"What do you want from me?" Fingers curl around thin wrists, push, hold, and Remus goes still against the coffee table. Pliant and unyielding, he is a rag doll bending to Regulus' will.
It's so unlike him to have nothing left to give.
"I'm sorry I just...it's Sirius. It's always been him." The words are choked out between stolen kisses, conjuring images until everything slips into place; puzzle pieces.
Recognition.
Bitterness.
"Sirius, huh? Guess there's nothing he can't get." Regulus clenches his fists, sharp tongue assaulting his part-time lover, knocking the pieces to the floor like a petulant child refusing to let that image, that truth, form. He's been alone for far too long and he won't let this chance slip away, not this time. But they've always been like children, realities rooted in the past, living vicariously through one another, ever so quick to place the blame elsewhere in order to avert it from themselves. Their worlds, so far rooted in the past, can't help but be entangled, drawing them together and pushing them apart again and again.
Though he'd give anything to take it back, to stifle Remus' words until they melted into incoherent pleas, he can already see Sirius' fingers playing over Remus' bare flesh, tracing each and every familiar scar or blemish, that shit eating grin daring Regulus to try and top him, insinuating that he doesn't stand a chance. No matter where he goes, what he does, Sirius is always one step ahead. Black sheep, outcast, sinner, saint, he's done it all and Regulus is nothing but an ill-equipped, barely recognizable shadow trailing along in his wake.
"Regulus I'm..." the rest of the sentence hangs in the air, the apology that Remus can't quite manage to squeak out because, when it comes down to it, he knows he's not actually sorry, that he's made the right choice, call it what you will. And Regulus seems to sense it, shoves Remus aside, a worn and tattered doll collapsing on the carpet, wallowing in the wrongness of it all.
And then Regulus is kneeling beside him, reaching for him. "You're not sorry." Fingers dig into Remus' shoulder, nails scrape away flesh, leaving angry red lines beneath the well-worn navy sweater. "Don't you dare tell me you're sorry!" And he's spiraling downward, reaching into himself, into the roaring center of his new found rage as though it's all he has left. Maybe it is.
Remus remains pliant as Regulus shakes him, trying desperately to shake all the life or all of the Sirius out of him, whichever comes first. The time for change has come. Regulus never did like change and Remus' bruised and battered body spread-eagled on the floor beside him is testament to that, and each unmet thrust becomes yet another form of rejection.
When the deed is done, Regulus kneels beside Remus one last time. "Remus I'm---" the words, a broken whisper, halt suddenly. A smirk erases them. "Not even the least bit sorry." And with that, he leaves Remus to inch across the carpet, to drag his leaden body into the bed with its threadbare sheets where he falls, a broken doll thrown away to dream of a new master, to dream of Sirius.