unspeakable | jegulus

you'll never get to heaven

chapter title: you'll never get to heaven (if you break my heart) by dionne warwick

cw: sexual content

if you'd like, you can add:

'Heavenly Creatures' by Wolf Alice / 'Voyager' by boygenius / 'Jonathan' by Adrianne Lenker, Buck Meek / 'The Alcott' by The National (feat. Taylor Swift) /  'Bird Song' by Florence + The Machine / 'Cold Cold Cold' by Cage The Elephant / 'You Can Be Mean' by Indigo De Souza / 'Bigmouth Strikes Again' by The Smiths /  'Punch And Judy' by Elliott Smith / 'Objects' by Big Thief

to your queue <3

The house was as labyrinthine leaving as it had been entering. James and Regulus walked in exhausted silence, arm in arm, then hand in hand, down endless-seeming gloomy hallways. The air reeked of roses and rot. James could smell decay the deeper they crept into the house. Maybe it was his imagination, but there seemed to be something awful drifting on the air. It slipped under locked doors, or yawning mouths of branching hallways, sometimes drifting cold, sometimes hot, but always humid. Hot, wet, like breath. Clammy cold, like spitting rain. Dead meat, fresh blood. He could smell the fetid scent of despair. It hung on the air like humidity in summer. Death wasn't dry. His arm still burned.

"When do you think it will stop hurting?" James asked, gazing down the dark hallways ahead of them. There must be a staircase around here somewhere, right? Hadn't they gone up a set of stairs?

"Bella said hers burned for days, I don't mind it much. It does hurt, but not as badly as I expected it would." Regulus touched his own forearm lightly, over his robes. His gaze was distant, like he wasn't seeing the dark wooden floor, or the identical side-tables and bouquets of roses. He was looking at something in his head, something James would never be able to see. "I can't believe we actually did it."

"It'll be there forever." James felt shaky, like he was barely holding himself together. "I sort of feel like I already had it," he said quietly. "I thought about it so much it's sort of like I already imagined it was. It doesn't even feel any different, except for the pain. I feel the same. I thought I would feel like a different person completely, like how you're... It sounds so stupid." James rubbed his eyes under his glasses, exhausted. "It's like how you always expect to feel older on your birthday, but you never do. That's how I was thinking of it. Or like New Year's Eve or something. I thought it would change me somehow, but I'm the same person I was this morning. I..." A flash of poison-green light, blindingly bright, brighter in memory than it had been in reality, made him falter. He turned to Regulus, the enormity of what had happened tonight crashing into him, his vision blurring awfully. "You could have died."

"She never would have killed me." Regulus swung the hand intertwined with James' playfully, like they were kids, a sweet smile on his face, then stiffened when he noticed the tears in his eyes. "James?"

"You almost died." He stopped in his tracks and Regulus stopped too, looking up at him mutely. The shadows clung to the violet shadows under his eyes. James held him tighter, much tighter, so tight it hurt his hand to hold him. He could feel all the bones in his hand through his skin. "Died," he emphasized. The word sank into him and, to his horror, James properly started crying. His breath stuttered in his chest, and his tears closed his throat, blocked his nose, made his face hot and wet, ragged breath punched out of him as he crumbled to pieces at last. Regulus held his face in both hands and pressed his forehead to his, close enough they were sharing breaths.

"But I didn't. Look, feel." Regulus took his hand and pressed his fingers to the underside of his jaw, to the place his pulse beat steady inside of him. James pressed his fingertips into his cold skin harder, deeper. He wanted to reach into his chest, between his ribs, and hold his heart in his hand. He wanted to keep it safe. He wanted to keep it in his chest with his own, he wanted Regulus to take his and keep it inside him, one, the other, both, James wanted their hearts to stop at the same time. "Feel that? I'm alive. I'm alright, so are you, my love." James couldn't stop crying.