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He’s trying. Doing it scared fucking sucks, but he is trying nonetheless. Regulus hadn’t been lying when he said trusting doesn’t come easy to him. Had anyone else told him what Sirius had told him the previous day, Regulus wouldn’t have believed it. He is still not a hundred percent convinced he believes it now either, but the doubt mainly stems from fear, and Sirius had said trying would be worth it even amidst that.
Had Regulus not come to this decision before, on his own, he doubts even Sirius’ reassurance would have made a difference. But because Regulus had been the one to start, the one to bring it up, and so it’s easier now. He has made the first step into the unknown by himself, but with his brother there – his brother, who’s already mapped out parts of this strange dread, intimately unfamiliar – it feels less impossible. Less unrealistic that he will ever make it out the other side.
Which is why Regulus is trying.
Which is why he comes back to that awful hospital room to sit by James’ side and slowly get used to his presence again.
Which is why Regulus is there when the Draught of Living Death is supposed to stop working.
Well, ‘supposed to’, he thinks, except clearly it does stop working. James remains in his hospital bed as he was; Still unconscious, still unresponsive. But there is a difference to his breathing now. What were even, if shallow breaths before now come out laboured, stuttering, wrong.
It’s painful to watch. Worse yet when Regulus’ gaze falls on Sirius as he watches James, concern etched deep into his face, darkening his eyes.
“I’ll get a Healer,” Regulus mumbles and gets up. Sirius doesn’t react, doesn’t even seem to listen. Regulus gets it.
The Healer looks unperturbed when Regulus tells her James has somewhat woken up but seems to have trouble breathing. “His lung got affected by the curse. That, on top of the injuries he suffered to his ribs means it’ll take a while for him to heal completely. This was to be expected,” she tells him patiently as she follows Regulus back to James’ room.
Regulus may have never finished his Healer studies, but he doesn’t think this is of no concern. Not with how James looks. Not when within the few minutes Regulus had been gone James’ breaths have turned into stuttered gasps, barely audible in the quiet room. Not when at the sight of him something in Regulus’ chest is starting to twist up painfully and irrevocably.
It feels like a cruel foil to the many moments Regulus had spent with James during the last few months. The same stuttered breathing, the same gasping for air. But now James isn’t crying, isn’t shaking, isn’t moving, and it is Regulus who is starting to feel the tides of panic persistently flood in.
He stands back and watches as the Healer checks over James’ vitals. She performs several spells, reading over whatever she finds with a crease of her eyebrows, then casts even more spells. She doesn’t speak, doesn’t express any type of deep concern, but Regulus has masked emotions often enough in his life to be able to read this look to mean that something is different than she expected. When she taps her wand to a small board attached above James’ bed Regulus knows for certain that something isn’t right. She wouldn’t be calling in another Healer if everything was alright.
“What’s going on?” Sirius asks, having picked up on the wrongness hanging in the air.
“We just need to do a couple more checks, nothing to worry about,” she assures him. Regulus knows she’s lying. He can feel it in his throat, his chest, his heart and it makes him want to run and hide and never confront whatever the truth really is. He can’t look at his brother, too scared Sirius might look back at him and read it off his face, too.
“He’s going to wake up soon, right?” Sirius asks. “I mean, properly.”
“The Draught we administered him has worn off, so Mr. Potter is now in a natural stage of healing.” Regulus doesn’t miss that this is in no way an answer to Sirius’ question.
Sirius notices too. “But the grey has faded nearly completely. Your counter curses have worked. So what’s wrong with him? Why is he breathing like that?”
The Healer gets saved from having to reply and Regulus from having to hear another half-truth when the door opens and disgorges two more Mediwizards.
Regulus presses back against the wall. The amount of lime green in this room is starting to make him feel sick.
“I must ask you to leave for a while. Please wait in your assigned room until someone comes to get you, we will need space.”
“I’m not going to leave him!” Sirius exclaims, agitated.
“Mr. Black, we are trying to help Mr. Potter, and we cannot do this in an overcrowded room.”
“I’m not–”
“Sirius.” Regulus’ voice is calm. He feels it too, an unpleasant quiet inside. An impending doom silencing out everything else within him.
Sirius looks at him, his eyes wide, searching for support, for help, for comfort.
Regulus doesn’t give either. “Come on. Let’s go.”
“I don’t understand,” Sirius whispers. He’s scared. More scared than Regulus has ever seen him. “He’s supposed to be fine. They said he will be fine.”
“We don’t know he won’t be. We have no reason to worry. They’re just doing checks,” Regulus says for the hundredth time. He’d hoped he would eventually believe himself, if he repeated it often enough. It has yet to happen.
“But why would they need three Healers for that?”
“Protocol,” Regulus lies. They never need three Healers for a normal check-up. Half the time they’re giving those tasks to interns. But Sirius doesn’t need to know that. Not yet, not if there’s still a chance that Regulus is wrong, and everything else isn’t.
It takes too long until someone knocks on their door again. Sirius’ fingers are wrapped around his, just as they had been two days ago, when Regulus first had come here. Then it had mostly been to comfort him. Now it is Sirius who seeks the comfort, squeezing Regulus’ hand hard enough he is losing sensation in his fingers. Although if that is because of Sirius’ grip on him or because his entire body has started to go numb he is not entirely sure. It doesn’t matter anyway. Nothing really matters, besides whatever is happening in the next room over.
The Healer entering the room now is one Regulus hasn’t seen yet at all. An old witch with kind eyes that Regulus can’t bear to look into. “Mr. Black,” she says, nodding her head towards him. Then another nod towards Sirius. “Mr. Black.” She pulls a chair up and sits opposite the brothers perched on Sirius’ bed, white hospital sheets creased from Sirius’ tossing and turning the previous night and his anxious twitching the past hour in which he periodically crumpled up the fabric in his fists.
The witch stays quiet for a moment, a kind silence inviting them to greet her.
Regulus hates her.
“I understand you must be worried for Mr. Potter’s well-being,” she continues with her agitatingly gentle voice when it becomes apparent that neither Black brother is going to say anything. “Please be assured that he is getting all the help he can here. Our Healers are doing everything possible to help him.”
“But what’s going on?” Sirius asks desperately. The comfort the Healer is trying to exude works on him just as little as on Regulus. It’s dishonest manipulation, nothing more.
The Healer sighs. At least she can recognise that empty words won’t do anything here. That Regulus and Sirius need the facts, the details, the truth of what is happening.
“It seems the valerian in the Draught of Living Death has weakened our counter curses more than expected, while the butterbur we gave him to combat the allergy-like symptoms Mr. Potter was experiencing has interacted with the failed Stinging Hex in a way we had no way of foreseeing and are still trying to understand. With the Draught of Living Death no longer stilling his body, his lungs are struggling to support the strain put on them through the curse, and his body temperature has risen to a worrying degree. It seems that even though the effect on his skin caused by the curse has mostly worn off, different aspects of the magic have evolved and have started migrating to various other parts of Mr. Potter’s body, including his heart and spine.”
“But you’re fixing him! You said you’d fix him! You said he’d be perfectly alright again in a couple days! He’s going to be alright again, right?”
“We are trying our best,” the Healer says placatingly. Regulus wants to rip that gentleness out of her throat. “But at the moment things are looking a lot more complicated than we are equipped for.”
“Can’t you just give him the Draught of Living Death again?” Regulus hears himself asking. His voice feels foreign to himself, his mouth moving without his input.
“Unfortunately, it seems its ingredients are the main reason the curse has started migrating. Which usually we might be able to work around, but with the way the curse has interacted with the butterbur this route is currently inadvisable. Our Healers are doing everything they can, but with how Mr. Potter’s body is reacting to the magic, and with the limitations this has put on our resources our chances of finding a counter curse that contains the Stinging Hex well enough are rapidly slimming.”
The Healer keeps talking. Speaking of other methods they’re going to try. Explaining the expected chances of recovery. Noting, ever so gently, how they should prepare themselves for those chances diminishing completely.
Regulus can’t listen to it any longer.
He’s at the match all over again, watching James get hit by a stream of golden light, bright and beautiful, nearly as bright and beautiful as James himself as he gets engulfed in it.
He’s at the match all over again, and he watches James freeze, then tip off his broom, his arm still outstretched towards a Quaffle that would never matter again as he falls, falls, falls–
He’s at the match all over again, and Sirius is next to him, his screams carving an excruciating, jagged rift into Regulus’ mind.
He’s at the match all over again, and then he isn’t. He’s in the reception area of St. Mungo’s with no idea of how he got here, with no idea where James is, or where Sirius is, or how either of them are doing.
Regulus knows he should go back. He knows Sirius needs him, knows Sirius is breaking down right now, but so is Regulus, and he cannot face any of it right now. Not his brother. Not that white, quiet hospital room, opposite to the home he grew up in in everything but its lifelessness. Not those Healers surrounding James’ bedside as they cast spells that no one believes in. Not James with his hair sad and messy, his eyes closed, his skin too warm and his breathing too wrong. Not James.
Not James.
Not James, when he’s slowly dying curled up in a foreign bed, surrounded by strangers who are trying to help despite already having given up. Not James, when he should be anywhere but here, should be laughing and talking to his friends and texting Regulus songs every morning that one day, soon, Regulus is going to reply to. Not James, whom Regulus is in love with, has been in love with for a decade, who has no idea that Regulus loves him because Regulus hasn’t even talked to him in four weeks. Hasn’t talked to him in four weeks because he was too scared of hurting his own feelings and too ignorant and naive to suspect that someone might be listening when he wished for never having to talk to James again. He had been too certain he’d always have the option to come back to him on his own terms, in his own time, when he’d feel ready for it. In the end Regulus had been too trusting after all.
Regulus cannot bear to face any of it.
Not himself.
Not James.
Not the truth.
—
James must have been three the first time he remembers ever having been truly scared. His parents had taken him out with them for a walk in a nearby forest, pulling him along in a small wooden handcart since his little legs were not made for the long distance they had planned to go foraging for whatever potion ingredients they hoped to find.
At some point James must have fallen asleep, curled up between baskets of leaves and flowers and the three stuffed animals he had insisted on taking along, because he distinctly remembers waking up and being entirely on his own. He had no idea where he was, or where his parents were, or what he was supposed to do. So he started crying, terrified that he had been abandoned, that his parents had left him or worse yet something had happened to them, that he had gotten lost and would never get to see them again.
At that point he had tried climbing out of his cart to go out into the forest and look for his parents himself. Because if they weren’t here they had to be somewhere else, somewhere where James might get to be too if he just went looking for them, which meant he had to go and find them himself.
However, all too soon he had to realise that he was stuck, the cart spelled closed so James could not escape to go on a search for his parents. (Or, as only years later he understood, so he wouldn’t wander off and get lost, or get abducted in the off chance anyone should come past this way. His parents were just trying to keep him safe, even if James at the time could not see that.) All he could do was stand up in his little prison, tears running down his face falling onto his stuffed animals hugged to his chest, and scream, and scream, and scream.
When his parents, barely a minute later, came back they were surprised to find him in such a state. They had not expected him to wake up, exhausted as he was, and had only walked a few feet into the covert to look for mushrooms, leaving the cart on the path where it would not hinder them. They hadn’t anticipated for their innocent little detour to go noticed. Much less could they have foreseen that this day was what made James first understand what terror really felt like.
James feels it now, too. He is back in the forest, alone and in fear, unable to move, unable to call for help or run towards it. His prison is no longer a small wooden cart, but rather his own body, trapping him and keeping him from the world around and the people he loves.
It’s mind-numbing, the terror he experiences as he lies in an unfamiliar place, unable to open his eyes, his senses so overwhelmed by the stinging of his skin and the heat underneath coursing through him that he can’t even hear anything besides the thrum of his own blood in his ears. It’s mind-numbing when he feels the panic building inside his chest, pressing against his sternum, closing off his throat, while he can’t do anything to fight against it. Can’t curl up, can’t cry, can’t even shake. Only lie there and feel it building and building until it is everything he is made of, fear and loneliness his only company.
—
When Regulus comes home his flat looks like it should, without half of his friends huddled together in his living area. He’s glad for it. He couldn’t face them right now, much less tell them that what he’d told them the previous day (that James will be okay, that it’ll be just a few days and then he’ll be fine) is no longer true. He doesn’t want to be the one to break the news to them. Not when it is already breaking him.
Without even first saying hi to Barty, Regulus locks himself in his bedroom, turns off all lights, and tries to turn off the rest of the world as well. It almost works when finally he falls asleep.
He manages to avoid everything for almost two days. For a while his phone stays turned off, but when his heart aches too much and the only thing he wants is a reminder of James he has to switch it on again. The flood of messages and missed calls freaks him out, though, and so in a burst of panic he deletes every single app off his phone and blocks everyone in his contact list.
Listening to his James playlist afterwards is only a small reprieve from everything.
Barty leaves him alone for the most part. He makes sure Regulus eats enough, but otherwise understands he needs his quiet right now, even if he has no clue about the gravity of the situation. The paralysing fear Regulus has about just how wrong everything is.
He doesn’t know, of course. The last thing he’s heard is still that the Healers are doing their best, and as long as they’re doing something Regulus should not be breaking down. Should still be hoping.
He’s terrified of even that.
In the end it is Remus who forces him out of his room.
When there is a knock on his bedroom door Regulus expects it to just be Barty again, checking in on him. However, when in response to his toneless hum Remus’ head appears in his doorway it is the first time since Regulus left that dreadful hospital that he is startled out of his numbness.
“Hi,” Remus mumbles. “Can I come in?”
Regulus nods and watches Remus step into the room, closing the door quietly behind himself. He looks tired, nearly as tired as Regulus feels, despite all the sleep he’s gotten. Remus walks stiffly, and when he sits down on Regulus’ desk chair he cringes, like his bones ache. Usually Regulus might ask if he’s alright. Right now he cannot handle knowing about another person doing badly, and so he doesn’t say anything.
“I couldn’t reach you. I tried calling you,” Remus starts.
“My phone’s off,” Regulus lies.
Remus nods, not questioning the statement. “When’s the last time you spoke to Sirius?”
“Tuesday.”
Remus nods again, a jagged movement. “I’m worried about him,” he says. “He’s not picked up any of my calls since last night, even though we’ve been checking in every couple hours until then.”
Regulus frowns. “How’ve you been calling him? There’s no reception at St. Mungo’s.”
“James and Sirius’ Two-Way-Mirror. I got James’ half of it from his flat,” Remus says nonchalantly. At least that explains why Regulus had been tasked with bringing Sirius a mirror to the hospital. Really, he should have known. “I don’t know what’s been going on with him, but I’m getting really worried. And since they won’t let me in to see him...”
“You want me to go check on Sirius.”
“Yeah.” Remus doesn’t even try to make it sound like anything but the plea it is.
Regulus doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to go back. He doesn’t want to approach the truth, even less now that he knows that Sirius has been reacting badly enough to it to make him stop talking to his boyfriend. He doesn’t want to know anything about it. Doesn’t want to know anything, doesn’t want to be there with Sirius, and a James who is probably dying. Doesn’t want to be anywhere. Doesn’t want to be at all.
“I’m having one of those shit cycles again,” Remus keeps talking. “Usually Sirius would be with me right now helping me through it. I don’t expect him to, of course, and I certainly don’t expect that we’ll have our Marauders hangout on Sunday with how things have been going, but ... well, honestly, the fact that Sirius is not here with me right now makes me feel like something is genuinely wrong with him. So I’m asking you to please go back and make sure he’s alright.”
Sirius is not alright. And there’s nothing Regulus can do about that. Because there is something genuinely wrong with him.
James.
Regulus feels sick. He wants to tell Remus to get out of his room, wants to tell him to fuck off and not ask this of him, not when this means he will have to come to terms with ... with–
He squeezes his eyes shut. In his head counts to ten, then starts over and keeps going until he’s reached forty-eight and hears Remus shuffling around uncertainly.
Finally he opens his eyes again, his gaze instinctively drifting to the gap in his bookshelf. Regulus might not ever get the life he had fantasised about, certainly not as more than a false pretence, and even that is now falling from his reach.
But Remus still has a chance. Sirius still does. He hates that it’s not him, but he doesn’t hate his brother enough to keep him from it.
“I’ll tell him to call you.”
—
When James was six years old his only relative, besides his parents, died. His aunt had been old by that point, older than her brother, and her health had been declining for a while. For the adults in James’ life it had not been a surprise, but James didn’t understand it.
He tried to get it. What it meant to die, and why she had to. Why at some point she stopped going to St. Mungo’s, and just stayed at her own home instead. Why the Healers that then regularly came over to her house didn’t do anything to help her. Why, eventually, they stopped coming too, and two days later she was no longer someone James would ever get to talk to again. He didn’t understand why everyone just gave up, when she could have continued to be, could have continued to do the trips to the hospital, continued to see him and his parents every Sunday for lunch, continued to live.
He thinks he gets it now.
He knows he’s doing badly. He can feel it in every vein of his body, every time he wakes up. He feels it with every last fraction of his consciousness. With every breath he takes, his lungs straining, burning around the little air they draw in. Every time he moves his head and flashes of blinding gold zap through his brain. Every minute he stays awake, short times in between in which he is barely able to do more than curl up tighter around his aching chest and hope that at some point, maybe, he will manage to open his eyes. To do more than lie there and listen to the Healers mumbling spells as they try to remove the pain from his body, the maddening itching in his lungs and the unbearable heat settling in his spine, crawling up into his skull, slowly taking over his brain. He wishes he could do more than lie and listen to Sirius cry and plead as he holds James’ hand, is holding it every time James becomes conscious enough to focus on it. He wishes he could comfort his best friend. He wishes he could offer more than a weak twitch of his fingers.
He wishes for a lot of things.
Mostly he wishes for it all to stop.
He knows things are bad, and he knows that even if they got better, got good enough for him to open his eyes again, it would not be enough. Won’t ever be enough. He’s heard the Healers mumble about it. Quiet, hushed voices, as they speak of such a tragedy and so much lost potential and so young and he would have gotten far. It hurts more than his breathing.
What’s the point of trying when they’ve all given up anyway? What’s the point of him still trying when there’s nothing to try for?
There is a dream he had lived for, and that is all he had.
Now there is nothing left. Just Sirius’ desperate pleading, only broken by the Healers’ useless attempts of magic and hushed whispers they don’t know James can hear.
The only reason he tries for as long as he does is the regret and the guilt building inside him. The regret of not getting to tell all his friends he loves them again. The regret of not even getting to hear them one more time, when no one but Sirius ever sits by his bedside. The guilt of upsetting Sirius, and of not being able to comfort him. The guilt of leaving him alone. The regret of a relationship faked, and a friendship destroyed. The guilt of a lie he will have to die with.
In the end neither regret nor guilt are strong enough to keep him trying any longer.
He manages to squeeze Sirius’ hand in return once. A gentle press, a soft goodbye. At least that is something he won’t have to regret.
—
It takes two days and three hours before Regulus manages to go back to the hospital room.
It takes two days and five hours before he manages to talk to Sirius again.
It takes two days and nineteen hours before I’m sorry becomes the worst sentence in Regulus’ life.
It takes two days and nineteen hours before he stops speaking altogether.
Regulus doesn’t remember the funeral. He knows he barely was there. He knows it should have been a quiet thing. Should have been for the people that actually cared about James for James, and not for whatever stardom he didn’t get to reach. He doesn’t know whether he actually left once he saw the mass of people around the graveyard of Godric’s Hollow, or if it was only him dissociating the entire time that kept him away.
It’s a weird kind of grief Regulus is caught in now. The loss of someone his heart longed to call the love of his life. The loss of someone the entire world thought used to be his boyfriend. The loss of the only other person who knew this to be a lie.
Regulus wonders how much James knew, or suspected, at least. He’d always assumed it was quite a lot, with how much fun James used to make of him with his flirting, causing him to blush and lose his composure. He certainly knew Regulus found him unbearably attractive. Since that night of truth or dare mixed with Veritaserum knows he was Regulus’ first crush. But anything more than that? He’d seemed genuinely oblivious at points, so Regulus doesn’t know.
He’ll never know now.
It’s probably better this way. At least like this he won’t have to know for certain that James was aware, and ignored it, because he simply had no interest in Regulus. Like this he will never have to get that verbal rejection he’d feared for so long.
That’s about the only good thing he can draw from this.
Regulus doesn’t remember a lot of what he’s been doing. He’s not really aware of it, of the hours and days and weeks he’s losing, of the way he is sort of just floating through it all, not even an outside observer of his own life because there’s nothing he’s observing. He doesn’t realise he’s losing time until at some point he gets a letter. One by owl, which is barely ever a good sign. But when was the last time he’s had a good sign anyway?
“Do you want me to read it to you?” Barty asks, still holding the letter in his hand and looking at Regulus, sitting on his bed, knees drawn up to his chest. He thinks he might have been here a lot. He doesn’t know.
Regulus shakes his head, but still doesn’t make a move to accept the letter.
Barty looks rather helpless. Regulus has no idea how he’s been doing. It’s probably a bit selfish of him, the way he’s ignored everyone’s feelings to focus on his own. Or ignore those, too, maybe. He thinks he should feel guilty about that, but he doesn’t feel anything. “I can read it and then let you know what it says?” Barty suggests now.
Regulus gives a miniscule shrug. “Okay.” His voice sounds weird to his own ears. Rough. Hollow. Regulus wonders when the last time was he used it.
Letting out a small breath of relief at getting a response, Barty opens the envelope and unfolds the paper inside. Regulus watches him read, even though his vision keeps going hazy, eyes drifting off into a space where James still exists. Every time he manages to focus back on Barty, he looks more worried.
“It’s uh...” Barty mumbles when he’s finished reading. “It’s from Madelaine Higgs.”
Oh, Regulus thinks. It’s not too difficult to figure out what she wants.
“She sends her condolences. Says she gets why you’ve not been back to work in a while.” He hesitates.
Regulus finishes the news for him. “But she’s still letting me go because I broke our contract.”
Barty winces. “If you pick up your job regularly immediately following next Sunday she says she won’t, but otherwise she’ll have to.”
“That’s fair,” Regulus says. “I should probably write to Terence, tell him I’m sorry...”
“Or you could just tell him Sunday in person?”
“I’m not going back.”
“Reg...”
Regulus shakes his head. “There’s no point to it.”
There’s no point to anything.
“I think it would do you good.”
Regulus disagrees strongly. He doesn’t want to have to touch a broom ever again in his life. The thought of it makes him sick to his stomach.
“You can’t keep living like this. And no, killing yourself is also not an option,” Barty immediately adds before Regulus even gets to open his mouth.
Not that he would have suggested it. Of course.
“I know he meant a lot to you, and I know he broke your heart, and I know this sucks, but you need to learn to move on at some point. You can’t keep withering away because your ex-boyfriend di–”
“He wasn’t my ex-boyfriend,” Regulus interrupts Barty before he can finish the sentence. “He wasn’t my anything.”
“All the more reason why you should figure out how to move on.”
“That’s not what I–” Regulus sighs and stares at the gap in his bookshelf. He couldn’t get himself to fill it yet. “James and I were never dating. It was all a pretence,” he finally says the words he’s hated for so long. They’ve been replaced with worse now, and Regulus needs to find a way to let go of this at least. He can’t mourn James when everyone sees him as more of a part of his life than he’s ever been. “It all – there were reasons why it became necessary. Had to do with James, and I promised him I wouldn’t tell anyone. But I was never his boyfriend. He was never in love with me. It was all a lie.”
“You’re joking,” Barty says.
Regulus shaking his head isn’t even necessary to make it clear he wasn’t. He’s barely been recently, he wouldn’t be joking now. Certainly not about this.
“That’s fucked up,” Barty mutters now, frozen in shock as he stares at Regulus. “Why would you ever do that to yourself?”
Regulus laughs, a hysteric, wet little thing. “Desperation and lying to myself that it would mean something.”
“Did he know?”
“Did he know what?”
“That you were in love with him?”
Regulus only barely manages to hide his flinch at the words. He hadn’t known Barty knew about that. Not about the full extent of Regulus’ feelings. Had assumed he’d hidden it well enough. He doesn’t like hearing it said out loud. “No,” he whispers, the admission that comes with that simple word pressing on his lungs, his heart. “James has no idea.”
“I’m–”
“Please don’t,” Regulus interrupts, exhausted. He doesn’t want to have to hear those words ever again.
Barty nods tightly. “Who else knows?”
“Just you, me and James.”
“You should tell–”
“No,” Regulus interrupts again. “And neither should you. I made a promise to James. I want to–” he falters, his eyes going out of focus again. The gap in his bookshelf seems smaller every time Regulus looks at it, taking place in his chest instead. “At least let me keep this. Please. It’s all I have left.”
It is a while before all the things in James’ flat get sorted out. Regulus doesn’t want to have anything to do with it. The idea of going through everything, deciding what to do with what … the idea of James’ flat – the place where Regulus had spent so much time, where he’d comforted James and drank tea with him, where James had taught him how to cook and where he had kissed him for the first time – the idea of this flat no longer existing as James’ rips open the wound on Regulus’ heart that had slowly started to scab all over again. It feels like a second loss. A finality.
So he refuses to join when all of their friends come together to reminisce and make decisions. He doesn’t care how much Barty insists he needs this. Needs to get closure from it.
He doesn’t want closure.
Of course, his refusal to seek it out still doesn’t stop it from haunting him.
When he comes back home from his escape (a new thing. His compromise to not wither away in his bed. He now withers in the library instead, hiding in a quiet corner where no one will think of even looking at him), his bed is already occupied.
He knows this is Barty’s fault. Knows he meant well, too, thinking of Regulus and assuming this is what he’d want.
Regulus is not sure if it is what he wants.
When he touches the thick fabric of James’ Quidditch jumper time seems to fold over on itself.
He’s here, and he’s not. He’s in James’ kitchen, learning how to cook dal. He is making coffee, sending James a sleepy morning selfie. He is snuggled up on his bed, interrupting his reading time only to text James. He is on his sofa, Barty and Evan on either side, as he tries to keep the pieces of his broken heart from cutting him open from the inside.
Regulus can feel the prickle of tears in the back of his throat. Gingerly he takes the jumper into his hands, and presses his face into it. When he breathes in deeply the tears start to fall.
The jumper welcomes him, holds him like it used to, asks to comfort him and gently takes his tears from him, its red darkening as it soaks them up. But it barely smells of James anymore. All there is is a faint scent, barely discernible over the fragrance of Regulus’ laundry detergent.
He hates it. Hates himself for having worn it enough to leave a part of him in it. Hates himself more yet for having washed it, having washed out both himself, and James from the memories it holds. He doesn’t want to forget what James smells like. Doesn’t want to forget how it feels to be wrapped up in his arms. Doesn’t want to forget the way James looked at him.
He doesn’t want to forget, and yet remembering is the worst thing he’s ever had to do.
It takes a while for the tears to stop. It takes longer for Regulus to lower the jumper again and guiltily pull it over his head despite the lack of James within it. It takes even longer for Regulus to notice the envelope that must have been hidden by the jumper’s folded layers before.
After a moment of hesitation, of staring at the light yellow of its paper, he picks it up and slides it open, careful not to tear it. The envelope is thick, promising several pieces to be waiting for him.
The first thing he pulls out is a lined piece of paper, hastily written on in pretty, round letters.
Hi Regulus,
These are all the photos of you and James that James had hanging above his bed. I thought you might want to have them. If not, please don’t throw them out, give them to Sirius or me.
Wishing you all the best, Lily
His fingers tremble when he pulls the pictures out of the envelope.
They’re all just as they had been when they first took them. Somehow that feels wrong. Regulus looks at them, and it feels like no time has passed. The colours are just as vibrant, James’ smile just as bright, and Regulus looks at him with the same undeniable love.
But the world has faded to greys, and James hasn’t smiled in weeks. The only thing that has not changed is that still Regulus loves him. Of course he still loves him.
And isn’t that the tragedy of it all?
There is love, and there is loss. And there is Regulus, caught in the middle. How long can he wander the ridge in between before the two stop looking so alike?
There is a month of daily songs, of messages left unanswered. The promise of a constant to welcome him back whenever he wishes to return written out without words. There is an after, a sudden nothing. A gaping hole, a dulling edge, the vow of a forever in silence so unlike the one Regulus had once thought he wanted. And there is a little red heart, caught in the middle. Forever attached to what never was. Forever waiting for what never will be.
And Regulus, still, is so terribly, irrevocably in love with James. And, still, he will never know what it is like to be loved in return.