Liquid Luck [Sirius Black]/editing

Chapter 130

Tap tap tap tap.

I wake up momentarily confused by my surroundings. Sitting up in bed and squinting through bleary eyes, I glance out the window. It's raining loud and hard, drops hitting the pane like bullets.

"Keeks is awake." I hear someone say. I look around my room for the source of the voice. James.

James, Sirius, Elliot and Benjamin are sitting in a circle on the floor playing cards. Sirius scrambles up onto the bed with me and immediately has me wrapped in his arms. His nose brushes along my jaw as he turns to nuzzle into the crook of my neck. I feel him smile.

"Sirius was watching you sleep!" Benji calls up to me, smugly setting a card down.

Sirius whips his head in his direction. "I was most certainly not! You are such a wanker, Benji!" He gasps, snagging a pillow from behind my back and hurling it at the younger boy. Benji laughs, unbothered, as he's knocked over by the force of Sirius' throw.

Sirius looks back at me now; his eyes round and grey and flustered.

"Paddy, you are too cute." I laugh. "You've seen me naked, do you honestly think I mind that you watched me sleep? I watch you sometimes."

He visibly brightens. "Yeah?"

Even though the other boys are playing cards and immersed in their own conversations, I feel the need to whisper. "In the winter, your skin is flawless. You don't have even a single blemish. But in the summertime, the sun gives you freckles. They're faint but still there, like little kisses. Beautiful sun kisses." I graze my thumb over his nose and the apple of his cheek. "I try to count them when I can't sleep."

He's blushing a shade of red darker now and he's looking at me, staring with such intensity. Our faces are slowly inching closer, the air between us growing hotter.

The moment is ruined, yet again, by Mum appearing in the doorway. Sirius and I jump apart. "Chiara, there's someone here to see you."

"Really? Who's here?" 

Mum shrugs and turns to leave before adding, "He didn't want to come inside so try not to keep him waiting, alright?"

James peers up at me from the floor. "Did you invite Moony or Wormtail?"

"No..." I frown, mistrusting my own memory. "At least I don't think I did. Anyway, Mum would have said if it was one of them." I plant a chaste kiss to the top of Sirius' head and slip out the door without another word.

When I open the front door, the first thing I see are two icy blue eyes. "Regulus?" I say, unable to conceal the tone of surprise in my voice. Regulus is standing on my front step, sopping wet and shivering in the humid rain. I gently shut the door behind me and lean against it, hugging my arms around myself. He looks so much like Sirius, it's disorienting. "What are you doing here?"

"I-I-" His voice is shaky with emotion. His Adam's apple moves up and down his throat as he swallows nervously. "I found your address in Sirius' bedroom. Uh, his old bedroom."

I slowly nod my head. "He's here...Sirius is." I'm thinking maybe he wants to talk to Sirius and assumed he'd be where I am.

I'm now noticing just how unhealthily pale his skin looks. And he looks afraid and small, so small even though he's over a foot taller than I am. "I don't know what I'm doing here."