Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

From a young age, Barty Crouch Jr. had been afraid that he would never hold the capability to love properly. 

He had been born into a world where love and violence were so inextricably entwined that it was often hard to tell where one ended and the other began. He had been raised to believe that with every act of love came an act of cruelty. For every kind act of his mother came a vicious act of his father. He had been taught that the two could not be mutually exclusive; he could never be loved without being hurt in turn. It wasn’t a tragedy or an injustice. It was simply the way that things were. 

Then he had met Regulus and loving him had come as easy as breathing. 

He was never afraid that he was going to accidentally counteract his acts of affection with acts of animosity. His hands never yearned for brutality after touching with such care. His lips never longed to wound after scattering such delicate kisses across sensitive and freckled skin. His fingers never traced Regulus’ scars and craved the feeling of ripping them back open. He took the vulnerability that Regulus showed him—that he trusted Barty enough to hold—and he cradled it close to his heart. He held this boy that he loved—this boy whose hands had never hurt him and whose words only ever tried to heal—and never once did the idea of hurting him even cross his mind.

That didn’t mean, however, that violence didn’t exist in their love in its own subtle ways. He ached for Regulus in ways that he was sure could never be properly sated. He wanted to peel back his skin and carve his name into Regulus’ bones. He wanted Regulus to tear open his chest and fit himself into the protective hollows of his ribcage. He wanted to swap their blood and sew their hearts together, chamber by chamber. He wanted to sink his teeth into Regulus’ skin and mark his body with the bruises of his love. He never yearned for it in the name of sadism; he simply yearned to show Regulus that he loved him in the most cardinal—the most primal—of ways. 

But he didn’t want to hurt him. He was never afraid of being hurt in return—of Regulus compensating for his unbalanced acts of love with acts of irrevocable violence. He looked at Regulus and he loved and he was loved in return. It was as simple as that—as effortless as taking a breath. 

“Hey,” Regulus whispered, slender fingers cupping Barty’s cheeks as though he was something fragile—as though he was something worth protecting. He kissed the corner of Barty’s mouth before drawing back and meeting his eyes. “What are you thinking about?” 

Barty blinked to refocus his wandering thoughts. It took him a moment to remember where they were—bricks pressed against his back and muffled voices wavering just a few yards away. Regulus was patient, thumb tracing the bridge of his nose and the shape of his lips. When Barty’s mind had finally settled itself back into the hollows of his skull, the first thing that he looked at was Regulus. Unruly dark curls and pale irises that reflected every star that had ever sprinkled the sky; soft lips and sharp features that only ever reflected a tender sort of fondness when facing Barty; concerned brows and subtle freckles whose position Barty had memorized. He was so beautiful that it was obscene—so elegantly angelic that it was profane. He was a work of art that belonged in only the most prestigious of exhibits. He was a statue that countless sculptors had lost their minds trying to perfect. He was the inspiration for every sonnet, the vision behind every ballad. 

You aren’t real, Barty wanted to say. You’re too beautiful to be real. You’re too beautiful to be mine.  

All he managed was a weak, “What?” 

He pushed the hair from Barty’s forehead and planted a soft kiss on his cheek. “You were thinking about something,” he whispered. “You got that faraway look, like your mind was trying to take you somewhere else.” He slid his hands to Barty’s jaw and brushed his thumb across the corner of his mouth, staring at him as though he was the world. “What was it?” 

“You,” he whispered without a moment of thought. “Always you.” His voice was thready with the overwhelming emotions that had been inexplicably festering somewhere inside of him since that morning. He wasn’t sure why they were there or what they meant; he had never been the best at defining all of the ways that he felt. It was pathetic, really—a boy who felt so much and couldn’t manage to articulate a single ounce of it. No wonder his father had always treated his feelings as nothing more than trivial inconveniences; that was all they were to him. To them both. 

Regulus’ fingers pressed into his cheeks and he blinked to refocus his mind. Barty’s eyes settled on the faint crease that had formed between Regulus’ dark brows before slowly wandering to meet his unwavering gaze. There was concern there, swirling somewhere within those stormy pools of gray. Barty hated it. He hated Regulus’ worry—hated his pity. Regulus didn’t deserve to feel that; he didn’t deserve to spend his good days worrying about something as inconsequential as Barty’s silent bouts of inexplicable misery. 

Regulus was smiling suddenly. Barty didn’t know when the concern had disappeared, nor where Regulus had buried it. He wanted to run his hands along every inch of Regulus’ skin—press his fingers into every curve and dip of his body until he found exactly where it was hidden. He wanted to part the cells of Regulus’ skin and rip out that rotten reservoir of solicitude; to discard it so that it would spread its pollution elsewhere and never again upset the beautiful soul before him. 

“You’d better be careful,” said Regulus rather abruptly, “keep saying things like that and I might start to think that you fancy me.” 

Suddenly Regulus was it. The only thing that existed, the only thing that ever had. Barty looked at him—his head tilted and the bridge of his nose ever-so-slightly scrunched—and he saw the world. The static in his mind began to settle and the stray branches of thought began to fade as every single sense suddenly became acutely attuned to Regulus. Regulus Regulus Regulus.  

A smile crept onto his lips and the insoluble dread that filled him from blood to bones finally started to dim. As though Barty Crouch Jr. had finally—finally—been permitted to resettle into the strange and sorrowful shell that his body had inexplicably adopted. 

Barty’s grip on Regulus’ waist tightened as he finally seemed to regain himself. He raised an eyebrow and tugged Regulus a hair’s breadth closer. “Merlin, what could ever have given you that idea?” 

Regulus pressed his thumb into the corner of Barty’s mouth as though trying to hold his smile in place; as though the very thought of it disappearing could rival the thought of every form of violence that he had ever suffered. Barty wasn’t sure that he would have been able to impede the growth of his smile if he had tried—not with Regulus’ fingers on his lips, his gaze irretrievably tangled with Barty’s own. He looked at Regulus—and looked and looked and looked—and it was there again, that love. Every breath was laced with it. Every heartbeat was fueled by it.

Barty didn’t nullify the urge that ached right alongside his desperate and pitiful pools of desire. He dug his fingers into Regulus’ waist and pulled his body flush against his own; every bone aligned, every arch and curve puzzle-pieced together. Regulus’ lips parted as the smallest of gasps escaped his throat and pooled somewhere deep in the pit of his stomach. He leaned in and captured Regulus’ mouth with his own and he kissed him with the desperation of a dying man full of hopes long-destroyed. 

He kissed him and it tasted of salvation. He kissed him and it felt sacred. He kissed him and it was like a proverb; the universe repeating its every secret like a mantra between mouths shaped specifically for each other. He kissed him and he tore himself open at the seams and he gave Regulus everything that he had; everything that he was. He kissed him to the hushed melody of I’m yours I’m yours I’m yours. He kissed him and he wanted to keep kissing him until decay set in and his body began to rot; to dissipate in the arms and against the lips of an impossible lover. 

The only thing that filled Barty’s mind when Regulus finally pulled away wasn’t the loss aching across his lips nor the itch that raced across every inch of clothed skin, but the sheer beauty of him. His cheeks flushed and eyes half-lidded; chest heaving with ragged breaths escaping kiss-swollen lips. He was a masterpiece and Barty was a slack-jawed fool whose mind had long since descended into madness; imprisoned by the sheer captivating nature of his every exquisite brushstroke, every delicate inch. 

“You…” he began, voice strangled by the weight of his own traitorous tongue. 

Regulus tilted his head. A stray curl fell across the pale skin of his forehead and Barty stared at it. He stared at it and wondered how something so mundane—so accidental—could be so divine. As though it had been woven by the fates themselves; set in stone the moment the world had been so ungratefully blessed with something as seraphic as Regulus Black. 

“I’m what?” Regulus asked. His voice was soft and Barty knew somewhere distantly that he didn’t deserve that. He deserved something hard, something rough, something that would tear him open and leave him to bleed because love was violence and this was all too—

“Barty,” he whispered, and it was a ray of sunlight breaking apart every dark cloud that had begun to creep into his mind. His hands were so gentle—one placed firmly on the back of his neck, the other caressing his cheek as though it was something delicate. “Come back.” He leaned in and kissed Barty’s jaw, lips brushing against feverish skin as he continued. “Tell your head that it’s my turn with you.” 

A part of Barty wanted to laugh while another part had the swift and inexplicable urge to cry. He swallowed back the humiliating unease of the latter and forced a hollow chuckle from his chest. He wanted to say something—to distract from the incomprehensible dread that was ebbing inside of him once again; tearing through his flesh and carving itself into his bones like some sort of parasite. However, as he opened his mouth to utter the carefully curated words that he hoped would ease Regulus’ poorly hidden and underserved alarm, his body betrayed him and from his lips fell nothing but silence. 

The loss of Regulus’ lips as he pulled away was a searing ache on his jaw. It was clear from the small frown that marred his face that he was worried. The sanest and most desperate parts of him wanted to fall into Regulus’ comfort and confess. Describe the gore of his mind and the violence that clawed its way through his body. Instead, he stood in silence and felt his eyes sting with unshedable tears as his tongue took the words that he was hopelessly trying to spill and turned them to unspeakable shreds. 

Regulus squeezed the back of Barty’s neck. The concern was palpable between his words. “Barty, I’m—”

The sound of a train warning for departure pierced the air and cut him off before he had managed to finish even the third syllable. The corners of his mouth were pulled impossibly deep as he glanced to the left and scanned the distant crowd in an attempt to gauge how much time they had left. Barty’s eyes traced his profile, finding solace in the familiarity of his lover’s face. His gaze fell slowly to Regulus’ neck and his stomach twisted into something pleasant as his attention darted between the love bites that stood starkly against pale skin. 

His mind was blank and his body was blissfully light and he was a boy glowing with the love that he could hardly bear to contain. He slid his hand to Regulus’ hip and gave it a gentle squeeze as he leaned down and pressed soft kisses on the marks that his mouth had left; appreciating them and relishing in the fact that he was the only one who could. That animalistic part of him wanted to latch onto Regulus’ throat and leave him with more. To parade him around with those beautiful bruises on display. To show the world that Regulus was his and his alone—to hold him close as he watched it rot in its envy. 

Regulus slid his hand from Barty’s cheek to the back of his head, fingers tangling gently with unruly strands. Barty kissed his way to the crook of Regulus’ neck before burying his face into the soft curve of skin. (With how perfectly it always seemed to fit, it sometimes felt as though it had been made specifically for him—designed to house his most shameful insecurities. Created to protect Regulus from the draining and insubstantial entity that his mind was proving itself to be.) He moved his hands to the small of Regulus’ back and took the fabric of his shirt into his hands, clinging to its memory with every lucid piece of mind that he had left. He closed his eyes as he pressed his nose into the smooth skin of Regulus’ neck and breathed in the soothing scent of home. 

Suddenly, speaking didn’t seem like such a daunting task. “I love you,” he whispered. 

He needed him to know, he realized suddenly. He needed Regulus to know just how much he was truly loved before this dark, terrifying thing inside of him had achieved its imperceptible intention of corrosion. 

Regulus released a near indiscernible sigh as he slid his hands to Barty’s back and held him with the care of something worth protecting. Barty felt the weight of Regulus’ head as he rested his cheek on his shoulder and squeezed him gently in a gesture of consolation. “I love you too,” he muttered. 

Barty’s hands tightened on Regulus’ shirt because he could hear it in his voice—hear that too meant more and he knew there was no universe in which that was possible. No reality where the amount of love that Barty Crouch Jr. held for Regulus Black could ever be put into something as minuscule and inconsequential as words, let alone compared to the love of another. He knew that he was loved—he didn’t doubt that for a second. No matter how much his mind tried to insist otherwise, he knew that Regulus loved him. He felt it in his bones, in his blood, in every inch of skin that had ever been touched by such delicate and caring hands. No, he didn’t doubt that he was loved. He simply doubted that anyone else could ever love him as passionately—as all-consumingly—as he loved them.

Regulus lifted his head and planted a soft kiss on the shell of Barty’s ear. “I love you so much.” Another kiss, this one lost in his hair. “More than I could ever possibly fit into words.”

Barty felt his throat constricting on a restrained sob. He furrowed his brow and fought with everything that he had to keep it trapped in his chest. He didn’t want to cry—didn’t want to fall apart when the only thing that Regulus deserved was someone who could hold themselves together. But it was rising and he was drowning in a mixture of love and anguish—peace and brutality. 

He was saved by another warning whistle from the train. Not saved from the discomfort of his own emotions, of course, simply saved from the arduous effort of choking down his pathetic tears. Instead, he was able to claw together every ounce of coherence that he could muster and zero it in on the way that Regulus’ body had gone tense at the sound. He couldn’t pull back—couldn’t settle his gaze on a face marred by discomfort and sorrow—for Regulus’ grip on him had suddenly become suffocating. He pulled Barty into him as though it was his last chance, held him like he would never get to again. Barty released Regulus’ shirt and pressed his palms against his back, reciprocating his hold as his mind whispered that perhaps he wouldn’t. 

Barty kissed the crook of Regulus’ neck and his relaxation was near instantaneous, his body falling limp into Barty’s waiting and wanting arms. He kissed him again and Regulus shuddered as though it was the most wonderful thing in the world. He kissed him a third time and Regulus whispered something in French that Barty could hardly hear, let alone decipher with his substandard understanding of the language. 

“What?” He asked, because that ball in his chest was finally beginning to loosen as he was given the only thing that the most childish parts of his mind continued to seek: a purpose.

Regulus reluctantly lifted his head, his grip never loosening as he craned his neck to meet Barty’s eyes. Barty’s were filled with sorrowful warmth and Regulus’ were filled with cold desolation. It passed between them, then, the mutual understanding. They were both helplessly mutilated by their own self-destruction and they both wanted so desperately to shove away their own anguish and care for one another; patch each other back up with bandages spun from this incomprehensible and incomparable love that lived between them, even if it meant leaving themselves to bleed for just a few moments longer. 

Regulus’ eyes roved the exquisite planes of Barty’s face, drinking in every beautiful detail and cradling the memory protectively within the hollows of his chest. “We could just stay here,” he joked half-heartedly, the smallest of smiles falling across his lips. 

Barty furrowed his brows as a frown fell across his own. A part of him wanted to scream his protest to the idea—not because he didn’t want to, but because he so desperately did. He wanted to take Regulus’ hand into his own and slip into some dark and forgotten place; wanted to spend his days feeding on nothing but love and affection and the giddy feeling of finally being free. 

Regulus’ smile faltered before disappearing completely, afraid that he had somehow scared Barty away with his childish hopes and vacuous desires. He opened his mouth to voice a pitiful apology when Barty suddenly leaned in, lips brushing against cheeks and hands pressing fondly into soft flesh. “I didn’t mean it like that,” he whispered as he withdrew his face and hovered his lips longingly over Regulus’ own. Dismal brown eyes studied sorrowful grey as he began to chip away at the protective barriers that he had spent his entire life upholding in the name of his own deplorable survival. “I just… I want to.” He pressed a tender kiss to the corner of Regulus’ mouth. “I want to so badly that it hurts.”

Regulus’ expression transformed into something gentle. His right hand returned to Barty’s face, caressing his cheek after tucking a stray chunk of hair behind his ear. “I know,” he said, voice so soft—so loving—that Barty felt as though he was going to melt right into it. “I do too.” 

Barty swallowed the lump that was steadily rising from the knot in his chest and leaned into his touch. He allowed his eyes to fall shut—granted himself just a few undeserved seconds of quietude. He turned his head and pressed his lips to the palm of Regulus’ hand in a kiss that he would have allowed to linger for as long as Regulus tolerated it. He knew, however, that it would have to end eventually. He didn’t want to delay his suffering—wasn’t entirely sure that he would survive it if he did. 

It was with that that he whispered, words wrapped in agony, “We should probably go soon.” 

Regulus released a sigh that ached on its way out as he stroked Barty’s cheek with his thumb. “We should,” and the words split his throat like a blade. 

Barty kept his eyes closed, for he couldn’t bear to take this safety away from Regulus; the outlet of closed lids and close bodies that allowed Regulus to feel all of the things that Barty knew he would hide the second his pitiful eyes fell open and his gaze was available to bear witness. Instead, he removed his hand from the small of Regulus’ back and reached blindly for that which was cupping his cheek. He took Regulus’ hand in his own and felt him shudder as he sightlessly planted tender kisses across his skin, lips brushing every knuckle. Regulus’ exhale was unsteady on his cheek, warm breath fanning across Barty’s skin from so much closer than he had assumed. Even after so much time, the mere proximity of such precious lips was enough to make Barty feel like a lovestruck fool with a stomach that perpetually tied itself into knots. 

He released a small sigh full of content as he lowered their hands and brushed his thumb gently over unmarred knuckles. He tentatively opened his eyes after a few moments had passed and the idea of suffering such a substantial loss had started planting roots in his already poisoned mind. It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the assaulting light that spilled from the sky above, and when he was finally able to make out the definitive shapes that filled his vision, his first destination was Regulus. He looked at him and was surprised to see that he was already being watched, love-filled eyes analyzing every imperfect detail of such a mundane face. Barty frowned a bit as he failed to grasp the idea that Regulus had been watching him and he hadn’t known—hadn’t felt grey eyes burrowing into his skull like some sort of pleasant parasite. He had always assumed that he knew when Regulus was watching him; assumed that he could always feel him, a sixth sense attuned solely to the warm gaze of his partner. He wondered briefly how many times Regulus had managed such a feat without his knowing, the idea of being attended to in such a tender way enough to warm him down to the bone. 

“Do you do that a lot?” He asked. 

Regulus’ expression was sincere as he responded. “Constantly,” and Barty couldn’t help the smile that twitched at the corners of his mouth as color filled his cheeks. 

Regulus grinned at the blush that his words had caused as Barty dutifully studied their twined hands, fingers fiddling with those of Regulus. A kiss was pressed to his forehead and it was yet another moment of normality that they were lucky enough to share. 

They did move eventually, albeit reluctantly, Regulus taking a step back and tugging on Barty’s hand as he stood from the wall. They held hands until the mouth of the alley that they had deemed a haven just twenty minutes before. Their steps didn’t falter as Barty brought Regulus’ hand to his mouth, giving it one final kiss before it was released and they stepped into the assaulting eyes of the public as nothing more than friends who walked just a bit too close. 

The corridor bustled with activity as the final dregs of the students hurried around in search of an empty seat. Barty stared out of the windows on their compartment doors, watching faces that brought only a vague familiarity rushing past as some kicked them out and some invited them in. His gaze had been relatively vacant—eyes searching for a spark of enjoyment as his thoughts traveled sluggishly through his polluted mind. Only when the door slid open and a head popped in did his interest claw itself together into something that resembled awareness. 

“Can I sit here?” They asked, eyes darting between the two bodies that occupied the space. 

Barty maintained an expression of indifference, blinks slow as his unenergetic tongue fumbled to form a response. “No,” he finally drawled. 

They released a vexed groan as they retreated to the hall, door falling shut as they continued past. Barty sighed as he studied the newly vacated space before sliding slowly to the form that sat motionless just beside it. Regulus had been quiet since they sat, knees pulled to his chest as his eyes stared unblinkingly out of the window across from the door, unfocused as Barty’s had previously been. He frowned a bit and straightened his posture as his focus festered into something clear. 

“Reg?” He said quietly, name falling hoarsely from scarcely used lungs. 

“Hm?” He hummed in response, proving himself at least minimally coherent. 

Barty’s frown only deepened. “Are you alright?” 

Regulus’ gaze finally twitched, eyes focusing on something beyond the glass before settling blandly on the other boy. “Yes. Why wouldn’t I be?” There was a note of harshness mottling his words bred by what Barty could only assume to be the instinctive defenses that he always seemed to revert to when he was caught like a thief in a moment of vulnerability. Barty never allowed it to hurt—to sink agonizingly into his skin as it so desperately wanted—for he knew that Regulus didn’t mean to be cruel. It was absent, an impulse that only existed when he was laid bare and harmless jibes had historically become something vicious. Barty understood it all too well—he did, after all, have quite a few of his own desperate methods of self-preservation. 

It took Barty a few moments to scrape together a suitable response, and in those moments, Regulus’ face thawed to something penitent. “I’m sorry,” he whispered before Barty’s mind had even fully perceived the change. He shifted uncomfortably, hands falling into his lap and nails tearing maliciously at broken skin. “I didn’t mean… I’m sorry.”

“I know,” he countered quickly. His eyes darted from the remorse on Regulus’ face to his fingers, both the wounding and the wounded. “I know, love. It’s alright.” 

Regulus’ shoulders slumped in clear relief as he became aware of his hands and deliberately paused, frowning at such an absent act of self-harm. “Are you alright? You were… I was worried about you. I’m still worried.” He glanced at Barty’s chest, only briefly, and he had the irrational worry that he could see the poisonous, dark thing that was living there. Before he could wallow in his own illogical trepidation, Regulus’ eyes were back on his. “I’m not trying to take away from myself if that’s what that frown is about. Although, I reckon that it’s not…” he trailed off and concern twisted itself into his frown. 

Barty shook his head, but as he opened his mouth to quiet his worry, he found that he couldn’t quite give voice to the lie. He closed his mouth and breathed a deep sigh of consternation as he silently cursed his shoddy lungs for betraying him once again. Regulus watched him silently, patiently. “I don’t… understand… what’s going on,” he said eventually. His words were slow and careful, as though he was afraid that they would scare Regulus off; that they alone would be enough to shatter this meticulously curated fantasy and show him what a burden Barty truly was. He released a pathetically unsteady breath that might have passed for a chuckle if beheld by eyes that didn’t know him so well. “I’m a bit of a mess at the moment, I suppose.” 

While the bruised parts of him had half-expected a callous unforgiveness, Regulus’ face melted into something inconceivably soft. “What do you mean?” He asked, giving Barty all of his attention when what he deserved was probably none at all. He unfolded his legs from where they were still pressed to his chest and turned toward Barty, crossing them beneath himself. “What are you feeling that you don’t understand?”

Barty felt oddly as though he had been turned inside out—gore falling from an emaciated frame. He averted his gaze and shrugged his shoulders noncommittally, absently curling the slightest bit into himself in a desperate attempt to protect everything that he could keep hidden. He didn’t want Regulus to see him as he was—a mess of his own carnage whose inhuman mind was unrecognizable from the boy whose image he tried so desperately to contain. Every time it happened—every time he let Regulus catch a glimpse of the feeble and violence-ridden soul that lived inside of him—he felt as though he had been stripped and left bare with only the most disgusting and unlovable pieces of himself available for cover. He was terrified, every single time, that Regulus would gag in revulsion and leave. He knew that he wouldn’t—he knew that—but the terror still suffocated him every time he dared to attempt a cure for this maddening disease that his father had beaten into him. 

Regulus was standing in front of him, suddenly. Barty tentatively raised his eyes and the sight of him—the care on his face, the love that Barty cherished and cradled like a flame—was enough to loosen a piece of that dark cluster in his chest. “Move over,” Regulus said, a gentle command. It was accompanied by the ghost of a hand on his shoulder, allowing him the opportunity for refusal. (How could Regulus ever think that he could refuse?)

He scooted as far as Regulus prompted him and watched as he slid into the empty space. He moved closer as soon as Regulus had settled, collapsing into the security of Regulus’ body. He wanted to burrow himself beneath his skin and never resurface. His arms were an asylum and his breaths were a prayer. Regulus’ legs parted to allow him to get as close as could be humanly achieved—bodies pressed so close together that it was nearly impossible to tell where one ended and the other began. 

Regulus hooked his chin on Barty’s shoulder. “Talk to me,” he whispered softly. He followed it with a kiss to the sweet spot that he had discovered just months before, below his ear. 

Any tension that had left Barty was promptly reclaimed. He wanted to writhe out of his grip and curl into himself—hide from Regulus as he so often attempted to hide from himself. However, he forced himself to endure the discomfort that ran from vein to bone, and he made another foolish attempt at being better . “I… have never been very good at… this. I’m not good at explaining the things that I feel. Words have never really… worked for me. And even if I could, I’ve spent my entire life believing that the things that I feel are just — they’re just these trivial things that don’t matter and can—no, should—be ignored in the name of something more important. In the name of everything.” The words tumbled out, as though whatever force had been withholding his speech had finally allowed his tongue to come loose. In the aftermath, he was surprised by the relief that flooded him like a sea; as though he had spent his life with his lungs tied together and he had finally been granted the pleasure of an unrestrained breath. 

Regulus’ fingers brushed Barty’s arm, shoulder to elbow, as he took the confession that Barty had given him and sheltered it with the gratitude of a starving man finally granted a meal. “Okay,” he said, not unkindly. “Would you like to talk about why that is instead?” He recognized his selfishness—his insatiable thirst for vulnerability from a boy who had such a hard time giving up even the smallest sliver of himself. However, he knew that it stemmed from a place of care. He wanted to help Barty as Barty had so successfully helped him in the years since they had met. He wanted Barty to permit him past the barriers that he upheld around himself—lay himself bare and allow Regulus to whisper soft words of praise and vows of worship into every inch of him. He wanted Barty to show him his every warped and wounded piece and he wanted to love him anyway.

Barty breathed a quiet sigh and forced relaxation into his limbs as he sank back into the sanctuary of Regulus’ chest. “My father,” he said simply. The dark thing in his chest gave an agonizing lurch. 

Every muscle in Regulus’ body was suddenly pulled taut. His fingers dug bruisingly into Barty’s muscle, the pattern of warm breaths adjusting to the clear shift in the mood of the lungs from which they originated. Barty craned his neck as far as he could in an attempt to catch a glimpse at the face hidden behind him. He was certain that he had never seen Regulus’ eyes look the way they did, so full of rage—wrath leaking like tears down hate-flushed cheeks. 

Barty studied it and felt reassurance settle over him like a blanket. He had never in his life met someone who paralleled the way that he loathed his father. It soothed the most doubtful pieces of himself—the ones that often whispered ugly words of fallacy. He was not an unstable boy incapable of anything beyond a foolish misunderstanding of the way that his father chose to show his love. It was so overwhelming that his throat went tight with it—this sudden certainty that he was not disturbed as he had only just realized he feared. 

He ignored the aching protest of his neck as he stretched it and planted a kiss on the corner of Regulus’ lips. He seemed to come back to himself, then, fury softening into something tender. He winced apologetically as he realized just how firm his grip on Barty’s arm had become and kissed his forehead as he soothed the ache with compassionate fingers. Barty rested his temple against Regulus’ collarbone and gave himself a moment to breathe. He felt pathetically raw, as though every confession that had been lifted from his chest had been made of sandpaper and left nothing but exposed flesh in its wake. Even then, he was surprised at how relieved he felt to have finally made even the smallest amount of progress. 

A part of him wanted to keep going—crack open his chest and show Regulus everything that he could never manage to speak. However, he was afraid that if he continued peeling back the protective layers of himself, he would stray dangerously close to the gloom that thrashed inside of him. He would keep trying, though; he would try and try and try until bone and heart were all that remained of this body whose behaviors and fears had been composed from the cruelty of another. 

He followed the movement of Regulus’ fingers with his eyes. “What about you?” He finally whispered. He felt rather than heard the hitch of his breath and traced languid circles on his thigh. “You were upset. Tell me why?”

Regulus was quiet for a moment. “I don’t want to go back to that house,” he whispered, stripping his own defenses in the name of reciprocating Barty’s vulnerability with his own. He swallowed the lump of protest that his body had lodged in his throat and said, quieter, as though it was a piece of himself chipped away, “And I cannot bear the thought of losing you, even for three months.” 

Barty frowned at the sorrow in Regulus’ voice. “Don’t tell me you’ve already forgotten that I’m coming for your birthday,” he said. His words were laced with disappointment so clearly feigned that it came off as nothing more than its intention; a joke to ease the despair that Barty would cut off a limb to banish. 

He didn’t have to see the smile that had come to Regulus’ lips to know that it was there. “I wasn’t aware that we were adding that to the plan.” His tone was suggestive to match the fingertips that were suddenly tracing the outside of Barty’s thigh. 

Color flooded his cheeks as an inescapable grin carved itself onto his lips. He craned his neck to see the boy behind him and felt his heart lurch pleasantly at the sight, at the beauty of him. His smile had lost its edge of suggestion and melted into something soft; something that he saved for the boy whom he had never imagined he would have the pleasure of calling a lover. The flush that reddened his cheeks was rooted in bliss and his eyes glowed like the sun behind a cloud. The lump that formed in his throat was completely unrelated to the shadows that writhed beneath his ribs. 

He reached blindly for the hand that was carved specifically for his own. He had the sudden and inexplicable urge to never move from this obscenely wonderful position; bodies pressed together and fingers interlocked and eyes woven irrevocably together. It was nothing new, really, this weighty and insatiable want to stay with Regulus forever. Even as the sun collapsed and the sea rose, he would have chosen this. He knew that he would love Regulus until they were nothing more than food for the earth and its occupants to feast on. He wanted this painstakingly delicate hand to remain in his until their fingers began to decompose. He looked at Regulus and he wanted forever. 

They were both foolish enough to believe that forever was something they could have. 

Barty stood in the center of the compartment and stared out of the thick glass to his right. The world beyond was dreary and monotonous and Barty silently willed the train to resume its movement if only to take them somewhere brighter. At least somewhere with fewer variations of the color grey. 

Regulus watched him with a tilted head and eyes full of inspection. He twisted Barty’s fingers through his own and tried to commit every second of the moment to memory. After all, who was he if not someone who lingered in the beauty of the past to escape the horrors of the present? 

Barty sighed his disappointment as he realized that mental prowess was not enough to make a train move by itself. He turned toward his boyfriend and brought their hands to his mouth, lips lingering on every knuckle. Regulus’ expression faded to something pleasant as his eyes traced the outline of slender fingers against soft lips. He took a step closer, bodies only centimeters apart, and pressed a kiss to the exposed pulse point of Barty’s wrist. 

They stood there for a moment, content in their compartment of tender lips and warm bodies. Only when the life of the corridor began to thin did soft smiles become strained and comfortable air wane to something brittle. Barty tentatively lowered their hands, watching them as though afraid that they would lose one another. Regulus lifted his unoccupied hand and tangled it into the hair on the back of Barty’s head. He gave his hair a gentle tug before using the leverage to press their forehead together. 

Barty’s exhale was unsteady against Regulus’ lips. It was all too much, suddenly, this prolonging of a moment that they both knew would end in nothing but sorrow. He wasn’t sure how much he could take before the rest of his soul followed its other half away from King’s Cross. 

“You have to promise me that you’ll write,” he said quickly. “You’ll tell me about what’s going on in your life.” 

Regulus nodded, words scraping painfully past the mass in his throat. “I will.” He squeezed his hand. “Promise that you’ll do the same.” 

“Of course.” Barty swallowed, thoughts spinning through his mind too fast to catch. “I don’t just mean the mundane things, Regulus. I want to hear about those too, of course—I want to hear about everything. But you have to tell me about how you’re feeling, as well. You have to… promise me that you’ll tell me if you start to get bad again. You can’t withhold that from me to spare my feelings or whatever. You have to promise . Every thought, every urge, every—”

“I promise.” He slid his hand to Barty’s cheek and cupped it lovingly. “I promise.” 

Barty nodded slowly and swallowed past the misery that ached in every inch of him. “Okay.”

Regulus pressed his fingers into Barty’s skin. “You have to promise that you’ll tell me, as well. You can’t go on pretending that you don’t feel anything at all. You cannot keep these things to yourself because you think I can’t handle it. You are my boyfriend. You have to tell me what you’re feeling. And I know you said that it’s hard for you to articulate it, and I know that—I have seen it in you for years. But I am asking you to try. Please. Promise me that you will tell me, even if you can’t find the exact words.” 

He was certain that there were tears on his cheeks. Regulus was kind enough not to acknowledge them. “I promise.” He brushed their noses together and whispered against his lips. “I promise.” 

Regulus kissed him and grey seemed just a little less mundane. Desperation circled their tongues like a virus infecting every word. “Promise that you'll be careful over the summer. Promise that you’ll come back to me.” 

“I’ll always come back to you.” Barty’s hand found the back of Regulus’ neck and laid it there like a source of solace. Their foreheads touched again and Barty saw his cheeks, wet with despair. He requited Regulus’ kindness and kissed the corner of his mouth. “Promise me the same.”

Regulus allowed his eyes to fall shut as he nodded his head. “Of course I will.” His thumb traced the uneven plains of his knuckles. “I love you.” It was whispered, as though afraid that giving volume to the words would somehow make them any less true, any less impossible, any less consuming. 

“I love you.” He knew that words would never be enough—nothing that fell from his lips would ever compare to the things that he felt. He slid his hand to Regulus’ waist and pressed their bodies together, every bone aligned, every dip and curve adjoined, and he let Regulus feel it in him. 

Barty Crouch Jr. returned to a silent house. 

His eyes traced the entryway and wondered, not for the first time, how such a welcoming house could contain such cruelty. How the walls didn’t crumble with the violence that they contained. Sun-soaked portraits lined the walls with eyes intact, despite the malevolence to which they bore witness. Light poured through glass panes and touched everything within its reach, though it looked off; dim, as though the darkness that lived within those walls couldn’t be combated even by the sun itself. 

His body brought him to the nearest portrait as his mind pleaded to be brought anywhere else. He knew it by heart, every detail carved into his skull like a taunt. 

At first glance, it was rather mundane; an unremarkable family in an unremarkable house. Anyone else would have moved without so much as a second glance. He never could, though. Never once had he entered this place so erroneously called home and had the ability to brush past that portrait. That godforsaken portrait. 

It depicted a small family of three dressed in bland clothes of the color grey. A small boy, hardly six, stood smiling between his mother and his namesake. It was standard and it was bland and it made him want to pull out his hair by the root whenever he looked at it. It wasn’t real— from the smile of his mother to the unimposing and pleasant line of his father’s mouth. It was an image curated by a man to whom reputation meant everything—a man whose every breath was weighted by his own ambition. It didn’t depict the cruelty of his father, nor the developing illness of his mother. It didn’t portray the desperate and consuming need of a lonely child to be noticed, to be seen , by the man whose name he shared. It didn’t illustrate the fear that coursed through such young and undeserving veins, terror that had seldom been spoken aloud. 

It was one of the only pictures in the house in which he was shown, and none of it was real, and every time he saw it a small part of him wanted to rot. 

“Winky is be putting Master Barty’s things in his room.” 

Barty jumped and tried to hide his embarrassment when the surge of dread had passed and his brain had registered the words and the voice by which they were said. He turned his head by the smallest bit as he held his younger gaze. “Thank you,” he said. He paused and flicked his eyes to the woman over his shoulder. “Is she home?” 

“Mistress is being upstairs in her room.” 

“Thank you.” 

Winky apparated away when no further requests were made. He returned his full attention to the photo on the wall and briefly entertained the idea of drawing his wand and setting it alight. It was a notion that he never failed to consider, the destruction of this stationary haunt, if only for the brief hoax of satisfaction and relief that washed over him with the idea that it was something that he could ever bring himself to do. 

I hate you, he thought. He wasn’t entirely sure which Bartemius Crouch his mind hoped to maim. 

He sighed as the thing in his chest gave an excruciating tug. He turned away and didn’t allow himself to linger before its menacing presence any longer as he began his slow meander up the stairs. He slid his hand along the railing to keep himself steady, his balance thrown off by some inexplicable lightness, as though half of him had been whittled down to the bone. 

He traced the drab wallpaper with the tips of his fingers as he wandered down the hall. There was a mirror hanging above a small table and he was careful to avoid his eyes as he paused in front of it to glance at the flowers that sat off-center. He rubbed a petal between his fingers and was surprised to find it real; most of the flowers that filled the house were fabrications, magic built to sustain itself, to keep his mother from feeling upset as she so often did when her illness prevented her from caring for the plants that she loved so much. As he dropped his hand and sent absent glances at the other contents of the table, he decided that perhaps it was a good thing. Perhaps she was well enough to get around the house without the help of him or his father. 

As he knocked on her door, he had the swift and inexplicable urge to rap his knuckles against the wood until they bled. He quashed it almost as quickly as it had appeared and chose not to think too hard about the thought or its long list of implications. 

“Come in.” The sound of her voice was enough to tell Barty that he had been wrong. 

He pushed his way into her room and was hit almost instantly with the scent of lavender. It was a scent that he associated only with her, the signature smell of the first person who had ever shown him any form of love. It was where he got it—everything that he used had to mimic the scent that made him feel closer to her. Perhaps one day, he would stray away from it—it was rather childish, after all, this obsession with the nostalgia of something as simple as a scent. Regulus seemed to like it, though, and the thought of sharing such a raw and unadulterated thing with him filled Barty with simultaneous sensations of unease and giddiness. 

His mother was sitting in the bed. Barty tried not to look at how frail she had become as he shut the door and gave her a smile that was almost genuine. “Hi, mum.” 

“Hello dear.” Her smile was so bright that it seemed to light the room. It wasn’t soft in the way that Regulus’ was, wasn’t full of the carnal sort of love that existed between them. This was sunny and caring and made him feel like a fraud, an imposter posing as the son whose mind was untainted by the darkness that lingered somewhere in his blood. “Is it time for you to come home from school already?” 

Barty nodded and glanced at the window opposite the door. The trees rustled with a light breeze and the sky hung unblemished by clouds. “It is.” He tried not to let her forgetfulness sting and then quickly chastised himself for thinking such a thing at all. 

“Oh, well I’m sure that I have something…” she dug through the pile of blankets and yarn that covered her lap and feigned surprise as she pulled out a new jumper, this one knit in patterns of greens and browns. “Oh! Well, I’m sure this will do.” She held it out in a trembling hand and grinned. 

His smile returned as he stepped forward and perched himself on the edge of her bed. He took the jumper from her and tried not to look at the veins that traced starkly beneath paper-thin skin. “Thank you, mum. I love it.” 

“Do you really? I didn’t know how you would feel about the mix of brown and green.” 

“I love it,” he repeated, and the sincerity was clear in his voice. 

“Good.” She stared at him in silence for a moment, that sunny smile never falling from pale and chapped lips. She turned back to the knitting in her lap eventually, taking the needles in hand and beginning the intricate process that Barty had always been so captured by as a child. (She had always insisted on doing it without the use of magic. She said that it made the gesture more genuine.) “I’ve been meaning to ask you,” she began, as though it was a new thought rather than one that she had been storing for months, “what is Regulus’ favorite color?” 

Barty’s smile faltered for the briefest of moments from shock alone. It quickly returned, just a bit bigger than its predecessor. “He likes purple.” Perhaps she didn’t notice the fondness that laced every word, or perhaps she simply chose not to. 

She nodded her agreement. “That is a lovely color.” She glanced at him with the smallest quirk of a brow. “You have wonderful taste in friends.” 

Barty’s breath resembled a laugh. They lapsed into silence as Barty watched her hands and she focused on her knitting. He didn’t notice when his thoughts began to stray, clawing their way to the darkest corners of such a volatile mind. 

“Dear?” 

He blinked and, for the second time in such quick succession, tried to hide his embarrassment behind a cough. “Sorry, I was just thinking about… homework.” He hoped that the lie sounded more convincing than it felt. 

“That’s quite alright.” She had put away her knitting at some point. Barty wondered how long he had been staring at an empty duvet before his mother had felt it necessary to step in. The thought that she had seen him as anything less than the lovable son he tried to be for her made him feel vaguely ill. “Have you been feeling well lately?” 

His gaze snapped to her face as he registered the underlying fear that noted her words. “Yes, mum, I’m alright. I’m feeling fine.” He reached out and covered her hand with his own. Hers was cold in a way far different from that of Regulus, frigid in a way that felt as though it couldn’t possibly be warmed. “How are you feeling?” 

Some of her worry seemed to evaporate. “Oh, I’m feeling well. I haven’t gotten any worse since your birthday.” 

“That’s great, mum.” He wasn’t entirely sure whether he believed her. As much as he didn’t like to admit it, they were a family of quite talented liars.  

She pulled her hand out from under his and gestured him closer. He shifted further onto the mattress and crossed his legs beneath himself as her cold palm pressed against his cheek. Her sigh was quiet as her smile glowed with something close to pride. “At least I did one thing right,” she whispered. 

The words traveled down his throat and lodged themselves somewhere in the center. He swallowed around them and tried to say something, to thank her for this love that she wrongfully showed him, though he was met with nothing but silence. He sniffled and moved as her hand fell from his cheek, settling over the covers and resting his head on her shoulder. She kissed the crown of his head as she had always done when he went silent, when his father’s words had stolen the ability to form his own. Something creaked agonizingly inside of him. 

It was only a moment before she resumed her knitting. However, as Barty watched, she abandoned her project and fished through the basket beside her for her desired colors. And as Barty’s mind slowly returned to him, just as it had when Regulus had held him so tenderly, as though he was something worth protecting, she began a row of purple stitches. 

Regulus Black returned to a decrepit house whose darkness seemed to breed in every corner. 

He lingered on the threshold, dust motes dancing through the sunlight that spilled in and silhouetted his frame against dilapidated floorboards. He glanced over his shoulder and briefly considered stepping back out, settling on the rickety front stoop and allowing the untainted world to sink beneath his skin. 

He breathed a sigh of yearning as he turned back to the house and forced himself to take that final, damning step. The door fell shut behind him almost instantly, as though it had been waiting to shut him in since the moment he had dared to graze his fingers against its handle. He shook off such a chilling idea of sentience and dropped his trunk to the dust-covered mat beneath him. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he had the familiar thought that it was somehow thicker here. 

“Kreacher,” he called. He was careful to keep his voice low, afraid that his voice would shatter the tenuous agreement for a few moments of silent peace that the walls were granting him. Afraid that his words would draw out the screams that he knew to live within. 

Kreacher was there in an instant. “Master Regulus is being home!” Something close to excitement laced the gravel in his tone and Regulus curled the corner of his mouth into a smile.

“Hello, Kreacher. How are you?” 

“Kreacher is being good! How is Master Regulus?” He was wringing his hands, as he so often did. Regulus wondered briefly whether it was a tic of anxiety, then wondered whether house elves could have anxiety, then abandoned the thought completely before it spiraled into something much too large for such a closed-in house. 

“I’m good, thank you.” He paused to give the impression that his next question was something inconsequential. “Are mother and father home?” 

Kreacher shook his head. “Master Orion and Mistress Walburga are being out of the house.” The tension that had claimed Regulus’ shoulders eased as something inside of him shook itself loose. Kreacher shifted his weight from foot to foot in a way that would read as unease were it coming from a larger body. “Is Master Regulus wanting Kreacher to be bringing his things to his room?” 

Regulus glanced at his forgotten trunk and nodded. “Yes please.” 

“Is Master Regulus wanting anything else from Kreacher?” He was already moving toward the trunk, eager not to disappoint the only spark of kindness that lived in such an unkind home.

Regulus shook his head. “That’ll be all. Thank you.” 

Something like a smile crossed the old elf’s face. “Kreacher is being welcome!” He apparated away with a crack, and Regulus was alone once again. 

Something inside of him ached with the unobtainable yearning for the warmth of another body, the safety of a lover’s presence. It implicitly expanded to that of a brother and a dormant ache that he had been hiding for years suddenly sparked to life. He stumbled with the weight of so much longing and released a breath that trembled with it. He tried to breathe through the discomfort and found that his lungs refused, accepting only half the air that they usually accommodated. The desire for the comfort of another filled his limbs with lead and stole his ability to do anything more than lean and gasp and hurt. 

He wasn’t sure how much time passed before he was able to move again. His head had long since stopped spinning, the incessant ache mellowing to a dull throb that lived somewhere near his heart. He glanced at the walls and silently willed them to keep the secret of his flaws to themselves. 

He climbed the stairs with care, avoiding every step that he knew to creak. He glanced at his mother’s library as he passed the landing, wondering what sort of horrors she had added since his early adolescence. He considered stepping inside—skimming the books whose contents he had forced himself to endure despite his pathetic squeamishness. He abandoned the thought as quickly as it had appeared and continued through the house, ignoring the haunts that lived on every floor. 

When he finally reached the landing that housed his only semblance of a safe haven, he paused. He stood in the center and stared at one of two barriers that his childhood had allowed him to know. He knew what he would see if he turned around; knew the chip in the wood that lived in the bottom left corner of the door, the scuff on the right side of the handle, the scratch that ran parallel to the frame only slightly off-center. He allowed himself to consider, only briefly, the idea of crossing in the opposite direction and opening the door. He allowed himself to imagine what it would be like, to disturb the tomb that time had transformed it into. He allowed himself to consider a world in which he was strong enough to face the ghost of an unreachable life. (He only briefly thought of Sirius’ words from the night before, his inaccessible promise of asylum. He wondered, only for a moment, whether the offer had been his brother’s own brand of cruelty.) 

He shook off such a tortuous train of thought and stepped into his room as quickly as he could. 

It was exactly as he had left it. Books haphazardly placed onto a shelf much too small for their size. Parchment and quills spilling across an ink-stained desk. Clothes pouring from a half-closed wardrobe. Rug off-center beneath rumpled sheets on an unmade bed. He was filled with an unexpected wave of solace at the disorder of a bedroom whose every inch had been lived in by a boy whose head wasn’t the only mess that his body curated. 

He chose not to look at the untouched mural that consumed one of the walls. 

He kicked off his shoes and collapsed backward onto his bed, blankets swallowing him as though he had been missed. He stretched out as far as he could, limbs dangling only slightly into open air. It felt wrong, having so much room. He had become so accustomed to sharing half the space with another body that it felt abnormal not to. He wondered how many pillows he would have to shove around himself to make up for the uncomfortably empty space. 

He sighed and climbed out of the bed. He stood on the rug for a moment, glancing around the room in the hope that an activity would present itself to him. His eyes fell on the parchment that had been thrown askew and he pulled it toward himself as he dropped into his desk chair. He wondered for only a moment whether less than two hours was too short a time to write about before deciding that it certainly wasn’t. Half of him felt hollow and he yearned to find some form of relief that would last him until his birthday.

He dug through the disorganized drawers of his desk until he found a pot half-full of ink, and then spent another moment trying to find a quill that wasn’t broken. It wasn’t a long letter, not by any means, but it was something. And as ink sunk into parchment, he found that a piece of his aching chest was slowly beginning to thaw. 

Barty, 

I miss you. I know that it’s hardly been any time at all, but I miss you so much that it feels like I can’t breathe around it, this longing. I wish that the summer wasn’t so long. I wish that we didn’t have to be apart. It feels wrong.
The walk from King’s Cross was nice. It’s not terribly long, and it wasn’t very busy today.
Have you done anything since you got home? How’s your mother doing?
I almost went into Sirius’ room when I got back. It’s not as though it’s a big deal, especially considering that I didn’t, but I just thought I’d tell you. I don’t think I ever will, go in there. I think that it would feel vaguely like disturbing a grave. I suppose that’s what it is.
I hope you’re doing well, and that you’re feeling better. And I miss you, again. And I love you more than I can say.

R.A.B.  

He spent another few moments searching for an envelope and something to seal it with. When he was finished, he set it aside to give to Artemis when she returned to him. 

Only when he stood did he realize how hungry he was. He considered summoning Kreacher and requesting a meal brought to his room, however, he decided that perhaps he should appreciate the vacancy of the house while it lasted. He did change into a pair of pyjama trousers before exiting the bedroom, hoping that the vague scent of lavender would bring him even the smallest bit of consolation. 

The kitchen was deserted when he entered. He wasn’t sure where Kreacher had gone, but he didn’t fancy summoning him on the off chance that he was either resting or completing a task for his parents. He wasn’t completely helpless. He was quite certain that he could scrape together some semblance of a snack without doing irrevocable harm to the kitchen or its sole occupant. 

He searched the fridge and found nothing more than ingredients. He searched the cupboards and was disappointed to discover the same. He dug through the final cabinet and produced a small, half-eaten bag of crisps that had likely been there since before his birth. He wondered for a moment whether crisps could expire, then wondered what would happen if one were to consume theoretically expired crisps, then closed the cupboard and kept them in hand. 

He made his way to the table and, after a brief pause, took the seat that he had never once been allowed to sit in. He sat at the head of the table and popped a crisp into his mouth. There was almost no flavor and the texture had devolved into something resembling what he assumed to be that of cardboard, but they were edible and that was enough for him. He finished the bag slowly as he glanced around the kitchen and tried not to dwell on the darkness that seemed to be pouring from the corners of the house and settling into the recesses of his calamitous mind. 

The ache in his chest intensified as he shifted his focus to the absence beside him that throbbed like an open wound. He glanced at the empty seat to his right and felt as if the capacity of his lungs was being stolen by the longing that pulsated painfully in his bones. He exhaled unsteadily as his appetite was stolen by this irrevocable and excruciating pining for home. 

Barty sat in the kitchen, a muffin at his elbow and a half-finished essay splayed before him. 

He chewed absently on the end of his quill as ink bled together in his vision and his mind strayed to the letter that sat open on his desk upstairs. He exhaled uneasily as guilt gnawed at his flesh and longing settled into the hollows that it created. He yearned for Regulus as a drowning man yearned for the ability to breathe. He was certain, somewhere distantly, that it was an ache that could never be properly sated, even in the presence of the one whose company he ached for. He needed to touch him until his fingers felt only for the body of his partner. He needed to kiss him until he was the only thing that Barty’s lips could bear to taste. He needed to crawl beneath his skin and reside within the hollows of his body. He needed him in ways that he could hardly comprehend and couldn’t possibly fulfill. 

He sighed and dropped his quill, pressing his fingers against closed lids until black was broken up by tiny freckles of stars. He knew that it was pathetic, this insatiable need for another. Though he supposed that it was simply yet another pitiful piece of himself to be added to his ever-growing collection. 

He leaned back in his seat and glanced at the empty air beside him as longing throbbed through his skull. He had considered asking Regulus to come with him, in the compartment. When Regulus had revealed his desperate desire not to return to that rotten house. He had entertained the idea of hiding Regulus in his room like a secret and loving him in the precarious privacy of an unlockable bedroom. He had allowed himself one desperate moment of desire and then abandoned the proposal entirely. He couldn’t do that to Regulus, couldn’t risk the horrible repercussions that would unravel if he was discovered. The mere idea of Regulus facing the wrath of his father was enough to make bile rise in his throat. 

He leaned his head back and focused on the stretch of his throat rather than the thoughts that raced through his disorganized mind. He straightened and returned his attention to the forgotten essay before him, resuming the chewing of his quill and attempting to articulate his thoughts on the topic into proper sentences. 

He had only managed two coherent sentences when every muscle in his body went disconcertingly tense and his mind filled with static. The dark thing in his chest, which had been lying blissfully dormant for nearly two days, suddenly erupted in agony. It writhed through every limb, spilled into burning and airless lungs, swelled inside of his skull and enveloped his mind like a disease. 

He lifted his gaze slowly despite the desperate and throbbing protests of his body. He didn’t need to hear the dreadfully familiar gait, nor lay eyes on the figure that had joined him in the kitchen. His presence was like a knife driving between his ribs, twisting deeper with every second that passed, torturing him with every breath. 

He couldn’t breathe around the hatred and horror that raced through every vein as his eyes landed on the debilitating form of his father. 

He was such a mundane-looking man, really. He looked like a man whose greatest accomplishments were the family he had built and the title he had achieved. He didn’t look like someone whose very presence was anguish in the boy whose blood he shared, whose hands were emblematically stained with it. He didn’t look like someone whose only outlet for his ceaseless pools of anger was the son whose name he shared, the flesh that was inextricably connected to his own. 

He slowly lowered the quill to the counter as his eyes incessantly tracked the man before him. He wanted to look away, wanted so desperately to listen to the mantra of run run run that raced through his poisoned mind. However, the knife was between his ribs and the mere thought of moving only buried it deeper into his bleeding chest. He had always been quite good at that, making Barty feel like an impotent child with so much as a glance or lack thereof. He was certain that no one in the world had ever made him feel worse than his father perpetually managed. 

Bartemius Crouch moved through the kitchen as though he was alone. If he felt the woeful gaze of his son, he paid it no mind. Barty wondered briefly what it would be like, the ability to ignore eyes that so perfectly matched his own; to ignore the wounds that such a malevolent gaze never failed to inflict. The mere idea that his father could was enough to fill him with a sorrowful rage. He watched his father and he loathed him so deeply that it burned.

The suicidal and inexplicable urge to force his father’s attention rose in his throat like bile. It had developed in his late childhood, a way to remedy this insatiable and demoralizing desire to be seen. If he misbehaved enough, he gave his father no other choice but to look at him, to face the son whose flesh he had maimed and blood he had spilled in the name of his own pathetic anger. He was so afraid of the man before him, so afraid that he could hardly bear to breathe around it, and yet he continued to antagonize him for the flicker of satisfaction that something as small as a glance granted him. That brief moment, before retribution, when he could meet the eyes that so perfectly mirrored his own and be seen . It was stupid and it was reckless and there was a reason that he didn’t dare speak it aloud. 

He glanced at the mug before his father and discreetly drew his wand from the pocket of his trousers. The shattering of porcelain and slosh of liquid as it spilled across the counter was deafening in the quiet of the kitchen. The silence that followed was woven with tension so thick it was nearly tangible. The dread that twisted through his chest seized his lungs like a vice. Tea dripped from the edge of the counter and formed a puddle at his father’s feet and Barty could hardly breathe around the fear that his stillness invoked. 

Bartemius Crouch turned his head slowly and glanced over his shoulder at the form sitting behind him. He met the mirrored eyes of his father and the flicker of satisfaction was lost in his attempt to force words through the precarious channel of their gaze. Look at what you’ve done to me, he thought desperately. There is no excuse for the things you’ve done.  

Bartemius Crouch didn’t spare his son more than a few moments of attention. He turned to the mug that lay broken before him and his exhale hit Barty like a blow. He swept his things into a pile and tucked them under his arm as he stood from his chair and started for the stairs. He had sated the resentment that curled hotly in his chest and all that remained was the fear that gnawed at his flesh like a parasite. He was acutely aware of the scrape of porcelain against laminate as his father repaired the mistake as though it hadn’t happened at all. 

He was passing beneath the arch that led to the entryway when the crash of a mug echoed in his ears and pain erupted across his cheekbone. He didn’t give his father the gratification of a faltered step and continued for the stairs as though nothing had happened. He ignored the warm trickle of blood that pooled in the corner of his mouth and dripped from his jaw. Pain pulsed through his skull and he didn’t grant it even a moment of attention. 

He entered his bedroom and shut the door quietly behind himself. He walked absently to his desk and placed down his things before reaching blindly for the photo that he kept hidden beneath his pillow. He didn’t bother to lay on his bed—he didn’t want to feel the violent ache of loneliness that so much empty space created. He simply walked to the center of this small and sparse space and dropped to the floor. He curled into himself and pressed his bloody cheek to wooden boards that throbbed dismally with the cruelty that ran beneath them like a river. He traced the edges of the photo with his fingertips, eyes falling shut as he conjured the memory of its contents, his only source of solace outside of the presence of his mother. 

He wasn’t sure how much time passed before the ache of his sorrow was replaced by the searing pain of his arm. Fear comparable only to that which his father invoked pooled inside of him as the fire receded and he was left trembling pathetically on a cold floor. Even as his mind stung with the memories of what had been done to him in the parlor to which he was being summoned, he couldn’t help the small and shameful shred of relief for an escape that ignited somewhere in the desolate recesses of his mind. 

Regulus sat in the library of Lestrange Manor, waiting. 

His eyes lay unfocused on the flames that danced before him. His fingers fiddled absently in his lap. He thought only of Barty. 

He didn’t notice the company of another until a disembodied voice broke through thoughts of furious protection and fervid love. “What’d you do this time?” 

He blinked and glanced at the body that had settled beside his own. He didn’t bother hiding his distaste, wrinkling his nose and turning his attention back to flames whose sight was preferable to the face beside him. “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about, Lestrange.” 

Rabastan Lestrange rolled his eyes and released something akin to a chuckle. “Must you always be such pleasant company?” 

Regulus raised a brow and shot his cousin a sidelong glance. “I didn’t know you were capable of making a joke.” 

Rabastan waved a dismissive hand. “I have plenty of jokes. Just because you’re dull doesn’t mean everyone else has to be.” 

“Really?” He deadpanned. “I seem to be under the impression that the world revolves around me alone.” 

Rabastan released another breath of laughter as he relaxed into his chair and stretched out his legs in a gesture that reminded Regulus oddly of a cat. “So? What’d you do?” 

“I haven’t done anything. I’m not sure what’s given you the impression that I have.” He returned his gaze to the fire and absently popped the joints of his fingers. 

Rabastan scowled at the sound but said nothing of its existence. “Do you expect me to believe that you’re here of your own volition?” 

“What, are you dissatisfied with my wonderful company?” 

“Hardly. You should come to my room, we can discuss who we fancy while we braid each other’s hair.” 

“Sounds lovely.” Silence settled between them, broken only by the faint crackle of wood turning to ash. He sighed when he noticed the weight of Rabastan’s expectant gaze and wished, not for the first time, that he had been granted cousins whose few hobbies didn’t include this incessant prying. “I requested an audience.” 

“Oh.” He settled further into his seat as his relentless thirst for gossip was temporarily sated. “Why?” 

“That is none of your concern.” 

The finality in Regulus’ tone caused Rabastan to throw up his hands. “Sorry for asking.” Regulus cherished the few moments of silence that existed within the brief and blissful lapses of boredom that his cousin experienced. “Is it about the things he’s planning?” 

The center of Regulus’ attention swiftly shifted to the boy beside him. He straightened in his seat and gave him the full focus of his gaze. “What things?” 

Rabastan shrugged and sunk comfortably into himself, as though compensating for the sudden sobriety of his cousin. “He’s been dormant since that attack on Hogsmeade last year because he wanted to divert the attention to Dumbledore and his part in the war. He wanted people to focus less on the fact that he killed two children and more on the fact that Dumbledore failed to protect two children who were under his care. He also wanted the Ministry comfortable with the idea of safety that his inactivity has created. Anyway, Rudolphus says that he’s been planning things recently, attacks and whatnot. He says that he wants to coordinate something big, bigger than anything he’s done so far.” He furrowed his brow and looked skeptically at Regulus. “If that’s not what this is about, then why did you request an audience?” 

Regulus tried to quiet the disarray that his mind had devolved into following Rabastan’s words. “I’m going to ask him on a date,” he responded stonily. “Do you think he’ll say yes?” 

Rabastan nodded in mock sincerity. “You have my full confidence.” He stood as the familiar and chaotic gait of his oldest cousin approached the room. He placed a hand of feigned reassurance on his shoulder as he passed and Regulus forced his body not to recoil from the unwelcome touch. “Be sure to wear a pretty dress.” 

Regulus resisted the urge to scratch clean the fabric that Rabastan’s hand had nonconsensually touched as Bellatrix bound into the room. “Reggie darling, the Dark Lord is ready for you!” 

“Don’t call me that,” he said. He stood from his chair and tried to ignore the incessant itch that had bloomed on his thigh. 

Bellatrix rolled her eyes. “Reggie darling, don’t be so sensitive!” Something inside of him throbbed painfully at her words. “Now come along. Can’t keep him waiting!” She exited the library and Regulus was alone. 

Regulus sighed and allowed himself only a moment to gather everything that had so swiftly and pathetically unraveled. When he was sure that his mind wouldn’t collapse the moment he was met by the insistence of the Dark Lord’s own, he slipped into the hall and moved quickly toward the parlor. 

He had only just lifted his fist to knock when the voice rang from within. “Come in, Regulus.” He suppressed the shiver that such a blatant display of Legilimency never failed to induce and stepped into the room beyond. 

The Dark Lord was perched in his chair before the fireplace. He twisted his wand between his fingers in the way that Regulus had learned to be, despite his informal position of nonchalance, a threat. He straightened his spine and clasped his hands behind himself as his nails dug ruthlessly into the tender skin of his palm. “My lord,” he drawled. He wasn’t going to bother with the formalities that the man sought from his disciples. He was not a God and Regulus was not going to grant him the privilege of being treated as such. Not when rage consumed him at the memory of the scars that Barty bore from this very man and his pathetic ploy for power. 

He raised an eyebrow at the hostility that radiated from him as his mouth twisted into a smirk. “Regulus. To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?” 

Regulus swallowed his wrath and lifted his chin slightly. “I’m here about Barty.” 

His smirk twisted into something that dripped with boredom. “Yes, I suppose I should have expected as much. Tell me, Regulus, do you know how to speak of anything else?” His demeanor relaxed into something rather unimposing, a leader awaiting the grievances of someone who could only ever manage to complain. 

Regulus raised his chin in the intimidating way that he had inherited from his mother. “I want you to leave him alone this summer.” 

The Dark Lord’s attention was instantly piqued. He straightened in his seat and allowed that smirk of amusement to fall across his lips once again. “Now, now, Regulus, why ever would I do that?” 

“Because I’m willing to take his place in everything that you may have planned. Anything that you would have given him, you give to me.” 

He leaned back in his seat and, to Regulus’ surprise, seemed to consider. “And what if I wanted to assign the same task to the both of you? Who would take your place?” 

He tried not to linger on the idea of seeing Barty outside of the brief and singular occasion of his birthday. He could deal with a few feeble months of loneliness if it meant ensuring Barty’s safety, his protection. “I can do it alone. Or you assign someone else.” 

The Dark Lord released a sigh whose tone was indiscernible. “And why should I do this for you? Time and time again, you have disappointed me. I thought that you were going to be something great and you have given me nothing more than mediocrity.” 

“I found you a book that had been lost for years with no sense of direction as to where I should even start.” 

“And I had to threaten the life of the very friend that you are here asking that I protect to ensure that you would. Might I remind you, you were also late.” 

Regulus clenched his jaw. “By one minute.” 

The Dark Lord clucked his tongue. “Still late.” 

Blood pooled in his palms as his nails continued to burrow furiously into undeserving skin as he tried to ease the anger that shot through every limb. “I will do the work of both my assignments and his. I will take his place in your plans, wherever that may be. What more do you want? Would you like me to get on my knees and beg? We both know that I am not above it.” 

The Dark Lord sighed once again and tapped the tip of his wand absently against his temple. “I will not have him be completely useless.”

Regulus shook his head as something akin to hope eased the tension of his fury. “He doesn’t have to be. You know who his father is, where he works. Tell him to report anything that he hears.” Another moment of silence as the Dark Lord seemed to ponder Regulus’ proposal. “It’s not forever,” he reiterated, “just until the end of the summer.” 

He raised an eyebrow. “Until school has you indisposed?” 

Regulus tilted his head. “We both know that school has never stopped you from expecting impossible things of your child soldiers.” 

Something unsettlingly close to a laugh escaped on a breath. It was quickly followed by yet another sigh and a vague gesture of defeat. “Very well.” 

Regulus was still for a moment, afraid that movement would shatter the precarious agreement that had been laid out before him. When the man before him raised an expectant brow and gestured for Regulus’ response, he took a moment to separate the pleasure from his voice. “Thank you, my lord.” 

The smile that settled on his lips dripped with something that lay uncomfortably close to pity. “Do not thank me yet, Regulus. You have no idea of the things I’ve seen.” Regulus didn’t grant him the satisfaction of a reaction. The sigh that fell from his lips was one of apathy. “Now that we’ve settled that little matter,” he gestured for the door.  

Regulus didn’t give him so much as a nod of acknowledgment before turning away. Silence followed him into the hall and beyond, exploding into a world of noise the moment he reached the front stoop of 12 Grimmauld Place. 

Only when he had reached the delicate safety of his bedroom did he allow himself to linger on the implications of the man’s enigmatic parting words. 

“You’re bleeding!” Barty drew back from inquisitive fingers with distaste clouding his face. Bellatrix Lestrange withdrew her hand and rolled her eyes as though he was the irrational one. “Must Regulus surround himself with such drab people?” Barty walked past her without a word. He distantly heard the displeased huff of breath that fell from her lips as she sauntered off in the opposite direction. 

He had always found the halls of Lestrange Manor rather unsettling. The portraits held sharp figures who seemed to jerk their limbs in unnerving ways. Dark wallpaper peeled despite the effortless upkeep that magic would allow. The furniture was jagged and the lights were dim and Barty always felt as though there were hundreds of eyes with gazes glued to his back. 

Regulus had compared it to his house once. His voice had been nonchalant, as though growing up in a house at all similar to this was anything to be indifferent about. 

Rabastan Lestrange exited a room down the hall and fell still when he saw Barty approaching. His brow was furrowed with something oddly close to suspicion. “Does everyone else know something that I don’t?”

Barty slowed his stride and paused in front of the other man. “What are you on about?” He was relatively unfazed by the eccentricity of the question; in the year that he had spent in casual acquaintanceship with Rabastan, he had grown quite accustomed to his irregular nature. 

He rolled his eyes and threw up his hands in a show of dramatics that reminded Barty quite fondly of the lover whose presence he missed like a limb. “Why must everyone insist on never answering my questions? What have I ever done?” 

Barty’s stare was silent and unblinking. He could feel fresh blood oozing from the cut on his cheek that apparation had evidently reopened. He hoped, somewhere distantly, that everyone in this house was as self-centered and shallow as he assumed them to be. 

He rolled his eyes again. Barty had spent enough time with Regulus to be unsurprised. “Must you insist on being so bizarrely similar to my cousin?” 

Barty narrowed his eyes. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” 

Rabastan’s gaze raked itself over him, top to bottom, as though in search of something. Barty shifted uneasily as the inexplicable fear of discovery by anyone other than Regulus hit him like a blow. “Have you not requested an audience with the Dark Lord?” His previous suspicion had reclaimed its home in between his words. 

“Why would I do that?” 

His sigh leaked with vexation. He spun around and started down the hall. “I’m going to find some entertainment far less arcane.”

Barty continued down the hall without a moment of hesitation. He wanted to reach the parlor and face the source of so many nightmares and get it over with. He had spent far too many days bathing in an acid pool of hurt to procrastinate himself into reopening poorly-patched wounds. The little bit of self-preservation that remained, buried beneath layers of invisible scars, wouldn’t allow it. 

The parlor door was cracked open when he arrived. He slowed to a stop before it and gave himself only a moment to brace for the horrors that he knew to live beyond. His mind dragged him unwillingly back to the last time that he had stood in front of those doors, of the cruelty that he had faced over the threshold. The scars that he had retained from that wretched day throbbed with trepidation and agony. 

“I ask that you don’t keep me waiting, Bartemius. I am a very busy man.” 

The sound of his voice was enough to send Barty into an ugly spiral of terror and anguish. His muscles were so stiff that even the thought of moving made him ache. He had the distant and self-destructive urge to turn around and see how far he could run before the man hidden behind the doors could catch him. 

The exasperated sigh that fell from unseen lips was enough to send Barty inside. He wasn’t even entirely sure whether his mind had given the command or his limbs had simply decided to spare him the pain and do it for him. 

The Dark Lord was perched in his chair before the fireplace. His wand danced through pale fingers in a gesture so nonchalant that it made Barty shudder. He wondered, somewhere distantly, how such an unimposing piece of wood could cause so much pain. 

“I see you’ve finally decided to join me,” the man drawled. He angled his wand just so and something close to pleasure fell across his face at the boy’s poorly-suppressed flinch. 

“I’m sorry, my lord.” Even he was surprised by the steadiness that his voice managed to maintain. He tried not to look to his left, to the rug that he knew to be stained. To the place where his mind had been stolen and his pain had been callously explored. 

The Dark Lord was silent as he assessed the state of the boy before him. Barty tried not to shift as a frighteningly familiar gaze roved his frame as though evaluating what he was worth. His eyes found focus on his cheek and narrowed curiously at the cut that ran parallel to bone. 

The feeling of the man’s mind digging inquisitively through Barty’s own was an uncomfortable one. He wished fiercely that he had pleaded with Regulus to keep teaching him Occlumency. He quickly banished any and every trace of the boy from his mind; the Dark Lord could have almost anything that he wanted from Barty, but he could not have this. 

His eyebrows rose softly when he found what he was looking for. Satisfaction settled over his features as he pulled prying fingers from Barty’s skull and left him to unscramble the mess that they had left behind. “Well, this is a terribly inconvenient set of circumstances.” It sounded peculiarly as though he was mocking someone. 

Barty faintly furrowed his brow as confusion briefly overtook his terror. The man knew of what Barty’s father had done to him, had seen it in his head before he had trapped him inside a loop of reenactments—of pain and horror and guilt that gnawed at him like a parasite. He knew. Why was he suddenly acting as though he didn’t? 

“I have an assignment for you,” the man continued. 

Half of Barty was full of an instant and nagging sense of foreboding. The other half, the most pathetic one, was consumed by the idea of a consistent reason to escape the confines of such a dark house. “What is it, my lord?” He pleaded silently, to anything that chose to listen, that it would be with Regulus. He would have taken anything if it only meant seeing him again; he didn’t even have to touch him, his presence alone would be enough to sate the gnawing loneliness that lived inside of him. He knew how selfish it was, this urge to see Regulus through the means of war. He knew that, and perhaps the recognition of yet another flaw cushioned the words that forced themselves into his skull and began to swell. 

“You are going to spy on your father and the work he does with the Ministry.” Something inside of Barty crumbled completely and left in its wake an aching and vacant space. “This is your only job this summer. I will not be calling upon you for anything other than this. Gather intel on the progress of the Magical Law Enforcement and report to me if there is anything that I would deem of interest.” 

The aching collapse inside of him was washed away by a reflexive wash of numbness that years of agony had allowed him to perfect. He straightened in front of the man whose curses had torn him apart and whose mind had trapped him mercilessly inside of the darkest depths of his own. “What sort of intel are you wanting?” His voice was pathetically feeble, despite his desperate attempts to fortify it into something steady. 

Venom seeped from the previously impassive stare fixed firmly on the terror that leaked from such unremarkable eyes. “What sort of intel do you think I would deem interesting, Bartemius?” Barty clenched his jaw to abate the agitation that his first name never failed to incite. “Figure it out. You are not a stupid boy.” The demeaning notes that fell from his final word were somehow worse. 

“Okay.” He paused and his body throbbed with the ghost of his past pain. “I’m sorry. I’ll report anything that I hear regarding the war.” He was too far into the depths of his dread to fully comprehend the twisted sense of satisfaction that the man before him wasn’t even trying to hide. 

“Well,” he drawled, “don’t you think you ought to get to it?” That inexplicable triumph ran through every word like a weed. “You wouldn’t want to be away from home for too terribly long, would you? You could be missing important things.” Mockery dominated the man’s tone and twisted the dread that encompassed every inch of him into something far more violent. 

This man knew what he was sending Barty back to, the fate that would find him if he was left to rot in that wretched house whose only source of solace faded by the day. He knew and he was dooming him to it as though it was a game; as though Barty was nothing more than a pawn whose suffering served as the pinnacle of his twisted entertainment. 

From a young age, Barty Crouch Jr. had felt a distinct detachment from the idea of death. 

He hadn’t wanted to die. He had simply never understood the fear behind such a permanent and peaceful release from a deplorable life. He hadn’t ached or wished for it from a place of sorrow as he had known that some people did. His life had been a mixture of cruelty and love that always seemed to cancel one another out and leave him in a perpetual limbo of indifference. (He had grown up with an incessant overflow of feelings that he could never manage to comprehend, let alone express. Rather than death, he had learned to long for the relief of being ripped open and scrubbed clean of every woeful and inexplicable thing that had ever plagued him.)

It was only fitting, then, that he be punished by the asphyxiating encompassment of it; a mother whose illness marked its ever-approaching presence and a lover who yearned for it in ways that he was terrified he would never be able to abate. Persistent visits to a hospital in which it bled from the walls and burrowed beneath the skin of every occupant like a leech. 

His neutrality had steadily turned to an incessant and gnawing horror that left him calling desperately upon a God whose presence he had long since rejected. Please don’t take them from me, he pleaded. I know that I don’t deserve them—I don’t deserve him. But please, just let me keep them a little while longer. I’m not finished loving him yet, please. Tear me apart limb from limb and drain every drop of blood that I hold if that’s the penance that you desire, but please, let me hold him while you do it. 

He rubbed furiously at his eyes and cursed himself silently when he realized how close to Regulus his pleas had strayed. This was not about Regulus, nor the irremediable and paralyzing fear of losing this love that consumed him like a flame. This was about his mother, the sole source of comfort that had protected the most fragile parts of him before he had learned to do so himself. 

He lifted his face from the safety of his palms and winced at the brightness of the room. He had always hated that, the fluorescent lights that bounced off of blindingly white walls that throbbed behind his eyes. The only sources of color came from the blue front counter and light blue chairs that lined every wall of the waiting area. The decor was bland, boring beige portraits and a sparse scatter of plants whose only purpose was consolation. As if a leaf could erase his mother’s sickness; as if a flower could ease the dread that twisted through the hollow cavity of his chest. He rested his elbows on his knees and clasped his hands together as he stared emptily at the waiting area of St. Mungo’s and held nothing but hatred for the illness that had cursed them to its Purgatory. 

“Sit up,” hissed the man beside him. “You will not humiliate this family by being so informal in the face of its tragedies.” 

Barty sent his father a sidelong glance and hated him so badly that it burned right alongside his pathetic cesspools of terror. He straightened his posture and crossed his arms over his chest in the hopes that the pressure would subdue the ache inside of it. “You act as though her illness matters to you,” he mumbled in response. He recognized how stupid it was to antagonize the man who had only ever brought him pain. While he knew that the man would never be so vicious as to punish him in such a public setting, he also knew how much worse it was when his anger was given time to fester. 

He could feel the tension that took refuge in his father’s frame. “Don’t you dare insinuate that I do not care about her.” His tone was callous in a way that Barty had never thought he would allow himself to be beyond the confines of his home. He instinctively glanced at the man behind the counter just a few feet away. Don’t you hear him? He thought desperately. Don’t you see how cruel he is? He continued sorting the papers before him without so much as a flicker of focus. 

“Is it the same care that you have people believe you hold for me?” The tension that settled menacingly between father and son was nearly palpable in its severity. Barty fought the urge to shift in his seat as the pressure in his chest expanded and something uneasily similar to panic began to coil in his gut. He had the unsettling sensation of being split open and eviscerated of the loathing that had coaxed such destructive words to his lips. 

The stagnant stillness that had built a precarious home between them was shattered by the sudden movement of his father’s hand. It wrapped around his wrist and squeezed so tightly that Barty had to clench his teeth against the agonizing grind of bone as he was wrenched unbearably close to the fury that leaked from his father with every hot breath; the fury that his words had kindled. The dark thing in his chest came alive and writhed with anguish. “You are lucky that your mother is not here to witness such insolence,” he growled. “You are lucky that she is oblivious to the burden of you.” There was a moment, just a moment, in which Barty thought—half-crazed by the dangerous concoction of sorrow and terror—that his father was going to squeeze until the bones in his grasp shattered. 

He clenched his jaw against the retort that bubbled in his throat like bile. He knew, somewhere distantly, that he was right. He knew that if his mother ever bore witness to the affliction that was her son, she would certainly turn her back on him. If she saw him, every bruised and broken bit of him, she would wrinkle her nose in revulsion and scrub her life clean of any possible trace of him. If she saw the unlovable mess of a boy that she had helped to create, she would become just as angry as his father, just as violent. Because he hadn’t been born that way, had he? His mother had loved him, still loved him, for a reason; he couldn’t have always been this wrathful, this cruel. Barty had made him that way.

Bartemius Crouch relinquished his grip and Barty grit his teeth against the ache that instantly began to throb through his forearm. He battled the urge to cradle his wrist against his chest like some sort of pathetic child. He glanced at his father and the carefully curated mask of indifference that had resumed its place over malleable features and hated him so badly that he could barely breathe around it. 

He stood from his seat without saying a word. His father didn’t so much as send him a sidelong glance as he turned and started down the corridor that looked as though it would take him the furthest. He didn’t care where it led as long as it put space between him and the wrathful form of such a pitiful-looking man. Violence seeped from him and wove through the air like a disease that left open wounds along the pathetically delicate frame of such a woefully fragile boy. Even as the distance between them grew, the incessant ache of his father’s cruelty remained lodged between his ribs like a blade whose removal would do little more than maim. 

He wasn’t sure how far he made it before he decided that he didn’t want to walk anymore. He pressed his back to the wall and slid to the floor with limbs that felt as though they were being weighed down by the stones of every inexplicable emotion that had ever chosen his harrowed and hollow body as its home. (He had the panicked thought, somewhere distantly, that he wouldn’t be capable of standing again.) He cradled his throbbing wrist against his aching chest and, consumed by shame and sorrow and rage, allowed himself to tremble. 

Barty had seen his mother the previous night. 

The nights, ever since his return from school, had proven themselves the hardest. His sheets were too cold and his bed was too empty without another body to share it. Every night, as exhaustion ebbed at the corners of his mind and he silently begged it to let him sleep, he lay awake until the moon was replaced by the sun and the stars were put to rest. He tried not to look at them, tried to keep his eyes averted from the constellation that housed half of his heart, for it only made that gruesome and lonely ache inside of him writhe in its misery. The small bouts of sleep that he did manage to steal were plagued by nightmares so dark that he often awoke with sweat-stained sheets and a scream trapped suffocatingly in his throat. 

So, he had gone in search of the only thing that could soothe even a scrap of the sorrow inside of him. 

He had climbed onto her bed and she had looked at him with love in her eyes and he had known, deep down, that her illness had worsened again. “You’re leaving in the morning, aren’t you?” He had whispered. His voice had been small, a child terrified of losing his mother. Her smile, soft in a way that made him want to weep, had been his answer. “How long?” 

“I’m not sure.” Her voice had been so quiet, so frail. She had reached up with a trembling hand and brushed the hair from his face as she had always done when he was young, as though he was the one in need of comfort. “Hopefully not too terribly long.” 

The silence that had settled in the room had been one of despair. He remembered the way that her eyes had fixed on his cheekbone, the soft frown that had marred her face as her fingers traced the cut that he had never bothered to heal. From her eyes had fallen invisible tears of remorse. “He means well,” she had whispered to him. 

Barty had simply nodded his head and blocked the blade of anguish from striking his heart. “I know.” He had grown used to it, as a child, this ceaseless assurance that his father didn’t mean to be so cruel. He had needed to. For years, this numbness to his mother’s unremitting excuses for his abuser had been the only thing protecting the small semblance of sanity that his fragile mind had managed to cling to. 

“He’s not a bad man.” She had cupped his cheek and held it tenderly. It had felt shamefully as though poison were seeping from palm to skull. 

He had swallowed back the bile that had risen to join the screams that tore apart the lining of his throat. His words had come out little more than a plaintive rasp. “I know, mum.”  

She had smiled at him then, all strained softness and hidden anguish. “You’ll be alright.” It was something that she had always loved to tell him, as though repeating it like a mantra to such a vulnerable and broken boy would make it any less of a lie. 

The sitting room of 12 Grimmauld Place was swimming with bodies. 

Adults exchanged spurious pleasantries while adolescents waded among them and mocked their self-fabricated masks of civility. Every inch of the decrepit house was occupied by superficial conversations that leaked with ridicule under the imperceptible guise of affability; predators all wearing the disguise of their prey. Every breath was heavy with the tangible weight of hostility. The atmosphere was familiar to those who had attended the rare gatherings hosted by Walburga and Orion Black and asphyxiating to those who hadn’t. It was how they always seemed to like them, after all; a bloodbath of fake niceties all directed for the soft flesh of the throat. Those were simply the sort of people whom they insisted on surrounding themselves with; those who could match them in cruelty and surpass them in deceit. (Their son had never understood the point; they prided themselves on their ability to manipulate, to deliver the killing blow before their target had even noticed the first wound. Intentionally and exclusively surrounding themselves with people who reveled in their prowess to do the same seemed exceptionally counterproductive.)

Regulus Black nursed a drink and observed the carnage from the outskirts of a secluded corner. 

He wouldn’t have come had it not been for the unspoken threats that had bled from his mother’s insistence that he be there. His skin crawled with the proximity of so many warm bodies and his mind ached with the desperate want to be upstairs; hidden beneath the haven of his blankets, rotting in a pool of immedicable exhaustion and the agonizing and incessant longing for his lover. 

He glanced disdainfully toward the clock and fought the urge to stomp like a child when he saw that it had only just passed one in the morning. Despite the prim facade that they donned every other day, their gatherings started late and ended with the sun. (He had never understood the point of this either. Evidently, there were quite a few things that he didn’t understand about the people whose validation he inscrutably sought and whose personalities he was petrified of adopting.)

He breathed a sigh of disappointment and took a sip of the innominate liquid in his glass. He was just beginning to wonder whether staying was even worth the escape of punishment when the achingly empty space beside him was suddenly filled. 

“Your house certainly explains your miserable personality.” The sound of such a familiar voice did little more than sour his already foul mood. 

He sent a sidelong glance at the head of pale blond hair who had unsolicitedly taken residence beside him. He didn’t bother feigning indifference and scowled as he returned his attention to the pool of bodies before him. “You’ve been to my house before.” 

Evan Rosier absently studied the book spines that lined the shelf to his left. “Every time I’m here, I’m reminded of how incomprehensible it seems that someone could grow up in a house like this and turn out even slightly sane.” He shrugged and swirled the contents of his glass. “I’m surprised that you’re as stable as you seem to be, even with the buffer of your brother.” 

Regulus frowned at the boy beside him. “Was that a compliment?” 

Evan shrugged again and turned his head languidly to meet Regulus’ eyes. “I’d like to think that my insulting your house and personality balanced it out.” He raised his glass to his lips and took a slow sip. “If you’d prefer it, I could speak on the absence of your mutt.” 

Regulus’ expression morphed into one of malice as the dormant flames of malevolence that he had unwillingly housed since birth suddenly sparked to life. “Don’t call him that,” he snarled through clenched teeth. He clutched the glass in his hand so tightly that he became distantly aware of how near it was to shattering. His knuckles longed for the familiar feeling of such angular and fragile bones.

Evan arched a pale and accusatory brow. “You’re the one who requested animosity. You brought that part upon yourself.”

“I did not request anything.” His words seeped with vexation as he bit back the urge to continue. He had promised Barty that he would be careful over the summer; antagonizing Evan Rosier into a fight in the middle of a room full of vicious people seemed quite the opposite. He forced air into his half-full lungs and placed his glass carefully on the mantle behind him. “Unless you came here to do anything other than insult me, I should probably be going.” 

He had hardly made it a single step when Evan’s voice faltered his leave. “Wait.” He considered continuing his departure despite the protest. He would have, had it not been for the note of distress that wove between every confounding letter. 

Regulus turned slowly and trained a skeptical gaze on the inexplicably uncomfortable boy behind him. “What more could you possibly need?” 

Evan Rosier shifted and scowled slightly. His words were cautious—as though their utterance was bringing him physical pain. “I need… to talk to you about… something.” He glanced at the cesspool of people that writhed through the room behind Regulus. When his gaze returned to the other boy, there was something desperate in it. “Privately.” 

Regulus narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “What could you possibly need to speak to me about that would require privacy?” 

Evan glowered at him. “If I wanted you dead I would have let the Bludgers hit you in France,” he snapped. 

Regulus took a silent moment to study the boy before him. No matter how much he hated to admit it, there were far better places to make an attempt on his life than the house of two people desperate to maintain the viability of their sole remaining heir. He bit his tongue against the urge to decline and breathed a heavy sigh of exasperation. He didn’t give him the satisfaction of a spoken word and simply nodded for Evan to follow before he continued the blissful departure from a room stuffed with vultures.

He allowed himself only a moment of hesitation before he opened the door to the study down the hall and ushered Evan inside. Had it not been the closest room with the ability to offer some semblance of privacy, he would have preferred to go anywhere else. He hated the downstairs study and the family tree that claimed one of its walls; hated the sorrow that consumed him when he saw the black spot where his brother’s existence had once resided. It was one of the only rooms in the house whose contents overshadowed the hounding memory of the pain that he had endured there.  

Evan was studying that godforsaken wall when Regulus crossed the threshold and shut the door behind him. A confused crease formed between his brows as he traced one of its seven black marks gingerly. “It’s what they do when someone gets disowned,” Regulus explained. Evan glanced at him as he leaned against the opposite wall—as far from his family tree as he could get—and crossed his arms. “They burn them off.” 

The furrow of Evan’s brow deepened as he returned his attention to the wall and took a step back, eyes darting from one burn mark to another. “Well that’s… bizarre.” 

Regulus, who steadfastly refused to agree with Evan Rosier on anything, simply shrugged. “They’ve always done it.” 

Evan spared the family tree one final glance before turning to face the other occupant of the study. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his trousers and glanced around the room as though its contents were the reason for their attendance.

“Can we get on with this, please?” Regulus’ voice splintered the silence that had settled restlessly between them. His body was growing heavy with the unignorable exhaustion that the absence of Barty never allowed him to satiate and a headache had begun budding in his temples. 

Evan cleared his throat and straightened his posture as though readying himself for a presentation. He trained his gaze on Regulus’ own and winced with every word that fell from his lips. “I wanted to… apologize.” 

Regulus blinked in surprise before narrowing his eyes skeptically. “You want to apologize?” His words were slow as his mind tried to wrap itself around the idea that Evan Rosier was offering him repentance. “For…?”

He schooled his features into the scowl that Regulus had grown accustomed to. Something about it offered enigmatic relief to a fraction of his doubt. “For everything.” He withheld from spitting the words like the acid that they resembled. 

“Why?” Regulus’ head spun with the disbelief of it—the qualms of its reality. “You tried to kill me. More than once.” 

Evan looked as though every word was a knife splitting his throat with its exit. “Because I have realized that I was… immature. For hating you. For doing the things that I did.” He sounded small, somehow, like the admission had cracked something inside of him and from it had leaked every drop of hostility that he had previously contained. “I know that there’s no excuse for what I did to you. I know that I was stupid and childish and wrong for hating you for something that wasn’t your fault; I understand that you didn’t ask for any of it.” 

“Any of what?” From the depths of his mind clawed a small spark of a memory, a line of dialogue that he had spent days trying to decipher. “Is this about what you said fourth year? About me being your biggest competition?” 

Evan sighed and shut his eyes as though the memory pained him. Regulus had the unexplainable and unsettling feeling that it did. “As I said, I was very immature.” He opened his eyes, full of guilt and sorrow. Regulus wished, ridiculously, for him to close them again. “The reason that I hated you was because of the Dark Lord’s inexplicable and obvious favoritism for you. My father…” He breathed an exasperated sigh at his inability to articulate exactly what he wanted to say. It was slower when he started again. “I spent the first eleven years of my life being told that I had to become exactly what you did within the first five minutes of meeting the man. I hated you because I was scared of what happened to me every time you did exactly what was expected of me; every time you managed what I never could. 

“I understand that it isn’t an excuse. I know that I was wrong — I know that it was childish to hate you for something that you didn’t choose.” He took a moment to breathe and Regulus used the spare seconds of silence to pull apart every word that had settled inside of his skull. “I just wanted to tell you that I’m sorry. For everything. I’m sorry for everything that I’ve done to you.” His voice was sincere and his expression was serious and Regulus, perhaps foolishly, believed him. 

“Why are you telling me this?” The only thing keeping him tethered to his sanity was the idea that there was some ulterior motive; that one of the only consistent parts of his life wasn’t shifting as suddenly—as inexplicably—as so many other things had. “Why now?” 

Evan shrugged and kicked absently at the rug beneath his feet. “I’ve wanted to apologize for a while. I just couldn’t find the words, I suppose.” He saw the hesitation on his face and quickly matched it with that familiar expression of distaste. “I don’t want to be friends now, if that’s what you’re so concerned about. I just don’t want to be… whatever we are. Adversaries?” 

“So you want to be… acquaintances?” The entire conversation was so absurd that Regulus had to choke back a laugh. He was quite sure that he was losing his mind. 

“You can call it whatever you want.” 

Regulus narrowed his eyes and Evan rolled his own at the sight. “I’m not going to forgive you after just one apology.” 

He scowled faintly. “I don’t need you to.” 

Regulus worried the skin of his cheek between his teeth as he considered the words that had been spoken. The silence that had grown stale between them was shattered as he released a sigh heavy with defeat. The most rational parts of him screeched their protest as he spoke. “Okay.” 

Evan raised his eyebrows softly. “Okay,” he said after a moment of silent anticipation for contradiction. His shoulders relaxed as the word fell from his tongue. He removed his hands from his pockets and shook them out at his sides with a sigh. “That was the most painful thing I’ve ever had to fucking do.” 

Regulus rolled his eyes as he pushed himself up from his perch against the wall and started for the exit, eager to escape the confines of such a gruesome room. “I’m very relieved to see that you still have your glowing personality.” 

Regulus was sitting on the top step of the kitchen stairs when his mother found him. 

“Regulus,” she hissed. Before his enervated body could process her presence enough to go defensively tense, fingers were digging painfully into the sensitive flesh of his shoulder. He bit back a whimper as he was dragged to standing and forced to face the woman whose wrath wrapped around him like barbed wire. “What are you doing?” She demanded. Her fingers tightened on his shoulder and it took every bit of coherence in his fatigued mind not to pull away. “You’re meant to be participating, not sitting on the stairs.” 

He was tired and lonely and the ache that consumed his body went so much deeper than physical. He didn’t have it in himself to argue; he hardly had it in himself to feel fear over the fury in his mother’s voice. He simply blinked at her with bloodshot eyes and allowed the pain of her hand to distract from the agony of his longing. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. 

She narrowed her eyes and released his shoulder with a distasteful shove, as though one more second of contact would be all it took for his pathetic state of desolation to spread like a disease. “You’re meant to be getting used to this, Regulus.” 

He didn’t know what it was about her words that made him understand. He heard them and something in his exhausted mind clung to them like an answer; the final piece to a puzzle that had only just been sluggishly constructed. He furrowed his brow and stared at the woman before him as dread pooled in the pit of his stomach. “That’s what this is,” he whispered. His voice was hoarse with exhaustion and horror as he increased his volume. “This whole thing—” 

“Keep your voice down.” The threat was clear in her tone. Regulus was too preoccupied with his own panic to notice it. 

“— has been to find me a suitor.” 

She scowled at him. “Don’t be ridiculous, Regulus.” 

Regulus, for just a brief moment in time, felt relieved. He had been wrong; he wasn’t going to be married off to a girl he hardly knew against his will. He was going to graduate and he was going to leave and he and Barty were going to build a life together on foundations that weren’t so bloodstained. They were going to be happy—

“We’ve already found you a suitor.” 

He didn’t remember much of what happened next. He was exhausted and the anguish of his yearning mixed with the horror of his mother’s words was enough to push him over the ledge that he had been unknowingly teetering on since the moment he had stepped foot over that wretched threshold. His head spun with sorrow and his vision swam with anger; his ears rang with despair and his chest burned with grief. The walls mocked and the floors jeered and it was all too much, everything was too much . His skin itched and his lungs split themselves in half and he couldn’t breathe around the agony that writhed excruciatingly inside of what little space remained. His body was tearing itself apart and the darkness of his disease-ridden mind was seeping through the cracks because this couldn’t happen. 

He wasn’t sure whether the decision to leave had been a conscious one or if the small piece of sanity that had somehow survived the massacre of his mother’s words had been strong enough to tell his ravaged body to flee. He only vaguely registered the outrage that leaked from the incessant repetition of his name and the distant affliction of his shoulder as it connected with the wall in his attempt to shove past the formidable form before him. 

The sky was a dark and dreary canvas of pre-dawn grey and the front stoop creaked beneath his step as he crossed the threshold and the unimaginable weight of his childhood house began its steady withdrawal from the bruised and broken abode of his shoulders. His mind scrambled for the temporarily and pitifully forgotten knowledge of how to breathe, how to exist beyond this panic that had claimed it. His thoughts, what little scraps remained, centralized themselves on the desperate and throbbing want that pulsed through every vein; his desire for solace, his hunger for sanctuary. 

Barty Crouch Jr. didn’t know what was wrong with him. 

He lay awake in an empty house with the weight of this indescribable sorrow pinning him to the mattress. It had grown slowly as the days without his mother had passed, hidden until the point of debilitation by the incessant and aching darkness that had been afflicting him since his return from school. He was far too exhausted to move and far too sorrowful to sleep and the dark thing in his chest was thrashing through him with the delight of its corruption. His eyes lay trained on the bare ceiling above him as sunlight spilled through his parted curtains and warmed the skin of his immovable limbs.

He had felt himself getting worse over the course of the previous day. He had stayed in bed for far longer than he would have normally allowed himself in the name of this feigned sense of normalcy that he foolishly clung to like a cure. He had wandered into the vacant kitchen during the times of his usual meals and sat silently with nausea in his throat and hunger absent despite the gnawing ache of his stomach. He had ambled through the house like a ghost as though he wasn’t present in the harrowed and despondent shell of his body. He had dropped onto the couch and rubbed absently at the bruise circling his wrist with eyes unfocused on the rug and thoughts cycling between his inexplicable disorientation and insurmountable grief. The sun had set before he had even begun to process the passage of time at all. 

To his credit, he had tried to write it down. He had forced himself into the chair at his desk and scraped together every shred of coherence that his tragic mind was able to produce. However, when he tried to describe it—to take every incomprehensible feeling that squirmed inside of him and transfer it to something as inconsequential as paper—nothing about it felt right . He scribbled two words for every one that he wrote until, eventually, he drew ink across every letter and scrawled the only thing that made sense. 

Regulus, 

I don’t know what’s happening to me. 

It sat folded on his desk. He had told himself that he would mail it out with the rise of the sun; he would send Regulus this pathetically short and desperate plea for help because he had made a promise and he was not going to risk destroying this beautiful thing, unpolluted by his inexplicable sadness, that he had been so undeservingly granted. 

The thought of Regulus drew a shaky sigh from failing lungs. He knew that Regulus would have taken care of him had he been there. He knew that Regulus would have held Barty close and whispered soft words of reassurance and love into the ears of such an unlovable boy. He knew that Regulus would have gently urged him to eat and shower and cradled him tenderly when he inevitably couldn’t. He knew that Regulus would have taken care of him and the thought that he would have to at all made him feel so ashamed of himself that he could hardly breathe around it. He wasn’t supposed to be this way. He wasn’t supposed to be this pitiful and broken boy who needed the help of his partner to hold himself together. He was supposed to be stable and capable of keeping every atrocity that lived inside of him from seeping through unstitched cracks. 

He wasn’t sure how much time passed before the agonizing ache of his shame was enough to force him out of bed. He knew, somewhere distantly, that he wouldn’t be able to achieve the same feat the following day unless something changed. He had the unfathomable and humiliating urge to weep from the sheer frustration of feeling so many things and not being able to understand a single fucking one of them. He sat on the edge of his bed and his body trembled and he wanted so badly to just feel better. 

It was longer still before he could manage to stand. He dressed sluggishly in a pair of trousers and an oxford whose buttons he could only manage to do half of and sleeves rolled haphazardly to his elbows. He sniffled as he shuffled out of the cesspool of mourning and resent that his bedroom had slowly become over the dreadful course of his return. 

He settled onto the warm couch of a sun-drenched sitting room and felt hollow with longing. He pulled his knees to his chest and reached absently for the book that he had left sitting on the coffee table before everything had suddenly become so arduous. He splayed the book across his thighs and trained his vacant gaze onto its overwhelmingly ink-filled pages as everything inside of him erupted into misery. 

He wasn’t sure how long he had been sitting there before Winky found him. He turned his head slowly at the sound of her arrival and she wrung her hands uneasily at the emptiness behind his eyes. “Someone is being at the door.” 

He blinked languidly as his disjointed mind scrambled to piece together a rational response. “If they’re here for father, send them away.” His voice was a rasp, barely there. It only added to the pool of shame that twisted uneasily in the pit of his stomach. 

“He is being here for you.” 

He sat up just a bit straighter as alertness filled what little space remained of his decaying mind. “Are you sure?” 

“Yes. He is be asking for you.” 

He closed the book in his lap and slowly returned it to its spot on the coffee table. The lucid parts of his mind raced for an answer as to who would possibly be at the door in search of him. He stood from the couch and contained just enough logical thought to roll his sleeves over his forearms and the tattoo that marred the left before starting for the entrance hall. He sent an inescapable and sorrowful glance toward the portrait that hung tauntingly on its wall when he entered. He had the sudden and absurd urge to offer it to whoever stood waiting on the other side of the door. 

The second he opened the door and laid eyes on the body that occupied the front stoop, he froze. He grappled for the edge of the door and held it like an anchor as he stared disbelievingly at the boy who stood impossibly before him. Their gazes met and it was so soft and loving and everything inside of Barty wanted to scream with the sheer warmth of it. 

“Hi,” Regulus whispered. The sound of his voice alone was enough to rekindle that desperate and childish urge to fall to his knees and hide his face within the safety of his palms and weep. 

He looked at Regulus and felt the calamity that thrashed inside of his chest slowly begin to decay. He looked at the mess of untamed curls that hung haphazardly around his face. He looked at sharp features and soft skin splattered with faint freckles whose positions he had memorized. He looked at grey eyes framed by long lashes whose gaze overflowed with the care, the love , that never failed to warm him down to the bone. He looked at soft lips whose touch he had yearned for like a part of himself gone missing. He looked at a slender throat and curved shoulders whose junction he longed to mark with the bruising bite of his love. He looked at gentle hands that had never hurt him and whose touch he trusted more than anything. 

He looked at Regulus Black and he was so overwhelmed that he wanted to collapse into a puddle and sob because he was here and he was real and he was half of his soul and the darkness inside of him was fading. He looked at this boy who he loved more than he could ever possibly comprehend and, for what felt like the first time since his return from school, he took a breath.