowl, “His sign to us that those who are Lost will never find peace in death; that only God’s chosen can consume the holy communion of His body and receive everlasting life—”

“That is such bullshit—”

“James!” Regulus grabs his arm, forcing James to look at him. Fear is a sludge in his veins, a needle in his arm, a leather gag pressed into his mouth. He swallows around it, unable to hide his desperation as he stares into James’ eyes, pleading in a low voice pitched for the space between them.

“James, please. I need to get out of here, right now.”

Something fractures in James’ face, an internal struggle that flashes in his eyes, in the jumping muscle behind his jaw, in the twist of his lips. Regulus watches him sway, torn between the body in the cart and the body with a hand on his arm.

“Please,” Regulus whispers, voice cracking under the pressure of naked fear. A curtain falls behind James’ eyes.

“Fine,” he mutters, turning away, “Take her.”

The death eaters blink, clearly taken aback by the sudden acquiescence. Still, they waste no time in surging forward, hauling the shrouded body out of the cart. There’s no reverence to it; the heft Emmeline’s corpse like a sack of potatoes, setting off back down the street in the direction of the smoke. James doesn’t look at Regulus as he moves to untie Minnie’s reigns, shoulders one tense line. Regulus tries to ignore the guilt gnawing away at the lining of his stomach. It’s unbearably awkward, climbing back into the saddle, waiting for James to climb up behind him.

They’re just beginning to move when Pandora, still standing in the doorway, calls out,

“Potter!”

Regulus can feel James shift behind him, looking back at the porch; he turns, too, watching the ash crumble from Pandora’s cigar.

“Thank you,” she says, quietly, “For bringing her back.”

James doesn’t say anything in response; just swallows, hard, and nods once before kicking his heels into Minnie’s sides and setting off back out of Butte.

They don’t make it very far before the sun sets, only putting a few miles of distance between themselves and the city. It’s too close for comfort, but Regulus can’t insist that they ride on in the dark; it’s far too risky. So he unpacks the bedrolls from Minnie’s saddlebags, laying them down in the grass as James starts a fire. They’ll camp for the night, then ride the rest of the way back to the farm in the morning.

James hasn’t said a word since they left the city. Regulus can feel his anger, palpable, like lightning stinging in the air before a thunderstorm. He keeps bracing himself for the strike.

It comes when they’re both lying down, when they’ve already eaten and the fire is banked and Regulus is searching the sky for Sirius. There’s a full moon tonight, no clouds to cover it, and the soft glow gives just enough light to make out vague shapes in the darkness. James is nothing more than a lump three feet away, but his voice feels loud, rough as he asks,

“Are you going to tell me what that was about?”

Regulus tenses, eyes stuck on a constellation he doesn’t remember the name of.

“What?”

“I was going to bury her, Reg.” James gets straight to the point, as always. “It wasn’t right, letting them take her body like that.”

“I know,” Regulus says, softly.

“Then why’d you tell me to do it? Why’d you need to leave?”

Regulus can’t—he doesn’t want to think about this. The black robes, and the placid smiles, and the bonfire that smelt of burning, rotten flesh. We’re God’s chosen, Reggie.

We’re God’s chosen.

Sirius—the gun—you run, Reggie. You run, and you—

“Reg.”

James rolls over, turning to face him.

“At least tell me why. You owe me that much.”

Regulus owes him a lot more than that, and they both know it. Still, something feels incredibly unfair about leveraging that debt now, when Regulus already feels like his chest might cave in if his heart starts to beat any harder. I can’t, he thinks, desperately, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t tell you—I can’t tell anyone. The silence cinches tight, a noose around his neck.

Finally, Regulus opens his mouth, feeling as though the words are being forced from the back of his throat.

“My…” his voice sticks. He pauses; swallows; tries again.

“My family was part of the church,” he says.

The words sit between them, heavy, like an unburied body in a bloodstained blanket. Regulus feels like he’s swallowed an icicle, piercing cold that stabs at him from the inside. He thinks he might throw up. The buzzing fly of a remembered hymn circles his rotting mind.

“They’re who you were running from,” James asks, quietly, “Weren’t they?”

You run, Reggie.

You run and you run and you run and you run and

“I don’t want to talk about this,” Regulus says, shutting his eyes to block out the stars. James doesn’t push him, doesn’t try to ask any more questions—though he sighs, once, so quiet it’s barely audible.

That night, the nightmares return.

*  *  *

Even the magic quilt isn’t enough to stop them, this time. Regulus wakes up with screams tangled in the back of his throat, legs kicking, arms flailing, fighting off hands that melt away as soon as he opens his eyes. James pretends that he’s still sleeping, but Regulus can tell from the shifting rhythm of his breathing that it wakes him up. In the morning, he crawls out of bed quickly, face burning with shame.

James doesn’t mention it. They don’t talk about it, and the unspoken words grow like a tumor in the space between them. Regulus can feel James’s questions in the curious glances he steals when he thinks Regulus isn’t paying attention, in the horrible, pitying way that his voice gets gentler at night. But Regulus can’t talk about it—won't talk about it, and he clings with stubborn fingers to the insistence that if he just waits it out, the nightmares will go away, and everything can go back to the way it was. Before the death eaters. Before Emmeline. Before the Fever.

And then one night, Regulus watches Sirius die.

It happens slowly, time dragging, seconds bleeding like pinesap down the bark of a tree. Regulus stands there, watching, unable to move as the Fevered close merciless jaws around his big brother’s throat, ripping skin as easy as paper, again and again and again. Sirius’s Colt hangs limp and useless in his hand, the familiar scratched-up handle flecked with blood.

Sirius.

He was supposed to get away.

Sirius.

He was supposed to run, and keep on running.

Sirius.

He was supposed to go, just fucking go, and not look back, and—

“Reg!”

Regulus’s eyes snap open, consciousness a whip-crack. He blinks at the darkness—flimsy moonlight, glass window, warm bed. Warm hands, warm weight on his shoulders. Dark eyes, stubbled jaw, broad nose; and the man in front of him isn’t Sirius, isn’t Sirius at all. It was a dream.

It was only a dream.

Regulus cracks. His body betrays him, tears rushing so hot and so fast that his eyes burn with them, sobs a physical weight that bows his spine and hits like a gut-punch. He folds forward and James is there, tugging Regulus into his arms, holding him steady as the grief threatens to wrench him apart. Regulus can’t stop shaking. James presses a palm flat to his back.

“You were dreaming,” he murmurs, voice gravelly with sleep, “It was just a dream.”

Sirius, Regulus thinks, Sirius, Sirius, Sirius. Sirius and his gun, and his blood, and his overconfident smile. Sirius and his plan, and his advice, and the urgency of his voice.

You run, Reggie.

You run, and you keep on running.

Regulus is so sick of feeling afraid. He is so, so tired of running.

“It’s alright,” James whispers, “You’re okay.”

Regulus has both hands fisted in the material of James’s shirt, face pressed against the crook of his neck, shoulders anchored under his hands. The quilt is tangled around them, a colorful, broken cocoon. Regulus sobs, and tries to think of nothing but the warm skin against his forehead. He shoves the dream back, back, back. It’s not real—it's not. What’s real is the body in front of him, the softness of the stomach beneath his elbows, the flat planes of a broad chest. What’s real is the tendon in James’s neck, the movement it makes when he swallows, the steady pulse of his heart beneath fingertips.

When Regulus wakes in the morning, there is skin and linen and heat. There is James Potter and his arms, and his hair, and the groan from somewhere deep in his chest as he yawns.

“Morning,” he mumbles, cracking open an eye and looking down at Regulus like it’s the most natural thing in the world for them to wake like this, together, tangled in each other’s arms. He smiles, a soft, unguarded thing that leaves his mouth vulnerable, only inches away.

Regulus goes stiff immediately, pulls back too quickly, elbowing James in the ribs.

“Sorry,” he mutters, as he stumbles out of bed, moving as far and as fast as he can. His entire body is an ember, something eaten through with flame. He dresses quickly, stiffly, all too aware of James watching him from the bed.

“S’okay...” James mumbles, finally, after a silence like pulling teeth, and when Regulus turns there’s a kicked-dog look of confusion in his eyes, pathetic and infuriating, as if Regulus—as if they—as if—

That night, when the sun begins to set, Regulus makes his way out to the barn to sleep in the loft.

*  *  *

Nothing’s different. It’s all the same—the sun rises earlier, stays up later, the leaves unfurl and the earth grows soft. Regulus sleeps in the loft, and James wakes him in the morning, and they spend days working side by side, evenings eating around the familiar wooden table. Crookshanks leaves dead rats at the end of the cot, and Padfoot barks at rabbits, and Regulus becomes convinced that the chickens are plotting his downfall. James laughs at him, calls him paranoid, but Regulus has never before encountered an animal that fears neither heaven nor hell the way those goddamn birds do. They act like it’s a personal affront any time Regulus tries to feed them instead of James.

And so really, nothing’s different. Everything is just the way it was last autumn, when James first told Regulus he could stay. So Regulus doesn’t understand why it can’t all just be—normal, again. Why every weighted glance James sends in his direction sends a shiver down his spine. Why the sound of his laughter feels like an earthquake beneath the skin, why something as innocent as a hand brushing his shoulder in passing can spark a forest fire in his blood. Regulus feels like a man walking a tightrope, always on edge, always holding his breath. Maybe it’s because last autumn, he didn’t know the rhythm of James’s breathing as he slept.

It’s harder to sleep now, without it. Crookshanks isn’t nearly as forgiving when it comes to being woken by Regulus’s nightmares.

Still, it shouldn’t matter. Regulus reminds himself, constantly, that he is going to leave. He promised Sirius that he would keep running, and he will—just as soon as he figures out where to run to. Maybe north, to Canada. Continental United hasn’t crossed that border yet.

He plans it. Every night, he closes his eyes, and imagines himself climbing down the ladder, hushing Minnie as he saddles her, guiding her quietly out of the barn. He sees himself nudging heels into her sides, galloping off into dark fields, kicking dust up on empty roads. He’s going to do it. One day soon, he’s going to keep running.

In the meantime, the weather warms around them. Spring yawns and shakes sleep from her shoulders, kissing sunshine and life back into the earth. One morning, James takes Regulus by the hand, and guides him away from the barn, insisting there’s something that he needs to show him. Regulus untangles their fingers as soon as he can, following along from a careful distance of two steps away as he demands to know where they’re going.

“Come on, Reg,” James shoots him a smile, “Don't tell me you're scared of the woods?”

Of course he’s not scared of the woods. Regulus has spent plenty of afternoons wandering the trees on his own, foraging for the herbs that he uses to grind into poultices or steep into teas. It’s not the sort of medicine he’s used to working with, but he does what he can. He stores the dried herbs in neat piles, reminding James what each one is for so that he’ll remember after Regulus is gone.

It’s not the woods that Regulus is afraid of. What scares him is the claustrophobic privacy of the trees, the acute awareness that he and James are so entirely alone. It’s not the same as being in a barn full of animals. In the woods, any living thing scurries away before they can even get close.

“How much further?”

“We’re almost there, I promise.”

Regulus huffs, looking down at his feet. James has taken them off the beaten trail, and he has to pick his way over rocks and sticks and gnarled roots. He’s so focused on watching his step that he doesn’t notice it when James stops, and nearly runs headfirst into the other man’s back.

James grins, dropping a hand onto Regulus’s shoulder to steady him. Regulus steps back.

“Here we are,” James says.

The clearing is broad, slightly sloped, sunlight pouring down through the break in the trees. They’re standing in front of a creek, water so clear that Regulus can see straight through to the bottom, pebbles shimmering like spilled treasure in the silt. He turns, tracing the flow of the water, and finds himself staring at a small pool, nestled tight against a rocky outcrop, a laughing waterfall dancing over the stone to pour down into the creek.

“It’s the snowmelt,” James says, “From the mountain. Freezes over in the winter, but in spring...”

Regulus tries to swallow. It’s just a stupid creek—there's no reason for his heart to crawl into his throat.

“Why’d you bring me here?”

James laughs, claps a hand back on Regulus’s shoulder. He leaves it there, like he’s looking for any excuse to touch him.

“Come on, Reg,” he says, eyes sparkling like river pebbles in the sun, “Don’t get all shy on me, now.”

And with that, he lets go, moves forward, long strides towards the pool. He strips off clothes as he goes, fingers nimble on shirt buttons, battered hat that he uses to keep the sun out of his eyes abandoned on a nearby stone. Regulus stands frozen, unable to move, unable to even breathe. The clothes are nothing but a pile on the ground, and James is skin—so much skin, glowing like a false god in the sunlight. Regulus can trace the groove of his spine, the swell of his bicep, the tendons above his ankles. The trees around them are an unholy church, something sacrosanct and blasphemous. Regulus wants to fall to his knees and pray.

There’s a splash as James wades into the pool, diving in one smooth motion, surfacing to shake away the water droplets that cling to his curls.

“Come on!” he shouts, grinning, “The water’s great!”

“I don’t like swimming!” Regulus shouts back. James frowns, cupping a hand around his ear.

“What?”

“I said I don’t like swimming!”

James shrugs, fighting a smile, an over-exaggerated motion. “Sorry, can’t hear you! You’ll have to come closer!”

Regulus huffs, irritated, and stomps over to the pool. He pauses by the stone where James left his hat, crossing his arms.

“I’m not going to swim with you.”

“Aw, Reg, c’mon! Why not?”

Regulus shrugs, stiffly.

“I just...don’t want to.”

“At least come dip your toes in.”

Regulus looks down at his boots, then over at the pool, skeptically. Behind James, the waterfall bubbles down the rockface, a quiet rush of white noise.

“Come on,” James coaxes, beckoning, “A little water never hurt anyone. And I plan to stay awhile—think you can find your way back without me?”

Regulus sighs, heavily, because no—no, he cannot find his way back without James. He has no idea where the fuck they are.

“Fine,” he mutters, “But we’re not staying long.” He sits down on the stone, pulling off boots and socks, rolling up pantlegs and stepping gingerly towards the pool. He balances on one foot, lifting the other to let his toes skim the surface of the water.

“James!” Regulus yelps, the second his skin touches water, “You said it was n—”

The splash is the only warning he gets—and then Regulus is knocked off balance, abruptly, half-tackled and yanked sideways into the pool. He crashes below the surface, cold water a sudden shock that almost makes him jolt out of his skin. Regulus splutters as he surfaces, trying to kick with his legs to keep himself afloat while using his hands to rub water out of his eyes. The pool is deeper than it looks—dragged into the center, his toes just barely scrape the bottom.

“Fuck!” he shouts, all composure torn away, “James!”

James is laughing so hard that his whole body shakes with it, gasping for breath.

“You—you—” Regulus sputters, furious, “I’m gonna—”

He lunges forward, splashing icy water towards James, who shrieks and stumbles back. James dives away, half-running, half-swimming towards the waterfall, and Regulus chases him, weighed down by the drag of his clothing.

“You said it was nice!”

“It is nice!”

“It’s freezing!”

“You just have to get used to it!”

James splashes an armful of water towards Regulus, trying to hold him off, and Regulus finds himself sputtering again as he shoves his dripping hair out of his face. In retaliation, he uses both arms to send a wave of water at James, who looks like he’s having the time of his life as he tries to dodge away. The ensuing water-war has Regulus going in circles around the pool, chasing James with single-minded determination. That is, until they both realize that James is the stronger swimmer—after which the tables somehow turn, and Regulus finds himself trying desperately to escape as the other man relentlessly splashes water into his face.

“Get away!” Regulus shouts, breathlessly, retreating as fast as he can. He doesn’t know when he started smiling, but now he can’t seem to stop—his face aches with it, cheeks stinging from joy.

“Never!”

Regulus chokes on his own laughter, heart pounding hard, unable to stop himself from shrieking when he finds his back pressed into the rockface. He twists, despairing—somehow he’s let James get the one-up on him, and now there’s nowhere to run as the other man closes in.

“I’ve got you now!” James crows, triumphant, and Regulus makes a last-ditch effort to escape, splashing even more water into James’s face—but that only results in a futile struggle as James reaches out and catches one of his wrists, grappling with Regulus as he tries to twist away, pinning him against the stone and capturing Regulus’s wrists in each hand. They can both see that the fight is over; there’s no escaping, and—

And.

And it’s very quiet, only the rushing water and muted birdsong left whispering in the air. And James is panting, breathing hard from the exertion of the chase, tiny rivers of water running down his neck and chest. And they’re close, so close, arms pressed together, elbows touching.

“James,” Regulus says.

And James is staring at him, eyes burning like embers, tracing the contours of his soaked-through shirt and dragging upwards to his mouth. And the water is cold, freezing, but James is warm—warm like the sun, body heat that radiates, fire that licks under the surface of Regulus’s skin and warms him from within. The moment that hangs between them is a tiny eternity, time stopped in the space from mouth to mouth, like past and present and future have all tangled together. Like they both already know what’s going to happen; like it’s already happening before it does.

James leans forward, and—

Abomination!

“Wait!”

Regulus jerks back, even though there’s nowhere to go—his head only thumps against stone. James freezes, face an inch away from Regulus, so close that Regulus can feel the other man’s breath over his lips.

“Reg,” he murmurs, thumbs stroking over the palms of Regulus’s captured hands. Regulus sucks in a breath, heart a frightened rabbit in his chest, something kicking and caught.

“This is a bad idea.”

His voice is a choked whisper, breathless. James tilts forward, pressing their foreheads together, noses nudging. His eyes slide shut.

“I disagree,” he says.

“James—just—”

“Why?” James asks, softly. His lips brush against Regulus’s cheek as he speaks, the ghost of a kiss. “Why is it a bad idea?”

Regulus shakes his head, but that only presses them closer together.

“You don’t even know me,” he whispers, “We don’t—you don’t even know my real name.”

James pulls back, slightly, just enough to look Regulus in the eye. He lets go of Regulus’s wrists, no longer pinning them, but it doesn’t make a difference—Regulus feels just as trapped, just as helpless, when James lifts those hands to cradle his face, callused fingers brushing over his jaw.

“I do know you.”

“You don’t—”

“I do,” James insists, and trying to look him in the eye is like staring into the sun—blinding, but Regulus just can’t bring himself to turn away.

“I know you, Reg,” James says, earnest, “I know how you like your eggs and I know that you hate the snow. I know the voice you use to talk to Padfoot and I know you’re the one feeding Crookshanks our table scraps, even though you say you’re not. I know your hands—I know what they look like stitching a wound, and milking a cow, and fixing a fence. I know that your eyes wrinkle at the corners when you laugh. I know that you laugh, even though you always try not to, try to hide it behind your fist. I know that you’re difficult and grouchy in the mornings and that you love to complain. I know that when you come home smelling like wild mint it’s because you’ve been picking it for me.”

Regulus can’t do this. He can’t be here. James’s hands are so warm. His voice is so soft.

“I know that you’re scared,” James whispers, “And I know that you’re brave. I know that you care about people more than you know what to do with, care so much that it hurts you. I know that you risked your life to save mine.”

Regulus blinks, vision going fuzzy, eyes stinging. James reaches up, swiping the tears from the corners of his eyes before they can fall.

“I might not know where you came from, Reg,” he murmurs, “And I might not know what you’re running from. I might not know the man you used to be. But don’t you stand there and try to tell me that I don’t know the man in front of me now, because I do, Reg. I do.”

A small, broken noise slips from the back of Regulus’s throat—and then he’s moving, pulled forward like it’s gravity, closing the space between them as if he never had any other choice. James’s hands are on his face, and his hands are on James’s skin, and they are teeth and tongue and breath and body and Regulus is going to die, he is, he really thinks he is.

“Reg—” James gasps, and Regulus kisses whatever he was going to say right out of his mouth. He is an animal, something ravenous, and James feels like the only thing in the entire world worth tasting. The most precious thing. The most beautiful, beautiful man beneath the whole Montana sky.

Fuck. Regulus is so tired of running.

The water rushes, steady and cold, snowmelt in spring. The rock at Regulus’s back is hard, unyielding, but none of it matters. Regulus has James beneath his hands, beneath his fingers, stubbled jaw and soft stomach and fragile throat. He wants to feel everything, all of it, wants to hear every sound James can make, wants to memorize every hitch in his breath, find the places that make him gasp—fingertips dragging over ribcage, tongue at the hinge of jaw and throat. Regulus is a god, making a world of the man beneath his fingers. He bites off seven days and chews and spits and does not rest—cannot rest until he knows this body by touch alone.

“Reg—” James pants, one hand tangling in the damp strands of Regulus’s hair while the other drags nails down his back, “Fuck—please—”

Under the water, Regulus can feel him, pressed hard against his hip. He moves his hands down and James hisses between his teeth, eyes screwed shut, breath stuttering, and Regulus feels like god and the devil and jesus christ—jesus christ the sounds James is making, the way his voice falters and fractures on moans. Regulus would sell his soul for this, a thousand times over. A million. They are friction and heat and hands and thighs and when James finally shudders and cries out it is the most sacred hymn.

“Fuck,” James whispers. Their kisses are open-mouthed, hungry. “Fuck.”

Regulus doesn’t fight it when James pulls him away from the waterfall, dragging them both back to shore, fingers grasping at Regulus’s waterlogged clothes. Regulus nearly stumbles as he fights his way out of his shirt, abandoning it on the ground, and then James’s hands are at his pants, fumbling with the buttons. When they finally come loose, James sinks to the ground along with them, tugging wet fabric down Regulus’s legs and falling to his knees like a man preparing to pray. Regulus is naked and shivering and on fire, burning alive, forgetting to breathe as James anchors him with hands on the back of his thighs. He looks down, and James looks up, and their eyes meet and meet and keep meeting as James drags his tongue over the hair that trails down Regulus’s stomach, as James swallows him down like church wine.

Regulus dies.

In his hands, in his mouth, on his tongue. A hundred tiny, blissful deaths, and Regulus doesn’t know if it’s been three minutes, or three hours, or three days, but he is shattering out of the tomb of himself, he is coming—oh god, oh god—he is coming back to life. There is a man on his knees in front of him, and every point of connection on their bodies is its own sacrament.

Regulus drags James back to his feet, and kisses him, and tastes himself on his tongue.

*  *  *

Regulus no longer sleeps in the loft. At night, Crookshanks assumes his rightful place as King of the Barn, and Regulus crawls beneath the magic quilt with James. They sleep and don’t sleep, tangling together either way, waking each other each morning with peppered kisses along throats and jaws. They milk the cow and feed the chickens and watch the vegetables start to sprout, they sit under the stars at night and whisper stories about made-up constellations. Everywhere the world is blooming, and nowhere more than between their bodies, where each touch unfurls soft and lovely like spring petals. James brings Regulus bouquets of wildflowers, and Regulus dries them with the rest of his herbs—arnica and yarrow and larkspur.

He’s not afraid. He feels safe. He no longer thinks about running.

It is the most selfish mistake of his life.

*  *  *

This time, the visitor doesn’t take them by surprise. He comes across the field on horseback, visible from a mile off. James lifts a hand to his eyes to block the sunshine, squinting.

“Ah, fuck.”

“What? Who is it?”

The man lifts a hand to wave, clearly having spotted them as well.

“Crouch,” James mutters, setting down the armful of firewood he’s carrying and stomping over to the cabin. Regulus waits outside, unwilling to take his eyes off the stranger. When James returns, he’s holding the hunting rifle that Regulus has never seen him use, typically left on the wall to collect dust. Regulus’s hand falls to his own gun, automatically.

“James?”

“Tell the bastard to get lost,” James mutters, fuming, “And every year he comes right back. Won’t take no for a goddamn answer.”

“Who is he?”

James spits in the dirt, glaring at the man approaching on horseback. Padfoot, who’d previously been rolling in the grass, seems to sense his master’s mood, moving to sit at James’s side with his ears pricked.

“Works for the railroad,” James, with the same level of contempt and disgust that someone might say works for the devil in hell. Really, Regulus supposes, it’s essentially the same thing.

His heart drops.

“The railroad?”

“Mmm. Been trying to buy the farm for about four years now. Something about the most efficient route for new tracks, as if I give a shit about that.”

Regulus swallows. It’s too late to hide now; the man has already seen him, standing there beside James.

“Which...um, which railroad did you say he works for?”

James spits again, voice dripping venom.

“Continental United.”

Fuck.

Regulus tries to contain his panic, ignoring his screaming heart. He doesn’t know the name Crouch, doesn’t recognize the man riding towards them—Continental United employs hundreds of people, thousands, and it’s not like every one of them will know the names and faces of their boss and his family. If Regulus just keeps his cool, just acts normal, then there’s no reason that anything should go wrong.

“Hello there!” Crouch calls out, once he’s within earshot, “I can see that I’m gettin’ another one of your trademark warm welcomes, Mr. Potter!”

James hefts the gun menacingly, though he doesn’t point it yet.

“I told you not to come back here, Crouch!” he shouts, “You’re trespassing on private property!”

Crouch only smiles, an oily thing, a friendliness that slides from the surface of his skin without sticking.

“Oh, come on now,” he chuckles, spreading his hands wide, “There’s no need for all that! Can’t a man stop by to pay a visit to his old friend?”

“M’not your friend, Crouch.”

“Please, call me Barty.”

“Don’t make me shoot you,” James warns, and this time he does point the gun, steadying it against his shoulder, ready to aim. Crouch’s tongue darts out to lick the corner of his lips, eyes sharpening as they land on the rifle.

“Now, why would you do that?” he tuts, looking for all the world as though he’s perfectly comfortable staring down the barrel of a gun. But he halts his horse, hovering a few paces away, and he doesn’t dismount.

When James remains silent, Crouch licks his lips again, a quick, darting gesture, like the tongue of a snake. His eyes slide over to Regulus.

“Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?”

“Whatever you want, Crouch, the answer’s still no.”

That tongue darts out again, fast, like a flinch. Crouch smile at Regulus, eyes sharp.

“Bartemius Crouch Junior,” he says, inclining his head, “And who might you be?”

Regulus curls his fingers around the handle of his Colt. Crouch licks his lips.

“You look like a reasonable man,” he smiles, as if he and Regulus are sharing some private joke, “Why don‘t you tell our friend here that he’s being foolish? My employers want to pay him good money for this land, a good deal more than it’s worth, I daresay! No good reason not to sell—hell, you could buy yourself three more farms—”

“I’m not selling to you, Crouch. Now get off my property.”

Crouch glances back at James, still smiling.

“Now, there’s no need for any hostility. I’m just trying to talk to our new friend…I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name?”

“I didn’t give it,” Regulus answers, gritting his teeth. Crouch laughs, as though he’s just told the world’s funniest joke.

“Say, have we met before?” he tilts his head, squinting a bit at Regulus, “I do declare, you look mighty familiar…”

All the blood inside Regulus’s veins turns to ice.

No.

No, no, no, no—

“Think he’d remember a mug as ugly as yours, Crouch,” James snaps, cocking the rifle as he says it. His finger hovers over the trigger, an all-too-obvious threat. “Now, get off my property. I’m not going to tell you again.”

Crouch licks his lips. Glances at Regulus. Looks back at James, at the rifle in his hands.

“Alright, alright,” he says, finally, chuckling and lifting his hands in surrender. “I get the picture. I can see that the two of you would much prefer some…solitude to enjoy each other’s company. That’s fine—I’m not one to judge.”

His voice is unctuous, oily, making Regulus’s skin crawl. The way Crouch eyes the two of them sends a hot flush of shame creeping up his neck.

“But Mr. Potter, if you ever change your mind about selling, you know who to call.”

James doesn’t say anything, just keeps his rifle aimed. Crouch gives an ironic little salute, every twitch of his fingers insincere, and then nudges his horse around to saunter off back the way he came. James doesn’t lower the rifle, watching silently until Crouch disappears into the distance.

Regulus’s heart is pounding so hard that he swears he can hear it. You look mighty familiar…

He jumps when James heaves a long sigh, finally setting down the rifle to rub both hands over his face. When he turns to Regulus, the anger is still simmering beneath his features, but his smile is apologetic.

“Sorry about that,” he says, “Crouch is a bastard, but he’s mostly harmless. Just comes around to Butte every spring, poking his nose into people’s business, trying to buy up land. Have to chase him off every year.”

“It’s fine,” Regulus breathes, from far away, connected to his body by strings that threaten to snap. His mouth moves like a puppet’s. He can’t feel it.

“Come on,” James steps closer, coaxing Regulus’s hand off his gun to twist their fingers together. His voice has gone soft, gentle. “Don’t let it bother you, Reg. Folks around here really don’t care—Crouch just likes to get under people’s skin.”

Regulus realizes, distantly, that James is talking about—this. That he thinks Regulus is worried Crouch will ride back to Butte, start spreading rumors about the two men living all on their own. As if anyone in Butte would give enough of a shit to make the trip out with their torches and pitchforks. This part of the world, people have other things to worry about.

So Regulus tries to smile, woodenly, squeezing James’s hand in his.

“I know,” he says, as fear makes a thunderstorm of his body, “Don’t worry. Doesn’t bother me.”

That night, Regulus kisses James like he’s trying to eat him. He sinks teeth into skin, tangles fingers in hair, dips tongue into mouth into palm into crease above thigh as though swallowing flesh is the secret to life everlasting. He leaves marks behind, tender bruises that bloom, his own version of James’s bouquets. He pours the voice from his lover’s throat, drinking it down, every gasp and moan and broken plea for mercy. James looks at him like he’s an angel. Regulus wishes he had the heart to say be not afraid.

When James sleeps, it is deep and dreamless, the heavy slumber that Regulus has grown used to. He watches the chest of the man beside him rise and fall, presses his palm there, once, just to feel the heartbeat.

James doesn’t stir when Regulus slides out of bed. He dresses soundlessly, efficiently. In the barn, he murmurs gentle words to rouse Minnie from sleep, pats her neck soothingly as he saddles her. He guides her out of her stable, with nothing but the clothes on his back and the gun at his hip.

He climbs into the saddle.

He runs.             

Chapter Text

He rides for three days, three nights.

On the third day, he turns back.

It’s a stupid decision, maybe. Possibly. James will likely be angry. Regulus stole his horse. He needs that.

This is a bad idea. He’s supposed to be going to Canada.

But Regulus can’t keep running. His heart is compass needle, pointing back, back, back towards that farm, like James is due north. The only direction left that Regulus can go.

I’m sorry, Sirius, he thinks, as his thighs burn from hours spent in the saddle, I tried. I really tried.

He rides for three days, three nights.

On the third day, he clings tight to Minnie as she jumps the familiar fence, and his heart swoops with joy as the barn comes into view. Regulus knows James will be angry—he knows. He knows James will be hurt, and suspicious, and confused. Regulus knows he won’t deserve forgiveness, but he’s going to beg for it anyway, and hope the man he’s in love with is a more benevolent god than the one he grew up with. He’s going to explain everything, all of it, every secret he’s kept locked away. At the end of it, James can decide if he wants him to stay. Regulus won’t fight if James tells him to go, and—

And the door to the barn is open.

Regulus draws up short, staring at it.

It’s not that it’s strange—James leaves the barn door open all the time, if he’s moving in and out. If the cow needs to graze, or the chickens want to roam. But there’s no rustle of movement, none of the cheerful whistling Regulus has grown used to hearing as James works. There’s no sound of footsteps, no clucking of hens, no low braying of the cow. No barking Padfoot.

It’s quiet. Nothing but smothered silence.

Regulus slides out of the saddle slowly, hand already settled on the handle of his gun. He guides Minnie to the side, loops her reins around a fencepost, pats her neck soothingly when she snorts.

“Shh, it’s alright, girl...”

Regulus moves towards the barn with a stone in his stomach. The smell hits him before he even steps through the door.

The chickens are dead. All of them, slaughtered, left in piles of bloody feathers on the floor. The cow too, whole barn stinking of blood and rot, maggots already crawling on her flesh. The dull drone of buzzing flies is the only thing to break the silence.

Regulus turns, and runs towards the cabin.

The door bursts open beneath his hands, hinges groaning, and Regulus careens forward face-first as some unseen force trips him. He manages to bring his arms up just in time to stop himself from breaking his nose, landing hard on his wrists, knees screaming with pain as he goes sprawling across the floor. When he looks back, wild with fear, he sees what tripped him.

Padfoot.

The dog is a crumpled heap of black fur. One eye is open, glassy, unseeing. The other is gone, blasted away along with an ear and half the dog’s skull. They must’ve used a shotgun. Regulus can see brain matter, bloody and raw. There are maggots crawling there, too.

He vomits onto the bloodstained floor.

If he could, he would bury it. Take the dog’s body out to the field, dig a proper grave. But he can’t, because there’s an envelope sitting on top of the table, addressed with a single name.

Regulus Arcturus Black.

Regulus rips it open, hands trembling, nose filled with the stench of decay. The note is short, simple, to the point. Regulus can hear his father’s sneering voice, curling all around the words.

If you wish to see your friend again, come home.

Regulus drops the letter, and he runs.

*  *  *

The train is familiar. Regulus grew up with trains—the clattering of the tracks, the smoke-belch of the engine. The banshee wail of the whistle. The inhuman speed.

He hates them.

Climbing aboard feels like crawling into the mouth of a yawning beast, each step down the hallway of the compartment taking him deeper into its open throat. He sits, skin crawling, knowing that he can do nothing but let the acid of this familiarity eat away at him. Regulus stares out the window, digested. By the time this iron monster drags its body down into the cloying heat of hell, his family will already know to expect his arrival. Word travels fast along the Continental United line.

It’s funny, Regulus thinks. The entire time he spent running, avoiding these tracks, knowing that to even set foot on board a train car would spell his doom. Nearly two months on horseback, skirting towns and settlements, drawing a bandana over his mouth and a hat down low on his forehead anytime he stopped for food, for water, for rest. He rode until it killed his horse, until it nearly killed him. All for a trip that can be made in two days by train.

There’s a man waiting for him at the San Antonio station. Sweat beads along Regulus’s forehead the moment he steps onto the platform, Texas air so thick and humid that it feels like stepping into a bowl of soup. The man isn’t one he recognizes, but he steps to Regulus’s side immediately, puts a hand on his elbow. Regulus doesn’t fight as he’s led to the beetle-shelled automobile waiting outside the station, shiny and new, the only one on the streets as they drive through the stifling heat.

It's been a year. One entire year since Regulus left, since he clawed his way out of this hellhole. And yet it’s as if no time has passed at all when they pull up in front of the manor, when they abandon the automobile to climb the broad steps. For a moment, Regulus is gripped with fear, certain that it’s all been a dream—that he tried to run, succumbed to heatstroke in some godforsaken ditch, had his body dragged back and prodded up the familiar staircase. That it was all just a hallucination. That nothing has changed at all.

James, he reminds himself, closing his eyes and feeling the cold water of that mountain creek, the soft press of fingers and lips. I’m doing this for James. If he has to crawl back into hell, so be it. Regulus is no longer the kind of man who will sacrifice somebody he loves in his stead.

He doesn’t want to be that kind of man anymore.

It’s cooler, inside the house. Thick walls block the sun, cast long shadows across the floor. Like stepping inside a crypt.

His mother is waiting in the foyer.

“Darling,” she breathes, the moment her eyes land on Regulus. Then she crosses the floor, in three quick steps, and backhands him across the face.

Regulus breathes. In, then out. His cheek stings where her wedding ring has sliced into his skin, sharp diamond a familiar sensation. He feels the slow trickle of blood from his cheekbone, like a teardrop.

“Mother,” he says, voice hollow.

Walburga Black tuts, draws a handkerchief from her pocket, and grabs his chin. She tilts his head forcefully, fingers gripping hard enough to leave marks, and dabs at the blood trickling steadily towards his neck. Regulus shuts his eyes. He doesn’t flinch.

“Your father is furious,” his mother says, words cold and clipped, “You have no idea the amount of trouble you’ve caused us. No idea.”

Regulus swallows, putting every ounce of effort he can into keeping his voice steady.

“Where is he, mother?”

Walburga’s hand tightens on his chin. When Regulus opens his eyes, he sees his mother’s lips pressed into a thin line, her own eyes glittering with disgust. She lets go of him abruptly, wiping her hands on her handkerchief as though she’s soiled them by touching his skin.

“Get cleaned up,” she tells him, tersely, “You’ll be joining us for dinner at 6 o’clock.”

“No—I want to see—”

“You’ll see him at dinner.” She spits the words, like a hissing cat. The bloody handkerchief is crumpled in her fist. Without looking at Regulus, she turns to the man still standing behind him, and lifts her chin.

“Avery, please escort my son to his room.”

With that, Regulus watches his mother turn and walk away.

*  *  *

It’s the first time in nearly a year that Regulus has taken a proper bath. He watches the dust and dirt slough off, leaving his skin shiny and scrubbed-pink; he sits in front of a mirror to shave; he brushes through his hair with a silver comb, instead of using his fingers. There’s cologne on the dressing table, a clean suit laid out on the bed. Avery stands outside the bedroom door the entire time, like they’re all just waiting for Regulus to change his mind and try to run away. Regulus grinds his teeth as he dresses. The clothes feel stiff, starched, all wrong against his skin.

But it doesn’t matter. None of it matters, because the moment Avery opens the dining room door and gestures him through, Regulus sees—

“James!”

He doesn’t mean to speak; the word just slips out, a choked exclamation, fighting past the lump in his throat. They’ve put James in a suit as well, broad shoulders wrapped in fine material that might make Regulus’s heart skip a beat in any other context, but only makes him feel sick in this one. He’s clean-shaven too, all the dirt scrubbed from the cracked lines of his palms, unruly curls cropped close to his skull. Regulus wants to cry. He wants to run across the room and kiss him.

James stands immediately, chair screeching back, silverware rattling as he shoves his palms flat against the table in his haste to rise. Their eyes meet, and Regulus can see the battling emotions of confusion, fear, relief—he drinks in the familiar features, the nut-brown skin and upturned eyes, the gentle mouth and broad nose, the neck that Regulus wants to wrap his arms around, and bury his face in, and cry I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, over and over and over again, until his voice finally fails him.

“Sit down, please, Mr. Potter,” comes a silky voice from James’s left, “Dinner will be served shortly.”

All the blood in Regulus’s body turns to ice.

Tom.

He’s a handsome man. Or at least—Regulus thought he was, once. Square jaw, dark hair, dark eyes. Silken voice, smooth as butter, words that curl around your ears like a caress. Once, Regulus thought he was the only one who could understand—the only person whose eyes reflected back his same hunger, who shared his same thirst for knowledge. Once, he truly believed the things Tom said; that they could discover the secrets of the universe beneath a microscope, that they could unlock the codes of life, that no sacrifice was too great to make in the name of advancement, of achievement, of science.

Now, he just feels sick.

“I want to know what’s going on,” James demands, hands clenched into white-knuckled fists, “You people have no right to keep me here—”

“James,” Regulus interrupts, fear spiking as he watches Tom’s eyes slide over to regard the man beside him. “Sit down.”

James turns back to him, eyes falling to the bruise on his cheek. Regulus shakes his head, once, eyes wide and pleading.

“Just sit down,” he says, again, words too loud in the stony silence of the room. He moves to his own seat at the table, pulling out the chair as if in demonstration, sitting down quickly before anyone else can stand. Avery stays behind him, in the doorway. James’s eyes flicker around the room, once, before he finally sits, staring at Regulus the entire time.

At the head of the table, Orion Black is already holding a glass of wine, glaring at James with an open look of disgust. To his left, Walburga sits, sniffing in disdain at the unseemly display that’s just taken place. To his right, Tom Riddle inclines his head towards Regulus, smiling.

“We’re so happy you could join us, Regulus,” he says, as if no disturbance has taken place at all. Regulus can feel James’s eyes on him—it’s the first time the other man has heard his full name.

“Tom,” Regulus nods, stiffly, folding his hand into a fist under the table. “Father.”

Orion snorts, taking a swig of his wine. Regulus supposes that’s the best he could hope for, from him. Orion might be seated at the head of the table, but they all know it’s Tom who’s been pulling the strings, ever since he swept into Texas with his death eaters and his message about God’s chosen. Orion might think he’s still in control, and Tom might let him believe it, but Regulus knows better.

He just wishes he’d figured it all out sooner.

A line of servants sweep in, carrying trays of food. Nobody speaks as they arrange the platters along the table, an opulent feast far in excess of anything the five of them will be able to eat. Regulus doubts he’ll even be able to swallow a single bite with the way his stomach is rioting inside his body.

“Reg,” James asks, once the servants have left and the doors have swung shut, “What’s going on?”

Walburga makes a small, disdainful sound in the back of her throat at the nickname. Despite himself, Regulus feels the creeping flush of shame.

He ignores the question, keeping his voice low as he asks,

“Are you alright? They haven’t hurt you in any way?”

James opens his mouth to answer, but it’s Tom who gets there first, still smiling that cold, amused smile as he drawls,

“Come now, Regulus, we would never want to hurt a…friend of yours, as it were. Mr. Potter here is only visiting to provide adequate motivation for you to return to the work you so abruptly abandoned.”

“Right,” Regulus answers, voice clipped, “Well, I’m here now. So you can let him go.”

“What?! I’m not leaving you—”

“Shut up, James.”

“My, my,” Tom’s eyes are glittering, delighted as they dart between Regulus and James, “You both are certainly…passionate.”

“And what the hell’s that supposed to mean?!”

“James!” Regulus hisses, nails digging into his palm, “Shut up!”

James glares at him, but he ignores it, turning back to Tom.

“You have me,” he says, careful to keep his voice steady, “You don’t need him. Just let him go, and I—I’ll give you whatever you want.”

Tom tuts, patronizingly, voice sickening and saccharine. “Oh, Regulus,” he sighs, “This isn’t about what I want. It’s about what we want. It’s about what He wants. This is so much bigger than any one man’s individual whims—you used to understand that. It disheartens me to see how you’ve changed.”

“He’s been led astray,” Walburga hisses, suddenly, eyes fixed on James, “By this—this—”

“Now, now,” Tom raises a hand, and she falls silent immediately. Regulus watches, stomach turning, wondering if his mother even realizes that she’s acting like a trained dog. Tom smiles at her, benevolent, and she watches him with the sort of fervent devotion usually reserved for a pastor’s sermons.

“God works in mysterious ways,” Tom says, voice deceptively gentle. “We are all, at times, led astray. But had it not been for your son’s unfortunate predisposition towards…this sin, in particular, we may never have found a way to bring him back into the fold. After all, it is thanks to Mr. Potter that young Regulus has come all this way to join us for dinner tonight, is it not?”

At the head of the table, Orion sighs, impatient.

“Move this along, Tom,” he grunts, taking another swig of his wine, “I’ve already got investors breathing down my neck about the delay, thanks to my useless excuse for a son—”

James slams his fist against the table, hatred burning in his eyes as he snarls,

“Don’t you talk about him that way!”

“Excuse me?!” Orion flushes bright red, furious, beginning to stand from his own chair, “I suggest you learn your place, young man! You’re nothing but a—”

“Enough, enough!” Tom raises his hands, and once more, the room falls silent. He smiles.

“Gentlemen, please. Let’s keep things civil, shall we?” He turns to Orion, inclining his head. “I can, of course, move this along, Mr. Black. Your wish is my command.”

Regulus stares down at the table, too ashamed to say anything as everyone retakes their seats. He can feel James’s eyes on him, searching, questioning. But he can’t bring himself to look up.

“Regulus,” Tom says, calmly, “I’m afraid that we will need you to stay here and complete your work. To ensure you remain sufficiently motivated, Mr. Potter will remain as a…guest, thanks to the generous hospitality of your parents. You’ll find that so long as you both cooperate, there will be no need for any unpleasantness. I daresay you’ll find the accommodations here much more comfortable than wherever it was you were staying—Avery, where did you say Crouch found them?”

At the door, Avery speaks for the first time.

“Montana, sir. Just outside of Butte.”

“Montana,” Tom repeats, rolling the syllables around on his tongue as though savoring them. He turns back to Regulus, smiling. “I daresay you’ll find the accommodations here much more comfortable than Montana.”

Regulus meets his gaze, chin jutting forward slightly.

“And when I finish my work?” he asks, stomach twisting with guilt, “You’ll let him go?”

Tom inclines his head. “Of course. We should have no reason to keep him.”

Regulus nods, once. “Deal.”

“No!” James bursts out, palms braced once more against the table, “I’m not letting you people take him and—and torture him, or whatever it is that you do! I’ve seen your arm, Reg—I knew you were running from something—”

Tom laughs, loud and sharp, cutting James off. His smile grows, stretching into something more sharklike.

“What we do?” he asks, sounding horribly amused. “My dear man, there isn’t anything that we do to Regulus.”

Please, Regulus thinks, not like this.

But Tom turns to him, like he can read his mind, like he can see how badly Regulus doesn’t want to have this conversation, written all over his face.

“Would you like to tell him, Regulus?” he asks, “Or shall I?”

James glances between the two of them, clearly confused. I’m sorry, Regulus thinks, desperately, I was going to tell you—I was. Just not like this. Please, not like this.

But he can’t make the words leave his lips. When he stays silent, Tom opens his mouth to speak.

“You see, Mr. Potter,” he drawls, settling in with a wineglass in hand, “Or—James. Can I call you James?”

James glares at him, like he’s trying to snap his neck with his eyes.

“James,” Tom says, smiling, “Many people don’t know this, but Regulus Black here is one of the most brilliant minds of our generation. A prodigy, truly. The youngest man to become a doctor this side of the Mississippi.”

Regulus breathes, in, out. He stares at the food going cold on the table. Nobody’s eating. Nobody’s even moved to touch it.

“And of course, like any proud man of science, he was unwilling to accept that the Fever was an act of God. Like Noah’s flood—a purge, a cleansing of the unworthy from those chosen.”

“Fever’s a disease,” James grunts, through gritted teeth, “Ain’t got nothing to do with any god.”

Tom’s smile is patronizing. He speaks slowly, as though talking to a child.

“And when has any disease been known to raise the dead back to life? What more proof could any man demand that this is God’s hand, moving among us?”

Beside Regulus, Walburga is nodding, enraptured. Orion looks bored, as he usually does in any conversation that doesn’t revolve around money. Regulus thinks his father may be the only person who has ever been immune to Tom’s silver tongue, his snakeskin sermons and sheep’s clothing. Once he starts talking like this, invoking God and miracles and telling you that you’re chosen, it’s so hard to hear anything but sincerity. His eyes even shimmer with a fervent light, like he truly believes the things he’s saying.

“But Regulus Black doubted, just the same as Thomas. And just the same as Thomas, God gave him proof.”

“Don’t,” Regulus croaks, forcing the word out. His nails bite into his palms, threatening to draw blood. Tom turns to him.

“Did you want to tell this part of the story, Regulus?”

James is looking at him. Regulus can feel those eyes, but he can’t turn to meet them.

“Please,” he says. Pathetic.

Tom grins.

“Regulus’s older brother, you see,” he continues, in that smooth, slithering voice, “Was a bit of a daredevil. A thrill-seeker. A do-gooder. When the Fever broke out in town, rather than letting God’s will run its course, he tried to interfere.”

Regulus shuts his eyes. Sirius, he thinks, Sirius. Always so good at sneaking out.

“He came back with a bite.”

Regulus remembers it. The fear that ate him from the inside out, staring down at the bleeding wound on his brother’s arm.

“But God works in mysterious ways,” Tom says, spreading his hands, “And in this case, the mystery was that Sirius Black didn’t die.”

Across the table, James stiffens, staring at Tom in incredulity.

“That’s right,” Tom nods, pleased with the obvious reaction, “There it was: a sign from God, clear as day. The Black family had been chosen, blessed with this unique opportunity.”

“I don’t understand.” James turns to Regulus, eyes wide and searching, “Your brother was—immune? To the Fever?”

“He was chosen,” Tom repeats, mouth curling downwards, “And then he refused to share the gift that he had been so generously granted.”

“I wanted to find a cure,” Regulus whispers, barely able to meet James’s gaze, “I thought—if he was immune, the answer might be in Sirius’s blood. But he—” Regulus swallows, tries to pull himself together. He remembers their arguments, the fights that had them snarling and snapping and spinning in circles, every time.

I don’t understand why you won’t at least let me try! This could help so many people—

Oh, bullshit, Reg! Don’t act like this is about helping people! You just want to be the one to make the discovery, to make sure it’s your name in somebody’s fucking history book!

So what?! What’s wrong with that?! This is groundbreaking science, Sirius—it would change everything—

You see? I knew it! It’s always the fucking science with you—it's like you get these blinders on, you don’t care about anything except your stupid ‘discoveries’—

Why does it matter what I care about?! This would help people—

Not in our parents’ hands, it wouldn’t! Not with them listening to that fucking cult leader! Jesus, Reg, are you really so naïve? What the fuck do you think they want to use it for?!

Regulus shakes his head, words rasping from his throat.

“He wouldn’t let me.”

“Selfish,” Tom tuts, shaking his head. Regulus can’t stop the shame that crawls up his throat. He thought the exact same thing, once.

“But Regulus,” Tom turns to him, abruptly, eyes pinning him, nails through the wrists, “Regulus understood. He heard the call of God’s message. He took up the mantle, where his brother would not.”

It wasn’t like that, Regulus wants to say, It wasn’t about God, it wasn’t...

Except part of it was, wasn’t it? Part of it was Tom’s voice in his ear, whispering, goading, asking why Regulus would have been blessed with this knowledge, this curiosity, this talent, if not for a reason. Whispering that Regulus was better, was smarter, was not the same as all these people who crawled like rats over the surface of the earth, content in their fetid ignorance. Regulus was destined for more. Regulus was destined for discovery. Regulus was destined for greatness. If he only chose to try, he could outshine even Sirius. You are made for more than living in your brother’s shadow.

“I don’t understand,” James says, again.

“Tell him, Regulus,” says Tom.

Regulus swallows.

“I got bitten,” Regulus tells him, “On purpose.”

He can’t look at James’s face. Instead, he drops his eyes to his arm, to the mark he knows lies just under his sleeve. Twisted out of shape, now, and hardly recognizable—sliced open and sewn shut and hardened by the lump of scar tissue where the needle went in, over and over and over again. But Regulus knows what it used to be. He still remembers the feel of those teeth.

“I was immune, too.”

“Chosen,” Tom proclaims, “And this time, Regulus did not ignore God’s message.”

“I wanted to find a cure,” Regulus repeats, weakly, voice hardly a whisper. Like saying it enough times can somehow make it true—can somehow go back in time and make it something selfless, something noble, instead of what it actually was.

Greed. Pride. Willful ignorance, taking his parents’ money and using the laboratory they built and letting Tom Riddle whisper in his ear, like he didn’t know what all of them would do with a cure the moment he succeeded in making one.

You just want to be the one to make the discovery, to make sure it’s your name in somebody’s fucking history book!

Sirius was right, all along.

Regulus should have listened to him. Just once in his life, he should have listened.

“So you see, Mr. Potter,” Tom says, inclining his wineglass towards Regulus in a mocking toast, “It is not a question of what we do to Regulus. The only one doing anything to Regulus is Regulus himself.”

It’s true. All of it—true. The leather gag that Regulus placed into his own mouth, the restraints that he strapped himself into. The syringe that he filled himself, that he placed into his assistant’s hand. His own blood, drawn himself, studied for hours under a microscope. Tweaking the formula, watching to see how his body would react. Strapping himself into that chair, placing that gag in his mouth, over and over and over. His own hands. Never anyone’s but his own.

“No,” James shakes his head, brow furrowed, eyes lost, “That—that doesn’t make any sense. He ran away.” His eyes find Regulus from across the table, trapping him, pupils pleading for answers. “I saw you, Reg. You were half-dead when I found you.”

Regulus opens his mouth, but it’s Tom who responds first, waving a hand carelessly in the air.

“Yes, well. We all stray from the light sometimes, do we not?”

He’s smiling again, but it isn’t quite so smooth this time—there’s a tightness around his eyes, a stiffness to it that lets Regulus know he hasn’t been forgiven for this particular infraction quite yet.

“But now,” Tom says, gaze sharp across the table, “Regulus is going to finish the work that he started. Isn’t that right, Doctor Black?”

Regulus’s eyes slide to the left, to where James is sitting, stiff and uncomfortable and confused in his finely tailored suit.

“Yes,” Regulus says, as his nails break through the skin of his palm, drawing tiny crescents of blood. “I am.”

*  *  *

They’re keeping James in Sirius’s old room. Small mercies—maybe there really is a god out there somewhere. Regulus thinks it’s meant to be some sort of sick taunt, two men standing guard in the hallway with guns on their hips, the only thing keeping him and James from each other a few short feet of distance.

But what Regulus’s parents don’t know is that there’s a small ridge of stone, just three fingers’ width, jutting out below the window in his room. What his parents don’t know is that he and Sirius used to creep along the wall and climb through the windows into each other’s rooms on the nights that their mother locked their doors, keeping quiet and always making sure to return to their own bedrooms before sunrise lest their secret be discovered.

That was all a long time ago, of course, and Regulus is considerably larger now than he was as a boy. But the creeping kudzu vines that have slowly been eating the western wall of the manor provide handholds to grip, and Regulus clenches his teeth and edges along the wall, determined to reach the window just a few feet away.

He taps on the glass once, twice. James is there in a heartbeat, and the window slides open, and then Regulus is wrapped in his arms, and he’s clinging so hard that he knows it must hurt—it must—but he can’t stop, couldn’t untwist his fingers from James’s shirt even if he wanted to.

“James—” he gasps, “I—”

James grabs his face, grips his jaw, pulls him into a brutal kiss that knocks their teeth together and rips the breath right out of Regulus’s lungs. They’re pushing at each other, trying to get closer, stumbling and off-balance. James crushes him back against the wall, kissing him like it’s the last thing that either of them are ever going to do. When they finally break apart, Regulus is panting. James presses their foreheads together, eyes squeezed shut, breathing just as hard.

“I’m so fucking mad at you, Reg,” he gasps, and Regulus nods, wordlessly, and then they’re kissing again.

“Minnie?” James asks, when they break apart again. Regulus shakes his head.

“I had to sell her, James—I'm sorry, I’m so sorry, I needed money for the train tickets—”

James presses his eyes shut, again, drawing in a shuddering breath.

“They killed Padfoot.”

His voice is raw. The words scatter, like they’re flinching away from his tongue.

“I know,” Regulus whispers.

James swallows, once, and then pushes away from him abruptly, turning to pace across the room. He keeps his voice low, but it still shakes with anger as he hisses,

“We need to get out of here, Reg. I don’t care what it is that your fucked-up family wants, I’m not going to be held prisoner here while you—you—”

“I’m sorry,” Regulus whispers, helplessly. James glares at him.

“We’ll use the sheets,” he says, moving over towards the bed, “Go out that window—help me make a rope—”

“No!”

Regulus nearly shouts, and has to remind himself at the last second to keep quiet. He moves over towards the bed, grabbing James’s hands.

“You can’t try to leave, James. They’ll kill you.”

James huffs, disbelieving, glare sharpening. “They left the window unlocked, Reg,” he grits out, “If you think I’m just gonna stay here, you’re a fool.”

“Just—look outside,” Regulus whispers, heart sinking, “Just look.”

James huffs again, shaking his head, but he moves over to the open window to look down over the grounds. At first, he’s just squinting into darkness—but Regulus sees the moment his eyes catch sight of something, brow furrowing, hands braced against the windowpane as he leans forward.

“Guards?” James whispers, staring out, “They’ve got patrols or something?”

Regulus shakes his head. “Not guards.”

James looks again.

It’s faint, but if Regulus listens closely he can hear it. The telltale shuffling gait, the quiet groans. Who knows how many, at this point. Regulus doesn’t want to guess.

James recoils, pulling away from the window like it’s bitten him. When he turns to Regulus, his face is a twisted mix of emotion—confusion, horror, shock.

“Fevered?” he gasps, forgetting for a moment to whisper. Regulus lifts a finger to his lips, glancing pointedly towards the door.

James shakes his head, still backing away. “What the fuck, Reg,” he whispers, reaching up to tug fingers through his hair only to realize that he can’t, with how short it’s been cut. “What the fuck?”

“They use them,” Regulus whispers, “It’s why they want a cure.”

James turns to him, eyes hardening.

“I think you need to tell me what the hell is going on.”

Regulus nods, swallowing. This is what he came here to do. Still—it feels as though there’s a rock lodged somewhere in his esophagus, like he’s slowly suffocating. He leans back against the wall, letting it support his weight, and wraps his arms around his stomach.

“They let them out at night,” Regulus whispers, “To roam the grounds. Easier than hiring guards. The fences around the property keep them in. The doors to the manor keep them out. And in the morning, they use animals to round them up—release a pig, let them chase it, corral them all back into the...storage facility where they’re kept.

“It started as an experiment. A way to see if they could even make...use of the Fevered. My father sees them as a potential source of free labor. My mother thinks they’re the damned, that god’s chosen have a right to do with them what they see fit. Tom...he plays into their delusions because it serves him to ingratiate himself to them. For now.”

“For now?” James asks, frowning. Regulus nods.

“Tom wants an army,” he whispers, “He knows that if he holds the cure, the secret to immunity...well. Who could stop him? If he doesn’t have to fear the Fevered, he and all his followers could use them, control them, set them on anyone who gets in their way. The church of the death eaters won’t just be some fringe religious sect that people roll their eyes at anymore. They’ll be...Tom will be the most powerful man in the country. In the world. The master of death itself.”

“And you knew?” James asks, staring at Regulus like he doesn’t recognize him. “You knew, and you still...”

“No, I didn’t—” Regulus breaks off, searching for words. I didn’t know, he wants to insist, I didn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t.

“I didn’t want to know,” he whispers, looking away. “I was so...enraptured, caught up in the discovery of my immunity that I didn’t...Sirius tried to tell me, but I wouldn’t listen. I was too focused. I wanted to be the first person to discover the cure.”

James doesn’t say anything. Regulus is too scared to look up—too afraid of what he might see. His own guilt, his own shame, reflected in the judgment of another man’s eyes.

“Tom wanted to test on Sirius, too. It would have made things faster, if more than one of us with immunity was willing...but Sirius wouldn’t let him. He kept trying to talk me out of it, made it very clear to both Tom and my parents that he didn’t approve of what we were doing. And he was always—he kept sneaking out, slipping off into town...Tom became convinced that he was meeting with someone, that he was going to sell out our secrets—or, worse, let somebody else use his immunity to try and find a cure.

“But Sirius always came back. He always came back for me. He started trying to convince me to run away, insisting that what Tom and I were doing was...was evil. I thought he was just jealous that I was finally—”

Regulus breaks off, swallowing the lump in his throat. Finally the favorite. Finally doing something for myself. Finally outshining him.

“I told him he was wrong. The only person I was testing on was myself—how could that be evil? Sure, we were using rats, testing the formula on them once we discovered that they could carry the Fever same as humans. But a few dead rats was nothing in the name of scientific advancement. And of course, eventually, we would need to move on to human testing—but we were still in the early stages. We wouldn’t be infecting anybody until we had the first iterations of a working cure. That’s what Tom and I agreed on. And I—believed him. I wanted to believe.”

When Regulus risks a glance up, James has locked his emotions behind a stony wall. He listens to Regulus talk, blank-faced, eyes revealing nothing about what any of this makes him think.

“But Sirius didn’t trust Tom,” Regulus’s voice breaks on his brother’s name, “And he was right. One day he took me out to an old barn on the far edge of the grounds, a building that hadn’t been used in ages. He dragged me to the window, and he forced me to look inside.”

Regulus can still remember it like it was yesterday. The furtive way Sirius’s eyes darted about, the way he hurried them across the grounds, shoving Regulus forward as the sun set. Look, he’d insisted, iron grip locked around Regulus’s wrist, Look, quick!

“And I saw them.”

Bodies. So many bodies. Upright and decaying, shuffling aimlessly around the empty barn, eyes devoid of life.

“Tom had been conducting his own tests, behind my back.”

Do you see now, Reggie? Don’t you see?

“On people.”

Regulus scrubs a hand over his face, trying to erase the image of Sirius’s earnest face from his mind. The hope in his brother’s eyes, that Regulus might finally—finally—see the light.

“I should have left,” he whispers, “The moment that he showed me. I should’ve left.”

The stone mask on James’s face cracks, incredulity bleeding through as he hisses,

“You didn’t?!”

Regulus laughs, bitterly, under his breath. Shakes his head.

“I went to Tom,” he says, “And asked what he was doing. Demanded answers. I told myself it was because I wanted to hold him accountable, but really—” he sucks in a breath, releases it. “Really, I think I was looking for an excuse. Anything, so that I could continue my work in naïve ignorance.”

His lips twist, against his will, into a sour, brittle smile.

“And Tom gave me one. Of course he did—said that all the people he’d tested on were volunteers. Said that they knew the risk, and agreed anyway. He’d promised them money, see, with the help of my father. One tiny little injection, and they could walk away with enough cash to feed their family for a month.”

James makes a small, disgusted noise in the back of his throat. “That’s—”

“Evil,” Regulus cuts him off, “I know.” He presses his eyes shut. “I knew, even though I didn’t want to. But...I ignored it. I told myself that they were informed volunteers, that it was all just the underbelly of scientific progress. I told Sirius that I was going to stay.”

He looks up, and meets James’s gaze. In his chest, his heart is rotting like an apple, decaying around its core.

“My brother looked at me the way you’re looking at me now.”

James shakes his head, and there’s pain in his eyes. The same way there was in Sirius’s.

“Why?” he asks, a broken whisper, “I don’t understand how you...why, Reg?”

Regulus smiles, sadly.

“I tried to tell you, James,” he whispers, “I was never a very good person.”

Something shifts in James’s eyes, then, but Regulus doesn’t wait to see it. He looks down at his arms, still wrapped around his stomach.

“Sirius couldn’t stay, after that. I think...I think he’d been planning to go for a while. I think the only reason he stuck around as long as he did was for me.”

Regulus runs a thumb along his forearm, over the mark beneath his sleeve. Scar tissue has knotted beneath the skin of the repeated injection site, leaving a hard lump beneath the already-twisted mark on top.

“He told me, the night he was running away. He told me to follow, once I was ready. That he would find me, wherever I went.”

You’ll realize. You’re a good person—you're not like them. You’ll realize one day, and when that day comes, you run, Reggie.

You run, and you keep on running.

It’s getting to the part that’s harder to talk about. The part where just saying the words feels like digging into gums, like pulling out teeth. Regulus closes his eyes, and keeps them shut.

“But Tom found out,” he says, and it’s no longer an effort to keep his voice low. The words are barely a whisper. “He found out, somehow, that Sirius was planning to leave that night. And Tom started his new...experiment. Let the Fevered he’d been hiding out to roam.”

Behind his closed eyes, he’s back at his window. He’s looking out, watching Sirius’s dark form moving across the grass. Watching the swarm of figures that seem to pour out of nowhere, drawn to the body-heat of life like moths to a flame.

“They...there were so many of them. I couldn’t even see—they surrounded him, and they just—I could hear them just—”

“Reg,” James breathes, horrified. Regulus shakes his head.

“I ran downstairs,” he says, feeling those pounding steps under his feet, the frantic adrenaline rush as he sprinted towards the door, “I tried—I thought if I could just get out there in time, that maybe...”

He pauses. Takes a breath. Presses fingers into the lump on his arm. Swallows down the lump in his throat.

“But it was too late. Tom was there, with my mother, my father—they wouldn’t let me. They kept saying it wouldn’t make a difference, that Sirius had already stopped screaming.”

Regulus breathes. In, out.

“By the time the sun rose, we couldn’t even recognize the body. They lured the Fevered back into the barn, and it was just....scraps. The kind of mess you’d see on a butcher’s table. They gave me his gun, and the blood was still wet...”

“Reg.”

The word is soft, quiet. Regulus opens his eyes, and James is looking at him, and he doesn’t deserve it. Doesn’t deserve softness, or quiet. Regulus doesn’t deserve anything from James, and least of all kindness.

Still, James opens his arms, and Regulus is across the room before he can stop himself, collapsing into them.

“You can’t run,” he chokes out, clinging to James so hard his fingers ache. “The only reason I got away is because they weren’t expecting it, but they’re expecting it now, James, and—and even if you made it past the gates, they’d hunt you down, they’d find you, like they found me, and—I can’t—you can’t—”

“Okay, Reg,” James whispers, stroking his hair, “Okay. I won’t try to run. I’m not going anywhere.”

Regulus swallows, hard, and pulls back just enough to look into James’s eyes.

“I’m going to protect you,” he insists, digging thumbs into shoulders, noses so close they nearly touch. “I’ll give them what they want, James, and I’ll make sure they let you go. No one’s going to hurt you. I won’t let them. I swear, I won’t let them.”

James shakes his head, and drags Regulus back to his chest, and doesn’t say anything at all.

*  *  *

“This is Maria,” Tom says. Regulus nearly drops the vial in his hand.

“No,” he shakes his head, backing away, despite knowing that there’s nowhere to go.

“She’s a volunteer.”

“Tom, I said—”

Regulus breaks off, glancing at the girl. She can’t be older than seventeen, hair a black curtain, eyes dark and wary. She glances between Tom and Regulus, clearly apprehensive. Tom’s got one hand on her shoulder.

“Can I speak to you privately, for a moment?” Regulus asks, gritting his teeth and setting the vial back in its tray. Tom squeezes Maria’s shoulder, gesturing towards the door.

“Wait outside for a moment, dear,” he tells her, voice sure and smooth. The girl darts one last look around the room, then steps outside, arms crossed protectively over her chest. Tom shuts the door to the lab behind her.

“Well?”

“I told you,” Regulus hisses, immediately, “I’m not ready yet.”

“I think you are.”

“It’s not consistent yet—we don’t know how it might affect a human—”

“Which is exactly why we need to start testing on something other than rats, Doctor Black.” There’s a mocking twist to the word when Tom says it, always. Patronizing. Doctor, like Regulus is still a child despite his years of education.

Regulus shakes his head. “I’m not ready.”

“It’s been nearly ten weeks, Regulus.”

“Science like this takes time—it's incredibly precise, you can’t just rush—”

“My patience is wearing thin.” Tom isn’t smiling anymore. His eyes are the brown-black of beetle shells. “I am not a fool, Regulus. Don’t try to act as if you were starting from scratch. It was I, after all, who oversaw the preservation of your research in your absence.”

Regulus swallows. It’s true—the day after he agreed to continue his work, Tom led him down to the familiar lab, built off a back wing of the manor. All of his previous research—his notes, his equations, even some samples—was exactly as he’d left it. There was even additional work; tests and experiments run in his absence, notes from other doctors that Tom had sought out and worked with. Regulus didn’t ask what happened to those doctors, once they realized they couldn’t give Tom what he wanted.

So it’s true. He’s been making progress—rapid progress. And though Regulus hates himself for it, he can’t deny the old, familiar thrill each time he moves a step closer, can’t hold himself back entirely from the frenzy of learning, of knowing, of discovering. What he’s doing in this lab could alter medicine as they know it, forever. He could become one of the most important names in scientific history, spoken about years down the line in the same breath as Darwin or Newton or Pasteur.

But that’s not why he’s doing it. It’s not. Regulus knows now, in a way he couldn’t let himself know before, that this sort of advancement comes with a price. And it isn’t a price he’d be willing to pay any longer, if it weren’t for James.

James.

James, who once spent days roaming under a sky so big it could swallow you, and now spends his days confined to a single room. James, whose dog was shot right in front of him, who was torn from the land where his wife and child are buried. James, who still holds Regulus at night, who strokes his hair, even with seeds of resentment blooming in the backs of his eyes. James, who doesn’t deserve any of this. James, who shouldn’t be here at all.

“Perhaps,” Tom says, as if he can read Regulus’s mind, “The problem is simply that you lack...the proper motivation? I’m sure we could—”

“No.”

Regulus flattens his voice, his face. Uncurls his hands from the fists they’ve created.

Tom smiles.

“Well, then,” he steps toward the door, brows raised, “I suppose I should bring our volunteer back in.”

That night, after Regulus has watched Maria convulse in her restraints and writhe and sweat and succumb to the Fever—after he has timed how long it took for the illness to stop her heart, how long it took to bring her back, after he has taken blood samples and carefully stored them for testing, to try and figure out what went wrong—that night, he creeps along the ledge to James’s window. He grips the vines beneath his fingers, and imagines letting go—imagines allowing himself to fall backwards, to stare up at the sky as he waits for the bodies shuffling below to notice him, to converge and tear him apart the way they did Sirius. He could feel what his brother felt.

But James would still be stuck in that room. There’s a reason, Regulus reminds himself, that he’s doing this.

James is waiting for him at the window, the way he always does. He pulls Regulus inside, into his arms, breathing in deep.

“They let you out today?” Regulus mumbles, into his shirt. He can feel James nodding against the top of his head.

“Got to take a lovely stroll around the manor,” he says dryly, pulling back, “Really admire the décor.”

Regulus hates this. He doesn’t think he’s ever hated anything as much as he hates this.

“I’m going to get you out of here,” he says. He says it every night. James nods. He nods every night. He lifts a hand, strokes a thumb gently over Regulus’s cheek, drinking in his features like a man dying of thirst. It makes Regulus want to shove a hand down his own throat and rip out his stomach.

“We, um.” James’s thumb is still rough, calloused from years spent on a farm. “We’ve started testing on—on people.”

James stills. He stares at Regulus for a moment, then steps back and scrubs both hands across his face.

“Fuck, Reg.”

Regulus watches him, cataloguing the disgust, the horror, the frustration. He deserves it. He deserves this.

“Her name was Maria,” he says.

James stares at him. The silence curls around the space between them, a snake twisted in the branches of a tree.

“I don’t understand what you want me to say,” James tells him, finally. Regulus sucks in a breath.

“I just—” he breaks off, searching for an answer. I just needed to tell someone. I needed to say it. I needed you to stop touching me like I—like I’m not—

“I thought you should know,” he says, finally, “You deserve to know that I’m—what I—”

“Reg.”

“You look at me like that and it’s—I just don’t want you to think that I’m—”

“Reg.”

“I killed someone today, James,” Regulus says. He needs James to understand this. He needs to know that James understands this. “I injected her with an underdeveloped vaccine, and I infected her with the Fever, and I knew it would kill her. And I timed—I timed it, and then I—”

“Stop.”

“I’m not a good person, James.”

Regulus knows that he’s babbling, now—that he’s hardly coherent, that his voice is cracking, that he’s barely managing to keep quiet. But he just needs—he needs James to understand. He needs James to understand. He needs James to know now, to understand now, because he can’t keep balancing on the edge of this knife, waiting for the day that James finally looks at him and sees him for who he is.

“I’m not a good person, and I just—you look at me and it’s—I don’t deserve—it isn’t fair—I’m the reason—”

“Reg.”

James is there again. Regulus is in his arms, again. Chin to shoulder. Face to neck. He killed someone today, and now James is holding him, and Regulus feels like his whole body is one big stain. One spreading, bloody thing.

He’s crying. He doesn’t deserve this, but he can’t let go.

“Shh,” James says, hugging him closer, holding him tighter. “I know. I know.”

“You don’t—you—”

“Reg,” James says, and his voice is weary, defeated. The voice of a man who’s spent weeks locked in a house full of people who look at him like he isn’t worth the dirt on the bottom of their shoes. The voice of a man who knows what it’s like for the world to kick you while you’re down.

“Reg,” he whispers, sounding more exhausted than anything, “You’re not the first bad person I’ve loved.”

*  *  *

The drinking starts one week after Maria.

It’s not fair, Regulus knows. Not fair to James, who’s barely allowed to leave that fucking prison of a room, who no doubt waits for him, every night, standing at the window like a ghost. Not fair that Regulus gets to run, gets to escape the tomb he’s created in that godforsaken lab and wander through the swampy heat of the San Antonio sun, down to Dolorosa street, where all the sinners gather to spend their money and forget that the devil lies in wait to judge them the moment they set foot outside the sporting district come sunrise.

Sirius used to come here. Used to sneak out, then come back sweat-plastered and glowing, invigorated. Regulus never asked him what he was doing, and he never shared. He always did his best to hide it, but it was inevitable that their parents would find out—and then came the fights, and the locks on the doors, and the sermons they were dragged to, the church where their mother would grip their shoulders and force them down into the pews, listening to the pastors sing about hell and God and sin. Sirius was debasing himself,  Walburga shrieked, muddying the Black family name by rolling in the muck with the pigs.

Orion would stand by, arms folded, a stoic picture of disapproval. And then, once their mother had shouted herself hoarse, he would take his sons into his office, shut the door, and explain to them how the world was meant to work. All men, he would say, fall into sin. The sporting district was one of life’s necessary evils, a place for men to purge their base instincts before returning to polite society. Better to fuck a whore than to tarnish the reputation of a respectable woman, after all.

Below the line of their father’s desk, Regulus watched his brother’s hands curl into fists on his knees. But Sirius smiled, and laughed, a mean, slimy echo of their father’s oily smirk. Orion told Sirius to keep a low profile, to ensure that he wasn’t dragging the family name into any sort of disrepute. Then he clapped his eldest son on the shoulder, a red-blooded American man.

Regulus did not get the same sort of speech about purging base instincts when he was discovered in the pantry, on his knees in front of the new kitchen boy. After that, Orion began to rethink his leniency towards sin, accompanying their mother when she dragged her sons to church—just in time for Tom to arrive in San Antonio with his death eaters, preaching about damnation and redemption and God’s chosen.

Regulus supposes that it was all only a matter of time, after that.

Now, though, nobody tries to stop him from leaving the house in the evenings. They must know where he’s going—Regulus knows they send Avery to follow him, trailing him through the streets. But they all know he won’t be running away again, not with James locked away in his proverbial tower. And apparently Regulus’s family has given up on all pretense of saving his immortal soul—after all, they’ve already made him a murderer in pursuit of their precious cure. So they let him run as far as he can—down to Dolorosa, into the Vaudeville saloon, all the way to the bottom of a bottle. James waits at the window, and Regulus runs until the sun rises. Then he scrapes himself off the barstool, and returns to that house, and continues his work.

Regulus has been going to the sporting district for one week, four days, when he realizes that Avery isn’t the only person following him.

He ignores it at first. Doesn’t think anything of the man with the scarred face and rust-tanned skin who seems to appear in every saloon that Regulus frequents, sitting at corner tables or the end of the bar and nursing glasses of cheap whiskey like it’s something worth savoring. He’s odd-looking, crooked mouth and crooked nose and eyes too far apart. Regulus wouldn’t pay him any attention, except for the fact that there’s a sharpness to his gaze that feels out of place in a bar where everyone else is doing their best to get glazey-eyed and far away, like he’s the only man in all the haze of cigar-smoke who isn’t trying to run. The only one who knows exactly where he is, and knows that it’s exactly where he wants to be.

Regulus starts to switch up saloons. He moves around, doesn’t stick to the same place. And still, every night without fail, the scarred man appears before Regulus can get halfway through a bottle, sharp-eyed and watching even on the nights when Regulus manages to shake Avery off.

Two weeks pass. Regulus watches five people die in the chair he used to strap himself into. On the nights he works up the nerve to go to James, all he can see is the blood on his own hands, the way it drags across his lover’s skin each time they touch. On the nights he runs away, the scarred man materializes across the bar, stalking him like a wolf.

And then, one night, the stool beside Regulus drags back. When he looks up, the scarred man is sitting down, shooting him a crooked smile, eyes just as sharp as always.

“Let me get your next drink,” he says.

Regulus stares at him, and doesn’t say anything. This isn’t his first drink of the night—his mind already feels foggy.

The man doesn’t seem bothered by the lack of response. He just catches the bartender’s eye, nodding towards Regulus’s empty glass.

“Daniel—otro, por favor.”

The bartender, an older gentleman with a salt-and-pepper beard, gives the scarred man an exasperated look.

“Es un problema, Remus. Uno de esos cabrones adinerados.” He shakes his head, reaching for the whiskey. “Encuentra a otro chico bonito.”

“Ah, Daniel,” the crooked smile grows, “Ya sabes cómo me encanta un cabrón rico.”

The bartender shakes his head, muttering something under his breath, and reaches over to refill Regulus’s glass. Regulus looks down at the amber liquid, blinking. Then he turns to the man beside him.

“No…habla español,” he says, awkwardly. The bartender snorts, moving away. The man beside him grins.

“I know,” he says, lifting his own glass to clink it against Regulus’s, “Name’s Remus. What’s yours?”

Regulus shakes his head, taking a sip of his drink. The whiskey burns going down. Everything in San Antonio burns going down.

“Doesn’t matter.”

“I think it does.”

Regulus rolls his eyes. “Fuck off,” he mutters, hunching his shoulders and turning back to his glass. Whatever Remus is looking for, he’s not going to get it from Regulus.

Still, he can feel the other man’s eyes on him, just as sharp as ever. After a moment, Remus leans in, that crooked smile still stretched across his face.

“Mind if I call you Reggie, then?”

Regulus freezes, every muscle in his body suddenly tense. The only person who’s ever called him Reggie is—

“What the fuck d’you want?” he spits, nearly knocking over his glass as he jerks away. Remus reaches out, grabbing it before it can spill and slinging an arm around Regulus’s shoulders in the same motion. His wiry arms are stronger than they look; he holds Regulus with an iron grip, keeping him trapped at his stool.

“Careful, Regulus,” he murmurs, voice low, “You haven’t quite lost your shadow tonight.”

Adrenaline burns the liquor-haze from Regulus’s blood, setting his heart pounding. When he glances over his shoulder, sure enough, Avery is loitering in a back corner of the saloon, seemingly immersed in a card game and yet positioned so that he has a perfect line of sight on Regulus.

“I’m here to help you, Regulus,” Remus murmurs, still in that same low voice, “But we’ve got to play this right, okay? Don’t want your shadow getting the wrong idea.”

Regulus grips his drink so hard that his knuckles go white.

“Who are you?”

“I’m…a friend of your brother.”

All the air has caught fire inside his lungs. Regulus is going to suffocate.

“I know that you ran away, Regulus. And I know you didn’t want to come back. You don’t want to be working in that lab anymore, do you?”

Regulus forces himself to breathe. In, out.

“This is a trick,” he whispers, half to himself, “You’re—this is some kind of test, isn’t it? Or—”

“It’s not a trick,” Remus mutters, grip tightening on his shoulder, “Regulus, listen to me very carefully. This may be the only chance we get. I need you to trust me.”

“How do I—”

“The Colt,” Remus whispers, moving so that his lips brush against Regulus’s ear. If Avery’s watching, Regulus knows what this will look like. His stomach is a mess of nerves, every hair standing on end.

“You’re the one that scratched his name on that gun,” Remus continues, ignoring the disapproving look that the bartender shoots him. “You were angry that he wouldn’t let you use it. When he got mad at you, you told him that you were just making sure everyone would know it was his gun, since he was so opposed to sharing.”

“How do you—”

“I told you,” Remus huffs, “I’m a friend of your brother’s. Now, I need you trust me. Can you do that?”

Regulus swallows. His mind still feels foggy from the whiskey, but he can’t think—he doesn’t know how anyone could know that story. Not unless Sirius told them himself. And if Remus really was a friend of his brother’s…maybe he knows something. Maybe he knows why Sirius kept sneaking out, knows what he was planning, how he meant to run away…

“Yes,” Regulus whispers. Remus nods.

“I’m gonna help you up,” he murmurs, moving his arm from Regulus’s shoulders to his waist, “Stumble a little, like you’re drunk—but not too drunk. I don’t want your bodyguard swooping in to save the day.”

Regulus nods, leaning against Remus as he stands, swaying unsteadily. Like a naïve boy, letting a man pick him up in a bar in the one goddamn place in the world where anything goes. The bartender shakes his head as Remus guides Regulus towards the doors, dragging him out into the cool night air.

“Come on,” he whispers, “Follow me.”

Remus guides them through the sporting district like he’s got a map of the streets painted on the back of his hand, ducking down alleys and twisting through streets, a route so tangled that within five minutes Regulus has no idea where they are. He follows blindly, letting Remus lead him, wondering if he’s making the biggest mistake of his life—if he’s going to end up dead in a ditch somewhere, or beaten bloody and crawling back to his parents’ doorstep.

But then Remus pauses, tugging him back against a grimy brick wall, panting slightly.

“I think we’ve lost him,” he whispers, ducking his head around the corner to check. Regulus nods, numbly, heart pounding. Remus shoots him a grin, all teeth, and then mutters,

“C’mon, then.”

Remus takes his hand, and pulls him around another corner, and guides them up the front steps of a two-story building. He knocks on the door, then steps back, waiting. It only takes a moment for it to swing open.

The woman in front of them is clad in a severe dress, high-necked and broad-shouldered, cinched tightly at the waist. Her lips and cheeks are tinted with rouge, sleeves pushed up to her elbows.

“Lupin,” she says, then raises a brow at Regulus. “Who’s your friend?”

“Can we just get the usual room, Ms. Porter?”

The woman sighs, shaking her head. “S’pose I don’t want to know,” she mutters, extending a palm. Remus smiles, digging into his pocket and pulling out a handful of money, which he presses into the woman’s palm. She curls her fingers around his hand as he does, holding him in place for a moment.

“You tell him that I’m gonna start raising the rent if he intends to stay much longer. Thought I was supposed to have both of you out of my hair three months ago.”

“Plans change, Fannie,” Remus shrugs, still smiling, “But trust me—he’ll be moving on soon. And until then, of course, he’ll be happy to compensate you fairly for your troubles.”

The woman sniffs, eyeing Remus shrewdly.

“And you,” she says, “I want you to take another look at some of my girls. Della’s been having some troubles, and that doctor in town is a brute who charges an arm and a leg just for his discretion.”

“Tell Della I can see her tomorrow,” Remus calls over his shoulder, dragging Regulus past the threshold. He grins, winking back at the woman, “I’m afraid I’ll have my hands full tonight.”

With that, he pulls Regulus towards a staircase, guiding him to the upper floor of the house. From below, Regulus can hear the sounds of squealing laughter and piano music, the clinking of glasses. As they move upstairs, walking down a dimly lit hallway, the sounds coming from behind the closed doors they pass make it very clear just what sort of establishment Remus has brought him to.

“I…” Regulus falters, overwhelmed by the muffled moaning and high-pitched gasps that leak from the rooms they pass, “Where are we…”

“Shh,” Remus hisses, pulling him all the way to the very end of the hall, stopping in front of the last door on the left. “Just trust me.”

He knocks on this door, too—a pattern, three short raps, then two long. Regulus waits, confused and tipsy and on edge, shifting back and forth as his heart pounds in his chest.

Then the door swings open, and Regulus looks up and finds himself staring at a ghost.

He blinks.

He blinks again.

I’m dead, he thinks, Oh god, I’m dead, and James is never getting out.

Then the ghost drags him forward, and Regulus trips, and his brother is pulling him into a hug so tight that it crushes all the breath from his lungs.

“Reg,” he half-laughs, half-sobs, “Oh my god, Reggie!”

“Sirius?”

Regulus is clinging to him, clinging so tight that he thinks he might break his fingers, and Sirius is flesh and blood and warm and whole and not in pieces—he was in pieces—

“You—you—you’re dead, you’re dead, I saw—”

“Reggie—Reg, it’s—”

“No, you—you died, you’re dead, you’re dead—”

“Reg!”

Sirius grabs his face, hands firm against his jaw, fingers curling around the back of his neck. Regulus can’t breathe—he’s gasping, chest heaving, sucking in shallow breaths.

“Reg, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s me, I’m okay—just calm down, just breathe, come on—”

“Fuck!”

Regulus pushes, as hard as he can, and watches Sirius stumble back. And then—he’s hitting him, as hard as he can, fists colliding with his arms, his shoulders, his chest—any part of his brother that he can reach.

“You died! You died, you bastard—you fucking—died—”

“Whoa, hey, hey!”

Someone’s grabbing his arms—Remus, fucking Remus, and Regulus is going to kill him—going to kill both of them—

“It’s okay—Remus, it’s okay, let him go—”

“No me dijiste que tu hermano está bien pinche loco!”

Sirius laughs, breathlessly.

“Está bien, mi amor—I’ve got it.”

Remus huffs, but then his arms are gone—Regulus stumbles forward, and Sirius is there, sweeping him into a hug so tight he can hardly move.

“Let me—fucking—go—”

“Reggie. Hey. Hey, I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry, Reg—I’m so sorry.”

Regulus doesn’t know why he’s crying. He doesn’t know why his body won’t listen to him—why he’s trying to fight, but all he can do it slump against his brother’s chest, tears soaking the material of his shirt as he sobs. Sirius hugs him tight, leaning his head against the top of Regulus’s.

“I’m sorry, Reggie,” he murmurs, “I’m so sorry.”

Regulus feels like a little kid. Like he’s just a kid, and it was all a nightmare, and his brother is here now.

His brother is here.

“You—” he sniffs, wiping his snotty nose against his brother’s shirt, “You owe me a fucking explanation, you prick.”

Sirius laughs, and squeezes him tighter.

“I know.”

“You died,” Regulus repeats, pulling back to scrub at the tears on his cheeks with one fist. “I saw…I watched it happen, Sirius. They gave me your gun, and the blood was still…”

Sirius grimaces, lifting one hand to tug through his hair, a familiar gesture. Behind him, Remus has moved to lean against the wall, watching Regulus with a wary look on his face.

“It was faked, Reg.”

“Faked.” Regulus’s voice is flat, disbelieving. “Well it was pretty fucking convincing, Sirius.”

“I know, I’m sorry, I just—I needed them to believe it was real. It was the only way they wouldn’t come looking for me.”

Regulus shakes his head, squeezing his eyes shut. He can feel a headache coming on, a slow pounding against his temples growing more and more insistent.

“Explain,” he orders, voice rough.

And Sirius does.

Sirius explains how, after the groundbreaking discovery of his immunity to the Fever, he sought out someone who could help him. He explains how he met Dr. Remus Lupin after asking around at the brothels—he charged a fair price, Miss Porter told him, not an extortionist like some of the others that she’d hired to treat her girls.

So Sirius went to Lupin. Found him working in a local coroner’s office. Spent some time figuring out whether he was trustworthy, and then—once Sirius was certain he was—explained why he needed Lupin’s help.

Regulus listens, thinking about all those nights that Sirius snuck out. About Tom’s growing paranoia, his certainty that Sirius was out there selling the secrets wrapped up in his blood.

In the end, Tom was right. The entire time that Regulus spent trying to find a cure—Sirius was trying, too. Every argument they had, every time Regulus accused him of being selfish, of failing to think of the greater good…It wasn’t that Sirius didn’t care.

He just knew better than to let such power fall into their parents’ hands.

Into Tom’s hands.

Regulus has never felt like such a fool.

“You never told me,” Regulus mumbles, sitting down heavily on the bed that lies against one wall of the room. He feels dizzy, like the floor is moving beneath his feet. Sirius sits beside him, reaching out to take his hand.

“I couldn’t…trust you, Reggie. You were so…wrapped up in it. Remus and I—we didn’t have a lab, didn’t have all the latest equipment that mother and father could buy. And you just—you wanted it fast. You were so focused on cracking the code, you didn’t…”

He trails off, helplessly, staring at Regulus with wide, beseeching eyes. Regulus knows that it’s the truth—he does. He understands why his brother couldn’t trust him.

That doesn’t make it hurt any less.

“You were planning to leave, the whole time.”

Sirius swallows, nods.

“Yes.”

“But you waited.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Sirius glances at Remus, once, who’s still leaning against the wall. Then he turns back to Regulus, squeezing his hand.

“I thought I could change your mind.”

Regulus shuts his eyes.

“Your…death,” he grits out, “Was that…was that meant to change my mind?”

“No,” Sirius responds, immediately, “No, Reg, that wasn’t—I swear, I didn’t want to hurt you. I didn’t. It was just…” he blows out a breath, tugs a hand through his hair. “Tom was too suspicious. I knew he wouldn’t just…let me leave. And I couldn’t have them looking for me once I was gone. I needed…I needed all of you to believe that I was dead.”

“Mission accomplished,” Regulus mutters, folding his arms over his chest. Sirius winces like a kicked dog.

“I’m sorry,” he says, again.

“How did you do it?”

Sirius glances at Remus, hesitating. The other man raises a brow, inclining his head slightly as if to say go ahead.

“Remus stole a body,” Sirius says, voice dropping low, “From the morgue. One similar enough to be…mistaken for me. Once the Fevered were through with it. A little pig’s blood, and they thought it was fresh meat.”

The headache is getting worse. Regulus presses the heels of his hands against his temples, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees.

“That doesn’t make sense,” he grits out, “They would’ve attacked you, too.”

“Not if they can’t smell us.”

Regulus blinks. Sits up.

“…what?”

“Remus figured it out,” Sirius says, nodding towards Lupin, “S’why they don’t attack each other. They only want fresh meat—won’t go after anything that doesn’t smell alive.”

Regulus nods, slowly. That…makes sense. He’d been so focused on finding a cure, something to eradicate the Fever or neutralize it entirely, that he’d never stopped to think about what sorts of measures might render the Fevered harmless in lieu of stopping the disease itself.

“So you…how did you…?”

“Formaldehyde,” Remus says, stepping forward from the wall. He leans against the bedpost nearest to Sirius, explaining, “It’s got a strong enough scent to hide behind—at least, for a few minutes. Once you start sweating, breathing hard…well. It’s not perfect. But it was enough to sneak past them, especially when they were distracted.”

Regulus stares straight ahead, studying the peeling wallpaper, trying to process. Sirius isn’t dead. Sirius was never dead. Sirius was never in any real danger. The body they scraped off the ground in pieces wasn’t even his.

“You left the gun on purpose,” he says, flatly.

“Yeah.”

They’re quiet, for a bit. Regulus thinks about the fact that his brother didn’t trust him. The fact that Sirius never told him any of this.

Then he thinks about everything he did to make Sirius distrust him in the first place.

Finally, Regulus drops his hands to his knees, trying to ignore the headache that continues to press like fists behind his skull.

“Why are you still here?” he asks. Sirius blinks, as if he’s thrown by the question.

“Because…you’re here,” he says, as though it’s obvious. Regulus shakes his head.

“I don’t understand.”

“I—” Sirius breaks off, taking a breath just to blow it back out. He sighs, heavily, and then says,

“Remus and I were going to leave. That was the plan—Remus knows some people, people with equipment we can use, people we can trust. We were supposed to leave, to go meet them, but then…”

“I ran away,” Regulus breathes, as it begins to dawn on him.

Sirius nods.

“You ran away.”

“Then…you…?”

“I’ve been looking for you, Reggie,” Sirius murmurs, reaching out to squeeze his hand. “This entire goddamn year.” He laughs, wearily, shaking his head. “You’re a lot better at hiding than I gave you credit for.”

“I was in Montana,” Regulus mumbles, dazed.

“Montana?” Sirius frowns, muttering half to himself, “Thought you’d go east…”

Regulus shakes his head. “You told me to stay away from the cities.”

A strange look flits over his brother’s face, a mix of guilt and pride. He swallows, hard, before saying,

“Yeah. I did, didn’t I?”

Regulus nods back. He doesn’t know where the lump in his throat has come from.

“Right, well,” Sirius clears his throat, wiping the back of one hand across his eyes, “I’ve been looking, following any lead I could get. Remus—he’s been here, holding down the fort. Keeping an eye on Tom, as much as he could. When he found out they’d caught you, brought you back…he sent word to me. I came as fast as I could, but then we had to figure out how we were going to contact you…” Sirius laughs, a little ruefully, shaking his head. “Any other time I’d yell at you for picking up a drinking problem, Reg, but…well. Guess it worked out in our favor.”

“I don’t have a drinking problem,” Regulus mutters, kicking at the bed post with one foot. Sirius rolls his eyes.

“Well, you’re sure trying hard to develop one.” He knocks his shoulder into Regulus’s, smiling. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter—what matters is that you’re here. We’ve got horses stabled a few blocks south; if we leave now, we should be able to make it out of the city before dawn. Our contacts are waiting at—”

“What?” Regulus jerks away, shaking his head. “No, Sirius, I—I can’t leave.”

His brother’s face falls, immediately, disappointment and weary resignment. Behind Sirius, Remus has gone stoney, glaring at Regulus like he can’t believe what he’s just said.

“Reg, I…” Sirius swallows, reaching out to grab his shoulder, “When you ran away, I thought…you’re not still…”

“No—no, you don’t understand, it’s not—”

Regulus breaks off, swallowing hard. He glances between his brother and Remus, feeling suddenly trapped, like one of the frogs they used to pin down in medical school. There’s a sharp-edged scalpel, sliding cleanly down his stomach, peeling back layers of skin and fat to reveal everything hidden inside.

“I met someone,” he says, forcing the words out, “In Montana. Someone who saved my life.”

Sirius is frowning, now, clearly confused. Remus still looks angry, though the glare isn’t quite as intense as before.

Regulus turns away from both of them, staring down at his own hands as he forces himself to speak.

“It’s why I was there. I was hiding with…him. With James. He—he didn’t know who I was. Didn’t know where I came from. But he let me stay anyway, because—because he’s a good man, and—”

Fuck. Regulus lifts a hand, scrubbing fiercely at his eyes, cursing the tears that threaten to choke him. Sirius and Remus don’t say anything—just wait, listening, for him to finish.

“And when I thought I’d been found, I ran away. I ran and left him behind, and they—they got him. They still have him. They’re holding him prisoner, Sirius, and if I don’t go back—if I don’t do what they want—”

“Okay—hey, Reg, it’s okay—”

Regulus presses a fist to his mouth, folding forward into his brother’s arm. Sirius hugs him, rubbing a hand soothingly over his back, and Regulus tries to stop himself from shaking as he thinks of James.

James, who he ran from.

James, who he’s still running from.

James, who deserves someone better.

“Okay,” Sirius says, firmly, pulling back just enough to grab Regulus’s face, pressing their foreheads together. “Reggie, listen. Listen to me.”

“I have to, Sirius—I have to do what they say, I can’t let them—”

“Hey! Hey,” Sirius wraps one hand around the back of his neck, squeezing tight, “We’re not gonna leave him, Reg, okay?”

“Sirius,” Remus murmurs, from somewhere behind him.

“We won’t leave him,” Sirius repeats, though Regulus isn’t sure whether it’s for his benefit or for Lupin. Still, Remus falls silent, and Sirius takes a deep breath.

“Here’s what we’ll do, Reg,” he says, slowly, like he’s working out the words as he says them. “First, you’re gonna tell me exactly where they’re keeping him…”

*  *  *

Regulus stands at the window, watching the sun set. Soon, August will end, and the stifling summer heat will begin its slow fade into autumn. Of course, that doesn’t mean all that much in San Antonio—the sun beats relentlessly here, even into late October. Still, as Regulus watches the sun sink below the horizon, he knows the night is already starting to bring the cool promise of winter’s breath. No season lasts forever. Not even in Texas.

Avery leered at him when he decided to stay in tonight, retiring to his room after another dinner seated across from parents who can barely stand to look at him. But Avery’s been leering ever since this morning, when Regulus stumbled out of the brothel with Remus’s arm around his waist, shirt half-unbuttoned, hair mussed. It didn’t take much effort to act ashamed, allowing Avery to drag him back to the manor like a dog with its tail between its legs. It’s one thing to follow a man out of a sporting district saloon at night with three glasses of whiskey in his belly. It’s another to follow him out of a brothel in the light of day, to look around at the sneering faces beneath the harsh sunlight that tell him exactly what they think he’s been doing, and exactly what they think of him for it, even without any words.

“Guess loyalty has never been your strong suit, eh?” Avery muttered, as he shoved Regulus up the manor steps. Regulus didn’t say anything, though something burned in his chest, acidic.

By the time he made it to the lab, Tom had another volunteer waiting.

The sun slides below the horizon.

Regulus lights a cigarette, listening for the familiar faint groans, the quiet sound of shuffling feet. He chain-smokes, drinking in ash like whiskey, knowing that James must be waiting, at the window, as he does every night. He wonders if the other man is looking, if he’s watching the shadowy movement of the bodies below. Wonders if he notices two figures different from the rest, darting with sure, quick movements, in and out of the thin moonlight.

Regulus isn’t sure how much time passes.

He doesn’t start moving until he hears screams.

Once it begins, it’s quick. The problem, see, with using the Fevered like some sort of twisted guard dogs, is that there’s no one left with a functioning brain to watch the doors. Nobody left to actually recognize friend from foe, dead from undead. No one to stop Sirius and Remus, doused in the smell of formaldehyde, from picking the unwatched locks, from letting the doors to the manor swing open.

The Fevered wander, aimless. Drawn to the scent of fresh meat like moths to a flame.

Regulus hears gunshots, footsteps, shouting. It’s not long before he hears Avery yelling, called away to the slaughterhouse that now lies downstairs, all hands on deck as they try to secure the doors and put down the Fevered and protect God’s chosen from the wrath of the damned.

Now, Regulus thinks, the moment he hears Avery’s footsteps pounding downstairs, growing fainter and fainter, until there’s nothing but silence in the hallway outside. He draws out the lockpicks that Remus gave him, setting to work on the door. It takes a few tries—he tries to remember exactly what Remus showed him, exactly how to move his trembling hands. By the time he hears the telltale click, the screaming downstairs has only grown louder.

They don’t have much time.

Regulus sucks in a breath, lunging towards the door to Sirius’s old room.

“James?!” he calls out desperately, frantically. There’s the sound of footsteps—then, voice muffled from behind the door,

“Reg?!”

Regulus half-laughs, half-sobs, crouching in front of the door to begin work on the lock immediately.

“I’m going to get you out,” he croaks, doing his best to keep his hands steady, “Just—just hang on—”

“Reg? What’s going on?! I heard shouting—what—”

The door swings open, and Regulus throws himself into James’s arms with enough force that he nearly knocks both of them over. James sways back a step, bracing himself, gripping Regulus by the shoulders.

“Reg—what—?”

“We’re leaving,” Regulus gasps, breathlessly, “We’re getting out, James, right now.”

“What?! How—”

“No time—no time, come on—”

Regulus tears the bottle of formaldehyde out of his pocket, another gift from Remus. He opens it slowly, careful not to spill a single drop.

“Come here, come here…”

James wrinkles his nose in disgust, staring down at the bottle.

“What is that?! It smells—”

“I know,” Regulus chants, as he begins to dab the clear liquid on James’s throat, his wrists, the pulse points of his neck. James winces, eyes watering, hissing,

“It stings—”

“I know, I’m sorry, just trust me, I need you to trust me….”

Regulus feels hysterical, half-mad. This is insane. What they’re doing is insane. There’s no way this plan will work—it’s half-baked, rushed, thrown together in a single sleepless night, no time to rest—

“Hey.”

James has his hand. James is holding Regulus’s free hand in both of his, an anchor, a warm, grounding weight.

“I trust you, Reg,” he says.

Regulus swallows. Breathes. Nods.

“Okay,” he tips the bottle, begins to dab formaldehyde on his own skin, “Okay. We’re getting out, James. I’m getting you out.”

The screams grow louder once they creep downstairs. The front door to the manor is open wide, bodies crowding into the foyer, and on the ground—

“Jesus,” James gasps, sharp and sudden.

Avery is a bloody mess, a torn-up pulp of bone and meat, half-screaming, half-sobbing, hands twitching uselessly as the Fevered dig hungry hands into the cavern of his ribcage, the ropes of his intestines.

“Come on,” Regulus hisses, tugging on James’s hand, “We’ve go to go, James, we’ve go to—”

They go. Regulus guides them down the twisting hallways of the manor, running towards the lab. It’s in a back wing of the manor, with an exit on the opposite side of the doors that Remus and Sirius opened. The yard should be mostly clear by now, and if they can just make it to the gate—

“In here,” Regulus gasps, shoving open the familiar door. They run past caged, squealing rats, past vials and microscopes, past pages of notes, past that godforsaken chair, and the door is right there, and—

“Stop!”

Regulus turns.

Tom is there.

Tom is there, with an arm wrapped around James’s throat. Tom is there, with a syringe in his other hand, needle positioned just above the skin of James’s neck.

“I thought you might come this way,” he says.

Regulus sags back against a table, like all the exhaustion from a night without sleep has chosen this moment to finally catch up with him. He braces himself to stay standing, arms scattering neat pages of notes.

“Let him go.”

Tom smiles.

“I can’t do that, Regulus.”

“We don’t have time for this, Tom—the Fevered are here, your little experiment’s backfired, if we don’t get out now—”

“The Fevered will be rounded up soon. It’s unfortunate that they made it inside the manor, but we’ve prepared for this possibility.”

Regulus scoffs, though his eyes remain locked on the needle at James’s neck.

“Avery didn’t seem very prepared when we saw him on our way out.”

Tom shrugs, nonchalant.

“Well, of course, to lure an animal into a trap you need bait.”

Regulus feels sick. He thinks of Avery, twitching on the ground, surrounded by Fevered…

“You can go ahead and run, Regulus,” Tom tells him, smile stretching, teeth bared. “But we both know what’ll happen if I stick this needle in his neck.”

Regulus curls one hand into a fist. He looks away from the needle, into earth-turned eyes.

“You do that, Tom,” Regulus says, flicking open the lighter in his fist, “And I will burn all of this to the ground.”

The flame hovers like a beacon over months’-worth of notes, of research. Dry paper, Texas heat. All it would take is one flick of his wrist.

“You wouldn’t,” Tom says.

He’s still smiling, but it’s no longer the eel-slip oil-slick of a man who’s just called checkmate. Instead, it’s a brittle thing, a branch about to snap. In his pupils, Regulus can see the glowing dance of the flame.

“I will,” he says, white-knuckled fist around the lighter.

“You think I don’t know you, Regulus?” Tom sneers, tightening the arm around James’s neck. “You want me to believe that you would destroy months of research, world-altering scientific progress? That you would throw away the chance to make a name for yourself, the one thing you’ve always wanted? That you would give the opportunity to change the entire world?”

Regulus breathes in, out. There’s something else flickering there in Tom’s eyes, along with the flame.

Fear.

“I think,” Regulus says, hands steady, voice cold, “That you don’t know a single goddamn thing about what I would do.”

He drops the lighter.

An entire year’s worth of research goes up in flames.

“NO!”

Tom lunges forward, instinctively—in the same moment, James twists, shoving him away. The syringe shatters on the ground, leaving nothing but broken glass and a spreading stain.

“NO!” Tom roars, rushing towards the burning notes, wrestling out of his jacket to try and smother the flame. But the fire’s already crept along the table, reaching curious fingers towards the alcohol used for sterilization, hungry and searching and searing heat.

“James!” Regulus shouts, breathing in smoke for the second time that night. And James is there, crashing into him, hands on shoulders, pushing him towards the door—

“Go, go, go!”

They run.

They run, and they leave the manor behind. They run, and they leave Tom’s furious howls, and the acrid scent of fire and smoke. They run, and they leave the Fevered, and the blood, and the stench of Avery’s dying breaths.

They run, and they keep on running.

Chapter Text

The sky is just as big as he always remembered. Regulus breathes in, out, staring up at the late-summer blue.

An arm snakes around his waist. Warm chin on his shoulder. Unruly curls tickling his ear.

“Alright?” James asks.

Regulus shuts his eyes. Smiles. Breathes in, out.

“Alright.”

“Fence needs mending.”

“Mm.”

“Chickens need feeding.”

“Mm.”

“Goat’s gotten into the garden again.”

“Has she?”

“She has.”

Regulus turns, settling his hands on James’s shoulders, unable to stop the helpless smile the spreads across his face.

“I told you that getting a goat was a bad idea.”

“You did.”

“At least tell me she’s spared the tomatoes?”

James grins, deepening the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes.

“Think she’s going after the carrots.”

“Oh,” Regulus nods, solemnly, “The carrots. Well, we can live without the carrots, I suppose.”

James laughs, deep and bubbling, like water from an underground spring. Twenty years, and it’s still the most beautiful sound Regulus has ever heard.

It’s taken them a long time to get here. A long time. Weeks and months and years in a lab, hours of experimentation, damn near a decade spent on the run. The world keeps turning, all the old human horrors marching onward, sprouting up again and again like weeds—disease and cruelty and war and greed.

But not the Fever.

It’s been twelve years since the Fever took its last victim, thanks to the groundbreaking discovery of a cure by one Dr. Remus Lupin and his team.

Your name should be on it, Regulus, he’d said, that night in the lab—the night that they both broke down crying, holding each other’s arms, after the first successful instance of using their cure to save the life of a man who’d been bitten.

But Regulus insisted. And Remus acquiesced, eventually. They won’t find the name Regulus Black in anyone’s history books; they won’t speak about him in the same breath as Darwin, or Newton, or Pasteur.

Regulus is alright with that.

It took a long time, but he’s alright with that.

“Remus and Sirius still coming over from that conference in Billings?” James asks, pressing a kiss to Regulus’s temple before unwinding his arms, heading towards the barn.

Regulus nods, following. “Should be here in a day or two.”

“S’pose I should try and make up that bed in the loft.”

Regulus grins, leaning against the door to the barn, watching as James grabs the bag of feed for the chickens.

“If you think their knees can handle it.”

James laughs again, scattering handfuls of feed as the chickens cluck and scurry around at his feet.

“Well, if anything breaks, we’ll have two doctors to see to it, won’t we?”

“Mm.”

Regulus smiles, moving towards the stable in the back corner of the barn. The horse there whinnies, a chestnut-brown mare with a perfect white spot in the center of her forehead.

“Hey there, Moony,” Regulus murmurs, reaching up to stroke her long nose. She nickers, and he sneaks a glance back at James to make sure the other man isn’t looking before pulling a sugar cube out of his pocket to feed her.

“Thinking about bringing her out later today,” James calls over his shoulder, nodding at the horse. “Take her for a run. Check on the fence out near the woods.” There’s the soft rustle as he puts the bag of feed away, footsteps as he moves over to stand beside Regulus at the stable. “Care to join?”

James does that a lot, these days. Ever since that awful summer in San Antonio he’s taken any opportunity to roam, like he can’t quite settle into his skin until he’s out in the open, nothing but sky and an ocean of space. Regulus doesn’t blame him. He understands.

But he’s happy here. Grounded. Rooted. Safe. Content to stay with the barn, and the cabin, and the goat that keeps getting into his carrots. Knowing they’ll always come back to each other. Knowing they give each other a home to come back to.

“You go,” he says, reaching out to twist their fingers together. “I’ll be here when you get back.”

James will take the horse out into the field, and gallop across the open space, feeling the rush of fresh air through his hair, against his skin.        

But Regulus is done running.

He hasn’t run in a long, long time.