For Camp Potter (History Appreciation - Write about Regulus Black); the Out of Your Comfort Zone Competition (RegulusRemus and reckless); the If You Dare Challenge (291. Real-life); the Slash/Femmeslash Bootcamp (40. Key); the Globetrotter Drabble Competition (Montreal, Canada) and the Legendary Creatures Competition (Kiyohime)
"Hello Remus," Regulus purrs.
And Remus lunges, and suddenly, they're a mass of clashing teeth and exploring tongues.
The two of them, they aren't these people. Not really.
They aren't the reckless risk-takers who meet up with secret lovers in the middle of the night in abandoned corridors. Hell, they aren't even the people who fall in love with the wrong person, the one from a different house or side of the war.
No, they're the carful ones. The ones who fall in love with the right people, the people no one will curse them for loving.
It should be easy after that. A fairytale, and wandering off into the sunset with their respective knight in shining armour.
Only, the thing is, real life doesn't work that way, does it?
Remus Lupin falls in love with Sirius Black. It's a cliché, falling in love with your best friend, but that's just the way that life is.
But clichés end with requited love, and Sirius isn't in love with Remus. He's straight, and just so happens to be in love with James Potter.
Life isn't fair.
Barty Crouch is the Slytherin golden boy, and everyone is half in love with him. Regulus is just like everyone else, only he's not half in love with Barty, his heart belongs to the other boy utterly and completely.
But Barty Crouch is a player who never falls in love, and Regulus Black has a fragile, firefly heart which he refuses to allow Barty to shatter and extinguish.
Not everyone can appreciate true love.
And so two lonely, loveless boys meet and come up with a way to starve of the loneliness, if only for a moment longer.
Because Regulus looks exactly like a younger Sirius, and Remus' kindness is exactly what Regulus craves from Barty.
They don't love each other. Neither holds the key to the other's heart; they have no illusions about that fact.
But every time Sirius' lovesick looks at James stab a knife through Remus' heart or watching Barty with his partner of the week shatters Regulus into tinier pieces, they take the risks they never would otherwise.
They're not the people they become when they meet each other, but then, that's the thing about life. It forces you to be someone you never would be otherwise.
"I'll meet you tomorrow," Remus whispers as he and Regulus straighten their clothes and head their separate ways.
"Is it wrong for me to hope that we don't have to?" Regulus whispers as Remus turns.
"Never," Remus replies with a heartbroken smile. "We live in hope, don't we, the fools that we are?"
Because that's the thing about hope. It demands to be felt.
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