Title: Blackballed
Challenge: Beware, The Ides of March at fandomfusion.
Prompt: (6) Nymph and (65) He’s got to make his own mistakes/And learn to mend the mess he makes/He’s old enough to know what’s right/But young enough not to choose it - 'New World Man' by Rush
Characters/Year: Regulus and Sirius Black, 1976
Rating: PG13 for swearing
Word Count: ~ 3000
Summary: Regulus sees Sirius' step outside family lines as personal rejection. Will Regulus take that step himself? Or was his brother's choice less visionary and more opportunistic? Having lost contact over the summer holiday, Sirius and Regulus meet-up for the first time since the familial disownment.
A/N: This story has been stored in my memory and in bits on my hard drive for a while, and fandomfusion's genfic and art challenge was a chance for it to have an official lj home. It was meant to be enjoyed, and I hope that happens if you read. It's unbeta'd, so politely point out spotted errors.



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I’ve lost track of how long I’ve been lying here. Been here flat on my back, concentrating on the scent of my fag to cut out the smell of scattered leaves decaying into the soil. If the autumn weather weren’t so warm, heating up the ground and spoiling the vegetation, it might not be as sour down here as it is.

But I like it anyway. Hogsmeade Saturdays are a chance at freedom, a bit of space for myself.

I tuck my forearm under my head as a pillow and the breeze laps my face, and I consider how useless eyelids are against the sun. Closed, everything turns into a pinky shade of yellow—it makes things dim, but not dark—and I wonder if this haze is what the first stage of blindness is like, like closing my eyes and facing the sun.

The wiry grass pricks my calves through my trousers and the din of insects and birds calms me. Then I hear it, my older brother’s bloody typical entrance scheme—bang and thrash on the way in—and it makes me catch my breath after having peacefully settled in.

A drag off my cigarette flattens my spiked nerves, and suddenly I feel the lump of my cufflink pressing into the back of my head.

“You’ve no stealth, Sirius.” I call out.

The banging continues. “What are you on about, little nipper?”

Piss off with the little nipper. “Do you have to walk so loud?”

“Why, yes. Yes, I do.”

He sounds as if he’s stomping on parchment as he marches towards me through the leaves, and I turn my head in his direction and squint at him through half-open lids. He’s twirling a tan sack in one hand and swatting and slicing low hanging branches with a cane in the other. No, it’s a stick. A very big, straight stick.

I realign my head on my forearm. “You don’t know the first thing about stealth, if you insist on making such racket.”

“Perhaps I do, perhaps I do not.” From his tone of voice, I can tell he’s enjoying annoying me, formulating a fresh confrontation to divert attention from his being late. “Or perhaps you’ve got it backwards, little nipper.”

“Yeah? How so?”

He’s strolled up to my face now, and I’m eyelevel to his boots. I cut them a glance. They’re bruised, cracked black leather with white untied laces—Doc Martens, he’s said. Immediately I think of my neat shirt cuffs hidden under my head, folded that precise way I like, and already I worry I’m too tidy for my brother’s new tastes, and I’m half-sick he’ll pick a fight over my family crest cufflinks if he sees. Sirius can punch someone’s lights out without any trouble, although he’s never turned right nasty on me.

“So come on then,” I ask. “How’ve I got it backwards?”

“Perhaps I’ve been keeping myself secret, hiding here in these weeds, and you weren’t clever enough to spot me, and I caught you by surprise. And in that case, if you claim that I, Sirius Black, do not know the first thing about stealth,” he sighs, then continues, “well, it means you’ve got the bloody wrong end of the stick.”

Sirius prods his stick at my chest as he speaks, and it’s a sharp little tap, so I lean up onto my elbows, pushing it away me, and he backs off.

I frown at him. “Er . . . you didn’t exactly catch me by surprise.”

“Either way.” Sirius chucks the stick into the brush and it clatters out of sight. “One thing is obvious.”

“What?”

“I did catch you napping.”

He’s impossible to contradict. “You did, yes.” I didn’t manage to sound satisfactorily upset, so I add, “Waiting on someone does become dull after a bit.”

“Don’t blame me that you hung around waiting.”

Waiting around all afternoon for Sirius doesn’t bother me in the slightest, but that’s exactly what he’s expecting, so I don’t have to say it. He’s aware I’m a loner, but it also infuriates him to know I’ll wander around alone, hanging around for him.

I’m pathetic, yet it always seems worth it after he arrives.

Drawing my legs and torso together, I instinctively begin to stand, but Sirius shakes his head and drops into the grass next to me. He stretches out his legs, cupping his hands between his thighs and curls his fingers under his crotch and hunches. He knocks his boots together, then crosses his ankles. This is his, I’m sorry, posture. The one taken when he hopes for understanding.

“What were you doing?” I ask, although I’m certain he won't tell.

“Mind your own business.”

Of course. There’s no telling how long his inattention might go on, and I watch him for a moment, having no idea what to say that he may find relevant enough to respond to.

“I know, I’m late,” he says, trying to not please me too much with a full apology. “We were playing Frisbee.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s this Muggle game, it's played by tossing a disc through the air at your teammate to catch, keeping it away from your opponent.”

He turns towards me for the first time since sitting with me in the sun. He’s gleaming with sweat and his clothes look slept in and his t-shirt is wet under his arms.

“James is bloody fucking brilliant at snatching—” He presses his lips into a thin line, then ducks away as if he were struck, meaning disappointment has settled into my face and he won’t look at it.

I want to throw James back in his face, but that would only irritate him further, and he’d leave. I haven’t seen him on his own since end of last term, and I was anxious for meeting up. He can't go—not yet.

“Ah, is . . . is Frisbee a bit like Quidditch?” Childish want kicks in my head, hoping that if I keep asking questions, he’ll answer, Yes, it’s exactly like Quidditch, and I’ve come to ask you to play with us. “Because it sounds like Quidditch,” I stammer. “Sort of.”

“No, it’s not like Quidditch. Frisbee’s a bit boring for me, actually.” He quickly decides not to go on about their game. “Look, today slipped through my fingers, and I’m sorry for making a late show.”

“Two hours late.” I barely say it.

“Christ. Really?”

I nod. It doesn’t matter if I confirm the length of my wait or not. Between the truth and what Sirius likes to think is the truth lies a canyon, and he manages to avoid being pushed into it by asking questions which sound imploring, but are too worthless to answer. It’s his way of implying he’ll go a mile for you when, really, he won’t give up an inch.

“Come out of it, little nipper. Don’t sulk,” he laughs, not for me, but to soften his own hardening mood. “I’ll stay the rest of the afternoon.”

Sirius angles his face at me with an expression I think is meant to make me feel more sorry for him for being late than for my own waiting.

“Can we just move on from here?” he asks.

“Sure.” I stare at the long line of ash hanging from my still burning fag, and then thoroughly snuff it on the grass.

Sirius plucks one from the case he’s dug out of his jeans, and he gestures at me with it. I shake my head, and as I watch him light up, I see it for the first time.

“What’s on your face?” I flick the skin above my upper lip.

“Oh, the moustache?”

“You’re not shaving?”

“I think that’s rather the point when growing a moustache.”

“Why are you doing that?” Now that he’s tucked his hair behind his ear, I notice a gastly long trail of black hair curving from his ear to his sharp jaw. “And sideburns, too?”

“What difference does it make why I’m doing it. I’m doing it simply because I can now I’ve gotten out of that sodding place you still live at.” He looks at me unapologetically.

I give him a long, searching look, wondering if he wants me to agree with him that home is a rubbish pile and say something contrite for remaining there after he left. But then he grins because he knows I’m fourteen years old and too young to choose to do otherwise, even if I know I ought to.

“I think it makes me look a bit like Jimmy Page. He’s wearing a moustache this year,” Sirius adds.

“I—I don’t know who that is.”

“Of course you don’t.” He rolls his eyes. “It makes me look more mature, then. Older.”

“Old?”

“No, not sodding old. Older.”

“But your whiskers are like bits of dirt on your face.” I wave my head across my mouth. “Or like the black firecracks in the porcelain Mummy received from Chin—”

Sirius cuts his eyes sharply at mine—can’t talk about that. Porcelain’s all right, but by saying Mother, I’ve sucked the small amount of joy straight from the moment.

Neither of us seems certain what is the safest next thing to say, and I say nothing.

Sirius pats the side of his face, then strokes his upper lip. “Well, it’s got a ways to go before its full effect can be appreciated.”

His tone makes it plain we’ve quit the topic of moustaches, too, and I realise we’ve now quickly gone wrong with both Frisbee and facial hair, and we’re a lifetime away from knowing anything about one another any more.

“Why do you want to pretend to be older, anyway?” I ask quietly.

“Bollocks, Regulus, I’m not pretending to be older. You know what I mean.”

I’m unsure I do, but I don’t want him to notice this, and then say he understands because I’ve never seen the point of understanding with him. It never changes anything, and I silently sit next to him, knowing the worst of it is that this eternal bond between us won’t break anytime soon.

Sirius pushes a cool, grey metal tin into my hand. “Oh, here, I’ve got you this.”

“What is it?”

“It’s from Honeydukes. I mean, you still like them, don’t you? They're Juicy Root Black Balls.”

He giggles like a ten year old when he says the words, and I smile a little, reading the label as daylight streaks brightly across the metal. It lies in my hands, making the uncomfortable quiet slightly easier to bear. “Thank you.”

“You don’t have to say that. I felt like doing it. I wanted to.” He huffs out a breath with something approaching relief.

“Thanks, though. Really.”

Sirius flushes mildly and begins a discontented frown. “You’re not, you know, making up for my faults around home, are you?”

I tense, slightly bewildered by his question. “No. I’m . . . . What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.”

“No. I don’t. And if I suspect what you do mean, there isn’t any of that going on.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.” A sinking feeling settles in my limbs as the chance for sitting here in contented brotherly friendship quickly passes.

“You’d tell me if there were, right?”

“Would I tell you? Tell you? Fuck it. How? How would I tell you, Sirius?”

Sirius narrows his eyes for an instant, puzzled by my reaction.

“I’ve written you precisely seventeen times and received one reply. One. Did you even bother to read my Owls?”

“I—I—”

“No. Of course you didn’t. But I know the Owls I sent arrived because in the one reply I did get from you, you said . . . let’s see . . . what did you say? Ah, you said, I don’t see the point in writing. But I did still write. I wrote every bloody week.”

From the reproachful look he's shooting me, I know I’m pouncing on him now, and I hesitate momentarily, uncertain if I ought to continue, but I’m caught by all the disappointment I ended up with after he left for James, showing me I no longer suited him.

“Shall we perform the arithmetic, Sirius? It’s what you hate about me isn’t it, that I reason everything?"

“That’s unfair, Regulus. How could I hate you?”

“There’re approximately three months in the holiday. Four weeks in a month. Three months is twelve weeks. Oh, my, what a bloody wanker am I, because I wrote seventeen letters. I wrote twice a week for starters, with no reply from you, and then continued even after you replied that couldn’t see a point replying.”

“I was trying—”

“And I was fucking concerned enough to hire public Owls from the MOMpost to elimiate the ravens since they’d be a touch too much like sending you a souvenir from home.”

“Are you finished?”

“You’ve no idea how wonderfully brilliant clear-cut inaccessibility from your own brother can be. Or were you just maintaining consistency? Have it all your way. Clean break from the family, and all that.”

“You know perfectly well it wasn’t entirely my choice. My god who chooses this kind of thing? I didn’t have a bloody choice by the time I left home. It’s the way things turned out.”

“You bloody dumped me and Mummy and Father so you could—”

“I didn’t dump you!”

“So you could—”

“What? So I could what? Be with James?”

I immediately realise that I am about to cry and don’t answer. I drop my head, pry open the canister with fumbling fingers, and start forcing chewy sweet balls into my mouth.

"So I could what? Regulus?"

I shiver and continue to stuff the sweets. He reaches for the tin, but I press it protectively against my chest.

“Don’t do that.” He sounds worried. “You’ll vomit.” And tender. “Please stop.”

My eyes are squeezed shut so tightly that they sting, and know when they open they’ll be pink.

“You think she would have let you at my letters? Do you? That if they managed to somehow reach you, she would have allowed you to have them?”

I can’t speak because I’m pushing down my throat the mouthful of licorique that’s become mashed and greasy on my tongue and against my cheeks.

“Well, do you?” he demands.

Sirius wants me to answer, but my lips are wet, and I try to lick away the saliva on the sides of my mouth as I shake my head. “You didn’t read my posts. Mummy wouldn't've seen yours, if you had read mine.”

“What?”

I hear feigned surprise in his voice, and now I’m certain he dismissed my posts entirely.

“I know you didn’t read them, Sirius.”

“Why do you say that? Of course I did.” He tries again, flattening his words this time to sound nonchalant.

“No, you didn’t.” I correct him. “I included a charm for you, an encryption charm, and I wrote you the code in the first few letters. If you used the charm, the messages would be invisibly sent from you to me at a common pickup box at a MOMP location, then I’d get a signal at Grimmauld that post from you had arrived. I wrote the charm it this summer. I picked it up from Father’s charmineering guides.”

“How would you have got out of the house to get to the MOMP office?”

“I picked one near Barty Crouch’s home—”

“Oh, for fuck sakes, Regulus.” He angrily interrupts. “What are you doing spending time with that little dickhead?”

I feel that familiar rawness at the back of my thoughts, the one Sirius always opens when he tries to protect me with his half-measures. “I picked the office near Barty’s because I’m permitted to go to his home without being questioned.” I shrug and clutch the tin. “And we get along.”

“Barty Crouch, Jr is seven kinds of wanker. I don’t like him, and you stay the fuck away from him. Understand me?”

“You don’t like him?”

“No, and neither should you.”

“And you’re ordering me to keep away from him?” I laugh.

“Yeah, I guess I am. His father works at the Ministry with James’ father, and James tells me—”

“James tells you. James tells you. This is precisely the bollocks with you I’m talking about, Sirius!”

“What?”

“Are you making me say it?” Will he make me say that he chose James over me?

“Making you say what?”

“That you . . . you . . . you—”

“Oi! Regulus, Christ!”

My head's spinning as my stomach twists up and splashes out of me, and for an instant I’m removed from where I am or what I’m doing until I feel Sirius rubbing his hand between my shoulder blades because he’s always done that to calm me.

And then I see it, there on the grubby grass and shriveled leaves, are my wasted, partially chewed Black Balls.

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