moon song
Regulus was doom scrolling. It wasn’t an uncommon occurrence, it happened quite often actually. Usually before and/or after he taught, it was a good break from the children. Not that he didn’t like them, contrary to popular belief, he loved what he did. And he was good at it.
The slightly less common occurrence was when his phone started buzzing violently. He thought about not picking up as he saw the name ‘sirius black’ light up, interrupting his listless scrolling. It was quite common for him to get texts from Sirius, usually about the most random things (“reggie, dearest brother of mine, would you throw a baby?” “like, a child.” “yes regulus a human child” was a good example) but he never got calls unless he was late to something and (as usual) not responding to his texts.
Unfortunately he decided to pick up. He sighed, taking his phone where it had been perched on his ankle and slowly getting up from the splits he’d been in, sliding his thumb over the screen to answer Sirius’ call.
“Reggie!!!!” Sirius was practically screaming. Regulus sighed again, wondering why he ever bothered to pick up the phone.
“Sirius.” There was a pause and then with and extreme amount of sarcasm,
“Wow. Don’t sound so excited.”
“I won’t, don’t worry.”
“Fine. Fine. But alas, I’m afraid I know you too well.”
“Lies.”
“Wrong! Anyway as I was saying,” Sirius cleared his throat, “But alas, I know you too well!” he said dramatically and then continued in a normal tone, “And therefore I know that if I hang up right now you will suffer in endless curiosity but not call me back ‘cause you’re petty as shit.”
“Says you.”
“Yes and?” Regulus mumbled something and then said,
“What do you want, Sirius?”
“I just wanted to inform my dear brother of a delightful fact but he’s being an ass about it and I find that very rude.” Regulus mumbled something else and sighed but decided to refrain from saying anything other than,
“Okay, go ahead. Inform me.”
“Great! Guess who’s coming to teach.”
“To teach.”
“Yes Reggie, to teach. Here. Must you repeat everything? Keep up. Anyway, guess who’s coming to teach?” He made a sound similar to what might have been a screech, maybe a squeal, how should Regulus know?
“Who?”
“JAMES!!!!!” At this point he well and truly screamed the name and Regulus cringed and moved his phone away from his ear.
“James.”
“Yes James! Like, James James. As in my best mate James, James Potter James.”
“That was too many James’.”
“Don’t be rude.”
“Why am I being informed of this?”
“Because, Regulus, he will be near you. I have reasons for informing you about things you know.”
“Oh yeah. Like that one time when you texted at 2 a.m. to inform me that your cheese had gone mouldy and you were sobbing in front of the refrigerator but you couldn’t remember if you’d closed it or not.”
“I was drunk! And you left me on read, you little shit!”
“Mhm. What’s James teach?”
“History of some sort, in your building!”
“Right. Well that’s great. I still don’t understand why you wanted me to know this.”
“Oh! So you can make friends with him. But don’t you dare steal my best friend Regulus Black.”
Regulus snorted a laugh, “That’s not happening. Plus, I haven’t seen James in, like, over six years.”
“Oh please, you have, like, no friends.”
“I have Pandora. And Dorcas. And Barty and Evan.”
“Barty and Evan aren’t even on campus and you barely see Dorcas and Pandora ‘cause you’re isolated.”
“The building I’m in is just better, Sirius.” Sirius scoffed,
“Well that’s just wrong.”
“No. Bye.”
“What? By-” Regulus hung up.
His mind was spinning a little but he needed to get his routine down, so he cued up the song, as planned before his unexpected little chat with his brother.
And you pushed me in
And now my feet can’t touch the bottom of you
You couldn’t have
You couldn’t have
Stuck your tongue down the throat of somebody
Who loves you more
It was a routine he’d choreographed himself, just for practice, but he felt an intense need to perfect it as though he had to get it right for a recital or something. But those days were long past. He did want to get it polished before the semester started though, because teaching was a lot.
He counted beats in his head occasionally saying the name of what he was supposed to do in his head. The song suddenly ended and sure enough he was tipping from a perfect landing from a jump into controlled splits, and all too quickly he was aware of the real world, of his surroundings again. Dancing was his escape (and occasionally the bane of his existence, but what good hobby isn’t a paradox?). He used to dance until his feet bled as a kid, escaping his parents, their expectations and school.
Again. The refrain that had been going around and around in his head from the day he’d started dancing. Every dance teacher would say it. Don’t do it until you get it once. Do it until you can’t get it wrong, do it until you can do it without thinking. Again, again, again.
So Regulus got up, walked over to his phone and restarted the song. Again. Counting out beats, visualising landings, jumps, turns. Repeating the parts that weren’t perfect and then putting it all together. Until around one a.m. when he finally realised that he should probably have been sleeping if he wanted to prepare anything the next day. He took off his pointe shoes, and packed up.
By the time he made it home, parking his car next to the broken street lamp, in the pitch black in front of his flat, it was almost 2 a.m.
Regulus flipped on the small lamp in the tiny living room bathing the entire room in a warm glow. He despised turning on the normal lights at night. And during the day sometimes. He then padded into the kitchen silently and put the water to boil. He rummaged around the small pantry for food because he knew logically he should eat, even though he wasn’t all that hungry.
The kettle started whistling. Wanting to stay in the good graces of his neighbours (meaning not wanting to get kicked out, he didn’t give a shit what his neighbours thought of him) he lunged toward the kettle dragging it off the burner and turned off the fire. He poured himself a large mug of tea, the one with the cat on it, his favourite, and retrieved his costco-sized box of saltines from where they had been tossed in his rush to get to the kettle.
He flipped through Netflix as he ate his saltines and burned his mouth with the scorching tea. A feast. He settled on Stranger Things, one that he had already watched a million times but who cares? He picked a random episode and watched until his fourth cup of tea had gone cold and he’d eaten an entire sleeve of saltines.
Then he went to sleep. Or at least he tried. He tossed and turned until his alarm went off, probably having gotten about two good hours of sleep, if that.
He groggily hit his phone trying to find the snooze button. The horrid buzzing noise finally stopped (he really needed to change that) and he unplugged his phone, still laying on his bed with his eyes closed. He opened them to see that he had a calendar notification, ‘three days before you have to have your shit together so pick up equipment’.
He threw on clothes and got ready, grabbing a stale croissant from four days ago when Sirius had showed up to his flat unannounced with eleven croissants (why the fuck they needed eleven croissants for two people, Regulus had no idea).
Regulus started his car (which coughed and sputtered a terrible amount) and dragged himself the fifteen minutes it took to drive to the building his classroom was located in, conveniently on the other side of campus from anyone else he knew.
He picked his equipment up (marking his notification as ‘done’, which brought him delight) and unlocked his studio. He flipped on the fluorescent lights and started finalising the cleaning and organising he’d been doing the previous days.
After a couple hours, Regulus picked up his laptop and collapsed in the middle of the floor. He opened up his ‘lesson plans, routines, songs, performances, and other teaching shit’ folder and made sure he had everything finalised. As he was finishing his final check (that was a lie, he knew he would probably check it twice a day for the next three days, convinced he was missing something), his phone lit up.
10:47
sirius black: REguLussSsSSSSSss
reggie <3: what
reggie <3: are you drunk
sirius black: unfortunately no
sirius black: can you come to the cafe??
reggie <3: no
reggie <3: the one on campus
sirius black: yes :)
reggie <3: no
sirius black: why
reggie <3: cause
sirius black: why
reggie <3: im finalising lesson plans and i have shit to do
sirius black: i literally saw you checking them yesterday???
reggie <3: why
sirius black: why what??
reggie <3: why should i go
sirius black: ummmm because im here
reggie <3: you owe me a pastry
sirius black: deal :)))))))))
Regulus walked over to the cafe, having nothing better to do other than freak out about teaching, which, mind you, was his job that he’d been doing for quite a while, and yet every single year he freaked out right before the semester started.
He was musing about how he shouldn’t have worn his boots because he could feel every cut and blister from dancing, when he walked when he saw someone unfortunately familiar.
Regulus stormed into the quaint cafe and sure enough the man was there and he was just sitting down next to Sirius as Regulus walked (rather aggressively) in.
Sirius started waving at Regulus as soon as he caught sight of him. Regulus spent a split second contemplating turning on his heel and leaving. There was another person, pleasedontbehimpleasedontbehimpleasedontbehim, Regulus thought, sitting next to his brother and he didn’t even want to come in the first place. But alas, he was being waved at and he would (hopefully) get a free pastry out of this nightmare.
He walked over to the table dropping his bag noisily and taking a seat across from Sirius and…oh shit. Regulus was fucked. Like absolutely screwed over. It was, in fact, him, the man from the bar.
Man From The Bar waved at him. He waved back, two could play that game. He could very easily pretend he had no idea who this man was. He half hoped that the man actually had no idea who he was, but he had a vague memory that the man had seemed more sober than him.
He didn’t think he had gotten the man’s name, and if he did he sure as hell didn’t remember it the next day, hungover and with the worst headache he’d quite possibly ever had. He hoped he hadn’t been stupid enough to give the man his name.
“Reggie!”
“Sirius.”
“I got you a chocolate-raspberry thing,” Sirius slid the plate with the pastry toward Regulus.
“Thank you,” Regulus said in his usual bored tone despite the fact that his mind was going a mile a minute trying to figure out why Man From The Bar (he really needed to find out his name) looked mildly familiar and not just from the previous week.
“James, would you pass me the knife?” Sirius directed the question toward Man From The Bar and suddenly Regulus knew why he looked so familiar. Regulus’ ears were ringing as the silverware made a clinking sound.
Shit. If he thought he was screwed before, oh he had been so, so wrong. This was much worse. He was so so so fucked.
He’d hooked up with Sirius’ best mate and now a fellow professor. No scratch that, he’d hooked up with James Potter.
He may have said James’ name out loud as he realised how screwed he really was. He would never hear the end of it from Sirius if he could tell Sirius, which, absolutely not.
He got up, picking his pastry up (because, despite the situation it was a goddamn free pastry and he would be taking it thank you very much) and hefted his bag over his shoulder as he walked out.
His head was running in circles as he walked back to the studio. He could feel the panic creeping up on him and his head was so crowded with anxious thoughts that he couldn’t discern his actual train of thoughts from those crowding his brain.
Somehow he ended up back in his studio, not remembering the walk there, rather, he supposed, using muscle memory to walk the short distance back while his brain was concerned about the situation that had occurred not moments before, give or take a week. Or nine years. He’d had a quite frankly embarrassing crush on James for some of secondary school. Had he recognised him the week prior at the bar, he would’ve turned and fled.
He unlocked and walked into the large room cursing all his decisions and connected his phone to the aux cord as he changed into leggings and his pointe shoes.
He cued up a song from an old routine he’d done forever ago. One that he knew and did whenever he got overwhelmed or needed something that he didn’t have to think as much about.
How's one to know?
I'd live and die for moments that we stole
On begged and borrowed time
So tell me to run
Or dare to sit and watch what we'll become
He focused on the routine but it was still sloppy, he was still half focused on the James fucking Potter situation. Every lyric somehow screamed his name, reminding Regulus of him. He hadn’t seen him in over six years, so he wasn’t sure how these connections were being made but suddenly all he could picture was green eyes and a trouble-maker smile.
A small pain shot up his left ankle but he kept dancing, finishing his routine feeling slightly better or at least a little calmer, maybe?, than before. He shook his ankle out and it seemed fine so he danced until there was no more sunlight coming from the window. He packed up his stuff, checking one last time the the equipment was all where it should be and picked up his bag and his phone. He went over his mental checklist making sure that, no , he really wasn’t forgetting anything, then cut the lights and locked up.
He got as far as his car before he heard a familiar voice.
“Regulus,” he called, seemingly out of breath, “hi.”
Regulus turned around slowly and of course it was none other than James fucking Potter, the death of Regulus Black.