Finding.Nirvana

———

"things we carry" prompt collection: black brothers; James x Regulus; complicated Regulus x Barty; platonic James + Sirius; past James x Lily

things we carry | out of control | early morning | home | an open door | faces in the street | mirror | this road | aftermath | very loud shoes | nothing | anywhere in the world | stars | forgotten | witness | small things | warning | walk away | supermarket | everybody | things people say | wrong way | too many | remember | song | impatience | if | one hundred years | what I wrote 

Jegulus-Microfics within the same timeline/universe

welcome, night, safe, more, devour (M) boggart, and then constellation: Regulus moves in with the Potters

doctor, pride, puddles and then penthouse: trans-Regulus Black; Jegulus baby

achieve and brain: quidditch player James; quidditch player Regulus

Bartylus-Microfics within the same timeline/universe

teach (M), hold (M), potion, earn, intense (E/NSFW) and then left (E/NSFW) (and one-shot (y)earn, which takes place after potion and earn, but before intense): trans-Regulus Black; Barty Crouch Jnr figures out sex

joint, idolise, blinded: canon-era; dark!fics; obsessive-love

buzz (E/NSFW), ride, pretty (E/NSFW) and then keeps (M/NSFW): modern-day au; trans-Regulus Black

Jartylus-Microfics within the same timeline/universe

The penthouse apartment is ceiling-to-floor windows, high-beam ceilings, architectural marble bathrooms, spiralling sculptural staircases, elegant butler’s pantry…All the bedrooms have ensuites, Regulus says, and in the principal suite, you access the bathroom through the walk-through wardrobe.

Barty whistles and trails after them, the baby wiggling and chattering in his arms. 

Isn’t it great, Regulus says. 

Great? It’s fucking pretentious, is what it is. 

James glares at Barty over his shoulder. “Why are you even here?” 

Why is Barty here? Where the hell else would Barty be when his best friend (nay, his soulmate) buys himself a big, shiny new toy? Barty has every intention of choosing his bedroom before anyone else gets their paws on the best digs in the penthouse (You don’t fucking live with us! James snaps), and then maybe going sock sliding across the glossy polished floor with the baby.

Barty has also recently heard of this superstitious muggle ritual where new homes are blessed with sex, and now he has ideas aplenty. Ideas that will have to wait until James is less snippy, because while Barty admittedly likes to fuck with a lot of things, he won't fuck with his best friend's (nay, soulmate's) happiness.

James takes Regulus by his arm, pulling him close. “It’s wonderful,” he says, but James doesn’t sound like he genuinely thinks it’s wonderful. He sounds tired, resigned, like he’s saying it’s wonderful merely to placate the resentment stewing in his gut. They’d been arguing over various places for weeks. 

I’m not going to live in a closest, Regulus had yelled, only for James to hit right back with, well, I’m not going to let Elio grow up in a stone-cold new-age rendition of Hogwarts, I want him to have a home! 

And then Regulus had taken the baby and moved back in with Barty and Evan (You want him to have a home? Fine! He has a fucking home!) and the metaphorical shit had hit the metaphorical fan.

And really, Barty could have told James that absolutely no one, not even Barty, wins in a fight with Regulus. Regulus is stubborn as fuck. The boy could stand his ground until he’s the last person left on Earth. He could take his frustration and resentment and spite with him to the grave.

There had been make-up sex after everything. There had been rough rage sex, and then there had been mope-y make-up sex, and then apparently James had cried, because James is an idiot who still doesn’t realise that Regulus is far too in love with him to ever actually want to leave. Regulus is just a stubborn motherfucker who had gotten over his anger ages ago only for his Mount Everest-sized pride to get in the way of early reconciliation.

“Raining again,” Baby Elio whispers. 

“Oh yeah,” Barty murmurs in return, “it is.” 

Barty had suggested, when James and Regulus were fighting, that Baby Elio come and live with him and Evan if Regulus was so insistent on having his palace and James was so insistent on the baby having a ‘home’. We have a home, Barty had explained. 

For some reason, that had made James even more angry. He’s my fucking child, Crouch, get your own fucking child! James had screamed, which Barty thinks is just ridiculous. Any child of Regulus’s is also a child of Barty’s. Obviously.

Regulus stands in front of the ceiling-to-floor window. From the penthouse, all of the West End is visible through the thin sheets of falling rain. James approaches him from behind and wraps his arms around his waist, leaning down to gently kiss his temple and whisper in his ear.

“Ew,” Baby Elio says.

Barty snickers and concurs. He’s taught his child well. There isn’t going to be ‘make-up sex’ for James and Regulus tonight, Barty knows. There’s no more making up to do. But after a particularly nasty fight, James and Regulus are always a little bit more gooey, more touchy-feely. The sex will be slow and sensual and desperate, the kind that lights Regulus on fire and sends him spiralling. 

It’s not gooey, it’s called love making, idiot, James always insists. You should try it some time.

Barty would definitely like to try it some time.

That’s not what I fucking meant, Crouch!

Barty leans down and carefully takes off the baby’s shoes. “Hey,” he whispers, “You wanna try sliding while they’re being gross?” 

“Sliding?” Baby Elio echos.

Evan will follow Barty to the ends of the Earth, would do anything and everything for Barty. Barty knows this. He doesn’t doubt it, nor does he question it. Barty loves Evan fiercely and unendingly for this.

That’s not to say that Regulus won’t offer to whack someone for him, but the boy has too many scruples about him, and Barty isn’t about to dump that big a load of guilt on his shoulders. No, Regulus is persistent. Regulus is resilient. Regulus is resourceful. Regulus is good for bailing Barty out of jail. He’s good for paying off, maybe even blackmailing, the jury panel. He is the mastermind, the one who makes the schemes and finds the resources and draws up the maps and makes the schedules and ensures everything runs like clockwork.

Regulus will bust Barty out of prison, should he need to.

But that’s, quite unfortunately, not how things are going down.

When Barty climbs into the car, Evan barely acknowledges him. He grips the steering wheel and stares straight ahead, and then slams his foot on the accelerator and kicks off before Barty has a chance to secure his seatbelt. Evan drives like a mad man when he’s angry, and currently Barty is seated alongside an F1 racer. 

“Ugh, I stink. Like sweat and piss and vomit. Not my vomit…or my piss…” Barty gives himself a cursory sniff and pulls a face. “You know, I’ve always had this fantasy. Did I tell you about it?”

“You told me about it,” Evan says flatly. He doesn’t ask whether Barty did it. It doesn’t matter to him whether Barty did or he didn’t. That’s not the point, at this stage. He doesn’t mind bailing Barty out of jail; this Barty knows. That’s not why Evan’s mad. What Evan does mind is that Barty didn’t ask him to help out, didn’t ask him to help hide the metaphorical body. Or literal. 

Whatever.

“Three men, all behind bars,” Barty sighs. “Ugly bastards, though. You know I love a lil' bit of exhibitionism just as much as the next guy, but…there wasn’t a single one of them that I had the slightest urge to shag or watch shag. Jail’s nothing like they make it out like in those films.”

“Jail’s nothing like what they show in porn films. You don’t say.” Evan spins the wheel so suddenly the car goes screeching as it swerves around the corner and Barty finds himself holding onto the car seat for dear life.

“Enigma, huh,” Euphemia repeats. Her lips quirk up at the sides as they do when she’s merely humouring him. “My James? Sweet child, James is the very definition of ‘what you see is what you get’. He does not do hidden layers.”

“Ma! I need to write this bloody speech, and it needs to be perfect. It needs to say: this, this, is who James is. The man is depending on me. Your son. The light of your life. The apple of your eye. Well, the other apple of your eye, obviously I’m actually the—”

“Alright, alright! A story, huh?”

“A story. The perfect story.”

Euphemia takes a thoughtful, measured sip of her tea and hums quietly. “You know, when James was in his first year, those first few weeks he wrote to us—and he wrote to us every day, you know—he’d spend pages and pages ranting and raving about this boy in his dormitory who kept vanishing his socks..”

“…he’d bloody leave them everywhere, it was disgusting…”

“…and ate all his biscuits…”

“…I did not, he’s a liar…”

“…and kept insulting him and picking fights for no reason.”

“Well,” Sirius shrugs, frowning, “I am an acquired taste. But Ma, not that kind of story!”

“You are James’s Best Man, are you not? This story is about James and you.”

Sirius rolls his eyes and falls back in his chair despairingly, barely missing the tray of cupcakes before him with the way he flails his arms. “I need a story about them and..,” he shudders, “their…love. Regulus is my brother! I can’t just skip over the matter and, you know, pretend I never had the chance to meet him.”

“Sirius,” Euphemia says firmly. She places her teacup on the only small, empty space left on the kitchen table and leans forwards. “They’re your best friend and your little brother. You’re the one with the stories.”

“I am biased,” Sirius says, emphasising his words in bold, in capital letters, underlined with exclamation marks. “You know, James bought me a huge, expensive bottle of whiskey and a full steak dinner to ask my bloody permission to marry my brother, the stupid idiot. Looked like he thought I was going to rip his head off, too, like he thought I’d say no, you can’t marry my brother, like James is not the best person I know and Regulus isn’t a particular little prat with such discerning taste that he’d never settle for anything less than perfect. Such an idiot.”

He tries to fall flat on the table before him, but the entire surface is covered with trays of shortbread biscuits ready for icing, and Fleamont cuts him off with a gentle, “mind the biscuits, please…”

When Sirius is desperate, he goes to Bartemius Crouch Junior even though he hates the guy with a flaming passion. With a pure intensity that cannot be reduced to anything so simple as words. There aren’t many in this world who know, but James and Barty grew up together. They shared a childhood long before Sirius arrived on the scene. James doesn’t often mention it. Barty rarely acknowledges it. But every once in a while, one of them will drop an anecdote or get a bit too familiar, and it’ll kindle something inside Sirius akin to loathing.

And, of course, Barty comes with the added benefit of being so attached at the hip to Regulus that he’s damned near territorial about it.

Barty and Evan live in a small flat in the bustling heart of London. Regulus hasn’t lived there for almost a year now since he moved in with James. But every time Sirius needs to talk to his brother he goes to the small flat in the bustling heart of London because even though Regulus no longer lives there…Regulus still kind of lives there.

Thankfully, Regulus is not there right now. 

“A story, huh,” Barty repeats thoughtfully. “A story about James and Regulus…”

“About their…love…” Sirius shudders just as Barty snickers, “for my speech. Hey, what are you putting in yours?”

When Barty had opened the door, he’d given Sirius this devious grin, like he had thought pre-dinner entertainment had just arrived. Sirius should have known then. Actually, he should have known when the, ‘Barty might be able to help, Barty’s actually in the perfect position to help!’ thought had first graced him.

“As much as Reg likes to pretend he doesn’t like to be touched, he’s actually all about post-sex cuddling, all sticky and still covered in fluids,” Barty sighs, feigning wistful. “It’s so romantic.”

“Oh my god, not those kind of stories, Crouch!”

“Reg likes it missionary-style, not cos he’s vanilla—believe me, he’s so far from vanilla, boy’s kinky as shit—but he likes to look at James when James…”

“Shut up! I don’t want to…”

“Alright, fine. Reg says James is a very giving sort. Says he loves that about James. Always tries to make sure Reg comes first. Can you imagine that! The guy could be hanging on for dear life, and he always—as Reg puts it—tends to his…”

The last person Sirius speaks to, when there is no one left to speak to, is Remus. 

Remus lives in a damp little one-bedroom box that seems like a metaphor for sadness. Every time Sirius visits, he wants to bundle Remus up and steal him away, only Remus’s pride and internal self-loathing will not allow for it. Sirius drifts through the flat, poking and prodding at the aging and frayed books on the shelves, at the photographs pinned to the walls. Remus hasn’t bothered to put down whatever it is he’s reading, which is all Sirius needs to know exactly how this conversation will go.

“Well?” Sirius repeats.

“Well, what?” Remus idly flips the page, giving off the impression that he’s not actually reading, he’s just avoiding eye contact. One of the things about Remus is that he is so much less likely to enable Sirius’s dramatics. Where Peter and James will get swept up in the moment, ferried away by Sirius’s emotions, Remus is very much a cold dousing of reality. 

“Well, you gonna help me?”

“I was under the impression that you’re the one giving this speech, not me.” Finally, Remus snaps his book closed and looks up at Sirius with a little frown. “I’m honestly not sure what I can say that you don’t already know…” He wanders off to the kitchen to fuss around with the kettle and mugs, pulling this and that from various paint-chipped cupboards. “Thing is, Padfoot, you were there for everything, for every single moment we were at Hogwarts together.” 

“Not everything,” Sirius mutters darkly.

“Fine. Almost everything.” Remus levels him with a stern look. “They’re your brother and best friend. You’re the perfect person to shed insight and perspective into their relationship.”

“What insight? James is a glowing ray of beneficence. Regulus is a mean and spiteful little shit. I guess with James, he’s a little bit nicer...”

“Sure,” Remus shrugs, handing Sirius the mug of tea. “The cut of his words aren’t quite as scarring these days.”

Sirius takes the tea and sips carefully at the brew, choking a bit as it scalds him on its way down. “But I can’t say that, Moony. Help? I mean, I get why they fell in love. Regulus always has to take what’s mine, and James thought shagging me would be a bit too weird…”

“You’re such an arse, Pads.”

And dare, James would like to. However, with his quidditch refined reflexes, he can sense an obstacle a kilometre away. It hits his radar like a bludger aimed straight at his head, and the name of said obstacle is Barty Crouch Junior. If there is anyone in this mortal world who can rival, and possibly even out-do, Sirius Black for the crown of ‘biggest fucking menace to ever grace the halls of Hogwarts Castle’, that would be one Barty Crouch Junior.

James has had run-ins with Baby Crouch. He’s gone head-to-head with him on the quidditch pitch, because Baby Crouch was the most biased and snarky commentator James has had to battle in all his years of playing quidditch. He’s gone head-to-head with him during the Library Wars when Baby Crouch had decided that table by the window was his and, one Full Moon, Remus had decided that he’d be a territorial son-of-a-bitch about it, and Baby Crouch had declared the whole thing great fun, lost limbs included. He’s gone head-to-head with him to win the affections of Lily Evans…until he’d realised that Baby Crouch had been merely fucking with him for shits and giggles.

He knows that Baby Crouch is not an opponent to be trifled with, and now it looks like the bastard is sniffing up James’s beautiful, mystery man.

“You distract Crouch. I’m going in,” James hisses, tugging on Sirius’s arm. He snatches away the glass of wine Sirius has started chugging.

“Huh? What? No, absolutely not. You are not leaving me to the mercy of the foot-in-the-grave masses to go and get your rocks off in the bathrooms, you slut.”

“Pads,” James whines, “look at him, he’s beautiful. We’re meant to be! It’s fate! You’re not going to stand in the way of fate, are you?” He tracks the movements of the beautiful, mystery man across the room as he weaves through the crowd like a dancer, glares jealously when Baby Crouch leans over and whispers in the beautiful, mystery man’s ear and gestures at the glass doors that lead to the garden outside.

No way in any level of hell! Things happen in gardens. James should know. Dirty, dirty things…

“No, what I’m going to do is stop enabling your frivolous, whorish behaviour.” Sirius tugs on James’s arm to try and pull him away, but James will not go. James is rock. James is marble. James is a statue erected somewhere in honour of the beautiful, mystery man.

“Look, Pads. He’s beautiful,” James insists. “He’s my prince. My dark, scowl-y prince. We’re going to get married. And you can be my best man. You can give me away. Look at him! Isn’t he wonderful?”

To Sirius’s credit, he does as James requests. He glances around the function hall, scanning the crowd milling about: the politicians chatting up prospective backers, the ministers, the Department Heads, James’s mother who is trying her hardest to politely exit a painfully dreary conversation.

And then Sirius frowns, says darkly, “What, one Black isn’t enough for you? You need the pair?” He stares so intently at James that James is sure he’ll actually turn to stone.

Black. Of course. Stupidity is a bitter, metallic taste. It’s only in retrospect that James realises why Regulus Black had seemed immediately so familiar; he has that ‘Ancient and Most Noble House of Black’ charm about him. The ‘back straight, chin high, clean and crisp tones’ kind of charm that Sirius has spent years trying to shake.

“Yes,” James whispers under his breath, “a pair…”

“You’re drunk, you idiot.” Sirius snatches a canapé off the tray of a passing waiter and shoves it into his mouth. “Merlin’s balls, you’re such a lightweight.”

“It’s just…he’s beautiful, and he’s all grown up. When did he grow up? Why didn’t you tell me he’s all grown up now?”

Regulus really has grown up. When they were still in school, James had seen photos of him when he’d been little, from before Sirius had dramatically departed Grimmauld Place. Regulus then had been a scrawny, awkward kind of little, all knees and floppy curls and angry, little frowns that had impressed James with their intensity. James had never met him—he’d been shipped off to Beauxbatons before James had ever had the opportunity to—and at the time he’d been somewhat relieved. Regulus had looked leagues away from Sirius in terms of personality.

Now in person, though still from a distance, James can see the similarities. Sirius and Regulus both have the same distinct pride and air of superiority about them. They just have it in different shades.

“No, but really,” James insists, “if we get married, you and I, we’ll be brothers. Look at him! He’s wonderful. Beautiful.”

“Stop saying that! You’re going to wake up tomorrow morning and you’re going to combust with embarrassment. Or with a bloody hangover.”

“No, I won’t,” James frowns, scandalised, “If I get to speak with him tonight, I’ll wake up a happy, happy man. He’s absolutely radiant. …he looks just like you, Pads.”

“Don’t try to speak to him, you idiot, you’re just going to embarrass yourself. And he does not look like me. That’s just fucking weird.” When Sirius scowls, the scowl is so very familiar. “No, you know what? Fine. Fine. Go. Talk to him. Off you trot. ”

Sirius lets go of James’s arm, brushes off James’s robe to smooth the creases, and steers him in the direction of the beautiful and mysterious Regulus Black. They’re getting closer, Sirius’s hands on James’s shoulders, wading their way through the crowd. They’re magnets, James and Regulus, and Sirius is the force pulling them towards one another. They’re an inevitability, James and Regulus, and Sirius is the hand of fate.

And when Regulus stands before him, James is oh-so-very-small beneath the judgement in Regulus’s gaze. Regulus’s hair is black, not the black-black of Sirius’s hair, but the brownish-black of ebony wood. His eyes are a speckled grey with little flecks of white. His mouth, James notes awestruck and despairing, is drawn into a thin line like James has managed to offend him before he’s so much as had a chance to speak.