Disclaimer: I own nothing and make no profit from this story. I do not claim to own anything.
This is a story from a livejournal challenge where I have to write one hundred stories about the Black family, I'm four in right now but this one is long enough to warrant a post here I think. The rest may appear as some sort of multichip babble when I am finished. This stories' prompt was 'green'
I tried to get this to work with cannon in that Sirius will still leave and everything we know about them will still happen but I thought it would be interesting to think about what it would have been like if they had got on better as teenagers and children and what might have forced them apart.
Warning: this story does contain mild incest, nothing too graphic.
If you read this, I would love to hear what you think. Concrit welcome but flames don't help anyone so please don't flame me
Green had always been one of Regulus' favourite colours. He had loved it since he was a child, young, innocent and untainted by the world around him. Green was the grass he and Sirius could run around in. Green was the colour of leaves on the trees that meant it was summer and the family would go to the manor in France; that he could play on the beach. It was the colour of his favourite robe with the nice blue trim, the wallpaper in his room and of course, something so important to the Black family, Slytherin house.
Regulus had always known that would be where he would be sorted when he went to school. It wasn't a question. There wasn't another option.
As a child, green was a great thing. As a teenager, it was the one thing he wanted to escape from and couldn't. Slytherin and never ending expectations. He went in to Hogwarts under a pressure that Sirius had never faced, a pressure that was so heavy on his shoulders that he was close to cracking under the force of it by the end of the year. Maybe that was what made him go to Sirius. He was too young to ignore the instinct that told him to run to his brother and though Sirius wasn't able to do anything more than assure him that mother wouldn't be worried about what Regulus did do at school that year because she would be too busy berating what Sirius didn't do it was still something. It was something that meant they could go around pretending to fight like cats and dogs through the summer to mask the fact that they didn't hate each other. It was something that held their fragile relationship together. The two brothers found time and ways to be together. The Blacks were masters of manipulation and the boys knew how to harness that gift. It was innocent at first, innocent until they were caught and Sirius was punished for it even though Regulus went to him first.
He remembers the sound of his mother's hand coming into contact with his brother's cheek, the sound of her screams, the flashes of light as she cursed him, tortured him in his own home and the flash of sickly green under the floorboards that stopped Regulus' heart for a second as he hid in the shadows outside because for that second he thought it was another curse, one Sirius couldn't recover from.
His brother didn't deserve this; he was still a child, no matter how old he tried to act. This was wrong. That should have been the moment Regulus chose to stay away from Sirius and try to protect him by being as snarky to him as the rest of the family but he was twelve and still scared of what life wanted from him and just because he needed to do something, didn't mean he could. It was Regulus who helped Sirius to his room once their mother was done with him and had left him in the library and it was he who had got him dinner from the kitchen around his mother's back, ensuring the house elf wouldn't talk and when he saw the grateful smile on his brothers face when they were alone, a contrast to the vicious remarks he got when in public, he knew it was worth the risk.
Later, he would realise it started there.
They grew older and the pressure on Regulus fluctuated between being unbearable as his parents pushed him to be the perfect heir and easy to cope with as they focussed all their energy on making his brother feel sorry he had ever been born. They had just turned sixteen and fifteen when things changed again and Regulus was never sure whether it was for better or worse. All he knew was that after that time, things were never the same and it was like gaining everything he wanted while losing everything he had.
There had been a party both were forced to attend where they were wonderfully played against one another by their twisted family, using one to show up the others flaws. While mentally a fool, Sirius was powerful and strong. Regulus was smart and knew the right ways but he didn't have the startling beauty of his brother, his eyes didn't shine so bright, his cheek bones didn't stand out as much as his brother's. Sirius could be broken and re-moulded into the fold, Regulus couldn't be fixed, he had always been the weaker child, the sicker child, the one with less of everything the Blacks wanted him to have. Regulus was the backup plan. He had always known that but the party made it real. It hurt and he had found himself in Sirius' room, crying into his brother's shoulder, hidden away behind locking charms and silencencing charms, taking advantage of the never ending protections on the manor that allowed them to practise magic freely. Not like this though; when Orion had set up the protections, he would never have imagined what they would hide. Regulus felt safe with Sirius, he felt normal with Sirius, like a real person seen for who he was and not what Sirius wasn't.
Sirius had wiped his face, dried his eyes and somehow they had ended up staring at each other, completely entranced in the others gaze, memories of everything they had faced together flashing through their minds before Regulus moved, pressed his lips to his brothers and changed everything. At first Sirius had pulled away, looked shocked and concerned but Regulus had just twisted until he was sitting in his lap, kissed him again, harder and with more determination. It felt right. He knew it was wrong but so much in his life was so what was one more thing to regret when it was all he ever did?
"Regulus, this isn't right. We can't do this."
He was saying it but he wasn't doing anything to push him away so Regulus peered into his eyes, his breathes ragged.
"We can't do allot of things. Nothing we do is right for everyone but....you're all I have that isn't....tarnished."
Sirius frowned and pushed him away, upending his little brother so that he fell to the floor.
"That doesn't make it ok. Allot of things in this family is wrong and vile but...we don't have to be. There is always a way out, always. Besides you are upset, you don't know what you are doing."
He avoided his brother's gaze and shifted until he was on the other side of his bed, pressed up against the wall, green sheets pulled up to his chin as he stared defiantly at the Gryffindor badges on the wall.
Regulus bit his bottom lip and wiped at the last tear slowly creeping down his cheek. Green sheets, green flashes of light, green house colours that clashed with red and divided them outside the walls of their rooms. Everything was wrong, even if this feeling was wrong to have, he wanted to be safe, he wanted the one thing that felt right.
"Sirius...you didn't push me away the first time."
"Well I should have." His brother mumbled.
"But you didn't...so it felt good for you too. Don't lie Siri, you can't lie to me."
Sirius turned, looked down on him and sighed.
"I can't, I won't."
"You already have." Regulus argued as he climbed back on the bed and moved to pin his brother down, "You already have."
Sirius looked at him and Regulus knew he had him, if only for a little while, if only for the summer. He would have Sirius and a chance at being happy and having someone who understood everything he was going through until his brother went back to school and the morals of his house made him realise what he had done and what it really meant.
Later, Regulus would look back on that summer, as the one that changed everything and brought them together while slowly tearing them apart. Sirius ran away that year. Ran away from him and everything Regulus thought they had, ran away from everything he couldn't believe he had done.
From that summer, green wasn't nice things, and it wasn't pressure, it was something that turned Regulus' stomach and made him think of what might have been. Green was the stains on his knees as Sirius pulled him into the back garden, far away from the house behind the trees and the sheds and kissed him hard and rough and where he loved him, where he changed him from boy to man, where he gained his brother and everything he was only to lose him as Sirius realised just what he was doing.
Green was everything that made and ruined Regulus Black's life.
Comments and reviews are love. But either way, thank you for reading this. Concrit always welcome.