2
The next thing that happened was in maths. The rest of his week had been fairly normal, now it was Friday period 3, and he really couldn't be bothered to deal with anything else happening. He was trying to work out what his teacher was explaining,it was probably something he already knew. then, as she turned around to write something, everything got way louder,especially the sound of his partners pulse. just when he thought this situation couldn't get worse, he realized that he could feel something sharp grazing the inside of his mouth. His eyes began acting of their own accord. Moving like some kind of metal attracted to a magnet to that vein carrying all that blood, and Regulus panicked.
“miss!” he said, his hand shooting up while the other covered his mouth and he clamped his eyes shut “please can i go to the toilet!?” he asked. she waved him off and he walked away with his head down and his hand over his mouth. he undoubtedly got some funny stares, but that wasn't really very important to him at the time.When he went to look in the mirror he was surprised to see his eyes looking darker and his fangs jutting out.
what confused Regulus, and left him with a bad taste in his mouth, was the fact that he almost… liked himself like this. he looked scary,yes.but he also thought he looked good. He felt like he looked pretty in a boy way,which wasn't something he'd ever felt about himself before.
Then the door was opening, and Regulus had to practically dive into a stall and lock it. Another shot of panic burst through him. He had no clue how to make his fangs go away,which he really needed to do in order no avoid someone freaking out and exposing or killing him.To make things worse, as he sat with his knees to his chest on the toilet lid he realized that he hadn’t been breathing for a while.He didn’t think he needed to. Thankfully,the guy finished with whatever he was doing fairly quickly and Regulus was able to climb down and leave the stall, and stare at himself in the mirror again. a pang of something that was almost disappointment bloomed in his chest.he was back to normal. he decided to unpack those feelings later and get back to maths for now. Evan and Barty would probably try to come and find him if he stayed any longer. He didn't want to have to explain anything, or think of an excuse.
‘you alright reg?’ Barty mouthed as he made his way back to his seat. He gave a small nod and a smile and settled down.
Regulus did not end up focusing on maths.
He came to the conclusion that if he was already finding himself with no air in his lungs and fangs in his mouth,then that meant that soon he would be a vampire, a proper blood sucking vampire. Regulus didn’t know why, but that made his heart soar. Once again, he was going to have to unpack that later.
For the rest of the day, he thought about it, he put a finger to his pulse to feel it beating slower, he stopped trying to breathe for long periods of time and he allowed himself to give in to the parts of him that were dying to even smell a drop of blood.
He found that he felt best in himself when he was giving in to his vampire side.
He wound up being excited to taste blood, when someone fell over or grazed them self he was one of the first people there. He tried to do the fang thingy on command,it came naturally to him really. but then he talked to Barty and Evan and found himself feeling a little bit guilty,he hadn’t been around them as much or been available (emotionally or physically) for them. He did try and apologize, but in the end it didn’t matter.
He stumbled across the reason why it didn’t matter like this:
He was on his way to his usual spot to skive french (he was already fluent, he was literally from there, so the school’s decision to put him in the class made no sense) when he stumbled across them snogging behind the PE department, which was where Regulus normally went to skive.
he felt a bit icky watching. so he broke the moment like a glass “sorry to interrupt”
the two boys broke apart and turned to look at him “hey reg!” said Barty. he really was odd at times. "you alright?"
“yeah, i have french right now and i was planning on not showing up, and this is where i normally go for that. so stop trying to eat each other please and thank you” Evan let go of Barty’s shirt and sat down next to Regulus. “i don’t know why either of us are in that class. it’s literally in the school system that we’re french. its not exactly a secret. in what world is Rosier and English name?” he was honestly a little bit surprised at how nonchalantly they were both acting about this situation.
“my thoughts exactly” he responded
Barty had nothing to add. he spoke 3 words of french, and those were “oui, bonjour,baguette” which he often piped up with when he and Evan were speaking in french. it definitely didn't annoy either of them. he made fun of the french language, but it did give them a reason to make fun of Italians at him. neither of them could get annoyed at the others mocking their ethnicity because they did it too.
“anyway” the boy in question piped up “anyone fancy a smoke?”
Regulus was definitely not a smoker like barty was,but he did occasionally partake. this was one of those occasions.
The trio stood around for a few minutes,smoking in silence. Then Regulus decided to start talking “so” he said, turning his head to look at his two friends. “so” Evan replied. Regulus smirked “how did that happen” both of the boys looked to be blushing and gave each other a look. “it only started a few days ago, you were busy being weird and Evan came over to mine and we accidentally kissed,a lot” barty replied. Regulus made a little hum of acknowledgment
“just try to keep it to a minimum when i’m present-“ his voice trailed off, barty and Evan were both staring in the opposite direction to him, and when he turned around he was hit with something so strong he almost fell over. Some guy was stood there, he was definitely at least a year older than Regulus, with some very messy dark hair and glasses. Regulus was awestruck, and he was fighting everything in him to avoid getting all fangy. He smelled amazing too, which was almost definitely one of the weirdest thoughts he had possibly ever had.
“sorry, i didn’t know you were here, i can find somewhere else” he said, and that made Regulus crumble even more.'this guys voice' he thought. To be honest, even if Regulus still needed to breathe, he wouldn’t have been able to.
“yes. go away,please” he had panicked, and the words stumbled out of his mouth before he could stop them. The guy looked even more awkward and ran a hand through his hair “okay, sorry mate” and he turned tail and walked off.
“what was that” stated barty
“that guy was so making heart eyes at you,reg. why the heck would you say that?” Evan asked. in all honesty, he didn't have an answer to that.
This was the first time that Regulus had seen someone and really wanted to go fangs out killer on them,he really didn’t think he could deal with the emotional impact of that, so he stayed quiet and bit the inside of his mouth to distract himself.
“i dunno” he said. so many thoughts covered up with two simple words. “i believe you were about to comment on how stupid high school relationships are”
“uh-huh” he said, not really paying attention. he was too busy watching the boy disappear into the main building.
“okay, you’re being even weirder than usual now” Evan remarked. and maybe he was but this certainly wasn’t the weirdest thing that had happened to him recently, so he didn’t think much of it. his hand moved to check his pulse on his wrist, both as a way to ground him, and because it had become habit. he smiled a little when he noticed it beating slower than ever.
“bell’s about to go, i reckon we should get going”
Regulus snapped himself out of it and nodded. he had managed to keep himself looking relatively normal for the whole ordeal, making himself very relieved. he found himself thinking about the guy all the way through his final lesson. he thought about his looks, what it would be like to kiss him, and about a million ways that he could kill him.
Regulus almost followed him when he saw him walking down the road with a blonde boy. he could’ve done it. if he really wanted to he could follow him, wait for him and the boy to separate, then before he got home drag him somewhere dark and tear into him.
However, no matter how much Regulus wanted to fantasize, he could never indulge in that. This guy had a pretty face and a friend. In the end it was only because he found the guy fit that he didn’t kill him right away.
Regulus managed to make it home okay, he even got a pizza delivered, which he was almost never allowed to do. this probably meant that his parents knew something was up, but he really just wanted to enjoy himself and just watch a film like a normal teenager, so he ignored that thought. more than anything, he really wanted to not think about his brother, or the guy, or Evan & Barty, or becoming a vampire. He wanted to eat his pizza and rest. so that was exactly what he did.