Bitterly and from a distance, Regulus watches the Sun. Sees how It spreads warmth and light across the people surrounding, the ragtag group of friends they’ve become, and he wants . It spills messy from him — dripping and sticky, clinging to his skin more and more as he grows further anguished.
Unable to so much as speak the thought aloud — not even as a whisper in the darkest part of the night — Regulus pushes it down, ashamed at his own desperation. He sinks his teeth into his bottom lip, tugging on it, feeling the give and pull of the skin.
Tucked into the corner, wrapped in someone’s arms, Sirius throws his head back, bright and laughing, a burning, burning star.
Regulus is a star too. And he
is
burning , skin aflame, tender and red.
Green coils in Regulus’s chest, squeezing and constricting his lungs until his breaths come too sharp and he’s turning away, fists closed, nails biting palms. Red marks bloom wickedly across his skin and the sharp pin pricks of pain are enough of a distraction to bring him back a little, feet firmly on the ground, mind balanced.
Sharp on his tongue: hatred, envy . A want so potent that it intimidates and scares him like no other.
He is Uranus — Neptune, even, cold and unfeeling, removed from the Sun and forever cursed to feel the effects of it. Burning once, star now failed, hanging suspended permanently, dulled, brown. Pointless and no longer a beauty. Everything but the sun, the center of life.
He turns away, lets leaden feet carry him, a drifting asteroid lost to space.
Regulus finds solace in an upstairs bedroom, the ceiling spinning pleasantly above him. His skin is buzzing, an incessant itch that he has long since learned to ignore, flush away with ugly thoughts and cold, rushing water.
“Reg,” a voice greets from the door. Regulus sits half-up, propped on his forearms, the room swimming while he blinks. Vaguely he makes out Barty; falls back to the floor. Barty laughs, a terror on Reg’s eardrums, and plops himself down on the floor beside. “So, how’s the Potter thing going?”
“Fine,” Regulus says back after a weighted pause, registering that he’s been spoken to.
Regulus inhales, exhales — watches his chest expand and contract with the motions, a reassurement that he is alive. Pathetic, bloody heart still thumping away in his chest, hidden beneath a cage of bone, a staccato beat spelling out James, James.
Fixes his gaze on the ceiling, the lines there are shooting stars, two of them twirling around one another then splitting off, crashing. Nothing without the other. A fated pair ripped apart.
“He’s looking for you.”
“Sirius?” Brightest star, dog star, Canis Major. Larger than the Sun. Larger than life. Brighter than Regulus.
Barty’s frown — melting, twisting. “No. Potter.”
“Oh.”
Regulus looks back at his stars, lets the world fade out until his ears start ringing. He laughs, a sharp, stinging thing, and his eyes are raining, eyeliner smearing across his cheeks — marred and ugly like he. It chokes him, oil-filled water, sinking into his lungs, filling them . . .
“Regulus, breathe.”
To his feet, the door and hallway pass, stumbling steps and steps and the living room, alive dark everything all at once cold empty and where has the Sun gone?
Looking for the heat, past the star and planets that question him, ask if he’s okay of course he’s not okay because the fucking Sun has gone missing and nothing is anything without the Sun, least of all Regulus.
The lawn — the lawn? — swims green and Regulus stumbles and sprawls out on his back, deliriously giggling as tears stream down his cheeks. His entire body is freezing, lost to the endless, vastness of space.
“Regulus? Regulus, what’s wrong?”
Regulus laughs harder at that, tastes the acrid, horrible bitterness of his want as the object of it all, the sun personified, comes into vision.
“James,” Regulus croons. “James, James, James.”
A hand, cool, on his forehead. Skin dark and calloused. Sweet and smelling like wood and eucalyptus.
“Oh, love, you’re burning up.”
Hands, on his sides, his back, his neck, until he’s sitting, the world tilting violently. Regulus turns to the side and throws up, coughing and crying again.
“Shh, shh, it’s alright.” James gathers Regulus to his chest, holds him tightly, not moving so much as an inch. A brace. Still. Calm. The sea levels out and Regulus groans, turns his face to rest his forehead against James’s chest.
Regulus leaves at some point — his body, not James’s side — because they’re in James’s flat and James is kneeling before him, wiping away the traces of the night from his face with gentle hands and a warm, damp cloth. Like a spring breeze, pleasant and soothing. Regulus’s eyes fall shut and he leans into the feeling.
“Careful, baby,” James murmurs, steadying Regulus. “Don’t fall.”
It aches. Deep in his stomach, winding up through his chest, a fruitless tree.
“I love you,” Regulus says with a sniffle. He can already feel his heart pulsing uncomfortably; a balloon ready to burst. “It’s awful.”
James pauses, the briefest bit of hesitation. “Open your eyes for me?”
Regulus does, staring down at his — not his, never his, more Sirius’ than his — James. Pretty, pretty James with his glowing skin and smile, the freckles across his face like constellations; James’s connection to the stars. But the sun is a star, too, isn’t it? James doesn’t need a star when he is one.
“You need sleep,” James says eventually, letting the wash rag fall away, his palm cupping the fragile skin of Regulus’s cheek — brushes over the scar there, from nicking himself when he cut his own hair off at twelve. Sirius had taken blame for it.
“Tired,” Regulus agrees in a mumble, half-nodding.
James ruffles Regulus’s hair in a way that he’d shy from while sober, but now only giggles at, swaying, asleep on his feet. James leads him to the bedroom, sighing in a way that seems almost fond each time Regulus bumps into the walls or when he trips going through the open door.
At the back of his mind, a little voice tugs, but Regulus ignores it for the looks James gives him, the clothes that James helps dress him in, being tucked beneath sheets that smell of James James James. How lucky he is, to be warmed personally by the Sun, wrapped in Its embrace. How lucky he is, to have drifted into Its orbit at all, a wayward comet circling around and around, waiting to be noticed and smiled down upon.
Regulus turns over on his stomach, lets James’s hands wander over his skin, mapping it out. He feels like a constellation and James his astronomer, tracing patterns and connecting, making pictures out of nothing.
His skin burns, a slow heating from inside out.
James' hands slip under Regulus’s shorts and his thumbs brush over the top curve of Regulus’s thigh, just below his ass. Regulus full out whines. It all feels so, so nice and he doesn’t ever want James to stop touching him. “You’re okay, love.”
White sheets tangle around Regulus’s legs, sticking to his slick skin. He turns over with an embarrassed groan, mind foggy, pressing his face into the pillow. His thighs are slick, gentle little rivers of stardust pooling in the creases of his skin. A dream about James. While in his bed. Just my luck.
But “you’re okay, love,” plays over and over in his head, a broken record perfectly scratching a hidden corner of his mind.
When morning rolls around, Regulus awakes slowly, no sun to rouse him in the cool darkness of the room. Bleary with exhaustion, he wraps himself back in the sheets and rolls over, eyes squeezed tightly shut as he tries to ignore the bombardment of memories cracking through his skull.
Fully dressed and alone, Regulus knows more so what didn’t happen than what did — though the litany of James in his mind is enough to fill in the blanks. Nails bite into his palms and with a wince he uncurls them, sees marks from before already pressed into the skin. Absently, almost, his thumb roving over the marks, he wonders if James would kiss them, show Regulus that every part of him, even the damaged, nasty bits, are worth loving.
The door to the room creaks open and the spell is broken, Regulus snapped back into his body.
“Sorry, just wanted to check and see if you were awake,” James says sheepishly. He’s smiling. Smiling at Regulus. Regulus genuinely can’t recall if James has ever done that before. It’s startling (read: lovely).
“I’m awake,” Regulus replies hoarsely. His throat aches with strain and a spike is wedged between his eyes. James makes a sympathetic noise — he knows, he always knows — and promises to return with pain medication and water.
Regulus is alone again. James’ room smells like eucalyptus and mint. Regulus falls back and lets everything fade away for a moment, lets himself feel instead of think.
James’ sheets, white, soft on his skin but not quite silky. The drapes pulled shut, cracks of light barely seeping in. The entire room is cool, and it sinks into Regulus, a balm on his burnt skin.
Icarus flashes to the forefront of his mind. Too close to the sun, burned and dead. It’s not a comparison he particularly likes. (But he’d do it, wouldn’t he? That’s the most terrifying part.)
James is back. Pills and water are handed to him, and he dutifully swallows. James’s fingers raise, touch the little scar on Regulus’s cheek.
“What’s this from?”
“Cutting my hair.” Doesn’t say that Sirius took the blame (“Maman, look what I did to Regulus’ hair!”). Doesn’t say that when he looked in the mirror afterward he sobbed, because Sirius got hurt because of him. Doesn’t mention how he couldn’t look in the mirror after Sirius left, because too often he could pick apart every little spot that made him look like his brother. (Sirius’s hair is longer now, like he wanted. The role reversal has stung for so long. They don’t look so alike anymore.)
James just hums, doesn’t ask any more, and offers Regulus breakfast.