Work Text:
Once Again
Once again,
James opened the bathroom door to see Regulus on the floor
Not crying,
Just there
As blood leaked from his arm.
The cuts surrounded a tattoo,
Burnt into pale skin,
Treated like cattle,
A brand.
But when the star saw him,
His walls collapsed.
Tears,
Flooding the world,
Pouring down like rain.
“Reggie?”
The suns’ voice is soft
But it only hurts him more.
“Reggie please-”
“Stop.”
His black hair is limp,
His silver eyes dead.
“Did I hurt you?
Please tell me, I couldn’t live if I did”
James pleads, his voice
Beautiful,
Drowned in his worry and hurt.
And as Regulus looks into his eyes,
He can see it.
Love.
It’s warm.
Comforting.
And so very,
Very,
Painful.
He’s fallen again.
Another crack in the boy’s heart forms
He knows what he has to do.
To erase it,
Like he’s done countless other times.
To make his sun forget
While Regulus dies even more
At least tonight will be the last.
What should have been a comfort
Is enough to
Finally
Break him.
James kneels,
Ready to comfort,
But is stopped.
A fist,
On his chest,
Grasping his shirt to stop him.
“Don’t”
“Why?”
James didn’t mean to,
But
The pain in his Reggie’s eyes
Showed him
That his words
Had cut deeper than the knife on the floor
Ever had
Or ever would.
Every time.
He asked him that every time.
But this time,
He was too tired to keep being strong.
“If I show you and survive, promise to stay away.”
“Reg-” James started
But Regulus muttered a spell,
And James stopped,
As memories flooded his head.
Of him.
Falling for Reg
Like he had now,
Over
And over
Again.
“Why?”
James looked into his waterlogged eyes
Searching.
“I’m a monster.”
James pulled him close,
Repeating the words he said every time,
Before Reg made him forget.
“I don’t care.”
But this time, Regulus let him remember
And let him see.
Before the mess they were in now,
The stolen kisses,
The empty classrooms and closets,
The knowledge of how it just
Felt
Right.
And James kissed him.
But it wasn’t enough
Because later,
Regulus’ blood splashed onto a stone wall,
Regulus’ throat burned with poison,
Regulus’ body was dragged down
To the bottom
of a
deep,
dark,
lake.
And as James watched the sky that night,
He saw a star fall,
And he cried.
He knew that star.
The one he gazed at every night.
The star of a boy,
Who once burned so brightly.
He cried,
Because he knew his hopes were gone.
He cried because the star had fallen
From the lion constellation.
A star
Called
Regulus.
Two years later,
As the curse struck his heart,
James knew he couldn’t leave them behind.
But,
Some part of him
Was at peace
Because
He knew he would see his star again.
And as he stepped off the train,
He fell into someone’s embrace.
He knew who it was.
He was home.
That night,
The sun and the star,
Were reunited,
Once again.