By his own accounting, James was not 'a smoker.' Much in the same way he was not 'a drinker.' He was just a person who happened to sometimes smoke. (Same as how he sometimes drank.) But he did like cigarettes. His father had favoured a pipe, but for James that particular habit never took. What was annoying was that the shop on this ridiculous island didn't sell cigarettes. Tobacco, however, was a common enough ingredient for the apothecary. The papers were a bit improvised, sure, and so thin that they had to be doubly wrapped, but what wasn't the point.
And matches were poor substitute for a working wand. But James had always had a particular knack for working with what he had available. And, gods above, if 'availability' were the very name of his trouble. Leaning against the shady side of the apothecary, he tried to let his mind wander.
It didn't wander far, however, before the truly surreal snagged at the corner of his eyes. His own, quite laudable, career as a fisherman aside, the idea of Regulus Black as a street sweeper just teetered on ridiculous. And he couldn't help it, that he chuckled a bit before blowing out a thin stream of smoke.
"You really have got a... 'job,' haven't you?" James mused.
Maybe he ought to have let the issue alone. Maybe he ought to have let Regulus alone-- only, he'd never really done so well with that. It was hardly his fault, though. The fates just liked to stick Regulus in his path. It's not like he went looking for trouble, exactly, but trouble had a way of setting itself right in front of him. It wasn't really as though James planned these sorts of things. He just kind of... got ideas into his head, and it was his knee-jerk response to relentlessly pursue them to the point of completion.
Maybe he shouldn't have just up and left, the other night, but what else had there been to do? He'd woken up, still drunk, and only half-sure of what they'd gotten up to. If anyone had found them, had seen them.... well, there was risk, and then there was Risk. And staying out all night was hardly a good idea, given the circumstances. Not to mention, the last time he'd tried to have a conversation with Regulus, he'd kind of wound up hitting him a lot. Not so great for communication, that. Not that he even had the faintest idea on how to go about 'communicating' with Regulus that didn't involve a lot of physical contact.
Surely, however, he was safe from himself in the plain light of day. In sort-of-public. Probably, anyway.