Perhaps in another life things would have gone differently. Perhaps the crackling air would have been sparked with a different sort of tension, would have lead to a room with sheets smelling of jasmine and two sweaty bodies stated and restful buried beneath them, would have lead to a night full of laughter and sweet nothings promised into keen ears, soft touches and pleased sighs. Perhaps in another life.
But not this one
Standing tense on his feet, James glanced at Regulus lounging against the kitchen counter, their kitchen counter. The distance between them expanded on for miles in his mind despite only a few meters separating them. This man (this man who he loved) had tricked him into thinking he was anything except a scapegoat for his crimes, the detective who’d look the other way for the boy who loved him.
He studied him from across the lamp lit room, sorrow filled eyes and a soft smile slipping from his face. He must have known this was coming.
“I’m no villain, Jamie,” he whispered. “I thought you knew that.”
James clenched his jaw, the betrayal of what he’d found cut deep, felt too raw against his heart for him to deal with and he refused to meet Regulus' penetrative gaze, could feel it digging its way through his skin, his muscles, his bones. His soul.
“I thought I did too.” he muttered out. The taste of deception sweet on his lips even as the words slipped out.
He could see it clearly in his head still, the grainy footage from an old security camera they had stumbled across by complete accident. It was him; how could it be anyone but him? His posture, his walk, his clothes, even drenched in someone else's blood he recognised Regulus. His comment then was the only confirmation needed to wipe any denial he had so desperately clung to away.
Hours of built-up adrenaline threatened to envelope and suffocate him, hours of exhaustion blanketed itself across his limp shoulders, swelling in his chest, beating his heart at what felt like a hundred beats a second and he felt an uncertain need to run. Leave. Escape. Perhaps it was foolish, but he turned his back on him and stepped towards the window.
Pride must have stopped him from stabbing James in the back
His reflection stared back at him, eyes hollow and heavy in his head and he looked past it. Dark clouds held down the forlorn sky, its misery weeping down on the city and its rage howled against the tear-spattered window.
“I expected that you of all people would’ve been sympathetic with my cause; I mean you are an accomplished detective.” James could hear Regulus shuffling around the kitchen as he spoke, but he still hadn’t stepped any closer than when he’d first entered the flat.
“The difference Regulus is that I put people in prison. You put them in the ground.”
“I’m sure a few of them were cremated.”
Abruptly, all the hairs on the back of his neck stood on edge and a sudden irrational, panicked thought told him to open the window and jump to his death. Plumet to the pavement, let his body split itself across the cracked slabs. He turned slowly, wanting to prolong the moment before confrontation.
The glint of a blade was what caught his eye first. the glow of the lamp dancing down the length of a carving knife, a threat clasped firmly in Regulus' hand. He dragged the blunt side down James' face, and he fought to hold of a shiver.
There was a look in his eyes that James couldn’t quite place. An immense ferocity, ravenous and unyielding, not something he’d ever seen in anyone before, but of course he hadn’t, that look was completely and utterly Regulus, so unique in it’s rage that it could only equate to the beast residing under his skin.
The blade grazed his neck. His mouth dried.
“If I were a better man, I would kill you now.” The knife pressed harder against his throat, a drop of blood slid down his neck, smearing on his pressed shirt as he took a breath. “But my heart has been tainted by you James, and maybe one day your blood might mark my hands like the dozens of other meaningless stains. However, I won't let you bleed out today; death is a rare mercy that I am not yet willing to give you.”
He let the thought of that drown him, pulling him deeper into its depths the longer the words swirled in his head, each second ticking by and he felt as if he wouldn’t survive until he opened his eyes and he was breathing in mouthfuls of air. When had he closed his eyes?
Death, a mercy.
A strange concept. Is that what he thought as he tore his victims apart? As he peeled back each layer of skin and subjected each man he chose to an unrepenting torture that surely must have made God forgive them for their sins, if that is what they had to go through to fall into Death's grip.
“But James, if you even utter one word of what you know to anyone, they’ll never find all of you.”