Who: Regulus and Juno
What: Regulus can be a right bigoted tit sometimes, and Juno is brilliant with the verbal lashings
When: This afternoon
Where: Juno’s flat
Rating/Warnings: High for swearing and verbal bashing and a definite D for dumbassery on Regulus’ part
Status: complete


It had started with a text, Juno, can I come over?, when it really should have never started in the first place, not when Regulus was this upset about something wholly unrelated to Juno. He was exhausted, never could sleep that much even before the exploding flat building top. His argument with Merlin that had started about how to treat Kreacher and then turned into some discussion on wizard supremacy and how that was wrong didn’t do much to Regulus’ mood. And then there was that lovely conversation he’d had with his tit of a brother this morning over Sirius’ tender sensibilities. No, Regulus needed to find some way to cool down, and he’d thought seeking out Juno was the best option, the other being getting high. The best option would have been to see a therapist. Regulus didn’t always chose the right.

They were crashed on the sofa, mindlessly watching something, Regulus wasn’t sure what. All he knew was he was irritated and it showed. “I don’t like this, can we watch something else?” His words were short and clipped, and he really didn’t intend for Juno to think they were directed at her, but he wasn’t in the best position to really assess how someone would take his words.

Juno looked up from her homework, frowning at his tone, but she picked up the remote from where it was balanced on the arm of the couch on her side and set it on the cushion between them. “Knock yourself out.”

She then returned to puzzling over math problems, feeling irritated with herself for the bad habit that she had developed early on--before pregnancy or Colligo had ever entered her purview--of copying Bleeker’s algebra. No Bleeker, no cheating. Sure, she could have asked Sam for help, but he was all morose and depressing, and judging by Regulus’ staccato sentences, he wasn’t in the mood for mucking around in Muggle business either. She sighed. She’d just have to work it out on her own.

Regulus took the remote from Juno, not roughly, but not really with a manner that befitted the proud heritage of one of the wizarding world’s finest bred families. He was sulking, or pouting or a combination of both, and he much rather didn’t care that he was.

He tried a few stations, flipping through at a rate that really didn’t give anyone a chance to evaluate what was on the station, but he really didn’t want to solve his problems, just stew in them. So the high speed channel surfing continued until he was back around to the station he started at with no better option having presented itself.

“Salazar, nothing’s on,” he grumbled, looking at the remote with a scrutinizing eye that missed everything. He found the device in his hand displeasing for some reason and gave it a toss onto the coffee table, definitely not forceful enough to break it, but not something as gentle as just placing it on the sofa cushion. He then slumped back against the back of the sofa, elbow propped on the arm and dramatically dropped his chin into his hand. “Stupid muggle thing, what good is it for?” He said under his breath, more just speaking out loud than as a way to start a conversation, but certainly loud enough to be heard.

“Nothing is ever on,” she muttered, scratching out her problems with the eraser end of her pencil and starting to rework them. It would be so easy with a calculator, but then, what would she learn? She looked up at his next comment, giving him an exasperated look. “Just shut the stupid muggle thing off then, if it bothers you that much.”

Regulus swiveled his head to look at Juno while still keeping his chin in his hand. His brow furrowed and he tried to decide what her tone meant, his need to over analyze everything in overdrive at the moment. Shortly he decided Juno wasn’t really trying to mock him really, though there was a bit of that. “Okay.” He leaned forward and grabbed the remote to turn off the television.

And then he was bored. Instantly. Regrettably. Inescapably bored.

He flopped back and crossed his arms. “Now what?” Looking at Juno as if she would be the wealth of entertainment he needed, desperately, to get him through the next agonizing minutes, despite her need to finish her homework. Stupid muggle homework in Regulus’ current, completely biased opinion.

Bored and frustrated herself, Juno snapped her textbook shut and shoved it off of her lap onto the coffee table, with some effort. “I don’t know,” she said, “What do you want to do?” He obviously wasn’t in the mood to make out, not that she would have touched him right now anyway. She had a feeling anything she suggested would be beneath his interest.

“You want to talk about what’s got you in such a huff?”

Juno was being so nice, so nonplussed, so relaxed and accommodating, and still completely chaotic as her ever more prominent baby bump always reminded Regulus. All the things that drew his attention to her, not that he was attracted to pregnant females, really, just with Juno it was so much a part of her character he couldn’t miss it. He sigh, trying to let some of his irritation go, it was mildly successful.

He chewed on his lower lip for a moment, giving her some sidelong glances before speaking, “I pissed off Merlin the other night.” The sulk was clear in his voice. “It was about Kreacher, he didn’t want Kreacher to be rude to him, so...” he shrugged, “I said I would order Kreacher to be nice, and he didn’t like that and...” he knew he couldn’t bring up the whole argument, that bit about thinking wizards being better and all, “it got out of hand.”

“And now,” he was moving onto the bit about his brother, which, only by just touching on it, enraged him more, “and now? Now? Sirius ran into him at the market and Kreacher’s never liked Sirius, but Sirius is cruel to him so I can’t blame Kreacher. But Kreacher called Sirius a blood traitor and a disappointment, and now Sirius is all pissed at me and won’t leave me alone.” He was getting worked over this part because his brother always got him worked up. “Which only proves my point to Merlin, that I should just order Kreacher to hold his tongue because otherwise he’s rude at all the wrong moments!”

Juno listened quietly as Regulus explained, but the more he went on, the more frustrated she got. If she’d been reading the story in a paperback book, say, under the name of Harry Potter and the Sibling Rivalry, she would have probably thrown it across the room.

“Sirius, Sirius, Sirius. It always comes back to the same old thing,” she remarked, “The two of you fight like...well, like brothers, I guess. I don’t think either one of you really knows how it all started anymore, but you’ve both got your heads too far up your asses to just get over it.”

“Are you fucking with me?” Regulus sat forward and his hackles - he hated that term ever since learning his brother could actually turn into a dog - rose the moment Juno started talking. That was a laugh, considering how he’d been perfectly content ignoring Sirius, never mentioning Sirius again. In fact the last three days had been gloriously absent his brother’s incessant wheedling into his life, and he’d never felt better, while in Colligo that is.

“Here, you want to see what he’s like to me, what an ass he is?” He dug in his pocket for the PDA and cued up his last text message conversation with his brother, confident that it would exonerate him. “Salazar, he’s so nice to the lot of you you all think the sun shines out of his arse.” He pressed the PDA into Juno’s hand, “There, read, see what he’s really like.”

Juno opened her mouth to argue, but shut it as he shoved his PDA at her. She glanced through the heated exchange of messages, then tossed the thing back onto the couch between them.

“So?” she said, crossing her arms atop her bump and drilling Regulus with a stare that said she wasn’t taking any flack from him or his brother. “I see a lot of mutual douchebaggery and mud-slinging from both sides. My point stands. You’re both too stubborn to get the fuck over yourselves and actually get to the point.”

“Fucking unbelievable.” Regulus set his jaw and stared back at Juno. This was his most prominent drawback with Juno, with anyone in this fucking city. They were all charmed by his brother to the point they couldn’t see how abusive Sirius was to him. He tried to be nice to his brother, help him with he was ill, stay away when the bloody bastard told him that he had to stay the fuck gone. There wasn’t a version of Regulus Sirius accepted no matter how perfect a past and manner he had. What was Regulus to do?

“How am I to deal with him, Juno? Really? Because I must be too simple-minded to figure out how to get him to treat me like a decent human being. Gods!” Regulus snatched up the PDA, “In this he was talking about abusing a creature who literally cannot fight back unless given permission to do so. And he thinks me on the same level.”

Juno tried to swallow the angry retorts that seemed to rise in her throat at Regulus’ accusations. She knew he thought that everyone was blinded by his brother’s so-called charm, he’d said as much the last time they had argued, but that wasn’t the case. She just didn't think either one of them was very charming when they got like this.

“I get that the verbal abuse is just as emotionally damaging as if he were smacking the creature around,” she said, “I get that Kreacher is basically programmed to be subservient and that everybody fucking takes advantage of that. Hell, the Kreacher barely even has a proper name!” The pushed herself up from the couch, waving a hand at Regulus and his PDA--and by extension, at his boob of a brother. “What I don’t get is why you and Sirius keep perpetuating the stupidity. So Kreacher poked at an old wound, and he blames you for it, poking at your old wounds, but nobody forced you to answer him. You could just shut the damn thing off and keep ignoring him! But no. I think you actually like the attention!”

“This isn’t only verbal abuse,” Regulus hissed back and stood up. No one had seen what he’d seen in his brother that Sunday morning. That look on his brother’s face and that way he brother held his wand, Regulus knew precisely what his brother wanted to do, would have done had Morgana not come in when she had. No one had seen it and because there was nothing to show for it no one believed Regulus.

“If I don’t respond then he tracks me down, literally tracks me down, and confronts me in person. Why do you think I went to such lengths to magically hide my flat,” he pointed off, not really in the direction of the other building, but the gesture was clear enough, “to set up an entrance through Merlin’s flat so that I never have to leave by my front door, because if I did my dog of a brother would be able to locate me.”

“He was supposed to leave me alone. I stay out of his life, he stays out of mine. These last three days? Why do you think I was so damn happy? That has been the longest he’s left me alone since I’ve arrived here. And it felt great!”

“Fine!” Juno said, throwing up her hands, “He’s an ass! He can be an ass. What do you want me to do? Yell at him for you? Denounce him in public for being a hypocrite and bewitching the entire city while he secretly plots your demise? What?”

The right thing to do at this point would be to take a step back, breathe deeply for a moment, maybe swallow a few time, hell even leave the room for a moment to collect ones thoughts and then possibly come back with an ‘when you ask me what’s wrong, and I tell you how my brother’s being an ass, can you just nod, and hold my hand... and maybe tell me I’m awesome?’. All these things would a good start to settling things in a calm manner.

Incidentally, all these things could be taught to someone by a therapist. But it was a shame Regulus didn’t have one, nor was he taught effective communication skill by any supportive adult figure in his life... hell, he’d not ever really had a supportive adult figure in his life.

Because his lack of skills, his hot emotions, and a bigotry that was drilled into him all his life, he chose to say something he would instantly regret.

“Oh Salazar, what do you know you’re just a stupid muggle.” Instant regret.

Juno’s mouth dropped open at that, momentarily stunned at Regulus’ jack-assery, to which he still seemed blissfully oblivious. Or maybe he was doing it on purpose now. Speechless though she was, she picked up the nearest object and threw it at him, just like Sirius was afraid she would do to him.

Luckily for Regulus, it was only a couch pillow, but Juno swung it as hard as she could at the back of his head as she found her voice. “What do I know?” she asked, “What do I know? I know you and your stuck up brother are cut from the same Black cloth, is what I know! And I bet it just burns to know how much alike you really are. Well cry my a river, build me a bridge, and get the fuck over it, wizard.”

Fuck, fuck fuck fuck FUCK! Salazar that’s not what he’d meant to say at all, or maybe it was, people said what was in their head so they meant it right? In a moment of deep reflection many ours after this moment Regulus would also have a moment of honesty with himself and he would realize that he had been thinking it, though he hadn’t actually wanted to mean it, but that wouldn’t mean a god damned thing.

This was not that moment. This moment was about dodging that pillow, because as much as it was a pillow for some reason Juno had an arm like a professional Beater and his head was the bludger. It hurt. Of course, he deserved it more than any bludger in the history of Quidditch had ever deserve to be hit - and it was their job to be hit.

And because of that he didn’t try to take the pillow away from Juno, just held up his arms each time that thing swung at him.

“Juno, I didn’t mean- Ouch!” His voice was muffled by the pillow.

“Didn’t mean what?” She retorted, punctuating the question with another bludgeoning. “Didn’t mean stupid? Or didn’t mean muggle? Huh? Now look who’s deeply conditioned by his mother’s portrait? Are you just going to stand there and take it?” ” Another smack, followed by a second to the arm of the couch, and then she threw the pillow on the floor in disgust. “Get out. You don’t get to call me names in my own house.”

She gave his shoulder a shove, as if to prod him from the couch and out the door. “You don’t apologize any better than Sirius either.”

Well the plan had been to stand there and take it, Regulus was a champion Stander And Taker, just ask his mother. What else could he do in the face of that mistake? But the plan changed, Juno told him his only option. He knew he should just apologize, correctly, without any caveats or dumb excuses, but the words didn’t come, even he was speechless over his own stupidity.

He had to get out of there, his mind erroneously thinking he should have gone with his first impulse, his fall back coping mechanism and that he needed to rectify that now, at least it was something he could rectify.

He didn’t push Juno a way when she shoved him, he simply nodded and then turned and left.