Summer. Warm sunlight pouring through dusty windows, a river of gleaming gold trickling down cobblestone streets, green leaves waving peacefully in soft wind, a world rejuvenated and refreshed. Regulus had always hated summer. Because the sun is stifling, Unrelenting. The world is too awake, too loud, too hot. He despised it. Unable to do much more, he lay in irritation on his sofa, blinds shut, the room still too bright. People would call him cynical-for hating something so sublime. Even Regulus could not deny the beauty of summer, but he'd be damned before he'd admit it.
It wasn't always this way. He wasn't always this way.
Summer used to be a beacon of hope. A lighthouse in darkness. Eleven years old, drowning and spluttering in a dark sea of cold winters and icy stares, was when he first saw him. A boy, with a smile so bright it was the sun himself, grinning right at him from across the lunch hall. And for the first time, Regulus felt the ice thaw. James, was his name.
Regulus cursed himself for unlocking the labyrinthian box of memories he had so laboured to keep shut. Summer heat always had a funny way of loosening the hinges. Huffing, he walked across his empty flat to cram the ac up, icy air blasting down on him. A moment or two of frustration passed before he gave in and wrapped himself in a blanket, his mind wandering un-obediently.
Oh, how he’d hated him. His charm, his sickeningly overconfident grin, his unruly hair and permanently askew glasses. He hated his kind eyes and hated that really, Regulus didn’t hate him at all. He hated that really, he wanted nothing more than to stare at him all day long. It had always been so futile. Though, Regulus supposed, if anyone were to stare directly at the sun for too long, they'd be blinded, too. It was never supposed to work. They were two sides of a coin, night and day, winter and summer, the moon and sun, opposites that were never supposed to have met. A person like Regulus Black would never even be permitted to love a boy, let alone a boy like James. He supposed that's why he'd wanted it so much. Even the idea of a person like James, who's warmth filled every room he inhabited, just looking at a person like Regulus, who'd always felt so miniscule and unimportant, so inherently invisible- it felt like the stars themselves had aligned. And there he he'd been, a boy who looked like summer, touched like the sun, and loved like a burning flame. The way people are supposed to love. Deeply. Brightly. Instinctively.
It'd never come that easy for Regulus. For him, loving was more of a storm. Messy and terrifying, leaving nothing but destruction in his wake. That was the real difference between the two of them- James was good. It was simply in his nature. He sighed and vacated his dark flat, finding a shady path sheltered by trees. He needed some air. A walk. Anything to distract him from reality. It didn’t work, of course. Memories of James seemed to have latched onto the forefront of his mind, like lichen on a rock. In frustration, Regulus fiddled with the charm on his necklace.
It’d been Regulus' sixteenth birthday when James had gifted it to him. A gold-plated sun, adorned with silver gemstones. ‘To keep him warm’, James had said. It had. For a while. Pathetic, really, that pushing 20, Regulus would still wear it everyday. As if it would turn back time, make the memories that sat stationary, collecting dust in his mind, return to the fuzzy warmth they had once been. But, no matter how many times he attempted to take it off, throw it away, scour his mind of their past, of what could have been, Regulus was never able. Why he tortured himself daily, was a mystery beyond his comprehension. It was just a necklace. Cold metal under his touch.
Eyes set on the pavement, he walked aimlessly. Calm winds drifted over rustling leaves.
Seventeen had been the end. It’d been Regulus' fault. Too many secrets to keep for a boy like James, who loved so loudly. Too many years of whispered touches, that the flame had begun to flicker. Maybe, if Regulus had just been braver, he could have loved James as brightly as he deserved. But he hadn’t been. Not back then.
Regulus looked up at his surroundings, brought back to reality. His breath hitched. Because his legs had led him to the last place he wanted to be. Stinging eyes searched the headstones for his name, freezing when he saw it. James. A name as warm as the sun, engraved into cold stone.
Eighteen had been his end. A car crash. Regulus hated him. Because he should have waited. Because Regulus was braver, now. Because he’s ready, now. And he hated how a person as alive as James could ever be dead. But James wasn’t coming back.
The summer heat didn’t matter. Because as he looked at it, Regulus felt cold.