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Today is Sirius Black’s birthday.
Which means that at some point in the next hour, James Potter and Regulus Black are supposed to be standing inside Sirius’ flat with a bottle of expensive whisky and a cake Regulus spent forty-five minutes frosting by hand—because apparently he cares about presentation even when it comes to baked goods for his older brother. Which is, James has always thought, one of the most quietly Regulus things about Regulus. The cake is sitting on the kitchen counter right now, wrapped in cling film and perfectly decorated.
Regulus is also standing in front of the kitchen counter right now.
He is significantly less composed than the cake.
James has him backed up against it. Regulus’ lower back pressed lightly to the counter’s edge and James standing close enough in front of him that there’s nowhere obvious to look except directly at James’ face.
James’ mouth is on his neck.
“James—” The word comes out weaker than Regulus intends. He tips his chin up slightly, which he also does not intend, and which James interprets as an invitation. “We’re going to be late.”
James doesn’t answer. He rarely does when his mouth is occupied, and right now his mouth is very, very occupied—dragging a lazy line from the hinge of Regulus’ jaw down to the junction of his neck and shoulder, pausing to suck a bruise there.
Regulus grips the edge of the counter.
“James.” He tries again.
James lifts his head.
This is the part Regulus hates. Not the kissing—though the kissing is a problem, categorically—but this. James draws back just far enough to look at him properly, at close range, with those eyes. Wide, and warm, and brown, and completely perfect. The expression of a man who is asking nicely and knows it will probably work and feels no complicated feelings about that fact whatsoever.
His doe eyes.
Regulus has never won an argument against his doe eyes. He suspects this is by design.
“Just a minute,” James murmurs against his skin. “I promise, baby. Just a minute.”
His arms are around Regulus’ waist, loose and warm, his thumbs moving idly over his hip bones. He doesn’t stop looking at him. He won’t.
“One minute,” Regulus says.
James smiles and tips forward to kiss Regulus’ jaw, then his throat. His hands, which had been sitting innocently at Regulus’ waist, begin to drift upward. Over the fabric of his shirt, tracing the lines of his ribs, his thumbs brushing the underside of his chest.
His fingers find their destination.
Regulus exhales very carefully.
“James.” Regulus grabs a handful of his hair, pulling his head back slightly—but whatever point he’s trying to make slips away almost immediately when James’ thumbs start drawing circles over his nipple.
Regulus exhales sharply. “James. Enough, we need to leave.”
“Mm.” James’ mouth is back on his neck. This is not a response.
“James.”
“Mhm?”
“Enough.”
James does not stop. Instead, he rolls his hips forward. The breath catches in Regulus’ throat before he can stop it. James is already half-hard against him.
James leans in close, lips grazing Regulus’ ear without quite touching. The warmth of his breath alone sends a shiver down the side of Regulus’ neck.
“Can you feel that?” he asks.
“Yes,” Regulus answers. “I can feel it. I can also feel the minutes passing.”
“Sirius will survive.” James’ hand slides back to Regulus’ waist, and his thumb traces against his hip, barely dipping beneath the waistband. Testing. Waiting. “I’ll be fast, baby. I promise. Just—I need to feel you. Please. Would you let me, angel?”
That please is doing entirely too much work.
“No,” Regulus says.
“Baby—”
“No, James.” He puts a hand flat on James’ chest, which James permits without moving an inch. “If we are late to my brother’s birthday because you couldn’t manage yourself for forty-five minutes—”
“Okay,” James says quickly. “Okay, fair. Fair. You’re right. Completely right.” He pauses. “Just the tip, then? I’ll be super fast.”
Regulus stares at him.
“I’m sorry?”
“Just the tip,” James repeats. “In and out, I promise. You won’t even know it happened.”
“I’ll know it happened.”
“Barely,” James says. “Just the tip, please, angel? I promise. I just need to feel you.”
“You said that last time.”
“I know—”
“And the time before that.” Regulus adds. “And the time before that. On three separate occasions you have said just the tip, James, and on three separate occasions you have proceeded to do significantly more than the tip.”
“This time is different,” James begs. “Just the tip in, and then we’re done, angel. That’s it. I promise.”
“How is it different now, James?”
“Because I really promise this time.”
Regulus stares at the cake. The cake stares back at him, unhelpfully.
He is already losing this argument. He can feel it happening. It’s deeply unfair. Regulus is, by most metrics, a controlled person. He has excellent discipline. He should be immune to this.
He’s not immune to this. Not to James Fucking Potter.
“You promised last time as well,” he says, trying one more time.
“Yeah,” James admits. “But that was—look, that was a different kind of promise, love. I really couldn’t help it at those times. This one is serious—”
“You are the least serious person alive.”
“The last time was in different circumstances. I was younger, I was—” James says earnestly.
“It was last Tuesday,” Regulus cuts.
“Emotionally younger.” He cups Regulus’ jaw with both hands, tilting his face up slightly, looking at him with those eyes again from a distance of approximately six inches. “This time is completely different, baby. I’m very serious. I really, really promise now.” His thumbs stroke along Regulus’ cheekbones. “I swear it. Just let my tip in for one minute, and then we’re done.”
Regulus looks at him for a long moment, trying to read his face.
“Fine,” Regulus says, and watches James’ whole face light up. “Just the tip, James. Only the tip. For one minute. And then we are leaving, and you will be pleasant at Sirius’ party even though—”
“You’re amazing,” James says, and kisses him before he can finish the sentence. His hands still cradling Regulus’ face. “You’re incredible. You’re the love of my life.”
Regulus makes a sound against his mouth that might be a laugh. Might be. He’ll deny it.
“Stop trying to flatter your way into more than the tip.”
“Would it work?” James asks innocently.
“Absolutely not,” Regulus answers.
James grins. “Worth a shot.” He kisses him once more, slower this time. Tongue tracing the seam of his mouth until Regulus opens for him and gets a hand in the front of his shirt.
Then his hands drop to Regulus’ trousers, fingers working quickly at the buttons before pushing them open.
“You’re very beautiful,” James says softly. “My beautiful angel.”
“You always say that.”
“Because it’s always true.”
Then his hand slides between Regulus’ thighs, and Regulus keeps his composure for about two seconds before it starts to fall apart.
“God,” James breathes. “Love. You’re already so wet.”
He’s not wrong. Regulus is, embarrassingly, already wet. He has been since somewhere around the second kiss to his throat, because his body has decided, apparently permanently, to hardwire a response to James Potter’s everything.
“That’s your fault,” Regulus replies.
“Mm.” James’ murmurs. Eyes fixed on Regulus’ face, watching his expression shift as his fingers move. “Tell me what you want, baby.”
“I want to be on time to my brother’s birthday.”
“Besides that.”
“James—” Regulus’ breath stutters when James finds a particular angle. “I want—I want you to—”
“What?” James asks, innocently. His fingers move again, and Regulus grips the front of his shirt. “Tell me, love.”
“You know what I want.”
“I want to hear you say it.”
Regulus looks at him flatly. James looks back, his fingers working in circles, waiting. He can wait indefinitely. Regulus has learned this about him.
“I want you inside me,” Regulus says, and watches James’ breath go visibly unsteady. “But just the tip for now, as agreed.”
“Yeah,” James says. “Yeah, okay.” He presses forward and kisses him as his fingers slip inside. Two of them, working him open.
“Mm—”
“There you are,” James murmurs against his mouth. “That sound. God, I love that sound.”
“Stop being—James—”
James does not stop. He works him open slowly, watching his face throughout—his eyes go hazy, his mouth falls open, his free hand finds James’ shoulder and grips. Regulus hates how transparent he is. He’s spent most of his life carefully managing what he lets show, and then James happened, and now apparently his face is an open book to anyone paying attention, and James is always, always paying attention.
“You’re so perfect,” James tells him, fingers curling, and Regulus makes a sound into the curve of his neck that he will also be denying. “Seriously, Reg. Look at you.”
“Stop that,” Regulus breathes.
“I can’t.” He kisses Regulus’ temple, his cheek. “Can you take me now, baby? Tell me.”
“Yes,” Regulus says, too quickly. “Yes, I can, if it’s just the tip, now move—”
James removes his fingers slowly. Regulus exhales through the loss, and there’s a soft rustle as James undoes his trousers, and Regulus leans back against the counter and lets himself look. James, slightly disheveled, cheeks flushed, bottom lip bitten pink, palming himself.
“Ready?” James asks.
“I’ve been ready for the last ten minutes.”
James huffs a laugh, steps back into Regulus’ space, gets his hands on the backs of Regulus’ thighs. “Up,” he says.
“What—”
“Up. Come here.” He lifts him easily, and Regulus lets out a small sound of surprise as his legs wrap around James’ hips, back settling against the counter for support.
“Hi,” James says.
“Hi,” Regulus says, slightly breathless. “Just the tip, James.”
“Just the tip,” James agrees. “Promise.”
And then while watching Regulus’ face the entire time, he presses forward.
Regulus goes still.
There’s a specific sensation to it that never stops being something—the stretch, the give, the way his body reacts to James. Even just this. Even just the tip, as promised. It’s enough to make his breath go shallow, enough to make his grip on James’ shoulders tighten.
“See?” James says. His voice has gone softer. He’s holding very, very still, and Regulus can feel the effort of it in the tension across his shoulders, in the slight catch of his breathing. “Just the tip. Like promised.”
“Yes,” Regulus manages. “One minute, James. That’s it.”
“I promise.”
“Good.”
James’ forehead drops to rest against his. Their faces are close—close enough that Regulus can see every detail of him. “You feel so good,” he murmurs. “Always so good for me, baby. You know that?”
“James—” The word dissolves when James begins to move. Barely. Just with the smallest motion, with the gentlest pull back and then forward, just his tip. But the friction of it is something. It catches and drags and sends little sparks up Regulus’ spine, and he finds himself pressing into it almost involuntarily, seeking more.
“That’s it,” he says. “Yeah. Just like that.”
The rhythm is slow—in, out, just the tip. Regulus focuses on his breathing. He focuses on the weight of James’ forehead against his, on the steadiness of James’ hands on the backs of his thighs. He does not press back for more. He is exercising excellent restraint.
James leans up to kiss him softly. “You’re doing so well,” he murmurs against his mouth.
James’ hands slide from his hips to his waist, adjusting his grip, and the shift brings him fractionally closer. The angle changes just slightly, and Regulus feels that change in his throat.
“Mmhh.” The sound escapes him before he can stop it.
“Okay?” he asks.
“Fine,” Regulus says, more quickly than necessary. “Keep going.”
James keeps going.
The rhythm settles back in, and Regulus focuses on his breathing, and almost misses the moment when the pull-back goes deeper.
This is more than just a minute. Regulus realises.
He does it again. The same depth. In, out, and Regulus shifts his hips and the angle changes, and the sound that escapes him is embarrassingly involuntary. James catches it.
“God,” he breathes. “Hear that? You like that, don’t you, baby?”
“I like the tip,” Regulus says, “as agreed—”
“Yeah, yeah.” James adjusts his grip on Regulus’ thighs, drawing them slightly higher around his hips. The shift in angle goes straight through Regulus. “Yeah, just like that. Look at you. Look at your face right now, Reg, you’re—you’re gorgeous, d’you know that? Absolutely—”
James goes slightly deeper.
“James.” The warning in his voice has lost all integrity. “That is not just the tip.”
“What do you mean?” James says, sounds genuinely puzzled. He looks at Regulus with wide eyes, head slightly tilted, and says, “That’s the tip. That’s still very much the tip area, baby, I don’t know what you’re—”
He moves again, and it is measurably much more than the tip.
“F-fuck, James.”
He moves in and out, and the friction of it is something. It’s not enough, nowhere near enough, but it lights up a very specific set of nerve endings and Regulus finds himself pressing against it almost involuntarily, chasing the sensation.
James lets out a breath. He does it again. And again.
Regulus relaxes incrementally into it, the initial tension in his shoulders easing, his grip on the counter loosening. His head tips back, eyes fluttering shut. James moving in carefully, and Regulus breathing through it.
James draws back, and Regulus relaxes. Then James presses forward again. This time, it’s much deeper than before.
“James.” The warning in his voice loses most of its strength somewhere around the second syllable.
“Yes?” Still innocent. The rhythm doesn’t change—still steady and slow, but deeper now, working him open with a patience that is, frankly, infuriating given that Regulus is fairly confident James does not have patience.
“That is not just the—”
James rolls his hips and presses all the way in.
Regulus’ sentence dissolves.
For a moment there’s just the sensation of it—fullness, deep, and perfect ache of being completely filled, it pushes the breath out of him—and then he processes the complete picture of what has happened and makes a very undignified noise that is equal parts pleasure and outrage.
“Oh,” James says, sounding absolutely thrilled. “It slipped, angel. I’m sorry.”
Regulus closes his eyes. “It slipped,” he repeats.
“Completely involuntary. I don’t know how that happened.”
“You are—”
“What should I do now?” James asks, all wide-eyed concern, and Regulus can hear the smile in it, the barely-contained delight. “It’s all the way in now. Is there anything I can—”
“James,” Regulus says.
“Yeah, love?”
“You said just the tip.”
“I did,” James agrees. “I genuinely meant it.”
“And then you—”
“And then,” James says, his eyes going soft, “your pussy got so wet it just—it just pulled me in, baby. What was I supposed to do?” He tilts his chin down to look at Regulus with an expression of profound helplessness. “I couldn’t help it. It’s not my fault. I’d call it an accident, really.”
“An accident,” Regulus repeats.
“A beautiful accident,” James says, gently. “I didn’t mean to, angel. It slipped.”
Regulus stares at him. The audacity of this man. The absolute audacity of this man, who is standing here looking at him like a puppy who has gotten onto the furniture and does not understand why anyone could possibly object, and who is currently—
—who is currently still inside him.
“Move,” Regulus says, and James moves. Whatever else Regulus was going to say about promises and birthdays and the absolute predictability of this outcome disappears completely.
James starts to thrust slowly at first, pulling nearly all the way out and then pressing back in with control. He’s enjoying drawing this out. He knows what he’s doing. He’s known what he’s doing since the beginning of this entire sequence of events, and Regulus would be furious about it if he weren’t currently too occupied with the sensation of James’ cock sliding deep into him on every measured thrust.
“You can’t blame me,” James says, conversational, as though they’re having a normal discussion. His hand finds Regulus’ hip again, adjusting the angle, and the next stroke goes deeper. “Your—” James exhales slowly. “You’re so wet, baby. You make it—it’s difficult, when you’re like this—”
“I’m going to kill you,” Regulus tells him, and presses back to meet the next thrust. “I am going to kill you, and I am going to explain to Sirius exactly why—”
“Why you were late to his party?” James says. He sounds unbearably happy. He moves again, and the specific angle he finds this time—Regulus’ breath snags in his throat. “What will you tell him, do you think?”
Regulus doesn’t answer. He can’t, actually. James has found a rhythm now, and every stroke is doing something very specific to Regulus’ ability to form coherent sentences. There are sparks building at the base of his spine. His legs have gone warm and slightly heavy. The sounds James is pulling out of him are embarrassing and completely beyond his control.
“Don’t be mad, baby,” James murmurs, low and rough, like he’s talking to himself. “I’m telling the truth. It slipped—”
“Move faster,” Regulus says.
“Baby.” James shifts his grip, wraps his arm around Regulus’ lower back, pulls him in closer — and then he moves, properly this time, and Regulus gets both hands in his hair and holds on. “Yeah,” James breathes, rough and low. “There we go. That’s what I—god, angel, you feel—”
“Faster—James—“
James goes faster.
The sound of it fills the kitchen. Their breathing, Regulus’ small helpless sounds, James’ low rough exhales. James has his face pressed close to Regulus’, and he keeps looking.
“You’re so beautiful,” James tells him, rough, between strokes. “You know that? When you make that face—when you look at me like that—”
“Stop talking and—”
“No, I want you to hear it.” James adjusts the angle, finds something that makes Regulus’ whole body shudder. “There. Yeah. Is that—”
“Mmhh… James—”
“Is that good, baby?” He finds it again, deliberately, watching Regulus’ eyes go unfocused. His voice drops lower. “Tell me it’s good.”
“Ahh—it’s—yes—” The word dissolves. Regulus grips the back of James’ neck with both hands. “Don’t stop, don’t you dare—”
“Not stopping,” James says. “Not stopping, I’ve got you. I’ve got you, angel, just—”
Heat gathering at the base of Regulus’ spine, spreading outward, his whole body coiling tight around the tension of it. He’s making sounds he isn’t tracking. James is making sounds back. They’re face to face, foreheads pressed together, and Regulus can see every detail of James’ expression—the flush across his cheekbones, the bitten lip, his eyes keep finding Regulus’ and staying there.
“You close?” James asks, low and rough.
“If you stop I will end you.”
“That’s a yes.” James’ arm tightens around his back, adjusting, drawing him in, and the changed angle hits something inside Regulus that—
He goes apart, and he comes.
It rushes through him. His hands are fisted in James’ hair and his face is pressed into the curve of his neck and he’s saying—something, his name, probably, or possibly nothing coherent at all, just sounds, just James’ name worn down to a syllable. James holds him through it, arm solid around his back, still moving in slow deep strokes that drag it out until Regulus is shaking with it, oversensitive and wrecked and not remotely interested in composure.
“God,” James breathes against his temple. “God, baby, you’re—when you do that—” His voice breaks slightly. “Can I—”
“Yes,” Regulus says, immediate and certain.
“Inside?”
“Yes, James—”
James groans. His rhythm stutters. He presses in deep and stays there, arm crushing Regulus to him, and Regulus feels him come. Regulus can feel the warmth inside him, the pulse and heat of it, the sound James makes against his neck that Regulus has filed permanently and retrieves approximately twice a day.
For a long moment, neither of them moves.
The kitchen is quiet. The afternoon light has gone golden through the window. The cake is still there, sitting twelve inches to his left.
Regulus becomes aware, gradually, of several things: that his legs are still around James’ hips, that James is still holding him up with both arms and showing no signs of letting go, and that they are now going to be very, very late to Sirius’ birthday.
“James,” he says.
“Mm.” The sound is completely content, absolutely post-orgasmic, and deeply unhelpful.
“We are going to be late.”
James lifts his head from Regulus’ neck. His hair is a disaster. His glasses are slightly crooked. Exactly the expression of someone who has recently gotten what he wanted and isn’t sorry about it.
“How late?” he asks.
Regulus reaches for his phone from where it’s sitting on the counter, checks the time, and puts it face-down again.
“…Quite late,” he says.
James nods thoughtfully. “I’ll text Sirius.”
“And say what?”
“Traffic.” He kisses Regulus’ cheek, then his jaw, then the corner of his mouth. “Traffic and also I love you.”
“Don’t tell Sirius you love him, he’ll be insufferable.”
“I meant I love you.” James tips Regulus’ face up. “I do, by the way. Enormously.”
“I know,” Regulus says, which is not I love you too but James knows what it means. He’s always known.
James smiles, then he withdraws—Regulus makes a small sound at the loss—and steps back to clean up. “You shower first,” he says. “I’ll text Sirius. And I’ll carry the cake.”
“You’re not carrying my cake.”
“I baked half of that cake.”
“You put the chocolate in the batter and then stood there while I did everything else.”
“That’s an essential role.” He hands Regulus his trousers off the floor. “How essential would the cake be without the chocolate, angel? Think about that.”
Regulus takes his trousers. He looks at James—flushed and rumpled, already pulling out his phone to craft some lies for Sirius—and thinks, not for the first time and certainly not for the last, that the specific problem with James Potter is that it’s completely impossible to have wanted him and then stop.
“Just the tip my ass,” Regulus says, jokingly, while stepping off the counter.
“I told you, it slipped!” James says, already typing. “It was an accident.” He looks up, and moves closer to Regulus again, cupping his cheeks.
“What?” Regulus looks straight into his eyes.
“You can’t blame me, angel,” he pouts. “It’s not my fault you’re so wet—it’s—it—”
“Go away.”
“I love you.”
“I know.” Regulus finds his way out from his boyfriend and turns toward the bathroom. “And James?”
“Yeah?”
He pauses in the doorway without turning around. “You’re carrying the whisky.”
He can hear James’ smile in the silence behind him.
“Whatever you want,” James says. “Always.”
They’re forty-three minutes late.
Sirius opens the door, takes one look at them—Regulus still slightly pink along his cheekbones, James with his cheeky smile—and closes his eyes.
“Traffic,” James says.
“I don’t want to know,” Sirius says.
“There was an incident—”
“James, I swear to god—”
Regulus holds out the cake.
Sirius looks at it. Then at Regulus. Then back at the cake. The cake is, objectively, beautiful—silver frosting, exactly the right amount of decoration, the chocolate done the way Sirius likes it. Regulus made it for him. He spent forty-five minutes on it, and it shows.
Sirius sighs. The long, mournful sigh of a man who has made peace with his circumstances.
“Happy birthday,” Regulus says.
“You’re both terrible,” Sirius says, and takes the cake, and steps aside to let them in.
James catches Regulus’ hand in the doorway, just briefly. Squeezes once. Regulus looks at him sideways.
James grins.
Regulus squeezes back.