[warnings: explicit sexual content, explicit language, voyeurism, former Bartylus, hints of current Bartylus]
James comes barrelling into their lives like a runaway broom. He’s loud. He’s abrasive. He’s audacious. He’s so damned righteous that he may as well be solar powered. He’s like you, Regulus has said, if you were at all well-adjusted. Regulus is delusional, but Barty’ll forgive him for it.
Drugs’ll do that to the best of people. And James Potter seems to be the most powerful drug of them all with his wind-swept hair and his crooked ‘ear-to-ear’ grins and his rugged ‘quidditch player’ good looks and physique.
Barty does not dislike the man so much as he is immensely suspicious of him. See, Barty can appreciate a good-looking man. He understands the rabid horniness of the cusp of adulthood. He empathises with being led by one’s metaphorical cock. Because Barty can spot a fuckboy blind in the dark.
Regulus, however? Regulus is like a child: he needs looking after, protecting, and protecting Regulus has been Barty’s full-time job since they were children.
Regulus knows Barty is there, watching. Maybe because Barty is always there, watching. Or maybe because so many years in each other’s presence has left them with a keen sense for the other’s whereabouts.
But Regulus knows. And Regulus knows that Barty knows. Because Barty detects the slightest shift in Regulus’s demeanour from loose and lax to entirely performative.
Regulus is on his back with James atop him laying between his legs. From his position across the room, tucked slightly behind the doorframe, Barty can’t quite see what’s happening between them. But he doesn’t need to. Not from the way Regulus is moaning, eyes closed, his short, quiet whimpers and whines familiar to Barty’s ears. They shared a dormitory for seven years. They shared a childhood and adolescence. They shared a bed. And now they share a flat. There’s nothing Barty doesn’t know about Regulus and there’s nothing Regulus can hide from him.
“Regulus.”
Barty is taken off guard a bit by how quiet, fond and intimate it sounds when James murmurs Regulus’s name. And if Barty were a better man, he would feel like he is intruding on a moment that is not meant for him.
But, alas, Barty is not a 'better man'. He’s not really even a 'good' man.
He cups his erection through his trousers and begins to stroke it, watching carefully as James lines himself up and sinks into Regulus.
Regulus is freakishly flexible. He’s fluid, like a cat. At fifteen years of age, Barty discovered the joys of practically folding Regulus in half when they were just discovering sex together. Now, Regulus has his legs spread so wide, knees pressed so close into his chest that Barty can see James’s cock thrusting in and out of him in long, deep strokes. And Regulus meets his thrusts by raising his hips just a bit each time as though, after only a brief time together, they’re already moving as one.
Barty has had to listen to Regulus singing James’s praises for the last couple of months. James and his sunny positivity. James and his kindness, his integrity, his wonderful sense of humour, his mischievous streak. James who loves animals because he’s just such a good person, apparently. James who “isn’t actually an idiot like we thought, he’s really quite intelligent, you know.” James and his firm quidditch player muscles. James and his chiselled chest. James and his magnificent cock.
Regulus had come running to Barty the first time he and James had had sex and had described everything in extremely vivid detail, including the “thing” James had done with his tongue that had Regulus seeing “stars”. It had been a little while after they’d just started dating (“James doesn’t put out immediately, apparently,” Regulus had said, “he thinks we should properly get to know each other first…”), and Barty had gotten the sense that James was trying to lure Regulus into a false sense of security.
After all, everyone and their owl knows that James Potter had started shagging Lily Evans weeks before the two of them had officially gotten together.
There’s no accounting for taste, Barty had thought. But now, Barty kind of gets it. James is a generous, attentive lover.
Because of course he is. The self-sacrificing bastard would never catch himself being anything less. With a hand between them, James tends to Regulus’s orgasm, which Barty can hear rapidly approaching.
And, well, Barty will admit it. Regulus was right. James Potter really does have a rather magnificent cock.
When James finally comes, swearing, shuddering, face buried in Regulus’s neck, hips stuttering, Barty can’t help himself. He knows he’s a bit of a loose arsehole. He knows Regulus will be furious with him afterwards. They’ll fight about it. Evan will scold him if Regulus also sulks about it.
But Barty can’t help himself.
He claps, slowly (perhaps a little mockingly), because every good performance needs an applause.
There’s a curl at the back of Regulus’s neck. It’s a little longer than the curls around it. Flicks outwards like it has its own mind. And no amount of combing, grooming, will tame the curl. A little act of rebellion, James thinks. Independent. Defiant in its own right. He loves it. Loves winding it around his finger, stroking the soft, silky hair between the pad of his thumb and the pad of his forefinger.
He files this sensation away. Records it. Commits it to memory.
Because he will not forget.
There’s a ghosting of freckles across Regulus’s shoulders. A smattering of stars like constellations. Like the freckles that dust his nose and cheeks. They’re light, only faintly visible, but they’re there. James searches diligently for them, maps out each one on Regulus’s delicate skin. He traces patterns between them, connects star to star to star…
Files them away. Records them. Commits them to memory.
Because he will not forget.
There’s this sound that Regulus makes. The edge of a gasp. A sharp inhale, a hitch of his breath in the back of his throat. James likes to try and catch it, breath life into it, encourage it to bloom and grow. But the sound resists, like Regulus is hiding himself, protecting himself Like he is wary of giving himself over, letting himself go and trusting James with who he is.
So James files the sound away. Records it. Commits it to memory.
James appears out of nowhere like some sort of apparition. It’s winter, past curfew, and it’s been dark since 5pm. Regulus is flushed and half-frozen from the cold, his extremities damned near freezing off. But just as James has appeared out of absolutely nowhere, his proposition also comes out of equally as nowhere.
So Regulus hits him square in the chest with a, “you’re bloody insane.”
“Come on!” The plea comes out of James as a whine. Eagerly, like a boy on Christmas morning, he bounces on his heels and stares at Regulus with the biggest damned puppy dog eyes that Regulus has ever seen.
“I’m a prefect.” Regulus bustles past, heading back down the long, winding corridor. He’s a prefect, and he’s cold, and his fingers have frostbite and his nose has frostbite and for wizards—wizards with magic, mind you—they just don’t heat the castle very well. And he’s certain that Barty has warmed up the dormitory with his famous heating charm because everyone knows, Regulus included, that Regulus can be a bitch and a half when he’s cold and tired and cranky.
“You’re a stick in the mud, is what you are,” James says coyly.
And it almost works. It hits Regulus in his sensitive spot: his pride. Regulus is not a stick in the mud, thank you. He’s all for breaking the rules, thank you. He just does it cleverly, almost underhanded. He’s not loud and abrasive about it, because he’s not a Gryffindor. He’s a Slytherin, for Salazar’s sake.
“It’ll be fun,” James sidles up to Regulus, who has picked up the pace, “It’ll be romantic.”
“Freezing my arse off on a broomstick in the middle of winter when it’s snowing is your idea of romance?”
James sighs dramatically and steps directly into Regulus’s path, backing him up against a wall. “I’m not going to see you over Christmas,” he crowds closer, pressed almost directly up against Regulus who can feel the heat from James’s body, because James always runs so hot, “that’s two weeks. I’ll go into withdrawal…”
Regulus arches an eyebrow. He’s almost convinced, he’s almost convinced. With James so close that Regulus can feel his breath on his skin, how can he not be? “Are you suggesting I’m drugging you…?”
“No, I’m implying that you are a drug. I’ll miss you.”
“I’m here right now,” Regulus says, his voice slightly shaky. From the cold. From the close proximity that has his hands shaking and his heart thudding and the blood in his veins warming. “Inside. Where it’s not snowing…”
“We could be outside. Where it is snowing. I love the snow.” James, damned him to through all seven levels of hell, slips his hands into Regulus’s robe. Even through all the layers of shirt and undershirt and jumper Regulus is wearing, Regulus swears he can feel James’s skin.
He’s spent too many nights dreaming about the feel of James’s skin.
“Reguluses aren’t made to be in the snow,” he says, though it doesn’t sound convincing to himself anymore, "Reguluses aren’t meant to be outside at all…”
James chuckles. His breath puffs against Regulus’s cheeks. Up close, Regulus can see the flecks of brown and amber in his eyes, the V of the cupids bow of his full lips. Feels his hands, which have moved up to cup the back of Regulus’s neck, fingers curled into his hair. Feels the thud of James’s heart beat…or is that his own?
And then James steps back and hums thoughtfully.
And fuck it all to hell.
Regulus thinks he must have sworn. He didn’t hear or feel it himself, but James’s laugh and his, “Language, Reg,” implies he must have.
They’ve barely kissed. They have, but they haven’t, because James had declared he has plans to “court you, it’ll be a thorough courting, you will feel so romanced and courted after this, I’m a gentleman, I don’t dare to presume,” which Regulus thinks might actually be James trying to figure everything out, particularly how to tell Sirius and not get murdered by Walburga and Orion, before debauching the heir to the House of Black.
But Regulus has hit, “fuck the rules and fuck gentlemanly courtesy,” about 100 kilometres back. He doesn’t want chaste kisses stolen in hidden corridors. He wants proper kisses. He wants lips and tongues and limbs and lightning and all the exciting things that make his blood sing.
“Okay,” James says, nodding. “I understand. I bid thee goodnight, fair prince.” He steps back and offers an elaborate bow, because James Potter is truly a bit of an idiot.
“What?” Regulus looks around hastily. It’s past 10pm now, long past curfew and the end of his prefect rounds, but anyone could be watching. “We can be indoors doing…indoor things.”
“No, no,” James gives a crooked smile; the bastard knows exactly what he’s doing, “I don’t dare to presume. I am not the presumptuous kind. You should be where it’s warm…”
“…indoors, doing indoor things…”
“…absolutely.”
“…together. We can go to the astronomy tower and…talk…”
“The astronomy tower where it’s…open air…and…not warm?”
James cocks his head to the side and blinks, giving Regulus the most ridiculously demure expression that anyone could possibly ever wear.
Actually, maybe Regulus is the one who is the idiot.
