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It starts with a great day. James is neither too much nor too little. He is present and he is happy but not too happy. Earlier, he and Regulus went out for lunch at their favourite delicatessen and had a lovely time.
As the afternoon wears on, James can feel himself slowly sliding down in mood, but it isn’t anything too worrying. He joins Regulus in his office for some company while Regulus works. It’s a Saturday, but Regulus runs a charity for the rights of magical creatures, and there’s a Wizengamot vote on renewing unicorn protections in two weeks. During a quick trip to the restroom James goes to wash his hands and that’s when there’s the slip. Those are not his hands.
Oh, James thinks. So this is happening.
The thing is, James knows that he is looking at his own hands. He knows that, logically. But he also knows instinctively, deep down in his very bones, that these are not his hands. They’re too big or too small or the wrong shape or the wrong colour or something. There’s just something very wrong with them and they do not belong to him.
James continues washing the hands that are not his, then turns off the faucet, and this is where he makes a grave mistake. James knows himself, knows how this goes. He knows better, but he looks in the mirror anyway. And as jarring as it was to be connected to hands that were not his hands, that is nothing compared to the terror of seeing a face reflected back that is absolutely not his face.
He stumbles back, slapping a hand over his eyes and automatically calls for his husband.
“Reg?” That voice does not belong to him. Who’s there? Who’s in here with him?
No one is here, of course. It’s only James. It’s only James except that it’s not.
"Reg!” he calls out again. And has the light always been this heavy? It’s beating down on him, accusing him of something he just knows he’s guilty of. Even with his eyes closed, he can feel it. And James cannot withstand the weight of its judgment. His breathing picks up.
Footsteps sound from the hallway—or is that his heartbeat? Maybe it’s both. Or neither.
“James,” Regulus breathes. And for a brief moment James is James, until he’s gone again, somewhere unreachable now.
“Darling,” Regulus tries again, and James can feel the weight against his eyes and neck and back and shoulders lessen just a bit as the lights are turned off. It’s not enough, there’s still so much weight, but it is marginally better.
“Can I touch you?” Regulus asks. And James goes to nod or speak in the affirmative except that now that Regulus has said touch he has become acutely aware of the skin. The skin that is not his even though he knows that it is, just like the hands are not his even though they are. And now that skin is touching other skin and it hurts and it’s NOT HIS which frightens him, so he rips his hand away from his face, eyes opening wide.
Avoiding the mirror, James looks to Regulus and frantically responds, “On my clothes, on my clothes, not the skin, Reg not the skin, it’s—“
“Alright, it’s alright, my love,” Regulus soothes and there are hands on his shoulders over his shirt, thumbs rubbing small circles.
“James, darling, can we cover your skin? Can we get to bed?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know!” James whines, and he knows he’s whining but he’s just so scared because whose hands are those and whose skin and whose face is that in the mirror? The mirror. James suddenly remembers its existence and flinches away from it with his whole body.
Thankfully, Regulus knows this well enough to recognize the issue and makes soothing noises as he guides James out of the bathroom and away from the mirror’s violent gaze. With a hand on James’s clothed back, Regulus uses his body to shield James from the mirror, and James follows his lead with an arm up between his eyes and the mirror.
As soon as they reach the bedroom, James lunges for their bed, sitting against the headboard and curling into a ball. Holding tightly to his knees and tucking his head in, James feels marginally better. However, this position reveals the additional problem that is that James is wearing shorts. That is bad. That is really quite bad because that means more skin that doesn’t belong to him except that it does.
Their bed is the place where James feels safest, especially if he is under a blanket, blocking out the world. He feels like nothing bad can truly happen to him there, or he can’t do anything bad to himself, in that cocoon. It’s especially comforting when Regulus is there with him and they can be together in that place of stasis.
Right now, even in the safest place James could possibly be in, everything is so completely wrong. He squeezes his eyes shut, but is immediately bombarded with images of that face—his face—again, filling him with a panic so acute his eyes fly open on instinct.
James tries looking at the wall instead but soon the pictures and artwork hanging on it are drooping and the soft green paint is swirling, swirling. He slides his eyes away from the spot then right back and it’s all back to normal; they’d never really moved at all.
Closing his eyes is terrifying, and staring at one spot is too, so James can only flick his eyes around the room. They briefly land on Regulus, who is rapidly unfolding the giant purple blanket at the foot of their bed.
“Darling, would you like a blanket?” He asks gently, prepared to place it over James at the slightest indication of an affirmative response.
James lurches for it, wrapping it around his body as quickly as possible, paying special attention to pressing it against his neck, where the weight of the light and the judgmental mirror still lingers.
It’s better, a bit. But he’s started to shake and it’s not letting up because his hands—
“Gloves. Reg, something—gloves,” he presses out through short breaths.
"Alright, alright darling, just hold on, I’ll get some for you.”
It’s the dead of summer but somehow Regulus perform a small miracle and produces a pair of warm winter gloves in hardly any time at all.
James is shaking badly and can’t manage to look at his hands long enough to put the gloves on, so Regulus assists him. Once the gloves are secure, James gives his hands a lasting glance and immediately feels sick and has to look to the ceiling instead.
“Reg, it’s still fingers, it’s still fingers. They’re moving.” And they really are moving, because on top of the shaking, James is fidgeting involuntarily, in a similar manner to the way his eyes flit around the room.
James struggles to tear the gloves off his hands but is once again struggling with them.
“Alright, alright, let me get them,” Regulus soothes as he efficiently removes the offending gloves.
But see now James is once again left with SKIN. Skin that is wrongwrongwrong. He begins to cry, those short breaths turning to sobs.
“Darling. James.” Regulus rubs circles into his back over the blanket, trying to do what he can to settle his husband.
James cries and shakes and doesn’t know what to do with his hands that are not his hands and are covered in skin that is not his skin.
“Oh, I have an idea,” Regulus mutters, stepping away. He comes back with an old pair of cotton socks.
“Can we try these on your hands?” James nods tearfully and Regulus helps slide them onto his hands.
That’s it. Now James can no longer see the skin or the hands. Just socks. Innocent, harmless, black cotton socks.
James lets out a sigh of relief. Tears still fall from his eyes, but at least he is no longer terrified of unassigned body parts. His breathing slows by the smallest fraction.
“Can we go under the blanket?”
So they go.
They arrange themselves with Regulus on his back on the bed, James resting an ear against his chest. Like this, he can hear Regulus’s heartbeat, and it’s the only rhythm he can handle right now. The outside world has noises all of its own, and right now they are frightening.
James could swear he hears skittering in the walls. Something is in there. But of course there isn’t. He knows, logically, that there is nothing moving in the walls, but. But it just really, really seems like there is! He can hear it!
So instead he stays with Regulus’s heartbeat. That even drumming that he knows better than his own. He covers his other ear with a socked hand, honing in on that beat.
Regulus is careful to keep his hands off of any of James’s skin, only touching over clothes. He alternates between rubbing circles into James’s back and sweeping his fingertips up and down it.
Regulus’s other hand is in James’s hair, brushing through the curls. Truthfully it is the best thing happening to James right now. It is something actually good amidst this bombardment of fear and panic and delusion.
Over top of them is their thick purple blanket, keeping the rest of the world as shut out as possible.
Once this passes, Regulus will sit next to James as he writes a note to send to his doctor, scheduling an appointment to recount what happened and to discuss a potential medication change. But for now James just has to ride this out. If he’s lucky, the combination of mental exhaustion and Regulus’s soothing will bring him to sleep soon.
This will pass. It always does.