Chapter Text
Regulus is alone in his apartment, the night is dark behind the large windows of his living room.
This winter evening is cold but the snow will soon give way to spring.
He is bored, the episodes of a trendy series show on his TV but he doesn’t really watch. He decides to order food, since he has no desire to cook and he finished the tupperware that Pandora gave him at lunch.
He takes out his phone and sees an Instagram notification, he clicks on it: a photo of Barty lying in the snow.
He takes the opportunity to take a look at the other stories of his friends, Pandora is in the middle of the umpteenth redecoration of her room, she changes it more or less once a month, Evan got his phone stolen by Barty, at least this is what Regulus deduces from the numerous photos of the latter grimacing posted as Evan's stories of the day.
"So they ended up going for a walk in the snow..."
He remembers refusing their invitation to join them, arguing that he had something else to do.
The "something" in question was actually "hanging out on his couch all day".
If they found out, they’d knock on his door until he opened it and then they would drag him out. If the green-eyed boy had not cooperated, they'd probably have broken down the door (Barty’s job, as the most muscular once since he began working out as his new year's resolution) and tied him up (Evan’s job because he does the most impossible knots to untie, Regulus had already experienced it in some circomstances complicated to explain), before dragging him by his feet out of his home.
So he decides to post a photo taken a week earlier, which he had saved in an album specially designed for this purpose, to let them believe that he had been very busy all day helping his cousin Andromeda to make her boxes.
Bless her for not posting anything on the day the photo was taken, nor on this present day. Thus the trickery is undetectable.
He vaguely thinks he could use his intelligence for something other than lying to his loved ones. But too bad, he has no intention of going out, he’s just not in the mood.
His gaze sweeps the screen and his attention is drawn to the little magnifying glass in the upper right, he can almost hear it say in a tempting voice: "Click, you want to know what he’s doing, don’t you?
Come on, nobody’s gonna know.
You just take a look, nothing serious.
Just type in his account name.
You remember it, of course.”
He hesitates for another three seconds before looking for deer.james.
The page appears, he has a new profile photo, not surprising since it was Regulus himself who took the ancient one. He still hoped that he didn’t, after all it was only the two of them that day, nobody knew who was behind the goal. He’s almost going back to his feed. Almost.
He looks in the blank and then clicks on the most recent post, it’s a carousel so he swipes to the right to see the following photos.
Suddenly, he freezes, a detail on the last photo catches his attention, as he looked at the way the boy with the battle hair seemed happy, he saw a suspicious hand on his ex’s shoulder.
He goes back to the previous photos and finally comes across a photo of James, Sirius and a little redhead, he recognizes the hand: it’s Lily’s.
The red-haired young woman is part of their group of friends, they were in the same class throughout their high school years and even knew each other before.
He knows that all the group members are very close and quite tactile. It can totally be a friendly gesture between two people who have known each other for a long time.
To get to the bottom of it, he goes a little further back. Lily appears from time to time, always with one or more other people and nothing suggests that she could be more than a friend. Nothing to worry about.
Regulus almost bangs his head against the table to get his head in order, he has no right to worry, he is no longer James' boyfriend. The latter owes him nothing.
A small voice whispers even though only one month after their break-up, getting back in a relationship with someone else isn't so elegant.
While another says that the young woman appears more regularly since they are no longer together, three times in four weeks against only more or less once a month when they dated. Even then, maybe it’s just because James has been spending more time with his friends since they broke up, which seems logical.
In any case, he looks fine, the young Black does not wish him any harm, no, of course not, he would never want him to be unhappy. And yet... he’s fucking smiling!
While Regulus himself isn't really over it. Which is an euphemism, by the way.
James, him, is cheerfully living his life, shouldn’t he be sad? (As Regulus is)
The intercom rings, the delivery guy probably. He closes the app, throws the phone on the coffee table before going to open it.
He doesn’t bother smiling at the delivery guy. He’s polite, that’s good enough?
He finds himself alone again, a one-on-one dinner with his dish awaits him. What an exciting prospect!
He sighs just at the idea.
He could be out clubbing, he hasn’t done it in a while, he hasn’t been in the mood for a month. In addition, James generally preferred evenings with friends or two.
Here he is again haunting his thoughts.
"It would be really great if you stopped popping into my head like that. It’s not good for me.
You know what, at least it doesn’t let me much time to miss you.
…
Okay, that was a huge lie.
Am I really talking out loud to myself?” after finally noticing, he shut up and went back to his sad meal.