YOU RUIN EVERY TAKE (JEGULUS ACTOR AU)
Regulus shouldn’t have come to the rehearsal room.
He knew it the second he stepped in the cheap folding chairs, the harsh fluorescent lights, the script pages scattered like casualties across the floor. The room smelled like sweat and heartbreak and the kind of exhaustion you couldn’t fix by sleeping.
James was already there.
Back turned. Shoulders shaking.
Regulus froze.
James looked like he’d been crying for hours the kind of crying where your whole body shakes, the kind you don’t let anyone see unless you’re completely alone or completely broken.
Regulus turned, ready to leave.
Then James’s voice cracked across the room like a whip.
“Don’t.”
Regulus stopped.
James was trembling. “You walked out yesterday. You didn’t answer. You didn’t text. You didn’t even look at me on set today.”
“I don’t owe you my attention,” Regulus said, but his voice was thin, brittle.
James laughed, a harsh, broken sound. “You owe me something. After everything you pulled out of me you owe me something.”
Regulus swallowed. “I didn’t pull anything out of you.”
“You did.” James’s voice rose, sharp with pain. “Every time you touched me during filming. Every scene. Every look you gave me that wasn’t in the script. Every time you smiled at me between takes like you were letting me see something real.”
Regulus’s chest tightened. “That wasn’t”
“I believed you.” James’s voice cracked so violently it hurt to hear. “I believed every damn second of it.”
Regulus looked away. His eyes burned.
James stepped forward, hands shaking. “When we filmed the breakup scene you remember it you held my face like the world was ending. Like you were saying goodbye for real.”
“That’s what the director wanted,” Regulus murmured.
“No.” James’s voice shook. “That was you. That was you. I know when you’re lying.”
Regulus snapped. “Stop pretending you know me.”
James shouted, voice raw and loud enough to shake the walls: “I DO KNOW YOU!”
Silence after, thick and painful.
Regulus flinched, breathing uneven.
James took a step closer, eyes bright with fury and heartbreak. “You’re scared. I get it. But don’t you dare pretend I imagined this.”
Regulus’s hands curled into fists. “You can’t expect me to ruin my life for—”
“For what?” James demanded. “For love?”
Regulus’s breath hitched. The word landed like a blow.
James’s voice softened into something far more devastating. “I love you, Reg. I love you so much I can’t breathe around you anymore.”
Regulus felt something inside him split wide open.
James went on, quieter but fiercer: “And you’re killing me. Every time you pull away. Every time you pretend you don’t feel anything. You’re killing me.”
Regulus pressed shaking fingers to his forehead. “I can’t do this, James.”
“You already are,” James whispered.
Regulus’s vision blurred.
James stepped close enough that Regulus could feel the heat of him. “Say you don’t love me. Look me in the eyes and say it, and I’ll walk away.”
Regulus lifted his gaze.
James’s eyes were wet, shining like someone had carved grief into them.
Regulus opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Opened it again.
And whispered, voice broken and shaking:
“I can’t say it.”
James sucked in a breath like he’d been punched.
Regulus stepped back immediately. “But that doesn’t mean I can be with you.”
“Why not?” James asked, voice cracking.
Regulus finally lost it — tears spilling, shaking so violently he had to grip the back of a chair to stay upright.
“Because loving you feels like drowning,” he whispered. “Because you make me forget who I am. Because I lose myself every time you look at me.”
James’s tears spilled too, thick and silent. “So drown with me,” he said.
Regulus shook his head, sobbing. “I can’t.”
James’s face crumpled. “Then you don’t love me enough.”
“That’s not fair.”
“It’s the truth.”
Regulus choked on a sob. “Everything hurts around you.”
James whispered, voice breaking completely: “Everything hurts without you.”
Regulus wanted to scream. Wanted to throw the script at the wall. Wanted to kiss him until there was nothing left to ruin.
Instead he walked to the door, each step a knife.
James didn’t stop him.
Just whispered:
“I’ll wait for you. Even if it breaks me.”
Regulus paused.
A single tear slid down his chin and hit the wooden floor with a soft, cruel sound.
He didn’t turn around.
The door closed behind him.
James collapsed to his knees.
And for once, no one mistook their crying for acting.