Regulus, Remus, and Lily were watching with great amusement as they sat at the kitchen table, crowded with drinks and half-empty bottles of alcohol.

To be fair, the evening had started with Esme lightly pestering Sirius. That had been several hours ago and up until this point, the two of them had seemed to be getting on relatively well.

However, Sirius had made the mistake of thinking he could direct a jibe at Esme without any repercussions.

He was sorely mistaken.

The two of them had, for the past hour, been engaged in a heated argument about everything they could possibly argue about - ranging from how to pronounce certain obscure words to which kind of apple was best.

James and Peter had ended up drinking a lot more than anybody else, and were dancing rather chaotically to the music and laughing hysterically at anything and everything. They were clinging onto each other to stop from sliding to the ground, and all sense of sensical conversation between the two had gone out of the window.

"Do tell me if I've crossed some sort of line here." Remus began, sat next to Lily who was in the middle of him and Regulus, "But they are awfully alike, aren't they?"

"Yeah..." Regulus nodded, "I think I should see a therapist about that."

Perhaps that was why Esme and Sirius could wind each other up with such ease. They were so similar in some regards that they knew exactly how to push the other's buttons in order to get a reaction.

"I think I'd take either of them over James at the moment." Lily covered her smile with a hand as they turned to see James and Peter were now slow dancing with each other, despite the fact that a rather fast paced rock song was playing.

Remus laughed again, "We're the sane ones, aren't we?"

"I don't know." Regulus shook his head slowly and took another sip of his drink, "Sometimes I think I'm mad, and she's the sane one."

Then, without thinking, he rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. If they'd been in Hogwarts, Regulus would never have dared to do it, but outside of school he'd never had to give it a second thought. So he was more than a little confused when Remus' face paled slightly and he let out a strangled cough.

"Oh." He mumbled, quickly pulling his sleeves down again to cover the Dark Mark.

"Don't worry about it." Lily comforted with a small smile as she placed a hand on his arm, "We know it doesn't mean anything about who you are."

Remus cleared his throat, "It's just not something you see everyday, you know?"

"Well there is that about it." He replied, taking another, larger, mouthful of wine and wincing slightly as he swallowed it.

"How does it work?" Remus asked.

This somewhat caught Regulus off guard, but he explained nevertheless, "Well I haven't ever been summoned before but apparently the mark just starts to burn and then you can apparate to wherever you're needed."

They were suddenly interrupted by: "Merlin... I'll be back in a minute." Lily quickly stood up and made her way over to help James and Peter who had slipped over in the midst of their dancing, and were now lay on the floor slurring unintelligible things and cry-laughing.

"Do you think we should help?" Regulus asked Remus.

The older boy folded his arms, laughed lightly, and shook his head, "No. They'll just end up falling down again. Any second now James is going to pull Lily to the floor and none of them will get up after that."

"Hi there."

Regulus was distracted from watching the scene unfold on the floor as he turned to see Esme had sat down in the empty seat beside him. Her cheeks were flushed a light pink colour - though he couldn't tell if that was from the bickering or the drinking.

"Hi." He let out an airy laugh as she leant against him and hugged his arm against her body. "Where did Sirius go?"

"He's gone out for a smoke." She explained.

He sighed, "Did the two of you come to an agreement at long last?"

"As if." Esme laughed, "I just didn't want to lose my voice proving him wrong."

"Oh!" She exclaimed suddenly, leaning over Regulus towards the boy on the other side, "I should probably let you know that Sirius accidentally let slip about your... Lycanthropy."

Remus raised his eyebrows and muttered under his breath, "Sirius, I swear to-"

"I'm going to leave you to explain that one." Regulus stood up, "I'll be back in a bit."

Esme reached out to hold onto the table as she turned to watch Regulus leave the kitchen after his brother. Once the door had closed behind him, she turned back to Remus with a cheeky, lopsided grin.

"I didn't mean to... You know, pry that secret out of Black." She explained, "Oh, but don't think he goes around spilling your secret to everyone either. He didn't mean to."

"It's-it's fine." Remus shrugged it off, "I suppose it shouldn't really be a secret anyway."

"We kind of ended up... Erm, what?" She was distracted by the sight of James stumbling over Lily's feet as they swayed together to the music on the other side of the room. At first, this annoyed the red-headed girl but her frown was quickly wiped away and replaced with laughter as James tried to control his limbs long enough to hug her.

Remus masked his laughter by taking a gulp of his drink and then explained, "I think you were going to explain why Sirius told you that I'm a... Werewolf."

"Oh! Yeah." Esme looked back over at him, sliding across to sit in the chair that had previously been occupied by Regulus, and continued, "We kind of ended up having a competition about who'd been in the most dangerous situation. I said I'd been around loads of Death Eaters. He said he'd been with a werewolf. I said that didn't count because I was there that night, and I was once in a room with You Know Who. And then he said being with a werewolf for years was more dangerous than You Know Who on only one day. Then I said that was insane and he pointed at you and said he knew from experience because you were a werewolf."

Remus rubbed the bridge of his nose, "I'm glad it took so much effort to get Sirius to spill."

"Did that makes sense? I can't really tell." Esme's eyebrows furrowed together as she tried to remember what she had just said.

He laughed again, "Don't worry, I understood."

She smiled, "That's a relief, because I'm not sure I could explain it again."

"That's fine, we can just sit here and watch Peter rolling on the floor." Remus slouched down in his seat and rested his feet up on the chair tucked in on the other side of the table, "Tell you what, first one to laugh has to take care of him when he's sick?"

Esme grinned at this, "Oh, you're on. I'm definitely going to win this."

Meanwhile, Sirius was leaning against the outside of the house, with a lit cigarette in one hand as he stared out at the hills.

"Esme said you were out here."

He turned to see Regulus.

"What are you doing out here?" He asked.

"Well..." Regulus paused as he stepped nearer, "We haven't really had a chance to talk since I got here."

"My bad. I did kind of lose track of time." Sirius took a long drag.

Regulus hummed, "Yes, it can be hard to escape once you get in a heated debate with Esme."

"She's a riot alright." He rolled his eyes, "I mean... After all, I think you two are really good for each other."

"Oh." He chuckled, "Really? Despite the fact that she winds you up?"

This made Sirius laugh before he replied, "I didn't like her at all at first, but I think now I realise that in someways she reminds me of me. There's a lot of things I don't like about myself so when I meet someone similar to me, I'm inclined not to like them."

Regulus ran a hand through his hair, "I didn't think I'd actually get a serious answer out of you."

"I'm always Sirius." The older boy responded with a snicker and a smirk.

They stood together for a few moments, looking out at the dark sky and small puffs of smoke, before Sirius extended his arm and offered his cigarette out.

"No thanks." Regulus waved it off.

"And as much as I hate to admit it..." Sirius paused again to take another drag, "She is a better person than I am. I'm glad you two have got each other - especially given all the chaos you went through without me."

"Well you've got some pretty good mates too." Regulus offered, digging his hands deep into his pockets.

"That's for sure." He nodded happily, extinguishing the end of his cigarette against the wall and dropping its remains to the floor before the two of them made their way back inside.

-

quick fyi in here,

me writing about sirius smoking is because i think he would given who he is as a character and the era they're in

i'm not endorsing smoking in anyway

stay safe and healthy