Chapter Text
It had started with an off-hand comment from James. A text message, more accurately, nine words sent at 2.16 am on a Wednesday night.
i wish i could get out of the city
An hour later, Regulus had called ahead and sworn Mrs. Weasley to secrecy. The Blacks owned a cottage in southern Wales—more for tax reasons than the fact than any of them particularly cared for the landscape—and paid a local woman to look after it regularly.
He’d only stayed at the cottage once before. Their Uncle Alphard had taken him and Sirius there for a long weekend one May. Back then, Mrs. Weasley had still been Miss Prewett, and at nineteen, she’d been the same height as thirteen-year-old Regulus. Regulus vaguely recalled a young man who’d lived in the town, a struggling inventor named Arthur Weasley, who had a bush of dark red hair that had rivalled Molly’s mop of aggressively orange curls.
He called in a favour and obtained a car, a dark blue convertible, and found a reasonable excuse for him not being in the city for thirty-six hours.
On Friday morning, he asked James if he was free that weekend, and if he’d ever been to Wales.
***
James gaped at him when Regulus pulled up to the curb in front of the building his flat was in, wearing sunglasses and a wide smile.
“How did you do that?”
“A magician doesn’t reveal his secrets.”
And James honest-to-God pouted.
He threw open the passenger door and dropped his bag on the backseat.
Regulus watched him buckle himself into the passenger seat, resting one hand on the steering wheel.
“Fine,” James said, “Can I at least pick the music?”
Regulus let him, and they spent the drive with Céline Dion, Whitney Houston and Taylor Swift. The wind whipped their hair around their faces and the scenery whizzed past them in a blur of green and blue and grey. Every time James spotted sheep—which, while they were driving through Wales, was every few minutes—he pointed at them excitedly. Regulus struggled to keep his eyes on the road.
They stopped in a town that consisted of a dozen houses scattered along a Main Street. Upon raiding the single shop—which sold food, books, and, inexplicably, crocheting supplies—they had what they declared lunch, sitting on the hood of the car.
“What does the tattoo mean?” Regulus asked, mouth full of chips, nodding to James’ left forearm. He’d spotted a splash of ink the last time they’d seen each other, the first time James had worn short sleeves around him.
James swallowed before replying.
“It’s a lion,” he explained, twisting his arm so Regulus could catch a better look. The lion stretched three inches from his elbow down his forearm, caught mid-roar. “The school we went to had a thing with sorting students into houses. We ended up in the lion’s, and it evolved into an inside joke.”
Regulus turned his gaze away and blinked against the bright sun.
“Lily was a tough nut to crack, it took us years to convince her to get one, too. Remus got his before me, actually, but he’s been getting tattoos since we were sixteen.”
Regulus turned back to James just in time to watch him tug his shirt up to reveal the left side of his lower ribcage. There, creating a stark contrast against his skin, is a drawing of a Lily—the flower—in pitch-black ink.
“There’s a moon on my shoulder, too,” James added, “but I can’t reach it properly. Maybe you’ll see it sometime.”
The shade of red Regulus’s cheeks took on should’ve sent him into a spiral of embarrassment, but something about James stopped him dead in his tracks. And when James looked at him from under his lashes and raised one corner of his mouth, he knew that it was futile.
James was the sun at the centre of the solar system, the centre of gravity that had pulled Regulus in and now refused to let him go.
Blame it on the laws of the universe, all of it, from the first words they’d exchanged all the way to this moment, when Regulus pushed his fingers into James’ hair and pulled his lips into a searing kiss, and James slipped his hand onto Regulus’ hip, and he found the exact spot where his waist dipped, and his fingers curled around the jut of his hipbone, and Regulus arched into him and—
Maybe some things were inevitable, maybe they always would’ve ended up like this in this exact moment, or maybe it was one string of impossible choices that had led them here, and it had happened against all odds.
Either way, when an involuntary moan slipped past Regulus’ lips, a spark of electricity flew through his veins, he was sure that he’d never felt more alive than here in this moment, on the hood of a blue convertible in the middle of nowhere.
***
James’ mouth fell open in surprise for the second time that day when Regulus slowed down in front of a cottage. It wasn’t big by any means—just a two-storey house, painted pale yellow—but it stood at the top of a cliff-like hill that looked out over the rest of the town. They’d driven past the half dozen other houses that sat there, and Regulus had pointed out the Weasleys’.
Their house was made up of at least four floors—but it was hard to count them. The house seemed to defy the laws of physics. Rooms had been added in a seemingly random pattern, stacked on top of each other like childrens’ building blocks, creating the impression that magic was the only thing preventing them from toppling over.
The Black cottage sat in the centre of an elaborate garden, and the gravel crunched under their soles as they walked up to the house. The foyer was cooler than the air outside, and Regulus led James upstairs to the bedrooms. He picked the biggest one—with a king-sized bed, en-suite bathroom and balcony that looked out over the Atlantic behind the cottage.
In the kitchen, they found a cookbook—which, for some unfathomable reason was German, of all languages—and James flipped it open to a random page.
“Pfannkuchen,” he read aloud, most likely horribly mispronouncing the word.
Regulus held back a laugh and pulled up Google translate.
“How do you spell that?” he asked, leaning over James’ shoulder.
“P-F-A-N-N-K-U-C-H-E-N.”
“According to Google, it’s pancakes.”
James looked at the rest of the page—and at the picture in the top right corner, which showed a stack of pancakes.
“Oh, yeah—that makes sense.”
They ran the list of ingredients through the translator as well and raided the kitchen cabinets—only to discover them empty.
“It really doesn’t make sense to store food in a place you only visit once a decade,” Regulus admitted.
“A trip to the store it is,” James announced, and it was sealed.
Regulus hesitated briefly before they stepped out of the front door, but James took his hand with a certainty he didn’t want to destroy.
He’d never held anyone’s hand outside—the two times he’d held James’ hand had both been in the relative privacy of museums. There was something about holding hands outside, in plain daylight, that felt like a confession he couldn’t take back. Like him putting a claim on James the way you couldn’t really claim the sky as your own because the sky was infinite and you were entirely irrelevant in comparison.
James noticed Regulus inner turmoil and stopped over the threshold.
“Are you okay? Or is this too much?”
Regulus shook his head and squeezed James’ hand.
“Rationally I know there’s nothing wrong with me holding your hand,” he said, “and nobody here knows who we are, but—it’s not easy. There’s no switch I can flip to make it alright from one second to the next.”
James brought his free hand up to Regulus’ jaw.
“Take your time, love,” he said, and Regulus felt the heat rise in his cheeks at the pet name. “I’ll wait for you until you’re comfortable with it.”
The naked honesty overwhelmed him. He rose on his tiptoes until his lips pressed against James’. His arm looped around James’ neck on instinct, and he pushed one leg between James’. James sighed into the kiss and returned it softly.
They broke apart to take a breath, and James used it as an opportunity to push Regulus against the doorframe.
“I would—love—to hold—your hand—in public,” he mumbled between kisses, “but—I won’t—force you—to do—anything—that—makes—you—uncomfortable.”
Regulus let go of James’ hand and used both of his to cup James’ jaw and hold him a few inches away from his face.
“I want to hold your hand, too,” he assured him, “and I’ll tell you the second I’m having doubts, okay?”
James nodded, still caught in Regulus’ loving grip.
“Deal.”
Eventually, they made it out of the house, and half a mile down the street, to the only store in the town. They picked up flour, sugar and baking powder, salt, and milk and eggs. James ambushed Regulus with a banana and shot him twice—Regulus played along and dramatically fell to the ground, landing half on top of an aggressively pink flamingo pool floatie. They spent seven minutes translating and arguing about the final ingredient of the pancakes—Apfelmus—until they figured it was apple sauce.
On the way back, they each carried one bag of ingredients. Their free hands were swinging between them—intertwined.
They took a small detour to the sliver of beach, but the tide was so low that they only caught a glimpse of pale blue water in the distance. Seagulls circled above them and dove down, spreading their wings just in time to avoid a collision with the wet sand.
The beach was deserted, and James begged Regulus to join him until he agreed.
Leaving their shoes and the pancake ingredients by a bench, they took off running toward the water. Screaming due to the cold sand, Regulus slowed down to roll up his trousers. He bent down and managed to secure one leg, but when he touched the hem of the other one, he was swept up into someone’s arms.
“James!” he exclaimed. “Put me down!”
James’ laughter mixed with the squawking of the seagulls, and he sprinted to the edge of the water, carrying Regulus bridal-style.
“Don’t you dare drop me!” Regulus demanded as soon as he realized what James was going to do.
“I would never!” James claimed—moments before wading into the water and dropping him.
Regulus was submerged within a heartbeat and struggled to break through the surface again. When he did, it was to splash James with a load of icy water.
“Hey!” James shouted in protest, but Regulus didn’t let up.
James’ shirt was soaked through by the time he threw all caution into the wind and plunged into the water next to Regulus. Regulus waited for him to come up for air again—the water only went up to his hips—but an arm was slung around his waist and pulled him down like the tentacle in Star Wars did with Luke in the garbage compressor.
Thrashing wildly, Regulus tried to wriggle out of James’ grip, but it was futile.
The water curled around him, engulfing him. He coughed, not having had enough time for a proper breath. James seemed to notice, and rose above the water line again.
“Are you okay?” he asked, breathless.
Regulus blew his curls out of his eyes and clung to James’ torso like a koala.
“Yeah,” he said, and kissed James.
James tasted like salt and wind and life, and Regulus’ heart skipped a beat when James started kissing him back. In response, Regulus’ legs found their way around James’ hips and James gripped his thighs to secure his position.
Their bliss lasted only seconds, until the wind picked up and blew a gust of cold air over them, sending shivers down Regulus’ back that had little to do with the way James’ chest looked underneath his now basically see-through shirt.
“We should get back to the cottage,” Regulus whispered. “I don’t want you to get sick.”
A drop of water ran down James’ forehead and down the bridge of his nose. It picked up another drop and they rolled farther until they hung at the tip of James’ nose, threatening to fall at every motion.
James blew out a breath and Regulus watched the drop shudder and fall.
“Yes, we should,” James agreed.
He hoisted Regulus up and slung him over his shoulder, once again ignoring Regulus’ shouts of protest.
***
They arrived at the cottage dripping and freezing.
“You can shower in the bathroom attached to the master bedroom,” Regulus suggested awkwardly, “I’ll take the one down the hall.”
James hovered in the hallway next to him until he nodded.
“Sure.”
There was a brief moment when they tried to walk up the narrow stairs at the same time and their shoulders bumped against each other.
Regulus flinched and pulled back as if he’d been met with a spark of electricity.
Instead of pulling back too, James took Regulus hand and pulled him up the stairs along with him.
Another thing Regulus found himself wishing he could get used to.
***
It turned out that James did not actually know how to make pancakes. However, he made up for this lack of experience with a bottomless well of enthusiasm and the CD player he’d found in the living room. He’d gone through the collection while Regulus was in the shower, put on the West Side Story soundtrack and skipped over enough songs just in time for Regulus to catch him belting out I Feel Pretty, using a spatula as a microphone.
Once Regulus recovered from the laughing fit that had inevitably followed, and the kiss—James’ attempt at getting him back down—the actual cooking commenced.
According to Regulus, they shared the work—which meant James measured ingredients and mixed them into a batter while Regulus sat on the counter next to him and offered suggestions he got from a French website he had opened on his phone.
“Contrary to the actual instructions, this suggests mixing the dry ingredients first,” Regulus read out.
James emerged from the cabinet he’d stuck his head into in search of a bowl big enough to fit the amount of batter they’d need.
“Sounds reasonable,” he agreed, and set a bright pink bowl down on the counter. “Any idea where the mixer might be?”
Regulus shook his head.
“Sorry, no idea.”
Regulus kept scrolling down the page while James opened the door of every cabinet until it looked like someone had broken in and searched for something. It was when he opened the very last cabinet that he finally exclaimed, “Found it!” and raised the mixer above his head in a victory pose.
Regulus dropped his phone into his lap and clapped four times.
Following Regulus’ instructions—he calculated the amount of flour, sugar, salt, eggs and milk they needed with the calculator on his phone—he was gay and could drive a car but not do math in his head to save his life, thank you—James meticulously measured every ingredient.
During the thirty-minute resting time the batter demanded, James beat Regulus at eleven rounds of Uno. Regulus would have won the last one, he swore, if the timer hadn’t interrupted them.
Since the pancaked required constant attention to avoid getting burned, they ate leaning back against the counter, apple sauce dripping out of the rolled pancakes and onto the finest china in the house. In James’ defense, these plates were the first ones he’d found, and Regulus was far enough in his hidden rebellion to do anything that would send Walburga into fits of disbelieving anger.
Later, by the time the light shining into the kitchen through the windows wasn’t enough anymore and they’d turned on the yellow-glowing overhead light, James rolled up his sleeves and washed the dishes while Regulus sat on the counter again with a dish towel and put the dried plates and cutlery and other things they’d needed for the pancakes down next to him.
After handing Regulus the last plate, James ran his hands under the tap to clean them from dish soap and Regulus couldn’t stop staring at his knuckles.
He kept his eyes on them as James stepped between his legs and grabbed a piece of the dish towel to dry his hands.
“Hey,” he said, looking at Regulus from under his lashes.
Regulus lowered the plate, losing his train of thought.
“Hey.”
James extended his hands and took the plate from Regulus, letting it join the others already stacked beside him.
Suddenly, Regulus noticed the silence. Hours ago, they’d put on a few CDs, but they must have forgotten to switch to a new one when the last one had ended.
“Are you okay?” James asked, and the concern written across his face was real. “You’ve been quiet all evening.”
Regulus shrugged.
“I’m just—I don’t know what you expect from me now. I’ve never done this before, and I didn’t bring you here to sleep with you, and you probably have lots of experience with a lot of people—and that’s okay, obviously—I’ve just never—”
James slipped Regulus hand into his.
“I don’t expect anything from you,” he said slowly, “I didn’t come with you to sleep with you, but to spend time with you. I like you—genuinely. You’re funny and sarcastic and you don’t try to put me into a box, and though you’re terrible at Uno, you aren’t a sore loser.” He inhaled deeply and his eyes found Regulus’. “I would like to sleep with you, in general, but it doesn’t have to be today, or ever, if you don’t want it. I’ll wait until you’re ready, even if you’ll never be. I need you to know that I won’t try to pressure you into anything you’re not comfortable with, and—”
He was cut off by Regulus crashing his lips into his.
“We can try to see how far we get tonight,” Regulus whispered, “and I’ll tell you the second I want to stop. Okay?”
James nodded, and Regulus had never seen anyone look as beautiful as James had in that very moment, lips pink, pupils blown wide, and breathless.
“Okay.”