When James was younger, he wondered why growing up took so long. The thought was always there, sitting at the front of his mind. He carried it around with him everywhere he went. He’d watch high schoolers drive around in their cars and laugh over tables at the mall, and he craved it with everything he had. He spent hours staring at the faintly-glowing stars on his ceiling in the quiet darkness of his childhood room, picking apart what he would do when he was finally old enough to enjoy his life. The clothes he would wear, the things he would say--it would come easier to him, then.
Now, he’s afraid that, somewhere along the way, he did something wrong. He must’ve fucked up somehow, because his life wasn’t supposed to go this way. He’d give anything to be back in that bedroom worrying about high school of all things. All he does is go back to the simplicity of it, clinging to it any way he knows how.
Maybe that’s why he’s in his car, hands gripping the wheel so tight that his knuckles are white. The sun hasn’t come up yet. On any other day, he’d have already been running for hours by now, music loud enough in his ears that it would drown out the thoughts constantly wearing away at his mind. He hasn’t missed the sunrise in years.
He presses down on the breaks, then shifts the car into park. He’d recognize the street he’s on until the end of time, until the ocean swallows up the world and leaves it just as it was millions and millions of years ago.
James stares at his parents’ home, at the window of his old bedroom. When he opens the door, he instinctively folds his arms over each other to hide from the cold that overcomes his body. He slowly crosses the street towards the front gate, his eyes never once leaving his window. There’s still a piece of paper taped onto it. The memory of what’s on it is all but faded from his mind now, but it reminds him of Harry--his room is filled to the brim with drawings plastered all over the walls.
The side gate is cold against his fingertips when he reaches a hand out to open it. The click that fills the air makes him uncomfortable, as if it’s cutting through some sort of picture in his mind. He’d always remembered this place as being so full of life, but it’s sickeningly empty now. He doesn’t remember the last time he was here alone.
When he steps into his old backyard, he immediately hears a scratch to his right. James turns and stares at the chocolate labrador watching him from behind the door, her graying tail wagging as she paws at the glass again. Her tail speeds up when she notices him watching her. James was the one that named her. Pipoca. He thought it was funny to name such a big dog after popcorn of all things.
His stomach twists over itself in guilt. The next thing he knows, he’s sliding the key into the lock of the back door and opening it just enough that she’s able to slide out. She nudges his knee, and he silently sits to scratch behind her ears. She licks his face, and it’s only then that he realizes his cheeks are already wet with tears. She nudges her head into his shoulder, and he wraps his arms around her neck. She leans into it, and his arms tighten around her, his face ducking into her fur as if he can somehow hide away there for as long as he wants.
His parents had gotten her from a shelter twelve years ago, just around the same time that Harry was born. She licks his face again, and he remembers when she was still a puppy and he could carry both her and Harry in his arms. Regulus always laughed when he did that, always immediately taking out his camera and recording the three of them spinning around the same backyard he’s sitting in now.
James doesn’t know why he’s here. He hadn’t planned on coming to his parents’ house. He never thought he’d be back here again, but he knows where he’s going. He’s been staring at the finish line for a long time, and the piece of paper folded in the drawer of his nightstand back home only proves that.
Pipoca whines, nudging her head against James’ shoulder again. He runs a hand down the side of her face, shushing softly. “Hey, girl.” His voice cracks, and the breath that comes after it is shaky. He has to take a second to swallow back a sob, and she stares at him all the same. He has a feeling he’ll miss all this, somehow. It doesn’t do anything to change his mind, but the empty realization washes over him. This’ll be the last time he sees his dog. He raises a hand to her ears again. “Yeah, I know. I know.” He doesn’t know if he’ll be able to miss her where he’s going. He hopes he won’t. It’d defeat the point.
When his parents had first gotten her, it was a surprise. He and Regulus were barely getting enough sleep as it was with Harry, but when his mom called him and said that his dad finally had gave in and picked up a dog at the shelter, they’d driven over as soon as they could. The first thing that struck James was how happy his dad looked with her in his arms, her tail wagging furiously as her head flickered around to take everything in while he laughed and watched her with an uncontrollable smile stretched across his face. Regulus noticed, too. He’d told James later that day that it was exactly the way James looked when he saw Harry for the first time, with that sort of blindingly bright love in his eyes. He stared at himself in the mirror for a long time that night. He couldn’t imagine that same joy as plainly as he saw it in his father’s eyes on his face. He was thirty-one. He remembers thinking that he thought he’d be happy by then.
He does love them. Sometimes, it’s as if his chest could explode with the feeling of it, with what comes over him when he walks into the kitchen and the two of them are sitting there, smiling over pancakes. They make him happier more than anything else in his life--but it doesn’t mean that he’s happy. Harry and Regulus are the suns in his sky, the two people who helped him make it this far. They’ve been the spark that’s kept him going this entire time, and it’s not their fault that it’s been going out faster than they can light it. It’s his, and only his. He’ll love them far long after he’s dead. He doesn’t know how it’ll work, but he’ll find a way. It’s the least he can do.
Eventually, he forces himself to stand. He can’t be here when the sun comes up. He doesn’t want his parents to wake and realize what he’s doing. He doesn’t want them to have to live with the fact that he was right there before he did it. He’ll spare them that much, at least, but it doesn’t change the fact that the guilt continues to eat at him. It’s been there for months, slowly gnawing away at his stomach, sending that overwhelming sense of nausea that overcomes him whenever he thinks about it, like a wave repeatedly crashing over his head as he floats helplessly alone in the middle of the ocean.
He opens the door and lets Pipoca back inside, following after her to make sure she climbs back into her bed and not up the stairs to wake James’ parents. She doesn’t stop pawing at his pants, and every time she does, he pets her once more on the head in an endless cycle of empty apologies.
He finds the lights of the laundry machine blinking in the room beside her dog bed, and he steps inside and takes a deep breath. It smells like home. He almost reaches out and opens the dryer just to smell the detergent his mom always used to wash his clothes with when he was little, but he stops himself. He’d just been folding clothes with Regulus the day before. Harry was asleep, and Regulus was there, humming under his breath to the music playing in his headphones. It was the most beautiful thing James had ever seen. He’d stepped right in there alongside him. He heard the waves crashing behind him, but when he closed the door, they faded far enough away that he could pretend they were seventeen again. He keeps going back to how it was then. It was just the two of them against the world. His mind wasn’t as consuming as it is now. He wasn’t constantly trying to stay afloat every day of his life. It felt like a dream he never wanted to wake up from.
God, Regulus. He’s never going to forgive him. James is past trying to make his peace with that--he won’t find it. He wishes Regulus was here with him now, as stupid as it sounds. Just to hold him like he always does and whisper sweet nothings into his ear until he falls asleep. He was always the one that could keep the ocean away the longest. He was always the one that pulled him out of the water, even if he didn’t realize it.
James walks like a ghost as he makes his way through the house, eyes sticking to everything they can to soak it all up before he leaves. He spots the stairs to the second floor just as he’s about to turn to open the door to his backyard, dozens and dozens of picture frames staring back at him. He’s in half of them, surrounded by people that love him, both alive and dead. It’s him, and it’s Regulus and Harry, and it’s Sirius and his mom and his dad and his grandparents and his dozens of aunts and uncles and cousins. He’s stared at the wall for so long throughout years past that he’s half-convinced he’s memorized exactly where they all sit on the wall. James' own eyes bore into the back of his head as he turns and opens the door.
As the door shuts behind him he considers walking back to his car, but something within him can’t bring himself to leave yet. The trampoline sits in the corner of the yard, untouched since Harry was jumping around on it a few weekends ago.
James carefully undoes the zipper and crawls inside, kicking off his shoes. It’s all so much smaller than he remembers it being when he was younger. He used to sit out here for hours, breathing in the outside air and skinning his knees over and over again. His parents would cheer him on as he’d flip and dance on the trampoline mat, jumping higher and higher as a smile permanently stretched across his face. It was all so easy then, so free and soft. All he does is go back to the feeling of it, grasping at it as it slips helplessly through his fingers with every passing day.
James closes the zipper and falls back onto the mat, closing his eyes and bracing for the impact of it against his back. He can hear the ocean rushing underneath him. The place where he used to peek through to, eyes against the mat to stare at the weeds growing, is nothing but raging water now. It’s all around him, trying desperately to get in, but the walls of the trampoline are a bubble holding it back around him. James gets to his feet. He’s his five-year-old self and he’s flying through the air.
He’s his seven-year-old self and Marlene and Peter are there, grinning alongside him as they try to see who can jump the highest, who’ll get out first in a game of popcorn. They’ll stay the rest of the day and James convinces his parents to let them sleep over, and that night they’ll sneak out again and stare at the stars that have always shone bright above his house. They’re his first real friends, the first people he can be himself around.
He’s eleven and Sirius is there for the first time, and James is trying to teach him how to do a flip. They keep falling over themselves and eliciting shouts of caution from James’ mother inside, but eventually Sirius manages to land on his feet and he turns and looks at James with the biggest, proudest smile on his face. James tackles him down with a hug and they spend the rest of the afternoon there, together in the sun.
He’s seventeen and lying there with Regulus, the other boy’s head on his chest as James runs his fingers through his hair. Neither of them say anything, but the silence is filled with the air of being young and in love and feeling as if nothing in the world can touch them. Regulus turns to stare at the sky at some point, and it’s as if the two of them are up there, staring down at the world, and it’s all theirs.
He’s twenty-four and they’ve just married, and all of their friends are all tripping over each other trying to fit inside. Someone starts bouncing and everyone almost tips over--and somewhere Sirius is laughing--but Regulus holds onto James’ arm and looks up at him with a soft smile, and everything else fades away because they’re married. There’s another sudden bounce and they fall to the ground on top of each other, and Regulus is shouting something over at his brother but James can't find it in himself care because he’s right there and he’s his.
He’s thirty-one and Harry’s babbling in Regulus’ lap as the two of them sit cross-legged across from each other. Regulus looks up at him and smiles, and the waves grow distant enough that James can pretend it’s gone. It’s just the three of them. Harry accidentally sends a hand into Regulus’ chin and he laughs, and it’s sends the same lovestruck feeling through James' chest as it did a decade and a half prior. He wants to carve a hole into his ribs to keep it there, right next to his heart.
He’s forty-three and there’s a piece of paper in his nightstand, but it’s so far away and all he can think about is jumping higher and higher and higher. He’s reliving every lifetime he’s spent here, and it’s all he does as the air slowly sucks itself out of his lungs. He can be anyone he wants to be. He can be happy. It’s been years since he gave up on ever finding it, but he goes back to a time where he hadn’t given up yet, when he still had hope and the finish line wasn’t visible yet and the waves behind him weren’t pushing him towards it. It’s all he can do, but the bubble is cracking and water is slowly filling up the glass tank he’s been in for his entire life.
He knows people love him--he knows it--but sometimes it’s just so hard to believe. He can’t keep trying anymore. He can’t. The little boy who used to jump so high on the trampoline--that’s who they’ll miss. No one’s missing him.
He steps out of the trampoline and lets the tide wash over him again, and it fills in the cracks across his skin. It’s almost a friend, at this point. He knows it’s something to run away from, but he can’t bring himself to hide from the thing that’s been calling his name for so long, something that’s become a constant in his life. It finds him every time.
It’s only when James is sitting inside his car that he turns and looks back on the yellow walls of his old home. He tried so hard to do everything right. He really did try.
He squeezes his eyes shut, resting his head against the steering wheel. He still can’t breathe, and the tears rushing down his face do nothing to help. He wants to be a kid again. He doesn’t know why he ever wanted to be old; he just wants to go back. He wants to stare at the stars plastered on his bedroom ceiling and fall asleep to the sounds of the laundry machine tumbling downstairs. He wants to wait for the bus and watch it arrive just as Marlene’s running around the corner, just barely catching up in time before it’s gone down the street. He wants to watch his mom wash the dishes as his dad stands behind her, the two of them moving their hips to the music playing faintly in the kitchen. He wants to be able to sit at her feet again, to wrap his arms around her legs and cling to them as she laughs and tries to hobble around the house with him attached to her. He just wants her to sit there with him, to wrap her arms around his shoulders and help him fade off into sleep.
He starts the car.
“I’m sorry.”
It’s the last thing he says to his childhood home, to his mother and father, to his dog. He takes a shaky breath and shifts the car into drive, slowly pressing his foot onto the gas. He can’t be here when he does it. A bag of pills sits on the floor of the seat beside him. He couldn’t force his eyes to look at them even if he tried.
He doesn’t know where he’s going, but he knows what he’s going toward. He knows what he’s going toward.
James thinks Regulus might hate him for this. He never thought it possible, but this might be what does it, what fully breaks them into two. He has to believe that in some universe out there, he did it right. That the two of them grow old together and die in the same bed in each others’ arms in some reality, even it’s not this one. In some life out there, he’ll see Harry grow old. He’ll see his son leave for college, and he’ll cry over it for weeks. He’ll visit his apartment with Regulus during the holidays, passing down the instructions of how to make Christmas dinner, just like his mom did for him. He’ll watch as Harry marries the love of his life, and he’ll wrap his arms around Regulus as the two of them smile and cry at the sight of it. He’ll hold his grandchildren in his arms, and none of them will ever know the sound of the ocean. His son. His beautiful baby boy.
He wishes that growing up had taken longer. He wishes he was back home, slicing apples in the kitchen for a snack after his run. He wishes that he had said a proper goodbye to his parents, to Sirius and Marlene and Peter and Remus, to Regulus and Harry. He wishes that his stomach didn’t hurt. He wishes that he didn't want it. He wishes that it could’ve been easier, that the ocean wasn’t so loud. He wishes that he could’ve been stronger.
The sun rises. For the first time in years, he isn’t there to see it.