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Sundays were always chaotic in Sirius’ opinion.
Monday through Friday he worked at a magical mechanic shop on Diagon Alley, he met up with his friends on Friday evenings, had lunch at the Potters’ house (mansion, really, Effie and Monty’s home was huge) on Saturdays, but Sundays were always unpredictable. Sometimes he’d hang out with James and Peter, or go shopping with Marlene, or do something stupid with the Prewett brothers.
This Sunday, however, he was on his way to his cousin Andy’s, to meet Regulus.
He parked his bike in the driveway, took off his helmet, then walked up to the door. It opened before he could knock, and a whirlwind of bubble-gum pink hair collided with his stomach.
‘Oh, hi, Dora,’ he muttered, only barely managing to keep his balance. ‘Hi, what’s up?’
‘Hullo, Sirius!’ she beamed up at him. ‘Reggie’s not yet here.’
Sirius let out a shaky breath. ‘Yeah, I know, your mum told me to come earlier.’
Dora let go of his middle and nodded, a serious expression overtaking her face.
‘Now, will you let me in, or am I supposed to wait out here?’
‘Sorry.’ Dora’s eyes went wide as she realized she was standing in the way, then jumped backwards, hitting something with her elbow that fall from the small dresser next to the door.
‘Nymphadora Tonks, what was that?’ Andy’s voice called from inside the house.
‘Nothing!’ Dora shouted back, quickly picking up the large keychain and putting it back to its place. ‘I don’t like when she calls me that,’ she whispered to Sirius, who was now inside and taking off his Docs.
‘Yeah, so you keep telling me. Dora is still okay, right?’
‘Yup,’ she nodded, popping the p. ‘Come on.’
Sirius hung up his jacket on the rack, then let Dora grab his hand and drag him to the kitchen.
‘Hullo, cousin,’ he greeted Andy, who was elbow deep in flour.
‘Hi, Sirius, sorry I let her open the door, but as you see, I’m a bit preoccupied,’ she chuckled, holding up her hands before she went back to kneading the dough.
‘I can see that. What will become of that?’
‘Mum’s making klejner,’ Dora declared.
Sirius raised an eyebrow at his cousin. ‘You’re making what now?’
‘It’s some Scandinavian cookie, I guess. Dora found the recipe in one of those Muggle Christmas magazines Ted always buys.’
Sirius hummed in answer, playing with his rings to keep his hands busy.
‘Your brother should be here soon,’ Andy noted. ‘You’ll have to get your own drink, though, I’ll be doing this for another ten minutes, at least.’
Sirius nodded. He found a glass in the cupboards and filled it with water. He half-listened to Dora recount some tale or another that had happened at her Muggle school – she seemed rather put-out that she couldn’t change her appearance while at school – but most of his attention was focused on the slice of road that was visible from the kitchen window.
A few minutes later, he almost hit his head on the overhead cupboard when the bell going off made him jump.
‘I’ll get it!’ Dora shouted and ran to the entrance. They could hear hushed voices, and the key fell again, but this time Andy just shook her head as she extracted her hands from the now much less sticky dough and covered the bowl with a tea towel.
Sirius put down his glass, ran a shaking hand through his hair, and turned towards the kitchen door.
Regulus looked a lot different than he remembered him. He had grown out his hair, though it was still a lot shorter than Sirius’, but now he had actual curls, which half-hid his eyes. He had also gotten rid of the proper pureblood clothes their parents had forced on him (and had tried to force on Sirius, only to fail every time) and was instead dressed in tight black jeans and an oversized, dark purple hoodie.
When he turned to greet Andy, Sirius spotted the earrings and the nose ring in his left nostril, and a small arrow tattoo on his neck, then those grey eyes that were so similar to his own landed on him, and Regulus gave him a small and uncertain smile.
Sirius felt something unfurl in his chest as he returned Regulus’ smile, suddenly not at all worried. He quickly closed the distance between them and pulled Regulus into a tight hug, smiling when he felt Regulus’ arms wrap around him.
Andy cleared her throat. ‘Why don’t you two make yourselves comfortable in the living room while Dora and I prepare lunch? Ted should be home in about an hour, and he’s always famished.’
‘But I wanna-’ Dora started, but Andy shushed her with a look.
‘Reg, what can I get you to drink?’ she asked, ignoring her daughter’s sulking.
‘Whatever juice you have open, thank you.’
Andy poured him a glass of orange juice, then looked over to Sirius, who had already refilled his glass with water. She raised an eyebrow in question.
Sirius shrugged. ‘I’m driving, and you know I’m not a fan of those sugary things.’
Andy rolled her eyes. ‘You and your bloody motorbike. Now, shoo, we need the space.’
Sirius and Regulus walked over to the living room, Sirius plopping down on the sofa and Regulus taking one of the armchairs, drawing one knee up to his chest.
‘You carry yourself differently,’ Sirius observed. ‘More freely.’
‘I do feel better than I have in a long time,’ Regulus admitted quietly. ‘So, how have you been? I only know snippets from Andy.’
Sirius shook his head at Regulus’ obvious attempt at driving attention away from himself but decided to humour him. They had a lot of time to get to the more serious stuff.
‘Well, I work as a mechanic on Diagon Alley, which is awesome. I get to work on magically enhanced Muggle vehicles, test them, come up with new features and spells, I really love it. I don’t exactly need to work, I guess, but it gets boring when everyone else is, and no two days are ever the same at the shop,’ he recounted enthusiastically.
Regulus chuckled. ‘Is that bike in the driveway one of your projects?’
‘Yeah, got xem almost right after graduation and been tinkering on xem since. I already made xem fly and am now working on finding an invisibility spell that lasts more than a few minutes,’ he said proudly, gesturing widely.
‘Xem?’
Sirius shrugged. ‘I don’t like that Muggles tend to use female pronouns for vehicles, so I instead looked up something gender neutral.’
Regulus nodded and took a sip, hiding his face behind the glass. ‘You sound just as crazy as when we were kids.’
The ends of Sirius’ mouth curled up into a smile. ‘Well, this is a crazy month, so I blame that.’
‘Why’d you say that?’ Regulus put the glass on the coffee table, then hugged his leg, resting his chin on his knee as he watched his brother.
‘Apart from this?’ Sirius asked, waving his hand around to indicate what he meant. ‘I actually fucked up your number at first and texted a random stranger.’
That drew a surprised laugh from Regulus. ‘Of course you did! Made an arse out of yourself?’
‘Ugh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?’ Sirius shook his head. ‘No, or at least he didn’t seem pissed off at me.’
Regulus smirked at him. ‘And you know that how?’
‘I may have asked him to meet for a cuppa and he might have said yes,’ he mumbled, fiddling with his hair, twisting it up into a bun. He drew out his wand from its sheath on his forearm and used it as a hair stick.
‘I see you’ve still got your charm,’ Regulus teased.
‘My charm?’ Sirius asked, confused.
‘You know what I mean. You had quite the reputation at school.’
Sirius laughed. ‘That stupid reputation is so beyond me. I mean, I haven’t really dated since early sixth year, and even then, I was merely Marlene’s tool to make Dorcas jealous.’
Regulus shook his head with a smile on his face. He leaned down to pick up his glass, drained it, then kept playing with it.
Sirius sensed the change in atmosphere and his features settled into a more serious expression.
‘So,’ Sirius started, fiddling with his rings, looking for an easy question to start with. ‘Where are you staying nowadays?’
Regulus glanced up at him for a moment. ‘I’m sharing a flat with a friend from work. Well, my boss, really. Ze’s from abroad and doesn’t seem to care about the whole Black thing.’
‘Your boss? Since when do you have to work?’ Sirius asked, surprised.
‘That’s part of why I left Grimmauld, to be honest.’ Regulus sighed and leaned back in his chair. ‘I started working a couple months ago, just because I didn’t know what to do with myself anymore, but then mother found out and wanted me to stop, because, apparently, it’s below a Black to work at a partially Muggle bookshop.’
Sirius giggled. ‘I guess good old Wally wouldn’t approve of my work either, if she knew.’
‘Don’t worry, she knows. She’s quite mad about it, too.’ Regulus smirked. ‘So yeah, she somehow found out and then told me to stop, but by then I really wanted to get out, so my boss offered me zir extra room above one of the two shops, and I’ve been staying there since.’
‘There’s no way she took it that easily,’ Sirius remarked, remembering his own escape from Number 12 Grimmauld Place.
‘Oh, there was a lot of shouting, threats, you know how it goes. Probably didn’t help that she originally wanted to talk about marriage, and I told her she’d need to either reinstate you or have another kid if she wanted to attend a wedding. Then she made a comment, something like I wasn’t the son that she had raised anymore and got even more pissed when I told her I’d realized a while ago that I’m enby, so she was right, and I wasn’t her son.’
Sirius snorted out a laugh. ‘Dear Merlin, I would have loved to see her expression.’ Then he fully realized what Regulus had said. ‘Wait, did you just say that to piss her off, or are you really non-binary?’
Regulus shrugged and drew his legs back up on the armchair. ‘I guess I am. Though that was really just the cherry on top of the cake, not the actual reason why she kicked me out. Right, the number of disowned Blacks in our generation is now three.’
‘She’s crazy, we’re all better off without her and the rest of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black,’ Sirius firmly declared.
Regulus gave him a small smile. ‘Yeah, I know. Was planning on getting out for a while, if I’m being honest, I just didn’t really have anyone to turn to.’ Sirius frowned and tried to speak up but Regulus raised a hand to stop him. ‘Yes, I know you want to say I could have contacted you, but I wasn’t sure how you’d take it. I was pretty horrible to you back at school.’
Sirius leaned forward in his seat and looked Regulus in the eye. ‘You’re still my baby bro- sorry, baby sibling, and I refuse to believe you ever bought into their bullshit. You were always better than me at keeping your head down to survive.’
Regulus snorted. ‘Okay, first of all, baby sibling sounds weird, please never call me that again. Brother is actually not something that bothers me, so just stick to that, alright?’
‘Sure. Right, what pronouns should I use when James makes me recount today to him and Red?’ Sirius asked in a joking tone, though his expression reassured Regulus that he was being genuine.
‘Um, they/them, for now. I may look a bit more into other gender-neutral pronouns, but I like they/them. And you have my permission to tell them everything; I’d rather not deal with having to come out to your friends.’
Sirius furrowed his brows. ‘Are you sure? I don’t want to cause any trouble.’
Regulus nodded deliberately. ‘Yeah, I’m sure. Mother already knows, so does my boss, and Andy and you. I don’t care about anyone else.’
‘Okay.’ He contemplated Regulus for a few moments. ‘You keeping your name?’
‘Yeah. It’s been with me for two decades already, and it’s way too obscure to make me feel dysphoric. Though I prefer Reg to Regulus; Reg is probably even more obscure than Regulus.’
Sirius nodded thoughtfully. ‘So, if mother didn’t disown you for being enby, why did she?’
Reg rubbed their face. ‘She wanted me to get married and have an heir, and I told her that one, I think I’d be a terrible parent and I really shouldn’t have kids even if I wanted any, two, I really wasn’t interested in any of the cousins she had probably selected for me, and three, I was aroace and sex repulsed so even if she’d get me to marry some girl, I’d rather kill myself than try to knock her up. Of course, she tried to get me to obey but I was way too angry at that point and just grabbed my stuff and stormed out. Probably just as dramatically as you had.’
Sirius shot them a sympathetic smile. ‘I’m really sorry I missed all that.’
‘You’re still shit at Legilimency, aren’t you?’ Sirius rolled his eyes but didn’t deny the accusation. ‘Then find a Pensive and I’ll show you the memory.’
‘You’re on.’ Grinning, Sirius drank his half-forgotten water. ‘So, you’re aroace and enby.’
‘Yeah. Aroace is-’ Reg started, but Sirius interrupted them.
‘I know the basics, don’t worry. I read pretty much everything I could find when I was researching a-spec identities, so I know whatever there is to find about them on the internet.’
Reg’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. ‘Why were you researching a-spec identities?’
Sirius huffed out a silent laugh. ‘Y’know, I was curious. Also, turns out, I’m demisexual, so there’s that. Kinda explains why I’ve been avoiding dating for years with how sexualized relationships are nowadays.’
Reg snorted. ‘We’re quite the pair, huh?’
‘I guess,’ he agreed, then his expression became more solemn. ‘Also, you probably know but I realize I never actually told you, so here we go: I’m gay.’
‘You kinda made being gay your whole personality in your last year or two at Hogwarts,’ Reg reminded him, rolling their eyes.
Sirius threw his hands up in an exaggerated manner. ‘Yeah, but you just came out as aroace and enby, which, thank you for trusting me with that, by the way, and even though I’ve been out for years I never properly told you like I should have.’
‘And now you’re just being fucking sappy.’
‘You’re still an arse, I hope you know that,’ Sirius shot back immediately.
They grinned at each other, then Reg moved to the sofa and sat down next to Sirius with a smile rivalling the Cheshire cat’s from Alice in Wonderland.
‘Come on, I want to see what an idiot you made of yourself with that poor guy you texted.’
‘I did not!’ Sirius protested, sputtering. ‘And what makes you think I’ll show you?’
‘Because I’m curious, and also I’m your brother, so making sure you don’t get yourself killed because of some pretty eyes is kinda in the job description.’
‘Hardy har.’ Still, Sirius pulled out his phone from his pocket, then looked up at Reg, noticing the arrow tattoo on their neck once again. ‘Wait, I just realized why an arrow,’ he wheezed, laughing to himself.
Reg smirked at him and turned, showing Sirius the other side of their neck. ‘I’ve also got an ace of spades.’
‘Dear Merlin, how do you even know about that?’
‘I told you the bookshop I work at is partially Muggle. That, and my boss is also on the spectrum and we shit talk a lot. And ze shows me all the stupid memes.’
‘Ze sounds pretty cool.’
Reg nodded with a fond smile. ‘Yeah, ze is. Which is why you’re never meeting zir.’
‘Arse.’ There was no heat behind the word, just familiarity.
‘So, what about your stranger? When and where are you meeting him?’
Sirius fiddled with his phone. ‘Er, Wednesday. We agreed to meet at the Leaky Cauldron and then go to a nearby teahouse.’
Reg hummed and drew their legs up on the couch, turning so they could face Sirius, their head laying on the back of the sofa. ‘So he’s a wizard? Then he’s not really a stranger, is he?’
‘He didn’t go to Hogwarts, so yeah he is.’
Apart from a slight widening of their eyes, Reg didn’t show their surprise. ‘Right. Now, will you let me laugh at your stupid texts now?’
Sirius looked down at his phone, then remembered everything they had talked about. ‘Actually, no. He told me something in confidence, and it’s really not my place to give that information away, even to you.’
Reg pretended to be extremely sad at those words, and only spoke up after Sirius bumped their shoulders together. ‘I can respect that. Though maybe you do have a picture you can show me?’
Sirius groaned, then unlocked his phone, tilting it away from Reg, even though they had turned so they wouldn’t accidentally see the messages. He opened his conversation with Remus and scrolled until he found the picture Remus had sent to prove he wasn’t texting his brother.
‘There you go.’
Reg turned back and took the phone in hand. ‘Hm, I think I’ve seen him at the bookshop a couple times. I doubt he’s seen me, always came in when my boss was there. He buys both wizarding and Muggle books, like, a lot.’
‘He studies History and English Literature, so I guess most of the books are for his classes.’
‘Gods, you sound whipped. No wonder you’re all fidgety now that we’re talking about him. You like this guy,’ they accused, reading the little message on the photo with a smirk.
‘I- I don’t know?’ Sirius raised a hand and scratched the back of his neck, making some of his hair come loose from the bun. ‘We only texted twice, but he does seem like a really nice person.’
Reg handed back his phone, and Sirius smiled at the photo before locking the screen. Reg chuckled. ‘Yeah, totally whipped.’
‘Ugh, is this how it is now? You’re back only to bully me?’ he asked, burying his face in his hands. Reg laughed at him.
‘Well, that’s also in the job description, so yeah.’
Sirius shook his head and tried to repress the smile that wanted to creep on his face. Reg grinned up at him, then leaned in for a hug.
‘You got touchy since we last met,’ Sirius joked after they separated.
Reg shrugged. ‘I can stop if it bothers you.’
‘That’s not what I meant and you know it!’ Sirius protested, but then Reg cracked up.
‘Don’t worry, I’m just messing with you,’ they reassured him, still laughing.
Sirius glared at them, then tackled Reg and started tickling their sides until they were wheezing under him. He only let up when Andy cleared her throat a few moments later.
‘Are you two still alive and mostly unharmed?’ she asked from the door.
‘Mostly?!’ Sirius cried indignantly, sitting back up and pulling Reg up. ‘I guess now we know how much we mean to you, cousin.’
Andy rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, cut the melodrama. Ted just pulled up so go wash up. Lunch is ready in five.’
‘Got it, thanks, Andy,’ Reg said, running their hand through their hair a couple times to get rid of the tangles and fluffing it up a bit.
Andy nodded and walked back to the kitchen to set the table with Dora’s help. Reg moved to follow her, but Sirius stopped them by catching their wrist.
‘Hey, just… If you need anything, I’m here now, okay? Even if you just want to hang out or something.’ He stopped for a moment, looking contemplative, before he went on, ‘Actually, it’d be nice to hang out every now and then.’
Reg smiled down at him. ‘Yeah, I know.’ They offered a hand and helped Sirius up from the couch, going in for a half-hug.
‘Now who’s being sappy?’ Sirius asked cheekily as he grabbed his glass from the coffee table and followed Reg to the kitchen.