Entry tags:

fic: lucius/regulus, livelongnmarry, rating: nc-17

A Prelude To Ruin - 1/2
Title: A Prelude To Ruin
Pairings: Lucius/Regulus (background Lucius/Narcissa)
Word Count: ~17,000
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Minor character death and implied major character death, violence, dark themes, rimming, some aspects of a d/s relationship, a collar, a blindfold, implied abuse, angst

Notes: Written for Melusina for livelongnmarry. Quote at the start is from 'Black Sheep' by Martin Sexton, and the headers from 'Asking For More' by Sarah Manguso. Beta’d by my sister, the poor dear. Oh, and this is, technically speaking, completely and utterly canon compliant, I swear. I've just filled in some of the blanks (with slash, sex, and one of my favourite pairings, but shush, it totally still is.)



Part 1/2 -

A Prelude To Ruin

Somebody told me once before,
“You can never go home again once you leave”
Say anything just to steer me away from the truth of who I am and what I believe …


I: I am not asking to suffer less.

This is how it starts, he thinks:

He is seven – dark hair, dark eyes, red lips and more limbs than he knows what to do with; still growing into his skin, still able to get away with being a little too feminine, all fine bones and slim wrists and smooth baby-fine skin. Old enough to know the taste of blood in the back of his mouth, the impact of a fist against his temple, the sound of his own bones breaking; not old enough to realize that his brother doesn’t truly hate him yet.

There’s a hand on his left shoulder, the fingers digging in a little too hard below his collarbone, a thumb pressed against the back of his neck; the heat radiating from his father’s body so strong it seems stifling. He’s got his eyes on the floor in front of him, on the polished tops of a pair of dragonhide boots and the hem of the black cloak moving over them, trapped in the mingled shadows of two bodies. Both tall, both broad, both blocking separate sources of light until the only part of him that’s illuminated is the back of his right hand and two inches worth of heavy velvet sleeve. He’s following the conversation, but only because he has too; and he’s not speaking, but only because he’s not allowed to.

He’s bored, but that’s nothing new.

The man his father is talking to has blond hair, blue eyes - dark, like the ocean, like the reflection of thunderheads in the harbor - and a voice Regulus can’t pin down; one moment slippery, like treacle, sweet and smooth, and then sliding into stone, into footsteps in wet gravel. It feels odd, somehow, to think of a voice as something constantly moving, something that won’t keep still, but that’s what’s going through his mind and it makes his fingers itch with the need to make it stop, to grab it and hold it in one place, if only for a moment. But there’s no way he can do that and he’s not foolish enough to try.

There’s a boy playing Bach on the violin, half-reclined on the window seat, mostly obscured from view by the cluster of people watching him perform – all Regulus can see, peering up now from under his eyelashes, is the toe of one polished black boot, the long line of a leather-clad calf, the scroll of the instrument and, if he’s lucky, the neck of it too, cradled in white fingers that flick effortlessly over the strings. He recognizes the tune, though he cannot name it - but that’s not what matters.

What matters is that if he moves to the left, just an inch or so, then he can see around Cygnus’ shoulder and catch the boy’s reflection in the window, smudged across the glass, rippled and warped by the too-bright light. But there is enough definition in the image to see the glistening copper-tinged wood of the violin, the creamy strings of the bow, a white braid pressed between one shoulder and the glass, and a face, head tilted away from the crowd, a lock of hair covering one eye, the sharp angle of a cheekbone and the lips split open on the barest trace of a snarl. This is Lucius Malfoy; he does not know it yet, not really, but he will.

The first glimpse and it means something, it must, but Regulus doesn’t know what. What he knows, what he notices - what no one else does - is that the boy is lost inside his eyes, lost in the space between the notes, in the scale, in the tempo; he’s disappeared behind the tune, behind the physicality of the movements, gone to some place where no one else can reach, and what he’s left behind is little more than a puppet, a shell. And, though they all wear masks, somehow this isn’t the same.

It’s nowhere near the same.

There’s something fierce, something dangerous to it, and Regulus knows, before they’ve even truly met, that this boy is not like him. Not, at heart, beholden to any law bar his own - a contradiction in fire and ice, in beauty and terror. Not in any way predictable, and never safe.

Already forsaken, but pretty nonetheless.

He's seven – he doesn't know what this means; is aware only of the feeling of something spinning at the back of his head, sick and colourless, like the impact of his brother's fist on the white skin of his temple. The colour of the room turned grey, his vision tilting, and he puts the back of his hand to his lips and tells himself that he isn't afraid. This isn't fear.

But he's young, and he's lying.


***

He's got grey eyes, blond hair, a scar at the base of one finger, plays the violin, drinks red wine with dinner; gives him a half-quirked sort of smile when Regulus calls him 'Sir' – and this shouldn't be enough, not really…

But it is.

He knows what the name Malfoy means – two syllables used to capture the weight of centuries, of blood and magic and aristocratic brutality. Selectively bred for beauty, for cunning, for strength, power, and a bloodline far purer than most. Honed like steel blades by the lessons of history, made notorious through the years for sharp tongues and sharper minds. Oh, he knows this, he does, but that’s not the name he’s thinking about. Because this is Lucius, and Lucius is an enigma, an unknown quantity, something he hasn’t planned for. Someone he doesn’t understand, and a surname only provides so many pieces to the puzzle.

There's just something about him, Regulus thinks - just something about him, and he can't put his finger on it. Because he's hiding a lot behind those eyes, behind that face and its chilled androgyny; beautiful in a way that should be feminine but isn't, graceful in a way that doesn't look quite human - such a perfectly sculpted expression of elegant disdain that Regulus has to ball his hands into fists just to stave off the temptation to see if it will crack under his fingers.

And he, in contrast - in stark, devastating contrast - is just a boy, just a shadow, just a spare. Necessary simply as an afterthought, as something that becomes valuable only after another thing has broken; a trinket, really, and little more. Yet, despite this, Lucius' eyes are focused on him again; intense, bleached in the bright lights to become the colour of clear winter sky, following his moments with a kind of casual intrigue, as if he could be doing the same to anyone - except he's not, he hasn't been, and it doesn't make any sense, it doesn't.

Because he's Regulus, because he's the second son, because he doesn't matter...

Because Malfoy, of all people, should know that.


***

"Couldn't keep your eyes off him, could you?"

Later, when the lights have gone out and his parents are asleep, when the windows are closed and his brother has stopped moving in the room next door, Regulus will ask himself this question and answer, without hesitation, ‘no, I couldn't, I didn't want to’ - but now, with Sirius standing over him, throwing shadows across the pages of his book, one hand clutching his shoulder, he says "I don't know what you're talking about" and doesn't lift his head, doesn't even glance up.

"Liar," Sirius replies, and tightens his grip for a second before he lets go and shoves his hands into his pockets, not moving away, not putting any space between them because he knows how much Regulus hates him being this close. "You spent the whole evening eyeing up that pretty boy Malfoy, and don't even try to deny it 'cause I saw you, Reg."

Regulus eyes are fixed on the page of his book, on the middle of the second line of the first paragraph, on the date '1849', and he won't look at his brother, just wants him to go away because he doesn't want to talk about this, not really. "If you saw me, Sirius, isn't asking if I did it rather pointless?"

A shrug, his brother’s shadow stretching and receding across Regulus' body in time with the movement.

"I wanted to see if you'd admit it," Sirius says, dropping one shoulder and looking across at the open window, where the curtains are stirring fitfully in the wind, the sky beyond the glass turning to a dull, cloudy grey. "Which you haven't. Why's that, Reg? It’s not like it'd be news to me or anything, since I already know and all." And he reaches out again, closes his hand around the top of the book, and Regulus wants to tell him to go away, to stop being such a wanker and quit wasting his time, but he doesn’t; and Sirius pulls the book from him without even a hint of resistance because there’s no chance, no fucking chance. Less than one year of difference between their ages, but Sirius has inches on him and fists that know how to break bones, even if it’s mostly accidental. Regulus knows how to fight but he’s not built for it, rarely wins. It just isn’t worth it, not this time.

“Who knows, you might even have a chance with him in a few years,” Sirius adds, closing the book. “Bella says he’s bent.”

“Bella says a lot of things,” Regulus mutters, turning his head to the side – the comment rankles him, and he knows what Sirius is doing, that he’s just trying to get under his skin, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t working. “If anything, she’s a little broken.”

The buttons of Sirius’ collar are undone, there’s a beat of sweat on his collarbone, and when Regulus looks back at him this is what he focuses on; licks his lower lip, coloured a deep blood-red by his teeth long before his brother entered the room.

Sirius snorts, dragging his fingertips over the book’s cover; pushes the hair from his eyes. “Mother says they’re going to marry, you know?” – and Regulus thinks of spellfire, of the harsh bright-light of it so quick to burn out, so like Bella, while Lucius is sea and sky and sheet lightning, all coiled grace and shimmering power that's barely leashed; hot and sudden and sharp and burning and so many other things at once. Contradiction upon contradiction upon contradiction…

He draws in a breath, tilts his head back against his chair to meet his brother’s eyes. “They won’t,” he says, and means it.


***

There is a war coming.

His parents talk of it in dark corners, places where they think he cannot hear, where they think they do not need to bother with charms to keep him away; but the house is old, and full of magic, and it echoes in ways it shouldn’t. They speak of vengeance, and power, and the strength of blood; they speak of great things to come.

They whisper – always whisper – the name that is not a name; that of a ghost, a phantom, a savior, a man who is outside of the human race. And Regulus sits in the stairwell, hidden in the shadows, and thinks of Lucius; of how this man is not him, but how he could be, he could. They call this shadow a leader, they call him a Lord, and he closes his eyes and says, quietly, so they will not hear “Not mine. Never mine. No, not mine.”

These days he dreams of winter with almost frightening regularity. Of snow and trees with gnarled branches standing bare, reduced to mere skeletons and glorious in their harsh nakedness - but more often of ice, glittering on the windowpane, intricate and fragile and beautiful, or sprawling across lakes with far-distant shores, thick, like glass, almost, wet and frigid against his fingertips even during the most fleeting and restless of his daydreams.

He dreams of clear, crisp blue skies and the bite of the wind, the scratch of a scarf against his neck and the feeling of cold air in his lungs. He dreams that there is a voice, always in the back of his mind, disconnected from any face; a voice without a mouth, without a body from which it could come. Whispering, softly, calmly ‘I will wait for you. I will wait for you, and in return you will give me everything… everything…’ And Regulus does not pretend not to understand; resistance has been futile from the very beginning.

His fate was decided with one look and, in truth, he cannot say that he minds too much.


II: I hope to be nearly crucified.

The first time Regulus talks to Lucius – really talks to him – he is nine; still built like a greyhound, still overly pretty, a little more comfortable in his own skin, but not by much. Lucius is seventeen, white cravat knotted neatly at his throat, the collar of his black coat standing stiffly upright, one gloved hand curled around the wineglass he’s placed on the balcony rail, his braided hair the colour of moonlight in the light spilling free from the ballroom. They’re at the Manor again, and the surroundings flatter him in ways he doesn’t truthfully need.

Regulus stands frozen, his fingers clutching at the air above the handle of the French doors – they’re closed at his back, the ominous click of the latch still hanging between them, the only sound that of his own heartbeat and the distant rumble of the people they’ve left behind. His body is taut with nervous tension, and he wants to say something, he does, but he can’t seem to find any words.

“No need to keep so far away,” Lucius murmurs, glancing back over his shoulder with eyes like cut glass, bright and brilliant and filled with the reflection of starlight. “For all the stories you may have heard about me, I really don’t tend to bite.” A slight flash of teeth, and Lucius’ voice is dark, magnetic, laced with something that brings a hot flush of embarrassment to Regulus’ cheeks.

He steps away from the door awkwardly, unsure of himself and willing to show it – his parents speak of Lucius in the same terms they use for the dragons his grandfather used to hunt: formidable, lawless, ruthless, powerful. Someone to be feared, and respected…

Someone a little bit more dangerous than they like to admit.

“I didn’t mean to imp-” he starts, but Lucius waves a hand in his direction and his apology is cut off as cleanly as if it were sliced down the middle, the last syllables dying to an expectant silence. The blond turns his face away again, looking out over the manicured gardens and rolling lawns, the white-marble corner of the stables half-hidden by the trees beyond – he brings the wineglass up to his lips, cocking two fingers on the hand still held out, beckoning.

Regulus approaches slowly, one hand fisted in his robes for sheer lack of anything better to do with it – the other reaches for the balustrade, drawing himself up against the railing alongside Lucius. He takes in a long, shuddering breath, glancing down at his white-knuckled fingers, and it’s not until after Lucius has put his hand down beside them – black leather just touching his skin – that he remembers to let it out, so that it escapes in a half-choked rush.

For a while Lucius just watches him out of the corner of one eye, his lips curved upwards into the barest trace of a smile, a certain spark of curiosity imbuing the silence between them. Slowly, terribly slowly, Regulus loosens his grip on the elaborately wrought balustrade. He glances up – first to the stars, then to the wineglass, nearly empty, and then, cautiously, up to the line of Lucius’ jaw, the skin so pale it seems to shimmer. A moment longer and he’s found his voice.

“I hear you’re to marry my cousin.”

He doesn’t know why he says it – it’s not what he meant to say, not by a long shot – and there’s a spike of fear running through him as Lucius drinks the last of the wine, places the glass down and turns towards him, so that their bodies are inches apart, so that Regulus can feel the heat of him, is practically touching him; can’t quite bring himself to meet those eyes.

“Yes,” Lucius says, quietly, calmly. “I am.”

And he should stop – he should – because he’s overstepping the bounds of polite conversation and he knows it. They both know it. But Lucius is still watching him, still waiting, and Regulus clears his throat and says “Which one?” before he can stop himself.

“Which one do you want me to marry?” Lucius asks, honestly curious, and Regulus thinks of how, when the family gathered to talk about engagements in the dining room downstairs, Narcissa would sneak up to his room and lie on his bed and pillow his head on her chest and say “I’m the youngest, little puppy. His father would take it as a slight, you know that.” Thinks of her fingers in his hair, the silver links of the chain around her neck holding a ring she’s not supposed to have, and there’s only one answer he can possibly give.

“Narcissa loves you,” he replies, and there’s a finger under his chin, tipping his head back – Regulus can feel the warmth of skin through the glove. “I know,” Lucius replies, looking down through his eyelashes, not smiling, but somehow that doesn’t seem to matter. “Though I wasn’t aware that you did, puppy.”

The nickname sounds strange coming from him – not wrong, but different, so very different, and entirely unexpected. Lucius seems to sense his confusion; he quirks an eyebrow, tilts his head to one side, and says “My fault, I’m afraid, though I certainly didn’t intend for it to spread. I believe Narcissa thought it a rather endearing term for you.”

There is a depth to the words that Regulus doesn’t expect; meanings behind meanings, and he stands there like a deer caught in the headlights, disbelieving, because Lucius can’t be admitting what Regulus thinks he is. He’s young, but he’s no fool – there are secrets being shared here, questions being answered that he hasn’t dared to ask…

He closes his eyes, feels the thrum of his blood echoed in the air between them, in the moonlight spilling across Lucius’ face, the image burned into his mind so that he can see it, even now, trapped as he is in the startled silence of his own mind. “You,” he begins, and falters, unsure of how to express the maelstrom taking place inside his head, not knowing if he even wants to.

“Noticed you?” Lucius supplies, his voice laced with humor and hypnotic quality that makes Regulus’ heartbeat quicken. “Mentioned you?” A soft chuckle, and there’s a breath spilling warmly across his cheek, the faintest brush of lips just under his ear. “I daresay you may have noticed that I’ve even gone so far as to name you, pet.”

There’s a word – a single word – tripping its way up Regulus’ throat, hesitant, hopeful in a way he hasn’t allowed himself to be, ever; trembling and childlike, lost. When he opens his eyes they are wide and dark, uncomprehending, because he doesn’t understand, he can’t, not yet…

“Why?”

Lucius is still incredibly close, body darkly silhouetted against the star-splattered sky, skin shimmering, and he draws back only a little – just enough to catch that mystified gaze. His own is intent, vaguely amused but serious all the same. “Just something about you,” he murmurs, letting his eyes trail slowly down Regulus’ body - back up again just as languidly as he reaches out to brush two fingers across the boy’s neck, over the skin under his ear. A sly, slightly quirky smile as he adds “I expect you know the feeling.”

Regulus draws in a trembling breath, shaking his head slightly, less of a denial and more of an unconscious expression of his own inability to fully comprehend what it is that is currently taking place between them. He is young, but not innocent by any stretch of the imagination; he knows he is being seduced, tempted, baited, even. Not for his body – there is little focused sexuality to Lucius’ tone or the subtle language of his movements, bar that which simply comes to him naturally – although he cannot deny that there is a certain undercurrent of promise behind everything, of future possibility, of things still to come. This, he can understand, although not fully, and certainly not with any great deal of confidence.

What he doesn’t truly get is what exactly Lucius wants of him in this moment. A promise? A declaration that he is free to play his game, free to try and gain what he wants, whatever that may be – his mind, perhaps? His heart?

His soul?

“Yes,” he says, letting his gaze linger on Lucius’ face; on the glow of moonlight in the eyes so intently fixed upon him, highlighting the slices of mercuric silver through his irises, paling the grey to a near-white; on the smooth rise of his cheekbones, arched eyebrows, mouth still holding the lingering traces of that smile – all of it so devastatingly perfect it seems almost unnatural. His voice is the soft, reverent whisper of ancient hallways and rustling velvet. “Yes, I know the feeling.”

A faint sigh, and Lucius glances up at the stars for a moment before looking across at the closed door, the slightest hint of distaste lending a tightness to his jaw. “In time, pet,” he muses softly, studying the flickering shadows of people moving in the room beyond, tilting his head as if to better hear the soft, indistinct rumble of voices. “Yes, in time, I’m afraid.” He glances back down at Regulus, lips twitching slightly, and takes a step away, hands dropping to his sides. “We will speak again - perhaps not soon, but again nonetheless.” The slightest inclination of his head, and Lucius turns smoothly, moving back towards the doors; he curls one gloved hand around the handle, turns it, and shots a look back over his shoulder as he slides through the gap.

“Until next time, then, young Black.”

In the silence following the closing of the door Regulus watches his shadow disappearing, distorted by the glass and the golden light suffusing the room, fading into the distance; he closes his eyes, tips his head back, and wonders what it is, exactly, that he’s gotten himself into. Knows, with absolute certainty, that it the end even that doesn’t really matter…

His soul? No small price for what Lucius may offer him - but, when the time comes, one he thinks he will pay regardless.


III: To live because I don’t want to.

The months drag by like sand through an hourglass, trickling away piece by piece; his is a world slowly converted into that of shadows and whispers, of men who come and go in the dead of night, of things he sometimes wishes he didn’t understand.

But there is at least one bright spot in the darkness.

Lucius is true to his word – they meet again at a Ministry function, and again at another party at Malfoy Manor, and again, again, a hundred times over until the years are passing by in swirls of time measured by the questions ‘when will I see you again? When are you coming back?’

Sometimes they stay at the gatherings, away from the guests, in what solitude they can find – more often now mere solitude is swapped for isolation, for places lost under starlight, for the bite of the wind and the smell of grass and the spill of moonlight over them both. Lessons taught in places where the magic is so old it clings to the skin, suffuses the air, tingles in the back of his throat when he breathes. Shimmers around them as Lucius teaches him things almost forgotten – magic of blood and bone, of centuries long since passed. And he understands now, at least in part, some of what it is that has drawn them together so tightly…

There is more of the old world in them than the new.


***

Sirius will be going to Hogwarts in the fall, and he speaks of little else now; the encroaching darkness does not seem to touch him, though their parents turn to him more and more often to be a proper example of their house. He is not, and probably never will be – Regulus knows this, though perhaps he is the only one. Sirius may be born to velvet and gold, but he always has been more suited to force than mind games, for action rather than planning; he will not make Slytherin, and that fact alone leaves Regulus with his neck firmly placed upon the chopping block.

But he is not alone. No… not alone.

Lucius finds him three days before the start of term, curled up on the back porch with a blanket securely wrapped around his shoulders – it is nearly midnight, and the world is made up of shadows and moonlight; he can barely make out the shape that appears before him with a rush of wind and the faintest ‘crack’, but what he can see is more than enough. He jumps, but does not scream.

Pulling the blanket a little tighter around him and burying his chin into the fabric, Regulus peers into the darkness. “How did you get past the wards?” he asks curiously; Lucius glances down, the hood of his robes concealing everything except the bright silver of his eyes. “With ease,” comes the reply, followed by a flash of teeth when Regulus makes a disappointed noise in the back of his throat.

“You will find,” Lucius adds, settling himself down cross-legged on the porch with an easy sort of grace that makes the motion seem almost boneless, “that it is possible to slip undetected through the weaves of certain spellwork. To take them apart, even, and bind them back together in a matter of mere moments.” A long pause, and Lucius’ gaze is intent on him as he says “There are few places I am unable to go without being noticed, and fewer yet that I cannot reach at all.”

And this he could doubt, but he doesn’t – he has seen Lucius working spells in the shadows of Stonehenge, seen him touch things that aren’t, seen the shimmer of magic threading together under his fingertips, the writhe of it under his skin, the spark half-hidden behind his eyes; remembers, now, the wand lying unused on the ground by his own feet, and Lucius saying, smiling, “What makes you think I need it, pretty?”

His eyes are bright, but he does not speak; watches, instead, the frost of his breath and the glimmer of Lucius skin, like it’s been glazed over with ice, so pale, so incredibly pale…

“I came to bid you farewell,” Lucius says, and the words have an easy honesty to them – he is a man who hides and doesn’t hide simultaneously, and if there is something buried there then it is too deep for Regulus to see it. And he, he should be saying something, surely, but he’s never been good at finding the words once they start to matter.

Lucius blinks, drops his head down as he pulls off his gloves – flexes the fingers of his left hand and doesn’t speak, doesn’t speak, only lets out a breath, and Regulus wants to tell him ‘I’ll miss you’ or ‘I’ll go mad without you’ or ‘don’t leave me, please don’t leave me’ but the only thing he says is “Could you show me magic?” and even that seems enough of a plea, somehow.

There’s something about him tonight, Regulus thinks – something that doesn’t sit quite right. Just a vague sense that Lucius isn’t really inside of his own skin, doesn’t want to be, and it’s more than a little disconcerting because, damn, but he’s intense, unyielding. There’s tension, a tightness to him, like a coiled spring, and Regulus doesn’t realize that he’s been holding his breath until Lucius nods, just slightly, and reaches out to curl long, cool fingers around his wrist.

It happens without words – builds slowly, starting as a distant buzzing in the back of his head, one long, trembling note that holds, and holds, and holds; Lucius’ eyes are locked on his wrist, on his own fingers, wrapped around it, not gripping so lightly that Regulus can hardly feel it. The air smells like rain, like wet dirt, like…

Like magic.

There is nothing flashy about it, nothing blatant or sensational – there’s just a light under Lucius’ fingertips, dull at first, growing stronger, traveling down the lines of Regulus’ veins and he pulls the blanket away from his arm, shivering as the night air hits his skin; watches, fascinated, the way the light threads its way through him, the lines getting smaller and smaller, brighter and brighter. White, like starlight …

“Magic in the blood,” Lucius says, and glances up – there are sparks lighting up his face, trailing down the line of his jaw, gathered on his eyelashes, dripping from his fingers like wax from a melting candle as he draws his hand away; and Regulus looks down at his arm as he does so, at the lines of brilliant white, the soft glow of it catching across the underside of his jaw and making him look younger than he is. His eyes are dark and wide with surprise, growing bigger as Lucius slips his gloves back on, offers a wry half-smile tinged with a trace of bitterness. “I would show you mine,” he says, “but it is best done when wearing little – most articles of clothing have charms woven into them.”

Regulus nods, though he doesn’t understand – Lucius’ expression is at odds with his words, strangely resigned in a way it shouldn’t be. Instinctively, he reaches out to catch one wrist, clothed now in black leather, not knowing what he wants to say or why he wants to say it. His hand pushes back the sleeve of Lucius’ robe, baring skin and the start of something that looks like a burn, dark blood-red and blistered; Lucius draws in a breath, capturing Regulus’ hand in his own, squeezing. “Don’t,” he says – just that, only that, in a voice both threatening and slightly apologetic.

Silence – stuck in the pause between breaths, and Regulus doesn’t try to pull away and Lucius isn’t letting him go.

There is a fragility to the moment, as if a thin thread of tenuous understanding has been drawn between them and neither is willing to move least it snap – and Regulus wets his lips, tries twice to speak but comes out with nothing, until it is Lucius who says, quietly, in a tone edged with a slight hint of steel, “Times are changing. The war is almost here.”

A breath, and his eyes are bright, so bright, and he’s saying, softer now, softer, “There aren’t any choices left for us, puppy…”

“There aren’t any left.”


IV: That hope, that sweet agent -

In the house the portraits whisper of disgrace while his father screams it to the sound of breaking china, to the rush of spellfire, the smell of blood; and his mother…

His mother weeps.

He listens to it, curled into himself in the shadows at the top of the stairwell, the wall at his back, his bedroom door still cracked open further down the hallway, spilling light across the floorboards in a perfectly slanted block of dusty gold. It is dark outside, though none of the curtains are drawn – he has not eaten since breakfast, but he doesn’t dare to go down, not yet, not until the house is silent.

Sirius has not written home - he does not need to. News of this nature travels faster than most.

Regulus closes his eyes and thinks of his brother, of tanned skin and dark hair and snitches, silver wings beating either side of a closed fist, that damned arrogant smile, a voice saying ‘couldn’t catch it, could you? Nah, you couldn’t. And see, Reggie, I’ve caught it for you, haven’t I? So you owe me, right?’ Or, better yet, the sound of footsteps, a hand in his hair, the toe of a boot scraping away the runes he’d scratched so painstakingly into the dirt, ‘Merlin, you’re a real lunatic, y’know that? Quit playing in the mud, little brother, and do something useful for a change.’ And Regulus knows that they’ll disown his brother eventually. Until then, he’ll be ostracized, scorned – and Sirius will rebel, like he always does. So like Bella, sometimes: both quick to spark and fast to burn.

He wishes it were different, but it’s not and it can’t be, it was never going to be.

God, his brother. His brother. His bro- No. Not anymore, and maybe not ever.

So now he’s alone in a house made all the darker by Sirius’ betrayal, alone with the ghosts and the parents who might pay him attention, but only because he’s the only chance they’ve got left to save the family name. Alone, while Sirius spends his days learning magic and fooling around and being oblivious, because, damn him, but doesn’t he know how lucky he is? He’s got school, maybe friends, no expectations left of him since he’s already a disappointment to everyone who bothered to hold any and, god, maybe the worst of it is that he’s got Lucius, he’s got Lucius and he won’t care.

He won’t care, and Regulus hates him all the more for that.


***

Summer comes, and with it the return of something so much brighter.

He has not seen much of Sirius since he left for Hogwarts in September, has barely spoken to him, written only a few letters – brief, impersonal – and perhaps he should feel a little ashamed that he is not more excited to see his own brother again, but he doesn’t. His joy stems from a far different source.

And Regulus expects to have to wait, to have to suffer on for far longer in silence, finding solace in the magic in his blood, the practicing of spells he shouldn’t know; there is comfort in the casting, in the way it requires such complete concentration that the world itself fades into pale insignificance and there is only the steady thunder of his heartbeat and the feeling of his own power, like a brush of wind, like the constant thrum of a single string on a violin, perfectly pitched and unfaltering.

But Lucius does not keep him waiting.

It is early morning – two am, or close to it – when he appears, and Regulus is tossing fitfully on the very outskirts of sleep, duvet kicked to the foot of his bed in deference to the heat, a thin sheen of sweat on his bare torso, skinny and boyish, his hips just above the waistband of his pajamas. There is no sound, not even the whisper of cloth, but there doesn’t need to be - he can feel the air change, and when Lucius stretches out on the bed next to him, tucks one hand behind his head, all Regulus does is blink twice and utter a soft “Good morning”.

Lucius chuckles, reaches out with his free hand to brush his fingers through Regulus’ hair, and says “Shouldn’t you be sleeping, puppy?”

The pillow is soft against Regulus’ cheek when he turns his head, and he’s left both the curtains and the window open, so that Lucius is bathed in pale moonlight, the top two buttons of his shirt undone to show the slant of his collarbone, and for a moment he forgets what he meant to say; tentatively untangles one hand from the thin blankets, moves to brush his fingers over the bare skin, lightly, lightly. “You can take it off,” he mutters instead, glancing up to meet Lucius’ eyes. “Get comfortable. I don’t care.”

A moment of silence, a sudden chill, and Lucius is threatening in his absolute stillness, tense, wary, looking down through his eyelashes – the air around him speaks of coiled wire, of something tightly wound and ready to snap, but Regulus does not look away. “I don’t care,” he repeats. “Do whatever you want.”

Whatever Lucius is looking for he seems to find; the tension does not entirely leave him, but his eyes have warmed, just slightly - the barest hint of spring at the end of winter's chill, a slender shaft of sunlight and the flickering promise of heat lingering somewhere just beyond the horizon. He cocks his head to one side on the pillow, gesturing towards the buttons on his shirt with a slight wave of his hand. “You do it,” he says, voice utterly without inflection of any kind.

Regulus doesn’t question either Lucius’ reaction or the request – only nods, flicks the hair from his eyes, and bends to the task, his fingers neatly slipping each button free, brushing the skin of first chest and then stomach, all it smooth, silken, paler than the light spilling over them. When he pushes the shirt to either side Lucius’ skin is the brightest point in the room.

Without a word Lucius offers him first one wrist, then the other, and Regulus undoes the cuffs smoothly, appearing as unruffled as he can – he doesn’t understand what’s happening, not really, but he can tell easily enough that any questions on his part will cause the blonde to either curse him or leave him - or both - and none of those are options he wants to take.

Once the second cuff is undone Lucius levers himself upwards, slipping the shirt down over his shoulders with an easy shrug, back arching as it slides down his arms and pools around his hands – Regulus sucks in a breath, curls his fingers around one wrist, narrows his eyes and leans closer. The burn has healed to a smooth dark red, the colour smeared nearly the full length of his forearm; but no, not just skin, but ink – a skull and a snake, a tattoo, ugly and blunt and brutal and so terribly out of place that it takes a moment for Regulus to figure out what it is that he’s actually seeing. “You,” he begins, looking up once more, trying to string his words into a proper sentence; starts to say “You have a -”

And stops.

Not because he doesn’t mean it, not because Lucius is looking at him, not because those eyes are fixed on him as if they’re trying to pick him apart – but because he’s ceased breathing, ceased caring, ceased seeing anything except the thin, whiplash lines of not-quite-healed scars curling around the back of Lucius’ neck, curved around his sides, over part of his ribcage, just above his hips; is up on his knees, white-faced, glancing with growing horror over the line of one pale shoulder and down Lucius’ back. The pattern is uniform, the skin crosshatched with a deliberateness that speaks of long hours spent in the quest for complete perfection, almost artistic, almost fitting, almost…

He chokes. Tries to remember how to breathe properly. And once he’s stopped gasping for air he meets Lucius’ eyes, his own wide, shocked. “Are they new?” he breathes, and Lucius shakes his head, just slightly, shifting to push his shirt onto the floor. “No, not new at all. They’re just taking an incredibly long time to heal properly.” His face is blank, and Regulus can tell that he’s tense again; ready to move in a split-second if he needs to…

And in that moment, with them caught once more in a silent quest for understanding, he gets it.

“Fuck,” he breathes because it’s the only thing that seems to fit, tumbling gracelessly back onto the bed. “Your fath-” And Lucius’ palm is cool against his lips, his revelation lying unfinished on the tip of his tongue, and he blinks, nods, faintly, only once, when Lucius says “Leave it, puppy.”

Doesn’t say a word once he’s been released, although he wants to – only slides himself forward, tentatively, expecting to be turned away even though Lucius isn’t making any moves to try. Comes to rest with one arm slung across Lucius’ stomach, cheek to chest, chest to side, leg over leg; eventually sleeps to the feeling of fingers carding through his hair. Wakes up alone, but that’s always the way it was going to work.


***

His pillow smells so much like Lucius that sometimes it makes it hard for him to think.

Regulus does not have a name for this, though he knows what it will become – all he knows is a sense of warmth, of relief, of a swirling in the pit of his stomach; as summer passes, he spends more and more time wrapped up in the blankets of a bed they’ve shared only too rarely.

And sometimes, sometimes, he wonders how long it will take to get to where this is so very obviously leading.


V: My best work is its work.

The Sorting Hat barely touches his head.

He thinks upon it later, curled up cat-like on the ledge of the window beside what has now become his bed; the room behind him is dark and still, the only sound the steady rush of people breathing and the occasional rasp of cloth moving over cloth. Perhaps he, too, should be sleeping – but there are many things on his mind and they will not let him rest.

Today he’s chosen – today, in a hall with a ceiling filled to the brink with stars and candlelight; yes, today, with all those eyes on him, all those eyes and the people like birds, frank and interested and staring, and, god, Sirius, the only one not watching, not looking, that bastard, that fucking backstabbing bastard. He’s chosen, he’s chosen, he’s chosen…

No chance of going back.

And there’s a part of him that can’t helping thinking how stupid it is, really, to wear chains of blood; chains he can’t reach, can’t touch, can’t take off and, sure, he doesn’t want to, not really, but it’s still stupid, isn’t it? But there’s a bigger, more insistent part of him saying ‘one year; just one year, one year and you would have had him. One year and he would have been here. One fucking year…’ and it’s this he can’t shake because, god, but the place still feels like him, like magic blood-deep and out of order with the rest of the world. Enough of it left that there’s the low pull of residue magic, breaking like a wave, lapping at the edge of Regulus' conscience as he sits there in the dark; steady, consistent, untouchable, addictive - something brilliant and burning and hidden just out of sight, and it’s already starting an ache somewhere in his chest, a tightening of something he doesn’t think he can loosen.

But he has to do something. Anything.

Trembling, he reaches for the top drawer of his dresser, just close enough that he can hook two fingers around the handle and pull it open – inside there is parchment, a quill, a small bottle of ink, and by moonlight he scratches three words in black across a page – no greetings, no names, just these three words, these eight letters:

‘I miss you.’

***

Hogwarts is more boring than he thought it would be. This is not to say that he doesn’t like it, because he does – is, if nothing else, at least an academic – but the fact remains that it is not truly interesting in the way he imagines it should be; the magic is necessary but bland, the practice of it enjoyable but even that, too, quickly falls into the mundane.

He misses the other side of magic – the side they do not, and will not, teach him. Misses the way those spells make his bones ache, his fingers itch, his heart race, heat in his belly and his muscles contracting and there is pressure, pressure, pressure… the rush of it released into something so much stronger than anything they’ve taught him here. Misses, more than that, more than anything, having Lucius near him; has as a companion instead something in his chest that twists and tightens, a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach, an edge to his mind that has a tendency to add venom to his voice, to sharpen his tongue – his fellow Slytherins say he is aloof. Sirius thinks he’s just arrogant.

Regulus does not interact with him much now – they seem to move in separate worlds, bound by little more than a name and memories of a time when things were so much easier. These days Britain talks of dark tidings, of strange disappearances, of something looming on the horizon – it does not take long until the halls are filled with whispers of some unknown fear, something intangible, something everyone can feel but only a few can name. In the dungeons they call it the coming of a better world, the rise of a new Dark Lord; they call it salvation, retribution, hope.

Regulus, like Lucius, simply calls it war.

They do not see much of each other in the years that follow, though not out of choice – times are changing quickly now, and they have to keep up if they want to stay alive, if they want to make it at least partway through the madness. Regulus can do little more than study, though he thinks that fact itself may drive him to insanity, and Lucius…

Lucius does what he must.


VI: The horse I ride into Hell is my best horse

Lucius still comes and goes in the night, as he has done for years and, Regulus hopes, he hopes, will continue to do. Asleep at the moment, his body draped across the sheets, languid, feline, curled into the moonlight that spills through the window; Regulus stays on the other side of the room so as not to mar the sight with his shadow, sitting perfectly still with his legs crossed, the wood of his desk cool against his feet and the wall at his back colder yet. He does not know what time it is, and wouldn’t care even if he did.

This is how it always seems to happen, now – becoming harder to sleep, harder to ignore, harder to sit still and stay silent, because he wants - wants the flushed press of mouth on skin on cock on mouth, wants the ache of Lucius sliding inside him, the fire, the chill, the pain, the beauty and the crash and burn of falling again and again and again and over again, once more, once more, don’t stop, don’t ever stop -

He wants, you see.

So he doesn’t sleep, he watches; he practices some of the things Lucius has taught him because if he doesn’t the ache within him will surely drive him insane. He knows how this magic works – it’s a simple matter of weaving it through his hands, pulling the invisible threads of it together until there is enough of them that they show up, slim lines, bright colours, glowing, thickening, sliding through his fingers and every time magic and skin meet it’s like he’s captured the buzz of some insect and put it right under his flesh, forced the vibration into himself. The longer he spends on it the stronger it gets, builds up until his entire body is one long shiver of power and desire and the magic itself is taking shape – flowers, snakes, wolves and once, just once, the long slipstream curve of a spine, slant of a shoulder blade and the angles of a muscled torso, headless, legless, bent in some mindless interpretation of frozen rapture, hanging in the air before him for a second before he waves it away.

But, when it all comes down to it, they are images, nothing more – distracting, but not distracting enough. He’s tired, he’s hard, and all he wants to do is crawl onto the bed and wake Lucius up and say ‘please let me touch you. Please, for the love of Merlin, let me touch you just this once.’

He closes his eyes, lets out a sigh that’s half a moan, slides forwards on the desk until his legs hang over the sides – leans forwards to put his head into his hands. “Fuck,” he breathes, pushing fingers through his hair – glances up at Lucius, and says “Fu-”

Then stops.

Lucius’ eyes are open, his head turned on the pillow – there’s a flash of a smirk, a lazy blink, and he says “What are you doing, puppy?” as if he doesn’t already know.

“I,” Regulus starts, only to find out that they are no letters to follow it, no sounds at all except the rush of breath leaving his lungs and the throb of blood in his ears. Lucius nods, as if his sudden silence makes more sense than any words ever could, uncoiling himself from amidst the sheets to roll onto his stomach, fingers linking on the pillow as he arches his back slightly, stretching himself down the length of the bed, his gaze never wavering, not even once, as, a few moments later, he rises from the mattress at last.

It doesn’t take much more than a glance to tell that he’s hard, and Regulus feels the blood drain from his face, his heartbeat quicken even more, as Lucius moves across the room towards him – slides right up against the desk so that Regulus’ feet dangle down either side of his hips; he doesn’t talk, so Regulus glances down, says “You should probably do something about that” in a voice far weaker than he wants it to be. And Lucius arches an eyebrow, cups Regulus’ cheek with one hand, leans in to press their mouths together, hot tongue sliding across lips, against teeth, against tongue, the rush of their breath mingling, as if they’ve already done this a thousand times before. As if Regulus’ heart hasn’t stopped beating with the shock.

“Hypocrite,” Lucius murmurs, fingers trailing down Regulus’ chest, sliding under the waistband of his pajamas, across skin and hair to curl around the base of his cock. “Hypocrite,” he repeats over the silence where a moan ought to be but isn’t, because there’s no air left in Regulus’ lungs and his mouth is split open around something completely soundless instead.

There’s a thumb sliding over the head of his cock, the echo of a sidewinder smile fading on Lucius’ lips – Regulus tilts his head back, bares the creamy skin of his neck to the heated air, and doesn’t – won’t - close his eyes.


***

Christmas 1976: the war is on in earnest now, the body count is mounting, and the Ministry is falling apart. Where he is right now – a ballroom, all gilded edges and the sound of swishing silk, the hum of voices, air that tastes like perfume and wine – the latter is more a cause for celebration than concern. They talk here of dark magic, of politics, of the Dark Lord, of other things, also, and all of it hidden behind layer upon layer of inherent deceit.

A good thing, then, that both of them are fluent in this language of decadence, of expense and aristocracy - better yet, fluent also in subtle Slytherin underplay, in the conversation of eyes and hands and the curl of a lip, the shift of weight, a hand on one shoulder that dictates meaning through the pressure of fingertips meeting cloth. Lucius always has been one to say more with his body than his voice, and Regulus has at least been taught well the things that do not come to him quite so naturally.

Regulus is fifteen, only four months into his fourth year, young enough still to go mostly unnoticed, of the age where he is expected to be well indoctrinated to the game, but not yet fully ready to play it. They talk to him, but not about things that truly matter - though that will change soon enough.

He watches Lucius when he can – watches the way he moves through the room, the way the people ebb and flow in his wake, like the moon and the tide; watches, even more closely, how he moves his hands through the air, sketching careful curves in the space around him, fingers curling, uncurling, reaching out to touch and release, touch and release, arc, touch, slide, release. Playing the conversation into notes, into a melody, spinning the sound into a web and weaving the magic through it until the air around him seems to shimmer and his eyes brighten, striking silver, lit with the echoes of suppressed power and Christ, those eyes…

“He fucked you yet, cousin?”

Regulus tilts his head to one side - black eyelashes, dark eyes, hair swept across his brow and the sharpened arch of a white cheekbone, yes, this is him and he hasn’t changed – and lets his eyes focus on the smooth skin of Bella’s neck, on the space between her face and the swell of her breasts. He’s tall enough now to look her in the eyes if he wants to, but he doesn’t - hardly anyone does.

“Pardon,” he says, softly, slip of a tongue across his bottom lip and the sinuous edge of a smile she won’t know he’s faking. “You heard me,” Bella replies, and she’s wearing heavy velvet that’s cut just a little too low, drinking wine the colour of blood, hair uncoiled over her shoulders, playing the role of a black widow because death is all she’s good for. “I asked if he’s fucked you yet. If he’s put his cock inside you and fucked you.”

And Regulus wants to say ‘no, not yet, he hasn’t, I wish he would, I really wish he would’ but instead he curls his fingers a little tighter around his wineglass, brings it up to his lips and murmurs around the rim, heart in his throat, “What do you think, Bella? Do you think he has?”

She laughs, reaching out to run a thumb along his jaw. “I would have,” she says, dark, heady, and Regulus turns his face away to find Lucius across the room, to find him looking right back, all pale hair and narrowed eyes and the curl of a smirk and, god, but if he isn’t beautiful, if he isn’t so fucking beautiful it hurts.

“I think it would be good to watch,” Bella continues, following his gaze. “I think it would be good to see him get inside you. I think you’d beg him to do it. You’d scream for him. Admit it - you’d come if he told you to, wouldn’t you?”

“I’ve” – ‘let him jerk me off, watched him lick his fingers clean, let him kiss me with the taste of my own come in his mouth, put my hand down his trousers and around his cock and told him that I’ll do anything he wants me to, absolutely anything’ – “got no idea what you’re talking about.”

She leans in - Regulus feels her breath in his ear, the slide of her lips against his neck, the low purr of her voice vibrating across his skin, skittering along his nerves like nails over a chalkboard; he closes his eyes, as if that might help to block her out.

“Liar,” she whispers.


~ on to part two…