WHUMPTOBER [2023]

No.2: Delirium of the Heart & a Phone Booth Confession

"I'll call out your name, but you won't call back."
Thermometer | Delirium | "They don't care about you."

JEGULUS (James Potter x Regulus Black)

***

It had been weeks of Regulus pacing and paining, unbeknownst to Orion and Walburga, for the hope that James would appear again and all would be well.

Regulus should've known better. He'd called out James's name and not gotten a call back. Wasn't that enough of a sign?

He was delirious now, phone chucked to one corner with a notification box of zero messages. His near-boyfriend had rejected him, he knew it, and yet this pain was so different from the others he'd ever experienced.

It was almost like losing Sirius. The darkness returned, mining the hole in his heart deeper, and leaving an empty spot for somebody who won't be there to fill it.

Losing Sirius was the most painful thing amongst countless lashes and multiple broken bones to have happened to him. Now, James was trying to tie for first place.

Regulus, for the next few days, didn't bother catering for his needs, proving his parents were going to have an easy summer holiday. Meanwhile, Regulus would sit and preferably die.

Pandora and Evan had left for France, unaware of their friend's mental and physical state back at home. Regulus swiped through social media with a frown on his face, watching Pandora's snowballing competition with Evan on her Insta, and the next second he was on Potter's and scowling at the posts with either Sirius or Evans' happy stupid faces.

Walburga had noticed something was wrong, but her carelessness made her only scold Regulus about taking it to heart so much. "Weak," she had called him. Regulus sarcastically thanked her for calling him anything at all, because it felt like more than what James had ever done since their mishap.

A few days of his delirium had Orion joking tastelessly that his son was schizophrenic because he hallucinated up a certain brother and talked to himself in the bathroom mirror. When even Orion realised it was getting excessive by the end of the week, Regulus had to answer to the brutal punch of his ringed-finger fist.

Barty had tried to check up on Regulus a few times, but it seemed he kept getting his phone taken away. Dorcas was busy somewhere, though she also tried contacting him, but Regulus made sure to pretend everything was fine. Her tight schedule proved useful for him in hiding behind his 'I'm okay' facade.

It got so bad at one point that Walburga dragged him to the doctor and stuck a thermometer in his mouth.

"He is feverish," the doctor had said. There was something knowing in the doctor's gaze, but it hardly mattered, because Walburga and Regulus disappeared after that to probably never visit again.

"Fever," Walburga had scoffed. "What a weakling."

Regulus curled into himself.

The summer was apparently perfect for everyone, except Regulus, who was missing the sun dreadfully even as it hung in the sky. His sun was somewhere else, quite far away, and tragically out of reach.

And once Walburga found Regulus's nose buried in Sirius's Instagram account, carefully scrolling through his brother's posts, she had given a horrendously high-pitched cry and punished him severely for it. She took his phone away for the month in the process.