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deathnguts · 10 days ago

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tw/ cancer, leukemia

James memorized every flicker, every buzz, every way the harsh white light carved shadows across Regulus's gaunt cheekbones. Room 394 had transformed from a sterile medical space into something that felt almost like home—if home could smell like antiseptic and carry the constant undertone of machinery keeping someone you love tethered to life.

"You don't have to stay," Regulus whispered, his voice barely audible above the rhythmic beeping of the heart monitor. His fingers, once strong enough to grip a rugby ball or trace patterns across James's chest in the dark, now trembled against the white hospital sheets.

James adjusted his position in the uncomfortable plastic chair he'd claimed as his own weeks ago. The nursing staff had stopped trying to enforce visiting hours after the first week, when they'd found him curled up on the floor beside Regulus's bed at three in the morning, unwilling to leave even when unconscious.

"Where else would I be?" James asked, reaching for Regulus's hand. The skin felt papery beneath his fingers, translucent enough that he could see the network of veins beneath. When had Regulus become so fragile? The change had been gradual, then sudden—the way autumn leaves cling to branches until one day they simply don't.

Regulus's laugh was more of a breath than sound. "Anywhere. Living your life. You're twenty-six, James. You should be out there drinking overpriced coffee and—"

"And missing every moment I could have with you?" James's thumb traced circles against Regulus's palm. "Not happening."

The disease had a name—acute myeloid leukemia—but James had stopped thinking of it in clinical terms weeks ago. Now it was simply the thing that had crept into their lives like smoke, invisible at first, then choking. The thing that had stolen Regulus's appetite, his energy, his color. The thing that made him sleep twenty hours a day and still wake up exhausted.

Dr. Vance had been kind but clear during their last conversation in her office, with its degrees on the wall and box of tissues strategically placed on the desk. The experimental treatments hadn't worked. The chemotherapy had been too aggressive for Regulus's body to handle. They were talking about comfort measures now, about making the time he had left as peaceful as possible.

James hadn't cried in that office. He couldn't.

"Tell me about the flat," Regulus said now, pulling James from the memory. It was their ritual—James describing the life Regulus couldn't see anymore, painting pictures with words of the world beyond these four walls.

"Mrs. Smith from downstairs left another casserole," James began, settling into the familiar rhythm. "Tuna noodle this time. I think she's working through every recipe from 1987."

"Did you eat it?"

"Some of it." The truth was that food had lost most of its taste sometime around the third week, when it became clear that the treatments weren't working. Everything felt like ash in his mouth, but Regulus worried when he didn't eat, so James made the effort.

"Liar." Regulus's eyes remained closed, but the corner of his mouth lifted slightly. "You've been living on hospital vending machine coffee and whatever Sirius forces you to eat when he visits."

"He brought Chinese food yesterday," James admitted. "From that place on Diagon Street you like."

A knock at the door interrupted the moment. Sarah, the night nurse, poked her head in. She'd been working this ward for fifteen years and had perfected the art of being professional while still treating her patients like human beings instead of room numbers.

"Pain level?" she asked Regulus, already reaching for the medication cart.

"Four," Regulus said, though James could see the lie in the tension around his eyes. It was probably closer to seven, but Regulus had always been stubborn about admitting weakness.

Sarah adjusted something in his IV line with practiced efficiency. "This should help. Try to get some rest."

After she left, Regulus was quiet for so long that James thought he'd fallen asleep. The morphine often pulled him under quickly these days. But then his voice came, small and uncertain in the darkness.

"I'm scared."

The facade, so carefully constructed over weeks of quiet suffering, shattered with a single sentence. He'd made jokes about the hospital food and complained about daytime television and treated his deteriorating condition like a minor inconvenience rather than a death sentence.

"Of dying?" James asked gently.

"Of you forgetting me."

James felt something crack inside his chest. He stood up, ignoring the protest from muscles that had been cramped in the same position for hours, and carefully climbed onto the narrow hospital bed. The mattress was too small for both of them, but Regulus shifted over to make room, and Jmes settled beside him with practiced care, mindful of the IV lines and monitoring wires.

"That's not going to happen," James said into the darkness. "It's literally impossible."

"People forget. Time passes. I know it's probably selfish but—"

"Reg." James's voice was firm. "Look at me."

Regulus turned his head, and in the dim light from the hallway, James could see the fear there—raw and honest and so unlike the careful composure Regulus usually maintained.

"I have loved you for four years," James said. "I loved you when you were healthy and driving me crazy by leaving your books all over the flat. I loved you when you got food poisoning from that sketchy street vendor and spent three days convinced you were dying. I loved you through your thesis defense and that terrible haircut you got from Pandora and every morning when you stole the covers and every night when you talked in your sleep. You think I'm going to stop now?"

"It's different now—"

"It's not." James's hand found Regulus's face, thumb brushing across his cheekbone. "You're still you. Sick, but still you. Still the love of my life."

Regulus was crying now—silent tears that tracked down his temples into the pillow. "I don't want to leave you."

"I know. I don't want you to go."

They lay in the semi-darkness of the room, listening to the sounds of the nightly medical routine coming from the corridor. Somewhere at the end of the corridor, another monitor beeped insistently. The phone rang at the nurses' station. Life continued to move forward while their lives were reduced to this - a small hospital room.

"What will you do?" Regulus asked eventually. "After."

It was a question James had been avoiding, pushing away every time it surfaced in his mind. The future felt impossible to imagine without Regulus in it.

"I don't know," he admitted. "Probably make a mess of things for a while."

"Good," Regulus said. "You're too responsible sometimes. Make some terrible decisions. Date someone completely inappropriate. Get a motorcycle."

"You hate motorcycles."

"I won't be around to disapprove."

The casual way he said it—like discussing weekend plans—somehow made it worse. James pressed his face into Regulus's shoulder, breathing in the smell of hospital soap and medication and underneath it all, faintly, the bergamot scent that had always been purely Regulus.

Days blurred together after that. Regulus slept more and more, the periods of lucidity becoming shorter and more precious. James read to him—trashy novels and newspaper articles and old text messages from their phones, anything to fill the silence with the sound of living.

Sirius brought flowers one day, massive sunflowers that looked absurd in the sterile room but made Regulus smile for the first time in days. A steady stream of visitors began to fill the quiet room. With each familiar face, each worried glance that softened at the sight of him, Regulus felt a humbling truth settle in his bones: he was profoundly, and unquestionably, loved.

It was Saturday. James was reading aloud from one of Regulus's favorite books—a worn paperback copy of poetry they'd discovered together in a secondhand shop years ago. The pages were dog-eared from countless readings, and James could recite some of the verses from memory.

"I am free from love's tender sway, From enmity's grip, and the rumors' play.'" James read softly, his voice carrying the familiar cadence they both loved. "From the fate that was foretold to me."

"But I am chained by one chain, It's riveted to the wall by a mighty ring, And that ring is anchored deep in me". Regulus whispered along with him, though his voice was barely audible now.

They'd made it through three more poems when Regulus's hand, which had been loosely holding James's, went slack. His breathing had grown more labored over the past hour, each inhale requiring visible effort.

"James," Regulus said, his eyes still closed. "I'm so tired."

This was a tiredness that sleep couldn't cure, a weariness that had settled into his bones and wouldn't lift.

"I know," James said, closing the book and setting it aside. "You can rest."

"Will you stay?"

"Of course." James shifted carefully onto the narrow bed, pulling Regulus gently into his arms. The younger man felt impossibly fragile, all sharp angles and hollow spaces where strength used to live.

"I'll be right here when you wake up."

Regulus settled against James's chest with a soft sigh, his breathing gradually evening out as the morphine and exhaustion pulled him under. James held him close, one hand smoothing through dark hair that had grown back softer after the chemotherapy, the other resting protectively over Regulus's heart where he could feel its steady but weakening rhythm.

The night passed in a haze of half-sleep. James dozed fitfully, waking every hour or so to check on Regulus, to adjust his position, to whisper quiet reassurances. The nursing staff checked on them periodically but didn't disturb the cocoon of peace they'd created in the narrow hospital bed.

As dawn broke gray and gentle through the window, James became aware that something had changed. The room was too quiet. Regulus's breathing stoped.

For a moment, James didn't move. Couldn't move. He lay there holding the person he loved most in the world, feeling the terrible stillness where life had been just moments before. Regulus looked peaceful, younger somehow, as if sleep had smoothed away the lines that pain and illness had carved into his features.

The silence was a living thing, a weight that pressed down on James’s chest, crushing the air from his own lungs. He didn’t need to check for a pulse. He knew. The universe, which had for so long been held in a precarious, trembling balance by the simple rhythm of Regulus’s inhale and exhale, had simply… stopped.

"Reg?" James whispered, though he already knew there would be no answer. His hand found Regulus's face, thumb tracing across his cheekbone one last time. The skin was still warm.

It was 6:23 AM on a Wednesday in March when James Potter realized he was alone.

No more beeping monitors—they'd been turned off the night before. No more labored breathing. Just quiet, and the weight of a life ended, and the beginning of learning how to exist in a world that no longer contained the person who had been its center.

James stayed there for a long time, holding Regulus long after the nurses had come and gone, long after Sirius had stepped out to make the necessary phone calls. He stayed until the afternoon light slanted differently through the windows and someone gently told him it was time to go home.

Go home.

Which home? The one that awaited him was no longer a home. It was a museum. A tomb. A collection of evidence that life had once lived here, violently interrupted.

He saw himself entering the apartment with terrifying, crystal clarity.

He opened the door, and the first thing that struck him was the smell — not the smell of illness, not here. Here, it still smelled like Regulus. Expensive sandalwood soap, and the bergamot cologne he preferred, and the faint metallic smell of ink from the vintage fountain pen he always lost. James stood in the hallway, suffocating from the smell.

There, on the floor by the sofa, lay his slippers. The worn velvet slippers that James had bought him two Christmases ago lay exactly where he had taken them off before his last trip in the ambulance. One of them was turned on its side.

In the kitchen, there was a single mug on the drying rack. Black, with a chipped handle, which, according to Regulus, made the tea taste better. Inside, at the bottom, there would still be a ghost of tea leaves stuck to it. James would see it, and his body would turn to stone. He would have to make tea. He would have to fill the kettle, and the thought of its whistle—the sound—would be unbearable.

Their bed. God, their bed. It will be unmade, as they left it in haste and panic. The pillow will still have the dent from Regulus's head. The book he was reading, the biography of some little-known writer, will still be on the nightstand, with a bookmark in the page. Chapter Twelve. He would never finish it. James would lie on his side, motionless, staring at the empty space, at the cold sheets, and he would know, with a certainty worse than any pain, that he would never again feel the warmth of another body next to him. He will never again wake up to a cold foot nudging his calf or a hand casually thrown across his chest in sleep.

Every corner, every object will be a mine. A scratch on the floor from when they moved the table while arguing. A faint water stain on the ceiling from a leak in the apartment above, which they were going to complain about. A picture on the refrigerator of them, smiling and waving in the wind, standing on the beach in Greece. Two men, forever young, forever happy.

How was he supposed to go home?

#this was so fire I fear #I don’t even fw jegulus but I fw this so hard #yippee for tragic death #regulus black #james potter #jegulus

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