@jegulus-microfic | april 25th | headlights | 1,222 words | cw: mentions of a car accident, hospitals, mentions of smoking (nothing graphic)
Regulus tries so hard to think that Sirius is an idiot. That bloody thing'll kill you, he remembers saying. Sirius had only laughed. No one's laughing now.
It was just a Friday night. Regulus got home from work late and was looking forward to doing nothing until Monday morning. Was looking forward to being alone, sitting around with popcorn and staring at the telly until he fell asleep. Now, the idea of a simple night in feels light years away.
He never gets what he wants.
Sitting on a stiff white chair outside Sirius's room at St. Mungo's, Regulus's leg bounces up and down at a frantic pace, mind racing. Didn't he see the headlights? Didn't he try and stop? It wasn't his fault, they said. Regulus's older brother is in a hospital bed and he wants to strangle the idiot who put him there.
Remus is sitting across from him, eyes red-rimmed and body curled in around himself. He arrived before Regulus. Pettigrew was pacing until Remus yelled at him and he mumbled something about getting a coffee.
It feels like hours before Potter arrives. Regulus and Remus are only taking up two of maybe eight seats crowded into the hallway, but James sits right next to him. He's crying, too busy looking at his phone to pay Regulus any mind beside him.
"Why are you here?" Regulus grumbles. He sounds like shit. The corridor is far too bright for someone who wants to crawl into a hole and never come out. James glances up at him, looking confused and distressed and tired. God, Regulus is so fucking tired.
"My best friend is... he's...." James gestures helplessly to the room behind them. They're not whispering, but their voices are hoarse. Remus isn't paying attention anyway - he's been staring into space for hours now. "He's in there."
"No," Regulus says, shaking his head in frustration. He hates when people don't understand him. "Why are you... here. There's so many seats."
James stares at him for a moment. He still holds his phone in his lap - if Regulus looks closely, he can see the name Lily written across the top of the screen with a pink flower beside it. James opens his mouth to speak, but Regulus interrupts him, pointing to the phone.
"That's a hibiscus flower, you know."
"What?" James doesn't sound like he's actually processing anything Regulus is saying. Regulus presses his finger next to Lily's contact name. He remembers her from school. He never liked her much.
"The flower here," he says. "It's not a lily. It's a hibiscus."
James sniffles, shrugging helplessly. "There's no lily emoji," he says. "This one's good enough."
Regulus doesn't say that he thinks that's sort of stupid. He's too tired to, and he knows James doesn't really care. Who does?
"I don't want to be lonely," James tells him. Regulus stares at his ear.
"What?"
"You asked," James says, shrugging again. He shrugs a lot. "Why I sat next to you."
Regulus looks up, glances over to Remus. He's managed to gather all of his limbs up onto the small hospital chair and is staring into space, eyes glazed over, arms wrapped around his knees. "Why didn't you sit next to him?"
James's answer comes so quiet that he has to lean closer to hear. "I'd still be alone."
Regulus stares at him. "Oh." He wonders where Pettigrew's gotten off to. Wonders if Lily will come to take James home, will gather Remus into the car too. Wonders who will take him home now that the motorcycle he hates so much is nothing more than a pile of scraps, its owner not much more.
"D'you wanna see a picture of my cat?" James asks. Regulus looks back at him. James is tilting his phone towards Regulus, even though he never answered, and Regulus finds himself leaning closer again to look. His cheek brushes James's shoulder, and he expects James to tense up - they barely know each other. James is probably humoring him, but his best friend's weird little brother leaning his head on his shoulder is probably the last straw. James is just being nice because he's sad. Last Regulus heard, he has a pretty girl and a son waiting for him at home.
But James leans into the touch. Regulus is too tired to pull away. (Part of him doesn't want to pull away. He tells this part to be quiet.)
"Her name's Leo," James says, holding up his phone to reveal a small gray tabby. The smile is evident in his voice, which is soft and close to Regulus's ear. It sounds like a lullaby. "Harry named her."
"Leo," Regulus says softly. James's curls are tickling his cheek. It's not an unpleasant feeling - it reminds him of walking barefoot over grass on a sunny day.
"Like the constellation," James explains. "It's Haz's favorite. 'Course, he is a Leo, so he's a bit biased there...."
Regulus glances down and notices his fingers loosely intertwined with James's. He doesn't remember doing that.
"Leo's the constellation -" he begins.
"Your star," James replies. He sighs softly, content but a little shaky. "Yeah."
They're both silent for a while. It's weirdly comfortable, even in the buzzing hospital, even with Remus sitting numb across from them and Sirius laying unconscious behind them and Peter knocking around, probably smoking the pack of cigarettes Regulus saw him slip out of Remus's pocket before he disappeared.
"Is Lily going to pick you up?" Regulus asks.
"She has Harry tonight," James says instead of answering. It only leaves Regulus with more questions.
"I thought..." Regulus begins, but he doesn't know what he thinks, not really. James seems to, though.
"We broke up," he says simply. He shrugs a little, only one shoulder, trying not to jostle Regulus's head. "Few years ago."
Regulus is quiet for a while. He remembers school, seeing James's golden-brown arm wrapped around Lily's pale shoulders. He remembers a pang of pain at the sight, feels it now, a dull ache located deep within his chest. "I'm sorry to hear that," he says, but he doesn't sound sincere.
"Don't be," James says. He's turned his head, and his lips brush just barely against Regulus's forehead. He should pull away, but instead, he just closes his eyes. "She's my best friend."
Regulus squeezes James's hand. "I'm glad you're here," he whispers.
James squeezes back. "I'm glad you're here, too," he replies.
He sets his phone down on his lap, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a jumbled ball of headphones. He tries for a minute or so to untangle them one-handed before finally sighing and pulling his fingers out from between Regulus's, pulling the earbuds into his phone. He hands one to Regulus.
"Put it in," he says, watching Regulus do nothing.
"Why?" Regulus asks.
"It's too... something in here."
Regulus gives him a small smile as he puts the earbud in. It fits weird, but not uncomfortable weird like he remembers. Just different. As he settles his head back onto James's shoulder, a soft melody begins to play into his ear. James sets the phone down on his knee before taking Regulus's hand again, resting his head against Regulus's curls. Regulus takes a deep breath, closing his eyes.
Maybe this night won't be as long as he thought.
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I swear to god the more I think about how Sumi's toxic/negative thoughts and behavior along with the filter's red flags were not only fully ignored but even outright ENABLED and sometimes mocked by the people around her the more horrified I feel guys. Again, fuck Shujin Academy. Not only that but her whole experience at Shujin just felt so... Isolating. It doesn't excuse it and she needed to grow out of it but it's definitely little to no wonder she primarily clung onto and became dependent on Maruki and Joker for a while.
Like her peers, Shujin faculty, hell even well intentioned ones like Maruki and even her father just kept enabling and putting on temporary bandaids thinking that what's currently happening to her and their ideas to help her were gonna benefit her in the long run when they just... Unwittingly make it worse. It's primarily when Joker steps in to tell her to STOP with the delusions and unhealthy behavior that she finally starts to show actual improvement and snap out of it. Same with her coach who had been trying to tell her to stop from the beginning.
Like don't get me wrong, Maruki and her father aren't horrible and DO care about her compared to Shujin but they kinda still unwittingly contributed to her problems by allowing her to live a lie as Kasumi. But on the other end of the spectrum, there's the added nuance that she did feel like the filter did help her (she was suicidal for Pete's sake) but also felt that she didn't need it anymore because it's ultimately not healthy and just a bandaid solution.
That and she acknowledged and admitted her own faults in the situation saying that she wasn't any better. Actually the more I think about it, the more I realize that one of the mental hangups she's dealing with is being so caught up in her own problems that she doesn't see the bigger picture of things (Kasumi not being this perfect person, Maruki's suffering despite his kindness and smiles, etc.). She even mentions it in a safe room dialogue and can even be shown in the flashback of Kasumi's death. It just kinda adds more to her selfishness even when her feelings are understandable and Kasumi's behavior and methods of helping can definitely come off as condescending to anyone. It just reached MASSIVELY unhealthy levels along with people around her enabling the toxic behaviors (Maruki included).
I guess a tl;dr is that she IS an interesting critique on Japan's fucked up mental health system and stigmas along with Maruki and I feel like people should talk about this more because it's so interesting to dissect.
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OH ACTUALLY i have strong feelings about "should we kill these people?" and what it meant for geto
when they first see each other, geto is like "i survived, shoko fixed me up. but that doesn't matter." and he looks at the dead riko
but THEN. THEN. gojo says something to the effect of "this isn't your fault/i was the one who messed up".
and it's like... uh. gojo. no. of course this is geto's fault? he also messed up? BOTH of them were supposed to protect riko. it's not like geto wasn't there, he just let his guard down (like gojo did when toji first stabbed him... literally minutes ago).
when gojo says this he's thinking about his power-up and how he's finally grasped reverse curse technique and he's basically high on power.
but to geto, he thought his best friend was MURDERED and riko got SHOT IN FRONT OF HIM and then he was left half-dead and spared, on purpose, when gojo and riko were both killed.
and now gojo is acting like it was all on him. like geto isn't even worth holding responsible for this, like it wouldn't make a difference if geto was stronger; gojo was the one who should have been stronger.
then gojo asks if they should just kill these people. geto must have realized just how vastly different the two of them had become. their friendship never recovered from that moment.
Gojo really fucked up when it came to Getou, and I think that’s part of the reason why it haunts him so much, why he’s never been able to move past it, or even leave the highschool.
I think you’re right about him treating Getou as like…. less important? Less relevant? For Getou this was THEE moment of his life, the culmination of SOMETHING he hasn’t quite figured out yet coming fresh off it. It throws him into severe depression, and Gojo just kind of — leaves him behind. Gojo is affected by the Riko situation, but overall it was a net positive for him. He got his unmatched power. He won. And he goes on acting like it.
But Getou lost everything that day.
Also Gojo being the strongest and yet still considering killing those people; what was Getou (as less than the strongest) supposed to do? If even God’s Disciple can’t withstand the pressure of the sorcerer world, how was he supposed to?
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Real quick PSA for the followers, just to make sure my positions are clear on some issues and to make sure I am not causing any unintentional harm (that devolved into a minor hiatus):
-If I'm intending to talk about something specific, I'll mention it, I promise.
-I do be forgetting that you all recognize me on both my A03
and my tumblr. It is surprising to me every time. I tend to be vERY flippant on here, especially in my tags. I think we have reached a point where I should be more careful lol. I am not used to having an actual effect, so if I have an effect you don't appreciate, or I say something hurtful, please please bring it up to me! Dms, anon, replies; idc, I'm always down for a conversation.
-I am not in the business of apologies I do not mean, and I certainly do not back down from my opinions, I think that's been fairly clear. So, if I apologize it's because I mean it, and that won't change.
-I make a lot of posts that are critical of fandom culture in a lot of different fandoms, and culture around specific characters as well. I want it to be very clear that unless I am directly interacting with another user, then the criticism should never surround anyone specific. I never want to direct hate ever, unless I'm tagging.
-If there are questions about the appropriateness of my headcanon posts in response to asks, that can be changed. I would really hate to be making my very small community uncomfortable. I had thought I was fairly clear on the blogs boundaries and what I think is appropriate, but perhaps I haven't been careful enough. Please feel free to address issues with me, or to block me. That is always an option of course.
Uh, that being said, I might take a couple days. I have used this blog for fun and friends since 2015, it's not my first time fucking up nor will it be the last. But, it's upsetting to me that my blog might be harmful to some (who I hadn't intended it to be harmful to, it's always been an active warzone for irredeemable character excusers lol, since 2015). The queue will go on as usual but no new posts for a bit while I figure out if things need to change. I'll respond to DMs tho, probably, bc I'm obsessed with my mutuals.
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