Note: This was written for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry (Challenges & Assignments), where I am in Slytherin.
Assignment #4, Muggle History: Muggle Wars, Task #4, The Blitz - Write about something that happened every night.
Prompts listed at the end.
Warning: Some minor suggestive content.
Tied to You (with a String)
Toeing off his shoes one evening after Quidditch practice, Regulus collapsed on the bed with perhaps a little more drama than was entirely necessary—confirmation of which could be seen in the twinkle of Barty's eyes.
"To what do we owe the heavy sigh?" Barty asked, starting to untangle himself from the mountain of textbooks and parchment that he had clearly been organising just a moment before.
"Let it be said—once and a thousand times more—that Seeker is far and away the best position. Parkinson and Greengrass were squabbling the whole time."
Barty lifted his brow then, eyebrows hidden in part by the blonde wisps sweeping across his forehead. "What about?"
"I could not say, flying about as I was. That is why Seeker is the best position," Regulus quipped back with a haughty huff.
"You love eavesdropping." When Regulus met Barty's eyes, he saw that the smirk had pulled at the corner of his mouth in crooked amusement.
"I love eavesdropping on interesting things." The weight of Barty's frame pressed on his back, then, cracking their stress between them and leaving only a warm, enveloped feeling that smothered all crossness. "Are the others at Gobstones?" he asked, eyes flicking to the three empty beds around the room.
"They are, and they should be for a while," Barty responded, lifting up enough to flip Regulus on his back. They were reedy, the both of them, all elbows and knees for a moment, but Regulus didn't mind. Invasive though it might be, it was an uniquely pleasant invasion, and after a beat, Barty settled chest to chest like a particularly large and golden cat, stretching lithe and long as his hands briefly kneaded at Regulus's shoulders.
"I see," Regulus had started to say when the press of soft lips interrupted the train of thought. All at once, a thousand flicking embers lit his nerves as Barty's hips rocked slowly against his own, akin to the relaxed brush of a wave; and embarrassing though it still was, Regulus made a soft sound in the back of his throat.
"You always smell so clean after practice," Barty whispered, shifting to nuzzle behind Regulus's ear.
A tingling shiver trickled out from the spot. Difficult though it was, Regulus tried to stitch together a serious expression as he felt Barty shifting against him again. "Are you suggesting I'm unclean at other times?"
Barty snorted, this time against the soft part of his throat. "As if I would." Tucking his head into the curve of Regulus's shoulder, Barty peered over the foot of the bed, down towards the floor. "Hm."
"Hm?"
"Our shoes are pointed at each other," Barty remarked, fingers threading loosely in Regulus's hair to play absently with the sleek black strands. A small smile had started to form on his lips. "Even your shoelace. It's a little bit untied."
Dryly, Regulus's mouth quirked up at the corner. "Practically divination."
"We were fated for a mindblowing snog tonight." Barty dragged his fingers along the curve of Regulus's scalp. "Or…"
"That's-" Regulus's breath caught in his throat as their mouths collided again.
The following evening, Regulus noticed immediately when he entered their dorm room to find Barty's shoes were, once again, pointed towards the foot of Regulus's bed. The toes were arranged to a point this time, like an arrow without the shaft. The arrangement was obviously staged—no one removed their shoes like that—and when he met Barty's eyes, the other boy's mouth turned with a little smirk that made Regulus's cheeks heat for an embarrassing moment. A sideways glance confirmed that their dormmate Baddock was splayed on his bed with a Quidditch magazine, half hidden by their emerald green bed hangings and paying no attention to either of them. That was just as well.
When Regulus reached the foot of his bed, he carefully removed each shoe, nudging them lightly into place - an arrow shape, pointing back to Barty's. When their eyes met again, the other boy smiled with the warmth of a summer sunbeam, and Regulus's heart skipped in his chest.
Day 68. If their dormmates had taken any notice of the peculiar arrangement of shoes going forward, they said nothing; yet each night, Regulus found Barty's footwear pointing at his bed, sometimes in a line, sometimes an arrow, sometimes abandoned in a haphazard orientation that made Regulus wonder if he might have actually taken his shoes off normally on those days. Each night, Regulus arranged his own to match, situated just so.
Once again, their dormmates were nowhere to be seen. Regulus did not like it when there was a mystery to their absence, an uncertainty to the timing of their return, but as he neared the space between their beds, he felt the light clasp of fingers circling his wrist and tugging him in, like a shoe caught by the string.
Every night, the signal sent his heart aflutter. What had initially begun as a joke had since settled into a comfortable routine, a subtle reminder of heated kisses and wandering hands; such intimacies were reserved for their eyes only, and within his mind, Regulus carefully tucked them away.
The playful arrangement of footwear was a small thread of control in their otherwise chaotic lives—strangely reassuring. With a flash of quiet desperation, Regulus thought he would like to arrange his shoes with Barty forever, but the structures of pureblood tradition were laid out before them—laid out before Regulus, perhaps even more so than most, now that Sirius was gone. Within a year or two, they would both be hurtling towards two marriage beds of their own, with shoes pointed outward into some gaping void.
Barty looked a little surprised when Regulus pressed into his chest with hooking limbs—a rare initiation, they both knew—but Regulus's throat felt too sticky to explain his thoughts, even if he had wanted to. Whatever the limitations of their reality, Regulus thought that Barty's lips felt like forever as they brushed a trail of kisses from his mouth to his throat.
They were tied together with shoestrings just waiting to be pulled loose, but that would have to be enough.
Additional Author's Notes
Applicable Hogwarts Prompts:
Assignment #4, Muggle History: Muggle Wars, Task #4, The Blitz - Write about something that happened every night.
Slash September - Regulus (Barty/Regulus)
Insane House Challenge - 471. (item) Textbook
365 Day Challenge - 245. (restriction) Characters from only one era
Fortnightly Challenge, Feline Fair, Korat - 9. Emerald Green
Writing Club, Character Appreciation, Hermione - 1. (trait) Bookworm
Writing Club, Dark Lady's Diabolical Lair - 15. Pureblood Traditions
Writing Club, Amber's Attic - 1. "Perhaps our fatal flaw is that we attempt to make forever out of people who are meant to be temporary." (5 point bonus)
Writing Club, Count Your Buttons - O2. Magazine
Writing Club, Lyric Alley, "First" - 19. Ticking of clocks, gravity's pull
Summer Seasonal Challenges, Days of the Year, Smile Power Day - Write about cheering someone up
Summer Seasonal Challenges, Fire Element, Fire Prompts - (word) Embers
Summer Seasonal Challenges, Shay's Musical Challenge, The Great Comet of 1812 - Write about someone falling in love with someone who they shouldn't be in love with
Word Count: 1,024