The Critic Writes
James didn’t chase him.
He wanted to. He ached to. But the look on Regulus’s face—like he'd carved open his ribs just to show James the mess inside... told him not to. So he didn’t. He just sat there, staring at the manuscript on the table, like maybe it would get up and fix everything.
He didn’t write that night. Didn’t move much, either. He played a song Regulus once mentioned liking on repeatuntil the neighbours banged on the wall. Then he played it again. He didn’t sleep. He just waited.
---
Regulus didn’t sleep either. He sat in his car outside his flat, keys in the ignition, watching the rain crawl down the windshield like the sky had too much to say. The manuscript haunted him. Every line. Every image. Every metaphor that wasn’t really a metaphor. James had peeled him apart with prose and Regulus let him. And now he was terrified that it was too late.
He didn't regret leaving. He regretted not saying something before he did. Not telling James that he'd read the first chapter six times. That he couldn’t stop picturing James’s hand against his jaw. That when he said he didn’t like the book in that café, what he meant was: I don’t want to like you yet. It’s too dangerous.
But James had never needed safety. He needed truth. Regulus had never been good at that.
---
The next morning, Sirius burst into James’s flat without knocking. Again. He found James sitting on the kitchen floor, tea gone cold in his hand.
“Alright,” Sirius said, hands on hips. “I’ve let you sulk. I’ve let you brood. I’ve let you play that tragic indie song twenty-seven times. It’s time to move.”
James didn’t respond.
Sirius crouched. “Prongs,” he said softly. “If you love him, don’t let this be the last thing.”
James looked up, eyes glassy. “Was it too much?” he whispered.
“No,” Sirius said. “It was real. He just doesn’t know what to do with that.”
James sighed, then he stood up.
---
Regulus stood too, elsewhere, at a crosswalk, watching strangers move past him like ghosts. He held a book in one hand, a pen in the other. He opened to the first blank page. And for the first time in a long time, he started writing.
Not to escape. Not to vanish. But to explain. To tell the truth.
He was ready to give James a story of his own.