"A smile.The first, or the last? I can't help but wonder if your love is a kindness or a cruelty."
They haven’t spoken in three days.
Regulus has been counting, first out of pettiness and then with despair. He’d felt them breaking from the beginning, knew they were nearing their end, but he couldn’t stop himself from clinging to those loose threads of what they used to be.
“What?” James asks, and his voice isn’t exactly annoyed or cruel. Regulus is pretty sure James is incapable of being Cruel, even to someone he dislikes as much as he dislikes his Husband. Still, his voice is not kind.
“I didn’t say anything.” Regulus says, because he hasn’t. He can’t.
“I didn’t say you did.” James replied curtly “You're staring at me.”
Regulus probably was, but he still bristles at the accusation and turns away, busying himself with cleaning up the mess on the counter. James’s mess. The one he’d asked him to clean up the hour before, that James had flatly said he would and then “forgot”. James must see the tenseness in his shoulders if the way he sighs deeply is anything to go by, and he crosses the room to put his coffee cup in the sink.
“Can you wash that?” Regulus asks, not bothering to look away from the mess.
“Regulus.” James is annoyed now, his voice is shaky as he tries to reel his annoyance in, to avoid the fight they both know is coming. “I’ll spell it.” He relents, muttering the spell wandless.
“I didn’t ask you to spell it.” Regulus says flatly.
“Please don’t start a fight this early. Please.” James begs
“I’m not!” Regulus snaps “I just want you to wash your fucking cup!” He throws the rag he’s holding down and whirls around to scowl at James, who looks exhausted.
“It’s just a fucking cup.” He says, running a hand over his face.
“So wash it!” Regulus snaps “it’s not that hard to pick up a fucking rag and clean your cup, James. I’m already cleaning your mess from earlier-”
“I already apologized!” James hisses “Can you just- Just calm down for once?”
“Seriously?” Regulus snarls “Merlin forbid I ask you to do one god damned dish! I might just grow fangs and horns with how horrible you seem to find me!”
“Stop it!” James slams his hands on the counter and, despite himself, Regulus flinches and his hip hits the handle on the stove beside him. James goes very still, and emotions flit across his face in rapid succession before he carefully moves to the table and sits down, putting his head in his hands.
Tentatively Regulus joins him, sitting across from him and folding his hands on the surface over the white flowered cover. Lily had bought it for them when they moved in.
“What happened?” James whispers, lifting his shining eyes to his Husband. He looks like he’s given up fighting, and Regulus feels his heart strain against his chest like a trapped child beating against the cage of his ribs. “We used to be happy. There used to be so much love here.”
Regulus feels the breath punch out of him and he lowers his eyes, struggling to fight the rising tears betraying him. Used to, James had said. Used to be love. Past tense.
“I don’t know.” He says, because he doesn’t. He doesn’t know when lingering looks and soft loving smiles became passing glances and deep frowns. He can’t remember when the warmth of being near James went stale and cold. When the light in James's eyes when he looked at Regulus had dimmed.
Had it been that first argument, years ago, that began it all? Had it been the stress of their jobs or the constant time spent away from one another? Had it been their incompatibility, that everyone seemed to talk about when they’d first gotten together?
How could they know when this fear and hurt and brokenness began, when everything began to splinter and crack?
“Should we…I mean are we…” James swallows “Is this the end, then?”
Regulus feels his face crumple, his brows pull together and his lip begin to tremble, his eyes burning as the tears spill over. The pain he feels is almost physical, like someone is taking a part of him and tearing it painfully from his chest. He clenches his fist in his sweater, fighting the urge to push the chair back and fold in on himself, to sob unbearably loud into the horrible quiet of their home.
He had loved James, Once. So deeply and full it had become almost as easy as breathing. He had looked at James and thought He’s all I’ve ever wanted. He’s better than I’ll ever deserve. And he had thought himself right. James had been a god with which he would kneel and worship if given the chance. He had lived for James and loved for him and his very being was etched into the smile on James’s lips when their eyes met for the first time in fifth year, when James had brought him the sun in star-kissed palms and kissed the lingering fear from his mind with gentle lips, when he’d picked up the broken pieces of Regulus’s life and fitted them together better than before.
“I don’t know.” He repeats, his voice shaking almost as much as him. He chances a glance at James, who is staring at his hands with watery eyes framed wide by his glasses. He looks torn, broken, and something in Regulus aches to hold him closer and spell away his pain.
“I…I know it’s selfish to say but I…” James shudders and the tears spill over. He lets out a wail and begins to cry in earnest. “I don’t want this to end. I’m not ready to lose this.”
We already have, Regulus feels. We lost it a long time ago. We’ve been clinging to broken threads and they are beginning to wear.
“What else can we do, James?” he asks, voice raw and hurt. “We haven’t touched each other in weeks. We haven’t spoken in three days. We haven’t looked at each other like we used to in years and I…I can’t live like that. I can’t. I won’t.”
James can’t seem to speak, lowering his head onto his hands, fisted on the table. He’s trying to gather himself again, and all Regulus can do is watch him fall apart because he can’t…hasn’t been allowed…to touch James in a very long time.
Their first fight had been tame, a simple argument about a snarky comment made that seemed so important at the time. It had been the beginning of the silence that had become a fix in their lives.
They fought, James yelled and Regulus threw things and every single time they would leave the argument unfinished for the sake of keeping their marriage calm and they’d try to pretend everything was better. Their friends would call their relationship perfect, and complain about how they wished theirs was similar. How they seemed so in love and so happy it was almost like a fairy tale movie. Regulus wished he had scoffed, had fought off those comments so the pressure to pretend wouldn’t have become so much.
He remembers the James he had fallen for. The bright eyed mischievous boy with too much heart to give, needing someone to knock him down a peg so he could fall in love and stay in love. He’d been fifteen and absolutely besotted, convinced James could never love someone so cold and harshly made as Regulus. But James had loved him. Had smiled and kissed and held.
He wonders when their love had become a past tense.
He wondered when James had realized he’d made a mistake.
“Can’t we try?” James manages, his voice grieved.
Regulus considers this. He could fight for another year, try to fix what had broken, try to learn to let James love him again because he isn’t sure he’s ever stopped loving James. He feels a soft hand slipping into his and he looks up at his husband, the man he had sworn his life to, who looks hopeful with tears spilling down his face, waiting on the final decision. It seems cruel to put it on Regulus now, but James had already laid down his stance on the matter. He wants to fix it. He wants to stay.
Does Regulus?
He spent the last two years in silence. Living in a constant state of autopilot. Their house had begun to feel like a convenient space to sleep and eat rather than a home filled with love and laughter. He yearned for what they’d had in the beginning. That love and warmth and the brightness of it all.
But would it come back? Would they ever be able to fix their broken marriage? What if they try and it just hurts them both more?
For the first time in a long time Regulus misses his mother. Not the mother from his teenage years, the shrill, angry, spitting version, but the mother from his childhood. The one who sat him in her lap and rocked him, pressing kisses to his face and soothing his every worry. He longs for her to hold him, and whisper how loved he is. To tell him that she will figure it out, like she always does.
But she isn’t here, and she hasn’t been here in a very long time. The decision is his, now, and the only way to go from this ruin was to rebuild.
“Don’t break me, James” He says softly, wiping his tears and blinking to rid the last of them. His chest feels suddenly light, but the pain is still lingering. Maybe it will never go away, a constant reminder of how they nearly shattered. “If we do this I need…I need it to be 100%. I need it to be better.”
James jumps up and walks around the table, wrapping his arms around Regulus as Regulus stands to meet him. They hold each other tight and close, breathlessly clinging to the renewed hope.
“I love you, Reg. I love you so much.” James whispers wetly into his hair, his hand running up and down Regulus’s back as the other fists into his curls to hold him closer, molding their bodies together like they used to. Like he can’t get close enough. It’s so achingly familiar Regulus can feel his body warm and his chest swell.
“I love you. I love you.” Regulus whines. “I love you.” His hands cup the back of James’s neck, their noses brushing as he presses their cheeks together with a soft sigh that turns into a trembling breath.
“I’ll fight.” James whispers “I’ll fight for you, no matter how long it takes to fix this. I’ll do it because I can’t lose you, Reg. I won’t.”
“I will too.” Regulus chokes out “I’ll fight…I’ll do anything for you, James. Please please just-” He pulls back and cups James’s face, bringing their faces close until their lips are nearly touching. “Just kiss me-”
James closes the distance between them and their mouths slot together, bittersweet with tears. Years of grief and hope and love and heartbreak. The kiss is desperate, a plea of Love me, Stay, fight for this, until Regulus almost can't tell where he ends and James begins. He can’t remember the last time they’d kissed like this. Or kissed at all aside from a quick obligated kiss in the morning rush or the fake goodbye kisses in front of their friends.
When they pull away James presses their foreheads together, breathing him in with shaky inhales. His touch is possessive and warm, like he’s holding extra tight to that thread that they’d rubbed away at, mending it single handedly. It’s a comfort in the darkness of what they had become.
Regulus thinks, Just maybe, they’ll be alright in the end.