Regulus sits there for a while, thinking, he has almost pressed the button several times allready but has sill backed out.
What if he doesn't pick up?
What if he will pick up and then hear that it's regulus and hang up?
What if his busy and someone else, like his brother for an example picks up?
What will he do then? Just sit there in silence and hope sirius doesn't recognise his breathing or something?
Now, Regulus knows that Sirius lives on the othes side of the city from James and that he should be at work right now. He also knows that james should currently be at home, sick. Yes he has been keeping tabs on people who used to be in his life. Just because of boredom of course....
Before ge can realise that he had just pressed the call button a familiar boice starts to talk on the other end.
"Hi, James potter here, who is this"
Hw sounds older. Well that's because he is older, but regulua can't ignore the fact that the voice that used to feel so much like home, is now something new and different all together.
"Hey..." he hums into the phone hoping for at least some responce.
"Oh, it's you..." the sound was now deeper and more confused than before. He could hear the change.
"It's me."
"Why did you call me? I can't save you"
He knew that was true, oh how he knew that, and yet still he wished it wasn't. Regulus still wished that James could just appear infront of him and hold him in his hands until everything that's wrong in his life is gone.
Butt that isn't happening. Yet still he needed to atleast hearbthat James was alive.
"Well, can i stay on the phone with you atleast?"
He had to swollow his pride for this one, or whatevers left of it.
"Okay"
"What are you thinking about"
He just wanted to hear the other mans voice, James could talk about anything and he would listen, he could tell regulus yo die and he would listen, he wanted hia last minutes to be full on what used to be comfort.
"Oh just how nice things could've been if you'd have chosen this life..."
Regulus is cold, he can hear the water hit the rocks further away as he sits there, in a sweater that is too big for him and used belong to the other caller, one sleeve rolled up, faintly staring at the markings on his arm, and not the ones with black ink that had drove james away from him, but the now white lines across it, the ones that he was trying to rewrite his life with, after going home for that Christmas.
And so he sits there thinking about everything he could've had and just being glad that james even picked up the phone so he didn't have to suffer in complete silence but could hear the other mans breathing on the othe end of the line.
So there they are, on the phone, without saying another word to each other ever again, staring towards the night sky, one outside his house and the other on a cold stone outside a cave. Both understanding that they will never get to lay eyes on one another again but somehow accepting that as well as anyone every could.
After a while james falls asleep, the call still running in the background.
James doesn't dream that often in his sleep anymore, it has been years since he saw one at last, but that night for some strange reason he falls asleep seeing the sea, hearing it, feeling the wet sand crunch under his legs and far far away he notices a person, one from his past, walking towards a cave.
And james screams and sceams for what seems like hours to get the attention of a young man moving further away from him, but nothing comes out. And there he was again, alone.
As james lives his life after that night, his thoughts sometimes wonder towards the young dark haired boy from his past, and even tough he never heard from him again, he continued to hope to catch a glimpse of him on a walk or find himself answering the phone to the now memorized number that went out of service the night that their last call took place.