You always knew Regulus too well.

Knew how he hated waking up early, how he liked his tea with a single sugar cube, how his fingers twitched when he was holding in a thought he shouldn’t say. But you also knew other things. He liked control. He liked quiet obedience wrapped in chaos. And unfortunately for you, he knew you liked the opposite. To press buttons. To disobey. To test just how much he’d let you get away with.

You’d laughed about it once. That time in the library. He had leaned close, eyes low and bored, muttering dryly under his breath as you whispered something about his ‘very telling’ reading choices.

“Control, huh?” “You want someone to be good for you so badly, Reg. Almost makes me want to misbehave on purpose.”

He had turned to you slowly. Eyes dark. Dangerous. Unamused. “Careful,” he said, almost too soft. “You’re exactly the kind of brat that needs someone to ruin her properly.”

You had blinked. Your pulse had jumped. And he had smirked, just slightly.

You called it a joke. But neither of you laughed.

And now — now it wasn’t just words.

Now it was how he brushed his hand over the back of your neck in the hallway, low enough to seem protective but firm enough to make your stomach flip. Now it was how you whispered “yes, sir” under your breath in class when he asked you to pass him a quill, and watched the way his jaw flexed. Now it was how he leaned down, breath grazing your ear, to say things like: “You’re being difficult today. That’s unlike you. Or are you just trying to get my attention?” — and the worst part? You were.

Tonight in the common room, you’d gone too far. Maybe.

Feet in his lap, your skirt a little shorter than regulation — not a coincidence. You knew his eyes would catch the curve of your thigh. You smirked when he looked. He didn’t smirk back.

Instead, he set his book down slowly. His hand remained on your ankle.

“You like pushing me, don’t you?”

You feigned innocence. “I don’t know what you mean.”

His hand slid up just slightly. Not inappropriate. Not in public. But enough. “You know exactly what I mean. And you’re not being a good girl.”

That phrase was a weapon now. It made your cheeks burn, your legs cross.

And he knew it.

Just like you knew what he liked. Like when you leaned in close during Potions and whispered “You’d like it, wouldn’t you? Watching someone fall apart under your hands. Guiding them through it. Making them beg.” His quill had snapped in half.

It was like that now. Endless games. No rules. No name for it.

You weren’t dating. You weren’t kissing. But somehow it was more than either.

And it was starting to show. In how you looked at each other. In how his voice changed when he spoke to you. In how he started appearing where you were, like a magnetic pull he couldn’t quite resist.

Still. You were friends. Right? That was the foundation. That was the deal.

But it was harder to remember that now — especially when he was looking at you like this.

Eyes dark, focused. His thumb slowly circling your ankle.

You were sitting beside him on the couch in the Slytherin common room, knees brushing as always, his hand lazily playing with a loose thread on your sleeve.

“Don’t pretend to be so focused,” he murmurs without looking up. “You’ve been on the same page for the past ten minutes.”