unspeakable | jegulus

we can be us, just for one day

chapter title: heroes by david bowie

tw: discussion of suicide

if you'd like you can add:

'I Might Be Wrong' by Radiohead / 'Happy' by Mitski / 'Pitseleh' by Elliott Smith  / 'Comfort' by Julia Jacklin

to your queue <3

The dorm was empty and still when James slipped into it after lunch  to gather some of his things. Bottles gleamed on his neatly made bed in  the early afternoon sunlight like many coloured gems. No one had moved  any part of the mess he made. He quietly put everything back into its  place in the case he used to organize his potion implements, all of his  ingredients and tools, numbly noting the absence of belladonna and the  presence of many, many other poisons that no one thought to take away  from him. James traced the skull on one bottle with a fingertip.

He  had been very close. A touch of death and nothing more, but there were  moments when the memory of the ice of that touch, that little brush of  fingertips, the gentleness of death when it reached for him and cradled  him (however briefly) in the palms of tender hands, made his entire body  go cold again. He'd felt the end closing over him when he was in that  clearing, like so many clouds, then they ripped it away. They shook him  and slapped him and brought him back to see the carnage he made of  himself and steal his eternity of quiet and peace. It was childish to  think in terms of fairness, life isn't fair, James knew after all he'd  seen and done he should grow up and get over it, but the tantalizing  closeness haunted him. I should be dead. For a moment,  standing there in the warm scrap of tepid snow dampened sunlight, the  bottle in his hand felt like the belladonna catching light in the air,  when he held it up to look at it in the sun, when he cradled it in his  palm, cradling his death as death cradled him–tenderly.

James  dropped it on the bed like it scalded him. He stared at the little  green bottle with his heart in his throat, then held it as if it was a  venomous creature and dropped it gingerly into his potions case. He  locked it shut, staring at it with too much adrenaline in his blood. He  felt stupid, like a child, like a coward. He shoved the entire case into  his trunk and buried it under one of his least favourite robes so he  wouldn't have to see it.

The uniform Pomfrey provided him  with when he left the hospital wing wasn't tailored for him properly  and only served to emphasize how much weight he'd lost since October. He  stripped it off along with Regulus' sweater. He stood, shirtless,  staring at all of his t-shirts. He didn't want anyone to look at him,  his body, the leanness of him, his lack of flesh, the knobs of his spine  through muscle, or look at his arms, the scars or the mark there like a  brand. He ought to throw all of his t-shirts away. He touched the  sleeve of a shirt he didn't remember buying, longsleeved and dark, soft.  He pulled that on and covered it with Regulus' sweater. James didn't  feel like himself, ever.

He traced a fingertip over the  worn cover of his anthology of poems and picked it up. He shoved it into  his book bag. When he was dressed and ready to leave he lit himself a  cigarette and leaned out of the window to smoke. The burn felt better  after days without it. Sweeter, more bitter, the dirty feeling of  smoking, the way it lingered in his clothes and on his fingertips, it  was so familiar it almost felt clean. The air licking into the room was  chilly.

The door opened behind him. James didn't turn.

"Are  you really allowed to stand near open windows?" James didn't look at  Sirius. He looked at the scraps of blue sky. The white clouds. The white  snow.

"Dunno, probably not." James settled into the  window frame and sat up on the sill with his legs hanging into the dorm,  feeling like his skin didn't fit him quite right, tasting smoke instead  of the bitter gall of a friendship once closer than any James had ever  been gifted with twisted into something he hated to look at, to think  of, to remember too vividly in bed at night when Regulus was asleep  beside him and James was wide awake. He felt unmoored. He felt like a  stranger to himself, and a stranger to Sirius... yet he still felt like he  knew Sirius like the back of his own hand. It was strange to know  someone so well and feel so unknown. It felt unfair.