“We’re fucking going.”
Barty grimaced and crossed his arms resolutely. “No.”
Evan exhaled slowly through his nose. That look on Barty’s face—once the bastard dug his heels in, shifting him was like trying to move a mountain with a plastic teaspoon.
The real kick in the teeth? Evan didn’t even want to go himself. He definitely wasn’t in the mood to see Reg—that was for fucking sure. Sirius was different. Seeing him was usually like coming home after a long trip—easy, certain. Any other day, Evan would jump at the chance, grab a pint, talk shit. But even the pull of Sirius wasn’t enough to outweigh the fuckload of everything else that made him not want to go. Not even close.
And then there was James.
Fuck that.
The thought of seeing James set off something raw and unfinished beneath Evan’s ribs, a storm building pressure. He wasn’t ready for that. Not by a long shot. Fuck Reg. Fuck him for putting Evan in a position where he was probably going to have to deal with James—and whatever that was—before he’d had time to work out what it meant. Fuck Reg for begging, because it meant Evan couldn’t say no. Fuck him for turning his shit into Evan’s problem. Again. Same as he always did.
Words had never been Evan’s strong suit. No—that wasn’t quite it. Most days he could hammer his point home just fine. What he couldn’t do was dance around with them, weave them into something palatable. He dealt in facts, hard edges and all. Said things straight, no chaser, no sugarcoating. Usually that worked fine—people even seemed to like it about him. But right now he’d trade a kidney for Barty’s silver tongue. That particular ability to transform a hard no into a yes through sheer force of charm alone. He wished he could use words instead of bulldozing his way past Barty’s defences with the one thing he knew Barty wouldn’t say no to. Him and their friendship. It felt grimy and manipulative. Worse than that, it felt like lying, dragging Barty into something potentially painful under the pretence that it mattered to Evan. He did it anyway. Did it for Reg, did it because he’d asked Evan to do it, did it even if it made his insides curl in discomfort.
“It’s my birthday. We’re going.”
Argument won, they were going. And Evan felt like shit. He stared out of the train window, watching the countryside dissolve into London’s relentless sprawl, his reflection a ghost over the city creeping closer. Barty was sprawled in the seat next to him, boots propped on the one opposite, flicking through his phone with the kind of jittery energy that made Evan want to snatch it out of his hands and fling it into the aisle. He didn’t, though. Just pressed two fingers to his temple, like he could physically push his thoughts back into order if he pressed hard enough.
London hit his senses hard—thick hot air, car horns, the stink of exhaust and sun-baked pavement. They moved through the crush of people, dodging tourists with selfie sticks and businessmen charging ahead like battering rams. Evan was on autopilot, weaving through the mass with the ease of someone born to it, while Barty lagged a step behind, apprehension rolling off him in waves that made Evan grit his teeth. Made him want to turn around and snap at him to suck it up—because Evan didn’t want to be here either. But he couldn’t. He had to pretend he did.
And that fucking sucked.
Sirius had offered to put them up. Evan didn’t know what Reg had told him—how much he knew, or how much he didn’t—but it was enough. Enough that Sirius hadn’t expected them to stay at Reg’s like last time. Evan had considered it for a minute, then decided against it. Staying with Sirius meant staying with James, and the next forty-eight hours were going to be enough to get through without adding that complication on top. He wanted to keep James separate. James was his to work out—his to figure out what it meant, what any of it meant. He wasn’t going to let the fallout from whatever Reg had planned take that from him. Reg and Barty’s mess had taken enough already. So instead, he sucked it up and did the one thing guaranteed to make an already shit weekend significantly worse. He went home.
They made their way to the townhouse in Belgravia, empty for the summer. The streets around it were silent, the houses like mausoleums—pristine facades, pillars, security cameras. Barty let out a low whistle, momentarily forgetting to be miserable, dragging his fingers along the marble banister with a smirk.
“Not scared I’ll nick the silverware?”
Evan snorted, dropping his bag with a heavy thud. “Knock yourself out, mate.”
Barty, as always, looked infuriatingly good—tattoos stark against the cream nightmare of a couch Evan’s mother had picked, probably with the intention of chic minimalism but to the actual effect of colourless and soulless. His scuffed Docs tapped idly against a coffee table that probably cost more than most people made in a year as he sipped his drink.
Evan sank lower into one of the armchairs, his mood curling in on itself like a cigarette burning down to the filter. He’d picked the most expensive bottle he could find in the cellar—a label that would make a banker sweat. Pure pettiness, and he didn’t particularly care. He was tired of being a fucking martyr. It was his birthday, and he would damn well be petty here, since he couldn’t be anywhere else. He lit a cigarette, used a crystal flute as an ashtray, flicking ash into the delicate rim just to spite the room. Barty looked amused but didn’t comment.
God, he hated this place. It had never felt like home—but then, nowhere belonging to his parents ever really had. Not here, not the country estate with its endless corridors and silence thick as dust, nor the Paris apartment with its gauche décor and roof terrace. The only place that had ever felt like home was five hours north by train, with a fat grey cat, walls lined with books, and plants trailing from every available surface. He wished he was there instead.
It wasn’t the birthday itself—he didn’t give a shit about that. Twenty-six was the same as twenty-five as far as he could see. And that was the problem. Six years of the same fucking thing. Still pining over someone he couldn’t have. Still letting it get to him. Still holding Barty together while quietly coming apart himself. Still doing whatever Reg asked, like some loyal dog that didn’t know any better. Anything to make Barty happy—even if that meant serving him up to Reg on a fucking silver platter.
It was pathetic. He was pathetic.
He drank more than he should have. They both did—not unusual, but for once it was Evan leading the charge. It didn’t help. Didn’t blur the edges. Just sharpened everything to a lethal point pressing against the inside of his skull. Morning hit like a sledgehammer. Head pounding, stomach a riot of regret and expensive poison. The hangover clawed behind his eyes, dragging his mood further down. He did the grim arithmetic: facing this with a hangover was worse than facing it drunk. So he picked up where they’d left off. Bloody Marys for breakfast, heavy on the vodka. Barty didn’t object. Neither of them wanted to do this. The difference was that Barty might actually walk away with something good. Something resolved. Evan? No version of this ended without him feeling like shit.
They had backstage passes but ended up being late, dragging their feet like condemned men, stopping at one bar and then another on the way. By the time they reached the festival grounds there was barely time for anything other than a fleeting hello. Just enough for Sirius to yank him into a hug—all smudged eyeliner and knife-edge grin. A nod from Peter. No James—supposedly wrestling with some last-minute technical crisis somewhere backstage. Then Reg, barely sparing him a glance, eyes fixed on Barty like he was water in a desert. The whole thing was awkward as fuck, but at least it was mercifully brief. The band was whisked away by a severe-looking woman, leaving him and Barty alone in the green room.
Evan didn’t do uppers. Not his poison of choice. He preferred the slow descent of downers, the way they softened the world’s hard corners. Hated the jittery edge of being cranked up. But tonight he wanted to burn it all down. Torch every thought in his head. So he did, savouring the petrochemical burn as it hit his system like a freight train. Barty was too lost in his own head to notice the break from routine—would normally have raised an eyebrow, made some smart comment; he knew Evan’s habits better than anyone. But he just looked grateful, told Evan he was his favourite person as Evan racked up lines of coke big enough to scorch his thoughts clean out of his skull.
Then they were off to the VIP section, cordoned off like an exhibit. Good view of the stage, safely removed from the sweating mass of bodies below. It was populated with the beautiful and connected—industry types in expensive casual wear that was anything but casual. A few outliers, friends maybe, friends of James and Peter. And there was Remus, standing with the same severe woman from before. He waved them over, made introductions. Minerva. The manager with the reputation. The one James secretly adored.
And then the band walked onstage, and everything else burned to white noise.
He’d forgotten how fucking good-looking James was. Or maybe he’d never really noticed. No—that was a lie. Of course he’d noticed. Hard not to, wasn’t it? James Potter: six-foot-something of the kind of stuff most people’s wet dreams were made of. Evan had noticed the first time he’d met him. Noticed it when he’d seen him on stage in Glasgow—the way the spotlights caught in his dark hair, the way his entire body seemed to come alive under them. And then he’d noticed again on that cold January afternoon at the dawn of the year, when James had opened the door to his flat shirtless, a few days of stubble darkening his jaw, hair sticking up in every direction like he’d been electrocuted. Evan’s brain had catalogued the details: the tattoos curling around his shoulders and down his arms, the sleepy warmth of his eyes. But it had been abstract then. Idle acknowledgement. The sort of thing you noticed and filed away—like knowing the price of a piece of art you’d never buy. An awareness that someone was attractive without feeling the pull of it under your skin. Without it being personal.
Now, though, it was personal. Because he knew James—and knowing him made it feel like seeing him for the first time.
And oddly, he reminded him of Barty.
Evan glanced sideways at his best friend, comparing. There was some physical similarity, he supposed, in an abstract sort of way. Both tall, both dark-haired, dark-eyed, tattooed. But it was a push. They were written in completely different fonts. James’s tattoos were thoughtful, deliberate, curated—softer, less harsh against his tawny skin, a stark contrast to the chaotic sprawl of stick-and-pokes covering Barty. James didn’t have Barty’s sharp edges either. He was built like something solid, something unmovable—broad where Barty was angular, steady where Barty was all nervous energy. Evan knew for a fact there was a six-pack under James’s black t-shirt. He knew James ran every morning without fail, worked out multiple times a week, disciplined in a way Barty would never be. Barty only ran when something was chasing him. James ran towards what he wanted with the force of someone who’d never once considered stopping.
They shouldn’t have been alike at all. And yet—
There was something. The way James held himself on stage. The way he pulled people in, that magnetism. The same thing Evan had noticed the first time he’d ever seen Barty—pressed against a kitchen counter at a party Evan hadn’t meant to go to, green-haired and head thrown back in laughter. Something that made him want to take a second look, that made it hard to look away once he had.
Evan’s pulse thrummed hot-wired beneath his skin, too fast, too much. He told himself it was the coke. The booze. The music pounding in his chest like a second heartbeat. But then he glanced around. Saw the way the girl next to him was staring, pupils blown wide. The guy on Barty’s right, mouth slightly open. The entire fucking crowd had their eyes locked on James, the same hungry expression painted across their faces. It wasn’t the coke. It wasn’t the booze. It was just James. Evan lost track of time. It rushed past in lights, music and James, and then all of a sudden James was grinning as he swiped sweat from his brow, t-shirt damp and clinging to his chest like a second skin.
“You’ve been fucking wild, Hyde Park.”
Thunderous applause cracked the air. A whistle split the night beside Evan’s ear.
“Can I have some love for Sirius on guitar?”
Screaming, like something feral let loose.
“Reg on bass.”
“And Pete on drums.”
“This is our last song. It’s an old one from the vault, the first one me and Sirius wrote together. The band was different then—we’ve come a long way, and I’m so fucking grateful for all of you. For the new fans—we love you. And for the old ones, the ones who’ve been with us from the start—this one’s for you.”
“We love you, James!”
A girl’s voice rose raw from somewhere down front. The crowd erupted—one chaotic, joyful beast with a thousand heads. The first chord hit, and Evan knew immediately he’d never heard this song before. It was faster, rougher, harsher. Neon-lit streets at 2 a.m., drunken dreams of greatness carved into bathroom stalls. More bite, more edge. Less indie-rock, more something else entirely. He could hear Sirius in the guitar line—sharp and jagged, ripping through the air like barbed wire. And he could hear James in the lyrics.
They weren’t about love—not Reg’s kind of love, anyway. No bloody hearts and haunted dreams spilled carefully across the page. No dark longing, no poetic metaphors designed to make people feel profound. These lyrics were about something else. Family. Friends. London. For the first time all night, Evan couldn’t hear Reg in it at all. This was James. Fast. Loud. Alive. All heart and joy, just for breathing the same smoky air as everyone else in this moment. The crowd went feral. Bodies crashing against each other, feet stomping hard enough to shake the earth, voices raised in some twisted, wordless prayer. It was chaos—pure and bright and burning. James threw his whole body into it, and it wasn’t as sophisticated as what Evan was used to hearing from them, wasn’t as polished. And yet he thought it was the best fucking song of the set.
The lights cut, plunging the stage into darkness. Applause roared, filling the space like a heartbeat—relentless, deafening. It went on and on, until finally the lights flickered back to life. Dimmer now. James was gone, Peter too. Just Sirius and Reg.
Sirius stood centre stage, electric guitar swapped out for an acoustic. “Hey everyone, we’ve got one last song for you. Something me and my brother wanted to do. It’s a bit different—not our usual thing—but we hope you like it.”
Sirius stepped back. Reg took his place.
“Hello.”
His voice was steady, but his eyes weren’t. They scanned the crowd, searching. Looking for something. For someone. For Barty.
“I hope you don’t mind me stepping in for a minute.”
He looked down, then back up.
“I’m good with words. Always have been. What I’ve never been good at is saying them to the right person, at the right time. When it matters. I always get it wrong.”
A pause.
“We don’t usually do covers. But tonight I wanted to. Wanted to borrow someone else’s words, because mine aren’t working.”
A nod to Sirius, and the first few notes rippled out over the audience. Simple. Stripped bare. A melody Evan recognised—altered, reshaped, scrubbed of its flashy eighties glitz and turned into something quiet and painfully aching. Reg’s voice came low and smooth, full of everything he’d never said out loud. The lyrics were shifted, adjusted, but still the same at their core. And Barty was in all of them. In every syllable. In every breath.
You come to me wild and wired.
You come to me, give me everything I need.
Evan shut his eyes. There was a pain in his chest. It was final. Aching.
Give me a lifetime of promises and a world of dreams.
Speak the language of love like you know what it means.
Evan opened his eyes, a decision settling into his bones. He didn’t need to be here for this. This wasn’t for him. He’d done his part—he’d gotten Barty here. His duty as a friend was over. He didn’t even look at Barty as he turned to leave. Didn’t need to. Barty wouldn’t notice. Not now. He didn’t need Evan anymore. Because there was no way this wouldn’t work. No way this wouldn’t fix everything. Reg was doing what he should have done years ago. What Barty had been asking for, what every fight, every argument had always been about—claiming him. Telling the world he loved him. Giving Barty somewhere to belong, a place in his life that was real and permanent and his.
It was everything Evan had wanted for them. For Barty. Because he knew it would make him happy. But that didn’t mean it didn’t still feel like a knife to the chest—because it was also everything he’d ever wanted to give Barty himself. And now it was over. Finally over. The fights, the breakups, the revolving door of misery. There would be no more. And he was glad. He was so fucking glad. But he was also exhausted. Used up and spent and done. And so he walked away. Made the choice, for once, to protect whatever was left of his heart. He walked away and he didn’t look back. He didn’t see James standing at the back of the VIP area, watching. Didn’t see the way James’s head turned as he passed. Didn’t hear James say his name, or feel the way James reached out—almost catching his arm.
No. All he saw was the exit. All he felt was the burning need to be somewhere far, far away. He turned off his phone, didn’t go home—wouldn’t risk the slim chance Barty might come looking. Instead he found a bar, then a club, then someone’s flat in Shoreditch. Some guy. Neat auburn hair, beige chinos, a navy polo. No tattoos. Nothing sharp, nothing dangerous, nothing like Barty or James. Safe. Unremarkable. Boring. But willing and wanting, and right now that was enough. All he wanted was to forget. To forget, and to have someone want him.