Kill Your Darlings

“Regulus?” James asks quietly, and Regulus hums in response. “Be my boyfriend.”

Maybe, he thinks, some people are just meant to be left behind.

“What?” he can hear the forehead wrinkles in Evan’s voice.

“In my head. I talk to you all the time. Every day.”

I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.

He doesn’t trust them. But he trusts Sirius.

Regulus’s eyes go big for a moment, afraid. “Sirius—“

But Sirius only shakes his head. “You’re coming home with me, okay?” and then, because he can’t help it, he pulls him forward and kisses the top of his head. “You’re coming home with me.”

“I would leave me too if I could.”

“You told me to kill my darlings, right?” Regulus has no idea where this is going. “You spend all this time trying to be what you think everyone else wants—your mom, Sirius, fuck I think you even do it with me. But all those people you think everyone in your life wants you to be, they’re strangling you. So kill their fucking darlings. Because you, Regulus Black, you are the story.”

You are the story

because I don’t make the same choices you do, and since your choices are obviously the most empowering mine must be the opposite,”

Which is subjective but, well, Islam is supposed to be about peace and justice so, if you keep that in mind, hating the gays doesn’t exactly make sense.”

You know, the British, the French, when they started colonizing they tried to make women stop wearing their hijabs? It feels like, a bit of a fuck you. I won’t disappear. I won’t fade away. When you look at me you’ll see a Muslim woman. A lineage of Muslim women,” she shrugs. “I like that. It makes me feel…powerful.”