#they’re just Bartylus coded so it fit for them too

[deathnguts]

Academic rivals to lovers Bartylus, my interpretation yippee

Regulus is the golden spare child that needs to be number one to convince himself and his family he’s worth anything, let alone nearly as much as his brother was, and is constantly working himself to the very bone to try and prove to literally everyone watching that he’s something. He doesn’t have real friends, his family barely acknowledges him anyway, he doesn’t have a single hobby that he doesn’t turn into a competition with himself, all he has is results. Everything he does, he needs to win. Everything he does, he never does well enough. He’s a tortured student/artist who knows how to play every instrument, memorized every dance, studied for every test, and made it all look flawless just so that no one would see how hard he had to work to be flawless. No one can know he isn’t actually good at anything, not to himself anyway, not right away anyway. Not in a way that matters anyway. And people are blinded by gold, so he’ll get it every time to distract them. And it works. People love the idea of regulus, he’s popular for his name and for what he’s accomplished and people find how driven and mysteriously closed off he is endearing. He knows this, people liking the look and first taste of him has always been the norm for him, it’s just part of his life. Part of the image that’s built itself for him as he just helplessly watched.

Barty who’s the only child, the perfect son, who has just always been number one. He was never challenged academically and never thought it needed to challenge himself, who needs to do that? Things are easy for him and they always have been, he takes pride in that. Getting everything right and being told how good he did is his norm. He’s always glazed past average, and never broken a sweat, He understands and excels at everything the first run through, he flashes a smile and people fall in line, he plays a ditz or oblivious to make it fun, but he knows what he is. Everyone sees the brilliantly bright boy, the minister’s perfect son who would surely never step out of line and surely acts with the good intentions his father surely has and passed down to him, and he lets them believe that. He molds himself so they will, actually. Work is easy, interaction isn’t. Numbers are easy, people are not. That’s the challenge. And he doesn’t know how to rise to it. Everyday is a battle for him to desperately keep a delicately sifted image together and puppeteered to perfection every single day. No one truly knows him, he’s not even sure he truly knows himself. He just knows that if anyone did, they’d run. There’s something wrong with him and he knows it, he just can’t let anyone else catch on.

So you take these two absolute messes who no one else even suspects are messes and you put them in a room and they sniff each other out immediately. No one else has ever looked beneath their surfaces and no one else has ever done it so well, and that’s terrifying. They look at one another and they see a threat to eveyrthing they’ve built for themselves. They look at each other and they see how one carelessly excels where they desperately claw to be average at and they practically itch with hate.

Regulus meets Barty and his fists clench with how easily everything comes to him and easily the praise follows. Barty meets regulus and his eye twitches from how easily people fall in line around him and he won’t fall in line for Barty. Barty’s the first person Regulus has met who’s undeniably considered his level without working for it or even taking it seriously. Regulus is the first person Barty has met who has seen right through him and glared back into the void that is himself instead of running away.

They hate it. They hate being seen this way: at their truest, at their worst. And they take it out on each other. It turns into not only a game of who gets first place, but who can expose the other as a fraud first without ruining their own reputation in the process.

It’s starts as childish and purely spiteful with little to no actual ammo from either side because all they actually have on each other is a ‘bad feeling.’ But their weird obsession with one another quickly leads to them learning things and the using that to either beat them or embarrass them. Sometimes it’s a battle of words, sometimes it’s sabotage, sometimes it’s socially networking a downfall, but it’s always reliant on wits. As they get older it goes from blind seething rage to just the status quo. It’s known they don’t like each other but it’s more a running joke to everyone watching. It’s never a joke to them but it does start to become just an idea. They go from fighting like cats when in the same room to biting but playful banter when left alone together.

Because there is something in being seen. It’s scary, but it’s not anything anyone else will give them. Being perfect is tiring, being themselves is tiring. Sometimes it’s actually nice to know in full confidence there is someone out there who knows you aren’t and will act the same as they always have in the face of that. Begrudgingly, they understand each other and that leads to an understanding that no one else does and no one else will so who cares. They have their perfect images, the poke at each other and always take the opportunity when it comes to mess with them, but when they’re alone they feel more real and strangely comfortable than ever. It’s hard not to crave that, or at least take solace in it.

So when they have this realization, at first it’s polarizing on both sides. They don’t want to acknowledge their feelings might be changing or at least softening over time because that would be admitting they were wrong. About each other and about themselves and about everything they’ve done. So they don’t, for a really long time. But they do come to a silent and sobering agreement in inadvertently searching for one another in crowds at parties and then disappearing together to get away from them to just breathe. They do learn that the other is actually an invaluable ally to have in many places, and they learn on top of that they’re actually privy to that help now.

Since when, who knows, and it always comes with jabs and smirks and rolling eyes to match, but deep down they’re craving that too? They like being around each other, both for the release it offers themselves, but also for the release it offers the other? They like being safe to someone, especially if it’s them? They like letting the other win sometimes because they like seeing their smile? They like being teased when it’s them because they like talking to them? Fuck… they’re in deep shit, aren’t they?