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Like most things in Regulus’s life, the entire problem starts with his mother.
It’s a normal day in January, he’s just walking back from his third and final class of the day when his father calls him.
This by itself had been startling, his father never called him. His mother often reached out to order him to do something or other, but his father would be loath to call if the company were collapsing, much less on a random January.
He doesn’t know what he’s expecting when he picks up the call, definitely some yelling, probably some threats, his mother’s shrill voice in the background directing his father on what to say.
The phone picks up to silence.
It’s silent for so long that Regulus pulls the phone away from his ear to make sure the call didn’t drop, but his father is still on the other line, and he’s just breathing.
“Father? To what do I owe the pleasure?” His heart stutters in his chest, like he knows the information he’ll receive before he hears it, like his hearing is lagging behind while his body rushes ahead, absorbs the pain that’s already settling into his bones, a constant ache underneath his skin.
“Your mother’s dead.”
Pancreatic cancer they all say. Nobody saw it coming, it had spread without any sort of symptoms. She had complained last week about feeling fatigued, less than seven days later, she layed in a morgue in a body bag.
There hadn’t been anything anyone could do.
All her organs had gone into failure, something his mother would scoff at had she not been currently rotting, “A Black’s organs cannot fail,” she would spit at the doctor, “A Black never fails, ever.”
Regulus has been living by that motto since the day he came out of the womb, his cries being silenced by a harsh hand and a sharp, “A Black never weakens, never shows weakens, never fails.”
It’s a reflex, a coping mechanism, but his mother has failed. Failed to stay, failed to prepare, failed to expect.
She’s left Regulus to organize everything. Regulus starts looking into different coffin options and vows to himself to not fail.
Regulus plans the funeral, an elaborate and fancy affair stuffed to the brim with high society people schmoozing with each other and with Regulus in hopes of turning a celebration of his mother’s life into just another business deal.
It’s worshiping and formal and so cold that the chill settles in Regulus’s bones, pulling him beneath the jagged and rough waters of social interaction that drag him under an unforgiving tide until he wants to scream.
It’s exactly the way his mother would have wanted it.
He supposed, in some retrospect, that it should have been predicted.
Six months after his mother died finds him sitting in the hospital, bandaged arm wrapped around stitches from a cooking accident.
Seven months, his doctor predicts.
Seven months until the cancer that killed his mother kills him.
He’ll fail, just like his mother did, a pale imitation of the woman he had modeled his life after, perfectly fitting to go the exact same way she did.
Same in life and same in death, no matter how different Regulus had wished every day of his life that he would be.
They give him pamphlets, information detailing different treatments he could use to prolong his numbered days. Regulus takes one look at the sickly, bone thin people grimacing in pain on the covers of the treatments and declines.
He doesn’t want to spend the literal rest of his life hooked up to treatments that prolong his life while simultaneously draining it.
There are better things to do than that, and he plans on doing all of them.
His brother hasn’t talked to him in six heavy years, not since the elder ran away to bigger and greener pastures when Regulus had been fifteen, off galavanting with James Potter, Regulus’s summer fling.
That of course, doesn’t matter now. Time passing is such a silly thing when he knows he doesn’t have much of it left.
Obviously, even though he’s never been there or been told, he knows where Sirius lives. Obviously he would keep tabs on the brother that abandoned him. Obviously he still loved him.
He goes straight from the hospital, not even bothering to take off his admittance wristband as he knocks on the door.
It swings open to reveal James Potter, the man’s confused brow wrinkling as he takes in Regulus’s rumpled state.
“I’m dying.”
James swallows, Adam's apple bobbing up and down with the motion as he runs slow, calculating eyes over the state of Regulus’s clothes and his messy untamed hair, sweeping silently past the bags of his eyes.
“Right,” James says, a degree paler than he had been previously when opening the door. He swallows again, “Come in then.”
James had been a pretty thing when they were young, the summer before Regulus’s world imploded and Sirius left, they had danced around each other for months. James didn’t want to do the great things he could with his life that Regulus wanted for him.
The older man had always been content to watch his friends, to make sure they were all okay. He never had the time to dream about himself, too busy dreaming about how to help his friends.
It had always bothered Regulus, bothered him enough to break up with him. James had an effortless brilliance about him, could go on to change the world, but he didn’t care that he happened to be the smartest person in the room in every room he entered, too busy trying to get as many concussions as he could in the hopes some college or other would want him on their football team.
It aggrieved Regulus to no end.
They sit on James and Sirius’s ratty couch as they wait for Sirius to return home from his last final of the year.
Regulus skipped his last two finals, no longer bothering with his education. He won’t be alive long enough to accept a diploma, so what’s the point?
He refuses to tell the story twice, so they sit in silence as James stares at the hospital bracelet still adorning Regulus’s bony wrist with glassy eyes, hands trembling under the legs that sit over it.
It’s obvious to anyone, but especially to James, that he’s a ghost walking around on borrowed time.
Sirius returns and is stepping forward with his face screwed up, most likely to yell at Regulus about daring to show up unannounced in his life like an unwanted wart.
“I’m dying.”
It’s like every word drains out of Sirius, his entire body sinking lower as his skin goes paler than it ever did when their parents yelled at them.
When he speaks, it’s a whisper, a breath, all the wind taken out of his sails, “You’re-” one word is all he can manage, the breaking of a heart, the breaking of a mind, the beginning of a sob.
“Cancer. I have seven months if I’m lucky.”
Sirius sinks right down into the floor, body crumpling with the weight that pushes down on him. James moves forward immediately, arms reaching up instinctively to hold his friend up, being a support when Sirius can’t be.
Regulus just.
Stands there.
He watches from above as his brother sobs and screams and the love of his life comforts him.
It’s a scene that he fleetingly thinks will be repeated once Regulus is as cold as his mother’s dead and buried body.
Comfort or no, it makes something in his chest uncomfortably warm.
“I’m older.”
Regulus has started smoking again, the wisps of smoke curling in his lungs like deadly acrid snakes wriggling through his blood give him control. He’s dying anyway, nothing he does will slow it down.
Sitting down gingerly next to him, James glances warily at the half-smoked cigarette dangling from his long fingers.
“I’m dying,” Regulus breathes, like saying it more will make it feel real.
He’s drowning, a repeating record. He’ll die and his last words will probably be a recognition of that fact. It hasn’t fully settled into his brain yet, that he won’t be here next year, that this is his last summer.
Times like these make him wonder if it’s better or worse to know your days are numbered when there’s nothing you can do to stop it.
“I know,” James says, gently, treading carefully as he speaks like Regulus is the one that doesn’t know he’s dying.
The chill outside seeps into his bones, the last dredges of spring clinging to summer and digging its claws in.
And Regulus.
Shakes.
Comes apart.
There’s an arm wrapped around his shoulders, pulling him into a warm chest cigarette be damned as Regulus jerks harder than an earthquake, sobs catching in his throats as breathy little chokes escape his mouth, holding back every word he could ever say to fix this, to make it better.
“I’m dying,” Regulus repeats, like that will change the truth, rewrite history into something different, something kinder.
He’s failing, unable to overcome this, be better, do better, become a better version of what his mother failed at.
Dimly, he registers the pressure of warm lips against his temple, James mumbling soft, wonderful words into his skin. Regulus soaks up the warms like a sponge, ignoring the numbness of his fingers, like they already know what’s coming, preparing himself for the cold stillness of death.
Sirius kicks his feet out as they dangle from the high top chair he sits at, staring at Regulus.
Perfectly content from his armchair in Sirius’s favorite armchair, Regulus turns the page on his latest read and does his best to ignore the restless itching under his skin that grows with every idle moment.
Sirius needs silence to work up time to speak. Regulus will be damned if he doesn’t give that to him, not after everything he’ll take from him in less than seven months.
“It-Life-I should go first,” Sirius eventually manages to stutter out, scuffing his foot softly against the floor in fear as he glances warily at Regulus.
Turning a page, Regulus does his best to look nonchalant, “You might yet, never know, maybe I’ll hit you with my car tomorrow and steal your pancreas and live another ten years.”
Not even a pancreas would save him, the cancers’ already spread too far, wiggled it’s way into every crevice in Regulus’s weakening body, digging it’s claws in so slowly that Regulus probably never would have known if he hadn’t hurt his arm.
It’s luck that they caught it, that he knows now, bad or good is what he can’t decide.
“Would- I mean- If someone could donate-”
“It’s spread too far Sirius. There’s nothing to do. I’m going to die.”
He’s gotten better at stating it like a fact about the weather. A very dreary day. He’s going to die. The two facts probably have just about the same amount of importance to everyone else. After all, Regulus won’t be truly missed.
Somehow, he moves into Sirius’s apartment.
They clean out his own apartment, going through all his belongings and either donating, selling, or giving them all to his friends. Sirius claims Regulus’s old ballet shoes that don't fit for himself even though the older boy is three sizes bigger than even Regulus.
Regulus ignores the photos Sirius slips into his pockets, as well as the snap of a camera when he gives his brother a rare smile.
He’s already fading into a memory, a ghost, dead before his heart stops.
James wakes him up in the middle of the night, bright eyes dimmed by Regulus every time he looks at him, like it hits him for the first time that Regulus is dying every time he sees him.
The fatigue has gotten worse in the past few weeks, just one week short from the predicted seven months to dwindle down to five, and Regulus feels it in his bones, the stupid knowledge that he’ll be gone soon.
Letting James pull him out of bed, he follows the taller boy outside and into his truck and dozes as they drive for what feels like hours, letting James help him up onto the roof of the car and drape a blanket around his shoulders.
“What are we doing here?”
James smiles, wrapping a warm arm around Regulus that Regulus leans into, absorbing the warmth and letting it chase away the frozen cobwebs holding together his aching bones, “We’re watching the stars.”
Sighing, Regulus leans in closer, resting his head on James’s shoulder as he tilts it backwards to take in the sky against James’s side profile, “Whatever for?”
A cold nose nudges into his hair, a dot of ice against his forehead that presses in and shocks him, “You love the stars,” James mumbled petulantly, probably choking on Regulus’s curly hair.
Poking him in the side hard enough to make James curl up to shield himself, Regulus leans closer, “Yeah, I love the stars, not you. What are we doing here?”
James sighs, put out at being caught so obviously red handed, “Where are you?”
“What does that have to do with the stars?”
In response, James just points up, “Where are you?”
Shockingly, or maybe unsurprisingly, Regulus understands in seconds, squinting his eyes up as he searches for his namesake and adjusting James’s pointing arm until he’s pointing at him, “Right there, constantly, always watching over my favorite boy.”
Burying his face once more in Regulus’s hair, James teases, “Who? Sirius?”
Regulus snorts, “Obviously not, Sirius isn’t the one dragging me out at all odd hours in the morning to drive me in the middle of nowhere.”
“Darling,” James mumbles, voice dropping deeper as his chapped lips scrape against Regulus’s throat with every word, “It’s not for anything malicious.”
It takes everything in Regulus’s willpower to not melt into the hands rubbing circles on his hips, instead keeping his gaze to the stars as he whispers, “James.”
Affromented boy doesn’t even look up as he hums against Regulus’s neck, pressing a kiss there for good measure.
Regulus clears his throat, trying to get rid of the distracting fog filling his mind with James, james, james, james, “James, I’m-” his breath hitches as James presses another kiss against his rapidly reddening neck, “I’m dying James.”
Humming distractedly, James pressed another kiss behind his ear, “So you’ve said,” the sentence punctuated with a kiss against the lower part of his throat.
Squinting his eyes shut, Regulus tries to think of something else, anything else beyond James’s touch on his overheated body, “We can’t- I can’t-”
“Reggie,” James breathes against his skin, and Regulus falls apart.
The smaller boy twists, fullying facing James as he grabs his face in his hands and kisses him properly, kisses him like he has all the time in the world, like a boy kissing another boy under the stars, like he isn’t dying in less than six months.
James leans in when Regulus pulls away, pressing his forehead against Regulus’s as he pants from lack of oxygen.
Tilting his head, Regulus looks to the side so he can see both James and the stars, “How’d you know?”
James still has his eyes closed, chest heaving as his fists twitch from where they’re clenching the back of Regulus’s shirt like he can’t bring himself to let go, “Know what?” he asks breathlessly, lips beginning to trail their way across Regulus’s cheek.
“That I wanted to see the stars one last time.”
The finality of it has James clenching his fists tighter, plastering himself more firmly against Regulus’s side as he breathes out slowly, hands shaking against the small of Regulus’s back, “Don’t go. Stay here with me forever.”
Failing, he’s failing, he’s leaving behind the best thing he could ever have, ever hope or dream of calling his. He can’t fix this, won’t even try, and he’s failing, has failed, will continue to fail.
All of the air in Regulus’s body leaves in a shaky exhale, his entire being deflating, crumpling, sinking down lower into the blank space in James’s arms, the world that exists within the circular solar system between James’s beating heart and the rest of the world.
“Oh sweetheart,” Regulus exhales on a shaky sob, tears welling up in his eyes as he registers the wetness of James’s tears on his shirt, bringing a shaking hand up to run through James’s perpetually messy hair, “I wish I could.”
Regulus will die young, a universal constant probably, never living long enough to fully redeem himself in the eyes of the world, but for just a few hours, two boys can sit on the roof of a car and watch the stars while pretending they’ll exist in the tiny world they made for themselves forever.
He begins writing letters, thousands of words spilling out onto the pages that contain his heart.
It seems that’s the only proper way to mark time, knowing it’s time for him to sleep when his eyes drag and the side of his hand is so black from ink he can’t tell his skin color in the darkness of his room.
He throws away the first few, then just begins taking the rejects and keeping them. Any remnant, any memory, will probably be wanted.
Regulus’s love for Sirius is measured through long loopy script, all of things he’s never said, all of the secrets he’s kept from him, all of the fears he thought Sirius would judge, spills out to his brother through pen and paper and tears.
He writes by candlelight, after James and Sirius have gone to bed so as to not constantly remind them of his impending death.
Sirius insists he stay in the guest room “as long as he wants” and they both pretend that Regulus will move out one day, live near him and visit all the time, finish college and follow his dreams.
They pretend he won’t die in this guest room that loaned itself to him for less than six months.
Times like these, he wonders if it’s better or worse to know you’ll die before everyone else around you. In moments of weakness, he wishes he never knew, that one day he’d just keel over and die and never expect it.
He’s looking over his shoulder, waiting for the moment his organs fail, his heart stops, he falls limp like a puppet with cut strings.
James’s birthday pops up in the middle of a week, one of the hottest in July and Regulus wakes him up with a kiss, the first since the week previous when James took him stargazing.
The way James blinks up at him blearily like Regulus is the brightest star in the room makes Regulus feel brighter, like maybe he can pull through and burn all the cancer right out of him if James just looks at him like that for ten more minutes.
“You’ll date me?” James asks, stumbling out of bed to trail after him like a curious woodland creature, blinking uncomprehendingly when Regulus meets his gaze in the mirror as he brushes his teeth.
He takes the toothbrush out of his mouth just long enough to give the older man a flat look, trying not to look like he’s lighting up inside at every word that leaves James’s mouth directed at him, “I’m still dying.”
James has taken the liberty of plastering himself against Regulus’s back like a blanket, nuzzling his face into his neck like a cat, “I don’t care.”
“You should, I’ll leave you behind.”
The words twist in his chest, a blade seeking purchase in the sender, clenching stone around his heart that makes his eyes sting with the force of it.
“But I’ll have had you.”
The surety in James’s voice startles Regulus, so he ignores it as he bends down to spit the excess toothpaste into the sink, wanting nothing more than to relax in James’s embrace and kiss him a thousand more times.
“It’s my birthday,” James says, lips brushing little shocks of contact against Regulus’s collarbone that shoots like lightning through his veins, “You can’t make me sad on my birthday.”
Closing his eyes tightly, Regulus does his best to stay rigid in James’s embrace, “I won’t stay.”
A huff of breath against his neck, “When would you ever?”
“You’ll lose me.”
“A fine price to pay for getting to have you.”
Regulus just.
Quakes apart.
Splinters into seventeen different shards, knives digging into his heart and spreading sharp glass throughout his body.
He’s dying and he feels it, in the fogginess in his head in the mornings that he sometimes can’t shake all day, in the bone weary ache in his bones that hadn’t ever hurt before, in the thump of his overexerting heart as his organs fight to stay alive.
James wants him anyway.
Tucking his face into the crook of James’s neck to avoid his expression, Regulus mumbles his assent and James spins him around their tiny bathroom, laughter echoing against the walls as Regulus’s hip accidentally bumps into the counter.
In another life, they’re in this dingy apartment together, dreaming of a marriage one day and kids will run through the halls and they’ll grow old together.
In this life, it’s just here and now, the only time they’ll ever get, and for Regulus, it’s going to be enough to have James for one minute, one hour, one day.
It’s enough.