Who: James Potter and Regulus Black Where: Regulus's place When: Friday morning What: Time to wake up Status: Incomplete
Of course it was a bad idea, not dropping Remus a line to see if he was even home. But James had somehow managed to sort of avoid that thought. It was easy enough, with a million other thoughts crammed into his head at once. It was easy to think about the boat and the fact that they were nearly there with the whole underwater explosive thing, or the whole thing with Remus and Sirius, or the fact that being alive was nice and all, but what if he had a set time to live? What if the thread of his life would get clipped short, no matter where he was, no matter what he was doing-- no matter what.
That one sort of lingered. In fact, he couldn't really tell if he'd been thinking about that before or after his feet had set him off in the direction of the bungalow shared by Remus and Regulus and the Malfoy kid. (And that was another thing to think on-- Malfoy with a grandchild. Hardly impossible, seeing as to how apparently James had grandchildren. It just didn't quite seem to count, though, since he'd been dead long before they were born.) And then it was back to the whole death thing again. James wasn't afraid of dying. There was a whole afterlife to look forward to. But he really liked being alive. He liked the way how his nerves could hum when maybe they ought to be rattling, how when his pulse jumped it went hard and sure instead of tittering and skittish, how adrenaline never really tasted sour in his mouth.
James had been breaking into places as soon as he'd started picking up penny awfuls. At first, it had just seemed like a clever skill to have. Detectives had to break into places all the time. And then at school, it had been bloody useful. Different tactics, but locking picking charms and pulling apart wards came all too easily when he was already versed in the mechanics. Not, of course, that it took any measure of skill to just waltz right in. At first, he'd thought the place was empty, that Remus had gone off somewhere and was thus beyond the reach of James's company. It seemed a little late for Remus to be sleeping in, but James wasn't about to leave without checking.
Only one bed was occupied, and it wasn't Remus's. A corner of James's mouth dragged upward. It'd be harmless, to have just a little fun. Just to freak Regulus out a bit. For a used-to-be-a-Death-Eater, Regulus was sort of endearingly jumpy sometimes. And it stuck him as so amusing that James nearly laughed out loud-- Regulus, totally cool with hanging out with fucking Voldemort, got wound up around him. Once that got stuck in his brain, James couldn't have just turned around and walked out, even if he'd wanted to. It might have been the smarter thing to do, but instead, James was leaning down, smoothing his hand from the middle of Regulus's back, down his spine, and over his hip as he slipped next to Regulus.
"Morning," he murmured, skimming his mouth along the nape of Regulus's neck so that the word broke against the back of Regulus's ear. James was sort of bracing himself for Regulus to flail, and had his foot braced against the foot of the bed so that if he did, it'd be Regulus who fell to the floor instead of him.