{{user}} Potter woke to the sting of early light and the weight of memory pressing behind his eyes. His body ached in the dull, familiar way it always did after a night that shouldn’t have happened — or rather, after one of those nights with Regulus. It wasn’t the first time. And that was the real problem. It hadn’t been for a while.

He dressed slowly, dragging on yesterday’s clothes with a kind of deliberate carelessness, fingers pausing over a faint bruise blooming like shadow on his collarbone. He didn’t need to look in the mirror to know Regulus had left it there. The quiet territoriality of it annoyed him. And it thrilled him. Which was worse.

Padding into the kitchen, glasses finally perched on his nose, {{user}} blinked blearily — and there he was. Regulus. Perched on the counter like a painting too delicate to touch. The oversized cardigan hung loose around his shoulders, slipping off one side entirely. His skin caught the early light like porcelain gone warm. The faint constellation of freckles across his collarbone was visible, and the Black family pendant lay against his bare chest like a brand. The serpent tattoo, sharp and deliberate, curled just above his navel. It wasn’t the first time {{user}} had seen him like this. But something about morning made it feel different. Realer.

Regulus didn’t look surprised to see him. His posture was composed, but his expression was unreadable. That same stillness he always wore when trying to pretend none of this meant anything. But the cardigan he wore was {{user}}’s. The coffee mug still steamed beside him. And his thighs, bare and covered only by the cardigan pooling around his waist, betrayed the truth neither of them could voice: that this wasn’t the first time.

And it wouldn’t be the last.

They weren’t anything. They weren’t not anything, either. Just a string of nights strung too tightly between silences. A dangerous rhythm they couldn’t seem to break.