Chapter Text
James isn’t sure when it started. Just that it did. That’s the thing, isn’t it? Falling in love is like falling asleep. You don’t notice it happening. You’re lying there in the dark and then suddenly it’s morning. The moment of falling happens before you can realise what it is, and by the time you have, it’s too late—the harsh light of day is already streaming through the window.
Only this isn’t love. Couldn’t be love. Love is supposed to be bright and beautiful, or sharp enough to rip you apart—blinding when it’s good, brutal when it’s bad. This isn’t that. This is something else. Survival, maybe. A fix. A body against his so he can prove he isn’t empty. Something to burn out the silence where love used to live.
It doesn’t matter what he calls it. The rules are the same. One moment he was nothing—skin without a heart, moving through the world like a ghost, love’s hollow relic. The next, he was waking with heat on his mouth, fingers in his hair, and a blaze in his chest where the empty space of his heart had been.
And now it feels as if time has come undone. Whenever James tries to make sense of how he ended up here, the sequence slips through his hands. What he gets instead are flashes. Moments caught between waking and sleep—blurred at the edges, strangely luminous, as if memory itself has turned traitor.
Grey eyes across a library table. The first tilt, the first fall. Dark curls bending towards him, a smile that belonged to no one else. Months collapsing into a single image that won’t let go. Love burning so fiercely he thought it might scorch its way through his ribs.
And then the music. Long pale fingers against white piano keys, notes spilling into the dark. Each one heavy with sorrow, each one carrying a truth he couldn’t name.
Regulus.
Regulus Black.
A star burning bright against the black sky. A star James thought he could watch forever. That had been love. He knows it, because he can still feel the ghost of it under his skin—pain and beauty tangled until it lit him from within. It was in his chest, in his blood, burning so fiercely he swore the glow must have leaked out of him, impossible to hide.
Yes. That had been love.
This isn’t.
This doesn’t glow. It tears through him like fire licking bone, like the body’s desperate heave for air after being held beneath icy water too long. It claws. Not love. Not light. Just a burn that keeps him alive, even if sometimes he thinks it’s eating him alive, even if sometimes he wants it to.
Regulus Black.
Moments. That’s all it was in the end—a year broken into fragments, sharp and blinding. Then nothing. Absence. Darkness. James left hollow, walking through the days with nothing inside him.
When he tries to stitch it together now, it won’t hold. The months collapse into a flat sea of grey. Before Regulus is blurred, like an old photograph left out in the sun. With him, everything was too bright, too vivid to touch. After—nothing but ash, and the dull ache of going on when there’s nothing to go on for.
Months of grey. James sleepwalking through his own body. And then—suddenly—he wakes. Frozen January air biting his lungs. The cold stones of the Astronomy Tower beneath his feet, stars scattering cold light above. And a voice, low, steady, cutting through the night:
“You alright, Potter?”
Three words. That’s all it was. Three small words. Three words that changed everything. They shouldn’t have mattered as much as they did. Shouldn’t have sent him spiralling into the mess he’s in now. But they did.
James supposed that if he had to point out the moment that his life began unravelling, truly—if he had to choose one moment out of all the moments, the one that set him on the path to destruction—then it would be that moment, those three words. Strange, really, that it was that moment. Not the heartbreak, the destruction of his soul, his being, that losing Regulus was. No. It was three words spoken by a boy he barely knew.
“You alright, Potter?”
Said with an exhale. Pale smoke lifting into the dark night above him, hanging in the cold air.
“No. I’m not.”
A nod.
That’s what James got in return. A brief incline of the head, throwaway, nonchalant. And yet still—it mattered. Because no one else had asked. No one had known to ask. No one in his life had known about the tortuous, beautiful thing that had been his love for Regulus. And so, no one had known that he was dying, drying up, fading, empty in its wake. Not Sirius, his brother in all but blood. Not Peter, his oldest friend. Not Remus, his ever-patient confidant. No.
Instead, it’s Evan Rosier who asks.
Evan who belongs to Regulus. Evan, who James has never actually spoken to other than a few barbs hurled through the air as they clashed on the pitch in scarlet and green. And yet there he was—Evan Rosier, looking up at James like he could read the bloodied lines of his heart from where he sat sprawled against the cold stone wall of the parapet.
James isn’t sure how he even got here. He doesn’t remember choosing the tower, doesn’t remember climbing the stairs. It’s all grey, as so much has been since Regulus. His feet must have carried him by habit, because this had been their place. His heart knows Regulus is gone, but perhaps his body hasn’t caught up yet. Or perhaps his feet have simply grown their own will, because they move again, carrying him forward, his back finding the wall, sliding down until he’s seated with his legs stretched in front of him.
A hand moves into his view, holding out a bottle of Firewhisky already a third gone. Three words. Three small words.
“Helps to drink.”
James takes it. Swallows. It burns all the way down, makes his stomach twist and his eyes water until he coughs.
A low snort from beside him.
He tries again. Still harsh, but smoother now, and there’s a slow heat spreading through his chest. He passes the bottle back and watches as Rosier drinks without a flicker of discomfort.
So they sit. Silent. If James had been in his right mind, he might have thought it strange. But now, it steadies him. Not alone, not forced into talk either. Rosier seems content to share the quiet, passing the bottle now and then, staring into the night. Time slips sideways. James doesn’t know how long passes, only that the whisky is almost gone, the warmth in his stomach has spread to his limbs, and the dark inside him feels a little lighter.
Rosier pulls a packet of cigarettes from his coat, slips one between his lips, and lights it with his wand. For a moment his face is gold in the dark, hair bright, line of his nose and full lips tinged with fire, then the night swallows him whole. He tips his head back, exhales smoke toward the stars.
“You alright, Rosier?”
Words echoed back to their owner. Simple, like nothing. Like passing a bottle offered back. Rosier turns his head, eyes catching his. Another drag. Smoke curling from his nose.
“Not even slighlty.”
James waits, in case there’s more. There isn’t. Only summer blue eyes, turned black by the night, fixed on him. The moment stretches, pulling thin. Time slows, then holds. James should look away, but he doesn’t—or maybe he can’t. Maybe he doesn’t want to.
Then something shifts. Rosier’s gaze flickers—down to his mouth, back up to his eyes. A spark, sudden and sharp, like flint struck low in James’s spine. The weightless lurch of standing on a cliff, every nerve screaming with the impulse to jump. Adrenaline cracks through him, bright and merciless. And then he’s moving. Or Rosier is. James doesn’t know whose fault it is, only that it feels inevitable. As certain as gravity.
And then heat, white-hot, tearing through the fog that’s smothered him for months. Fire after endless grey. Hands knotting in the fabric of his jumper, pulling him closer. Lips that taste of smoke and Firewhisky, bitter and burning—and James thinks he could drown in them, might want to.
And then it’s gone. The heat, the fire, the spark that had lit through him—broken in an instant. For a heartbeat James can only gasp at the absence, frantic, desperate to pull it back before the grey swallows him again. But Rosier is already moving, pushing to his feet, his back turned.
James doesn’t speak. Doesn’t move. Can’t. Rosier dissolves into the dark, and then there is nothing. Only the cold tower, the bite of night air, the taste of smoke and whisky lingering on his lips, and the echo of fire in the hollow space where his heart had been.
It isn’t until morning that the weight of it settles. Grey light bleeding through the gap in the curtains of his four-poster, thin and merciless. The night comes back in shards: the tower, the Firewhisky, Rosier.
Rosier.
James doesn’t know what to do with the memory of Rosier’s mouth on his. Thinks he should feel guilty. Ashamed. Embarrassed, at the very least. He frowns at the thought, because no—that isn’t right. Why shouldn’t he kiss whoever he wants?
Regulus had made it clear. He didn’t want James. Didn’t need him. Didn’t love him.
Still—would it wound him to know? Would he care?
Later, James wonders if that was the motivation—if that’s what drove him to seek out Rosier again. Sometimes he thinks he can chalk it up to that, dismiss it as a need for revenge, to hurt Regulus the way Regulus had hurt him. But he knows, deep down, that he’s lying to himself.
Maybe at first that’s what it was. But that excuse only worked as long as James had wished that the mouth against his was Regulus’s. That the blue eyes meeting his were grey. That the hands pulling him close were pale, long-fingered, elegant—not golden, not strong enough to bruise where they gripped his hips.
At first it was survival. Vengeance. Fire to chase away the cold grey of heartbreak. That’s all it ever should have been. That’s where it should have stopped.
When the wound of Regulus began to close, scar over, when the grey began to fade—
that’s when James should have stopped.
But he didn’t.
Couldn’t.
Wouldn’t.
And Evan? Because he was Evan now, not Rosier—Evan.
James had never understood why he didn’t cut it off. There were moments after—Evan fastening his belt, eyes avoiding James’s—when it seemed like he despised himself for what they’d done. Sometimes, like he despised James too.
James never asked. Never brought up that first night, never questioned why Evan had kissed him back, why he kept kissing him. He wasn’t sure he wanted the answer. Not when more often than not Evan came to him drunk. Never messy, never out of control—that wasn’t who he was. And yet James learnt the signs, learnt to notice how Evan’s touches grew softer, how his fingers lingered. How only on nights when half a bottle of Firewhisky had already burned through him would he let himself sleep, head tipped against James’s chest. Then in the morning, that softness was gone. His eyes would slide away, his mouth set hard, and James would wait expectantly for words he was always sure were just around the corner.
But they never came.
Despite the way he wouldn’t meet James’s eye in the hallway. Despite the fact that he ate his meals with Snape, the Lestrange brothers, and that band of Slytherins who made no secret of their glee at the whispers of a wizard so terrible that no one dared say his name. Despite the way his friends spat “blood traitor” at James in the halls. Despite the way he was always quick to leave, always the first to pull away—he never stopped it.
And neither did James.
And so it went, until summer stretched out before them. They didn’t talk about it—about what it was they did, or why. They didn’t talk about what they were to each other, or what it would mean that, in a few short weeks, James would be leaving Hogwarts.
And then weeks became days, and still they didn’t talk about it.
James stands on the Hogsmeade platform, watching the scarlet steam engine glisten in the morning sun, and wonders:
what comes next?
It feels both monumental and somehow anticlimactic. Seven years, done. The castle towers rise in the distance behind him—a home that is no longer home. He boards the train behind Sirius, follows him down the crowded aisle for the last time, sits, stares out the window, and lets the ache of loss swell.
He tells himself it’s the school, the castle, the memories, his childhood. But it isn’t just that. It’s him. The loss of the fire that’s kept James going for the last six months, burnt it’s way into his skin.
Because of course this means the end of him, too.
Evan didn’t say goodbye. Didn’t acknowledge that this was the end of whatever they had been. And that stings—stings more than James wants to admit. Because James thinks maybe, maybe he’s been lying to himself, maybe it’s not just need, not just a balm to the grey, maybe there was more, maybe it had been like falling asleep, falling asleep in the dark cold of winter and waking up to the summer sun streaming in through the window as he gets the last look back at something he didn’t know how much he wanted until it was already gone.