unspeakable | jegulus

i'll find you in the morning sun

chapter title: i'll be seeing you by billie holiday

In his dorm, in the light of the waxing moon, James took off his cloak and settled into the idea that everything about his life was going to change tomorrow, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

He knew his friends weren't sleeping. How could they? Each of them knew just as well as he did what was going to happen to him over the next two weeks. Never had he dreaded a school break so much. Was this how Sirius felt all those years he spent going back there? James couldn't imagine the relief he must have felt during their second year when he got to stay at school for the holidays for the first time. He remembered his smile on Christmas morning, the first one he'd spent around a tree opening gifts instead of preparing for a formal family meal under his mother's oppressive attention. At least he knew where he was going. At least he knew what to expect. Was knowing worse, or better?

By the new year, James would find out.

He sat on the windowsill and stared out over the grounds. The stars looked close here. In the tower, would he really have been willing to jump? Would he have had the capability? Or was it all just posturing? James looked down at the stone far below, the pillars, the points of turrets, spires. It would be a terrible way to die, falling. Flying until your bones crunch and your body breaks—inside and outside. James opened the window. He felt the cold air on his skin. He heard the wind. A cigarette found it's way from his pocket into his hand. James leaned his head against the wall and smoked, anxiously staring at the moon and the stars.

Someone sat across from him in the windowsill. James didn't look away from the moon. A hand held his in the shadows around the window frame. Warm and rough. He swallowed a breath of smoke harshly, blaming the cigarette when his vision blurred with tears.

"Do you want to talk?" Sirius asked. James shook his head. No. "Do you want to be alone?" No. "I'll just stay here awhile. Is that okay?" James looked at him in the dim light, studying the dark line of his eyelashes, the harshness and sharpness he had in the hollows of his cheeks, the bridge of his pointed nose, his small, pensive mouth.

He'd grown up loving him.

Loving Sirius was like breathing, it was just something James had to do.

What was he doing, going somewhere Sirius had fled to keep himself alive? Maybe he'd know him better by the end of this. Maybe he'd understand something new about him, something he didn't before. He looked at his long dark hair, full of moonlight. His hair was the exact same colour as his brother's, the same loose curls, some reduced to waves a bit by the weight of his hair (and his habit of tying it up to get it out of his eyes). His hand in his was like a second pulse, in his fingertips. Another heartbeat to keep him alive.

They didn't say anything for a long time.

James stared through him into the shadows all around, the way they bowed to his features, the pooling of them under his jaw, his cheekbones, made him look like a murder suspect in a noir movie, under the detectives scrutiny. The moon like a lamplight in the sky. What was the source of the feeling of prosecution he had? What was pulling these images to the front of his mind? Sirius tilted his head, his dark hair falling over his dark grey eyes.

"James..."

"I'm okay." He wasn't. The cold air was making him shiver. He flicked his dead cigarette out the window and stuck another one between his teeth. Sirius didn't let go of his hand when he tried to move it to cup the end of his smoke. He did it for him, sheltering his wand's flame from the winter breeze breathing over them both. James couldn't meet his eyes. He felt like a ghost. Like he was already dead. There was an emptiness in his chest every night and the emptiness beside him didn't make the feeling ease. He needed to cover this emptiness up with something: skin, or spit, or blood, or another emptiness pressed up against his. Abyss to abyss. Regulus created this empty feeling in him. He was the only person who could fill it. James sure as hell couldn't.