cold feet

What the hell just happened?

For the next six hours, that is all that James is able to ask himself. Because seriously, what was that? A part of him is convinced it was a dream—there is no way that James Potter just had an interaction with Regulus Black that did not end in a fight, or in him getting told to go fuck himself. He didn’t think that would ever even be remotely within the realm of possibility.

Except it is. And James is pretty sure that it was real, because if he’d been asleep he’s positive he would’ve woken up by now.

So apparently, it did take place. And James has no idea what to make of it. He has no idea where he goes from here, or if he should even go at all. When it comes to the Black family, he’s never known what’s good for him. He doubts he’ll start now.

It’s all so confusing, and for some reason the entire occurrence has left his stomach full of nerves he can’t make sense of. He can’t shake the feeling that he’s done something horribly wrong, that he’ll never learn his lesson when it comes to this boy.

Jesus, what is he supposed to do now?

First, he attempts to lay out the facts. I sat down on the bench next to Regulus. He didn’t move away, or tell me to leave. So I talked to him. He responded.

That’s the first part of it, at least. And it makes sense—it’s only natural that Regulus would respond to James directly addressing him, right? Not to mention that Regulus couldn’t exactly cuss him out amidst a sea of small children. He was cordial, even civil, because he had to be.

The second part isn’t as easy for James to fathom.

I asked Regulus if he was okay, because his foot was bleeding. He said he was fine. I offered him bandages anyway. He took them.

…He took them.

He took them.

When James offered, he’d thought there was no way Regulus was going to say yes. And initially, he had tried to reject them. But then James had tried again. That’s where it all goes awry.

In the past, the second try has only angered Regulus further. The second try is always where he cracks, where his emotions begin to uncover themselves in full and ugly force. He hadn’t expected any less this time.

It hadn’t happened like that—not in the slightest. And that isn’t even the most perplexing part of it all.

Regulus took off like nothing ever happened. He said thanks before he left.

Regulus Black just continues to be full of surprises, doesn’t he?

“Heads up, James!”

The voice of Marlene screeching from across the rink is enough to snap James out of his daze and back into reality. When he’s able to refocus his eyes, tuning back into the action, he’s greeted with the sight of the puck flying out of their defensive zone–and barreling right towards him.

Shit. He doesn’t know what the fuck he’s been doing; he’s out here for a shift, and he’s just managed to get completely distracted by Regulus Black of all people. He needs to pay better attention, needs to focus on the here and the now.

He’s barely in time to make it. James takes a few strides forward in his efforts to get to the puck, his eyes never leaving the ice, and just as he reaches his blade forward to grab it–

“JAMES!”

Marlene’s screaming once again causes him to shoot his head up, and not even half a second later, he is harshly reminded why he should’ve kept it up there in the first place.

He doesn’t actually see it happen until it’s too late–someone comes crashing into him from his left side, the brunt of the force being sent right into his shoulder. James is sent tumbling down onto the ice, practically face planting from the brutal impact. When he finally gets his head out of the ice, all he can see is the outline of a player nearly twice his size sprinting away from him with the puck on his stick. The pain shoots through his entire left side, and immediately he begins to ache.

That shouldn’t have just happened–now, or ever. James is usually the best on the team when it comes to dodging hits, making the 6’5 players who want to run him over look like idiots. He knew his brain wasn’t entirely here already, but for it to be so bad that James neglected to keep his head up? To say he’s got to get his shit together in the next minute is an understatement. They’ve still got an entire period left to play, and James doesn’t have the right to captain the Marauders if he continues to give this heinous performance.

When he scrambles up to his feet, his entire left side only seems to throb more. He wastes no time in heading for the bench, the wind totally knocked out of him. He just needs a moment, he thinks, and then he’ll be good to go again.

He makes sure to wait a couple of seconds as he reaches the bench, watching for Gideon and ensuring that he gets over the boards before James hops over. The Marauders have already gotten called for a “too many men” penalty once this tournament, and James does not need to go through the embarrassment of being punished for not being able to count again.

The second that he sits down, he is immediately greeted with the sound of screaming in his ear.

“What the hell are you doing out there?!” Coach Hooch says, not even giving him a chance to catch his breath. James has to fight back the urge to grimace–he knows that he absolutely deserves this, but it doesn’t make the lecture that he’s sure is coming on any less terrifying to receive.

He doesn’t know what to say. “I–”

“Seriously, where’s your head at? You’re skating like it’s your first time ever out there, you’re not shooting, you’re not aggressive enough, you’re not keeping your head up. What’s wrong with you?”

“I don’t know,” James replies, not daring to look over at where she is standing behind him. He shakes his head as he replies. “Sorry, I’ll try to fix it.”

“You’d better,” she says with a scoff. “What the hell did I give you the ‘C’ for?”

And she’s right. Really, she is. He’s just been named captain a couple of weeks ago, and this is how he goes and performs in the first tournament of the season? It’s humiliating, and he feels every bit of mortification that comes with it. He’s sure he’s as pale as a ghost right now as he awaits his next shift, sweat dripping down his face.

Stupid Regulus Black, he thinks. This is all his fault. Even when he’s not physically present, even when he’s miles upon miles away, he is still finding ways to mess him up. It’s deplorable.

As James cheers his teammates on from the bench, he promises himself that just for the rest of this game, he will not spare another thought on Regulus. He needs to be here, helping his team, and there’s no way he’ll be able to do that if this continues.

Once the game ends, that is when he will think about this again.

❅ ❅ ❅

Marlene has never seen James play like such absolute dogshit before.

Don’t get her wrong, she’s seen him at his absolute worst many times before. She’s been playing with him for almost ten years now, and as a result she has been witness to many fumbles and fuck ups. Some are minor and she forgets about it five seconds after it happens. Others have led to championship losses and embarrassing stories that she will infinitely remind him of at team parties. But in all of those errors and slip-ups made by James, one thing remains consistent: he’s always playing his best game out there, and if a mistake is made it’s never been because he wasn’t putting the effort in. And when it does happen, because he is human and mistakes will inevitably occur, he is sure to try twice as hard. She’s never seen him mess up twice.

That isn’t the story of what happened out there today.

Today, James was on an entirely different planet. He was sloppy, he was slow, he was careless in ways that Marlene’s never known him to be. And the hit he took at the end of the second? Fucking hell. That defenseman may have been twice as big as anyone on the Marauders, but he was also the slowest skater out there. James should’ve been able to avoid that from a mile away. The fact that he didn’t is worrying. They may have won 3-1 in the end–but James did not contribute to a single bit of that. Some team captain he’s shaping up to be.

Okay, maybe Marlene’s a little bitter that she was given the A and not the C. But she’s been a fair sport about it so far, telling herself that it’s an honor to be named alternate captain at all. After the performance James put up tonight, though (if you can even call it that)? He’d better get his shit together before the semi-final they’re playing tomorrow morning and prove that he earned it over her.

As she finishes putting her equipment into her bag and ensures that she’s re-applied more than enough deodorant for the drive back, she has to fight back the urge to voice any of these thoughts out loud. Coach Hooch is still in the locker room, and though she’s already given James the smackdown of his life, Marlene can’t resist the urge to chime in. She doesn’t think that’s very alternate captain-like, though, and she knows that she’ll have nothing of value to add that Hooch hasn’t already said. So she doesn’t say a word to Coach Hooch about all of this. Instead, she zips up her bag and leaves the locker room, deciding to start right at the source of the problem.

“James!” she calls out once she spots him, texting on his phone at the other end of the hallway. He’s quick to shut it off, facing her like he’s been caught guilty of something.

“Marlene,” he responds, nodding. “You going to get pizza?”

She almost laughs at that. “You just played the most horrific game ever, and you’re still getting pizza? What the hell happened to you out there?”

James’s entire demeanor shifts, fumbling with his hands as he attempts to avert her gaze. “I don’t know,” he replies, his voice ever so slightly higher than usual. Lying ass. “I played like shit out there, though.”

“Yeah, you did,” Marlene affirms. “Now what’s up?”

“I don’t know!” James exclaims again, looking Marlene in the eye this time. She knows exactly what to do with this. All it takes is her raising an eyebrow at him, and immediately he is talking again. “I just… I was coaching Learn to Skate earlier, and it was a weird class. Is all.”

A weird class? She doesn’t buy it–whenever James has weird experiences with the children he coaches in Learn to Skate, he will tell the entire team about it in the locker room as they’re throwing their gear on. Marlene’s heard it all–she’s heard about the one child who peed themselves on the ice, heard about the little boy who kept trying to eat the ice, heard about the one little girl who wouldn’t shut up about murder. When it comes to James and Learn to Skate, nothing is ever too much information. No, there’s something else there that James isn’t telling her. “Weird how?” Marlene asks, crossing her arms over her chest. “What happened?”

James opens his mouth for a split second, and then immediately closes it. Yeah, she thinks, something is up. But what? Finally, he speaks. “Well, I’ve been coaching it with Sirius’s little brother,” he begins, “Regulus–”

“What?!” Marlene immediately screeches, shock immediately consuming her. “You’ve been having to coach with Regulus Black?” Okay, seriously, why has James not mentioned that yet? It would definitely explain the lack of stories from him this session.

“You know about him?” James asks, blinking once or twice.

“Yeah, he’s a dick,” Marlene responds. “He’s coaching?”

“Unfortunately,” James responds, though there’s a slight hint of apprehension in his voice that Marlene can’t quite place.

She nearly laughs, trying to imagine that boy as a coach. The boy who used to yell at hockey players to get out of his way on public sessions where he absolutely did not have the right of way, the boy who loses his absolute shit when anyone outside of his little throuple watches his skating, the boy who is constantly looking for reasons to be mad… is now coaching little kids. “I imagine he’s shit at it.”

“No, see, that’s what I’m confused about,” James says, causing Marlene’s eyes to widen. Huh? “He’s been great at it. Today, this girl Sofie fell down on the ice, and he immediately rushed her off and got her to stop crying. I can never do that.”

Okay, what the hell. “Huh,” she responds, her hands coming to her hips now. For a moment she stays like that, attempting to make sense of the information she’s just been given. “I guess his bitchy attitude only applies to hockey players?”

“You wouldn’t believe,” James sighs, looking off into the distance for a second. “He hates me, Marls. Genuinely despises me. But today, after the session, there was like. This one moment where he was decent to me. And it totally threw me off. I don’t know.”

He says it like he’s attempting to be nonchalant, but Marlene immediately knows. So that’s what all of this has been about. James Potter has put on the shittiest performance of his life because Sirius’s little brother wasn’t a dick for five seconds of his life. Typical James.

“You mean to tell me that’s why you sucked tonight?” Marlene asks. It’s not that she doesn’t buy it… but there has to be something else there. Something that he’s still holding back. “Jesus, James.”

“Hey, you completely froze up in the third during that breakaway!” James exclaims, gesturing wildly. And immediately, Marlene’s face turns bright red. She was hoping no one had noticed. “What was up with that?”

“Well.. I.. look, Dorcas Meadowes was skating towards me at full speed!” Marlene defends herself, her hands curling up into fists. “If you’d had to defend against her, you would’ve done the same.” She can’t even be blamed, really–Dorcas is currently Minnesota’s best high school women’s player. In a few years, that girl is probably going to be going first overall in the PWHL draft, while Marlene will likely have to fight to get recruited to even play D3 hockey. Marlene hadn’t even registered until warm-ups that the team they were playing against was Dorcas’s, and she’d been filled with terror about it the entire game. When the inevitable moment finally came, the moment where she had to face off against Dorcas, she completely forgot how to play hockey at all. It also didn’t help that even underneath the helmet, that was probably the most stunning girl Marlene’s ever seen. Something about her eyes told Marlene she was prepared to kill if she had to, and it was equally as exhilarating as it was terrifying.

Thankfully, Dorcas hadn’t scored on the breakaway James is talking about–but the moment is definitely going to haunt Marlene for a while. She’d basically blown any sort of chance to impress Dorcas with it, and now for the rest of her life Dorcas will probably think back on her and laugh. God, she’s humiliated.

James scoffs at her. “Yeah, okay. You have no room to be talking.”

“Oh, I had one bad moment. You had a game full of them.”

James goes to argue again, Marlene can sense it about to happen–but then, he just nods. “Touché.”

It’s quiet for a moment, the both of them having met a stalemate. Marlene debates whether or not to keep pressing him about it, but decides against it once she remembers that he has to coach with Regulus Black. That alone is probably enough torture for a lifetime. She clears her throat as she works out what to say next. “Look,” she begins, “you had a shit game. It happens. Just… don’t do that in the semis tomorrow? We kinda need you.”

The last bit kills her to admit. But really, the Marauders wouldn’t be as good as they are without him. The loss of Sirius was already tough enough on them. If James ever plays like this again, it’s safe to say they’re all fucked.

When James’s eyes meet hers again, they’re completely indecipherable. “Yeah,” he says, his voice flat. “Yeah, okay. It won’t happen again.”

This is new. Usually Marlene is able to read James as easy as a book, his bluntness one of the best things about him. But this? She couldn’t say what is happening to him right now.

God, she thinks. James has to get it together. They’ll never win if he doesn’t.

❅ ❅ ❅

The second that Regulus made his choice, he regretted it.

It’s been hours now, and he’s still internally scolding himself for accepting any sort of help from James. He knew the moment that he did that it was a mistake, that he should’ve just sucked it up and tolerated the pain a little longer.

Because he knows James. He knows exactly what he’s like, and knows what’s going to happen now. Even though they hardly interacted before Sirius left, years upon years of sharing a rink with him, of hearing all about him and how great he is through his brother, has given him all he’s needed to know. So now he needs to prepare for next Tuesday, to brace himself mentally for what comes next.

James is going to overthink it far too much, and he will take it as a sign that he is cool with him now. That absolutely is not the case, and is never going to be the case if Regulus can help it. Still, James is going to sit next to him on the bench before every single session as they lace their skates up, and he’ll make some lighthearted joke about the entire situation. He’ll try to help him out even more than he has been during classes, and he’ll think that is what Regulus wants. And throughout it all, he will talk with him like they’ve been best friends for years.

But they haven’t been. Sirius has seen to that, and there’s no use in acting like they’re something they aren’t simply because he’s not here. Regulus doesn’t see the point in that. And he wishes James didn’t, either.

All of this would be so much easier if James was as awful of a person as Regulus is, if he reciprocated even a fraction of the animosity that Regulus has shown him. Regulus keeps trying to get James to do just that. He wants James to fight back, he wants to give James a reason to stay out of his way. But it’s incredibly draining to keep up when James is constantly doing just the opposite, so desperate to be liked that he tolerates all of it. And Regulus is tired of being the one to throw each and every punch. Eventually, he is going to cave. It’s been seven years coming.

And today, when James offered him that bandage roll–that stupid bandage roll–that is when he finally cracked. He said yes, he took it, because he was fed up with being the only one who cared enough to spar. It was only for one moment, for one dumb, vulnerable moment–but a moment was more than enough for James, who can find a way to make a moment into forever. It’s despicable. He wishes James did not care as much as he did.

Now, Regulus will have to live with that mistake, live with that split second of vulnerability for as long as they continue to coach together. He has no idea how he’s going to move past it; James won’t let him forget it if he tries.

“Regulus!” the voice of Lucius suddenly echoes throughout the entire rink, causing Regulus’s head to snap up. He doesn’t know how long he’s been staring at the one rut ahead of him in the ice for, but it’s admittedly a very interesting rut.

When Regulus glances over, he’s confused by the frantic look on Lucius’s face. “Yeah?” he replies, throwing both of his hands up as if to ask what’s going on.

In response, Lucius gestures wildly to the speakers overhead. “Your music’s up!”

Not even a second after Lucius has finished yelling, Regulus hears the strings of his short program music start up. “Oh, fuck!” Regulus whispers to himself. His starting spot is way too far out from where he currently is standing at center ice–he immediately begins to skate as fast as he can to the other end of the rink, practically sprinting atop the smooth surface. By the time he reaches his starting spot, he’s already hustling to catch up to the choreography he’s missed. His starting steps don’t fall on the intended lyrics, and not even 10 seconds in he finds himself totally out of breath. He still has over two and a half minutes to go.

Lucius will be on his ass about this afterwards, and rightfully so. Regulus has never been so careless before, never been so scatterbrained about anything to do with his skating. And to think that it’s just happened because of James?

He cannot let this happen again. Regionals are in less than a month, and every shot at his programs has to be better than his last. If he dares to slack off now, all of this will be for nothing, and he refuses to let that be the case.

His rare moment of defenselessness is a matter for another day. It does not matter here, should not matter here. No matter what’s just happened, no matter how he feels the moment he is off the ice, he cannot let it show. For now, it is just him, the ice, and his music, and that is what he should be focusing on.

No more distraction, he tells himself, setting up for his first jump–a triple-toe, triple-toe combination. When this moment happens in competition next month, he can’t afford to think about anything other than jumping high and checking out hard. He can’t afford to think about his flaws, can’t afford to think about his weaknesses.

And most importantly, he especially cannot afford to think about James Potter.

As he digs his left toe pick into the ice and launches himself high into the air, he swears that he is soaring for a moment. He rotates three times before landing, and as his feet touch down again his left leg swings around behind him. He takes a deep breath–here it is, the moment of truth.

Regulus digs his toe pick into the ice again, launching himself towards the sky as if he’d never said goodbye. Once he’s high enough, he gets around himself once, then twice, then three times…

And then he sticks the landing, his left leg swinging out as both of his arms present to the imaginary crowd ahead of him. He envisions the applause this will bring on competition day, envisions the way that everyone in the crowd will be cheering, and then tells himself that none of this will happen if he can’t forget about everything else for three minutes in time.

And that is exactly what he intends to do.