Title: Eternal Nights
Author:SalazarInADress
Prompt: Drabble prompt for Drabble Fridays on Wandlore~ to include the words "You win some, you lose some. Except me, I always win." and the imagery of bloody hands, fire and I think a coffee cup, but I ignored the last one by accident.
Wordcount: 680ish
Disclaimer: not my characters or world
Author's Note: This is SLASH. It's not explicit, but it is SLASH. If you don't like SLASH, then don't read~
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There are many nights that Severus has forgotten – a blur of damp rooms, sputtering candlelight and sleeplessness, each moment is indistinguishable from another. There are beatings in there, like the flickering light of an old film projector. Flashes of colour pop in his eyes for every crack of his father's knuckles. Then the light turns green, and that's another world of pain he has learned to live with. Not even these memories can be pulled clean from the stream of nights spent staring, dry-eyed at the ceiling while shadows suffer their dance on the walls.
The forgotten nights don't haunt him, even as he lives them again and again. They are a part of him, constant as the grease in his hair and the ice in his... chest cavity.
The nights that haunt him, invariably, are the ones that he remembers. They are built up on the ever growing mound of wasted film in the back of his mind. Higher and higher, always at the forefront of his waking thoughts, like a warrior of blazing fire standing atop the bones of his slain enemies even as he beckons more victims to add to the pile.
Pain, his life companion, has no place with that warrior. That which hurts him most, as for all others, is love. The thing he has yearned for, yet which has only burnt him raw.
He sees it as day falls, feels it filling his very bones while his eyeballs stare into the dark, empty space above. Love.
His hand lies empty in the bed beside him, but his mind fills it. Places another inside, brings warmth to his palm that slides comfortingly up his arm. He is here.
He dares not breathe lest the illusion fade, but no force can keep the name from escaping his lips. "Regulus."
There is a tinkle of laughter, the kind that's half relief and half disbelief. They have survived. They both made it. They've done it, somehow.
They are finally, truly Death Eaters.
"We made it, Sev." There is a lake of words built behind those four, dammed by exhaustion. We made it. We killed them all. We can be together forever. We will do great things – together. Regulus squeezes his hand, cracking the crusted blood that sticks them together.
The blood. It's all over him – with his lover beside him he doesn't care, but decades later it disturbs him. He will not be clean, never again. Yet that night – now, tonight - it bonds them.
"What about the Parkinsons?" Severus can't help but ask. He is the guilty conscience between them.
A shift in the mattress tells him that Regulus shrugs. "One of them, I think." It could be his blood, between them now.
Sensing his disquiet mind, Regulus turns. His breath is warm on Severus's cheek. "Don't think about it. You win some, you lose some... Except for me." He pauses to grin, that mischievous Black flash of teeth - like he's king of the wizarding world. It's the same grin that Severus would like to slap off his brother's face. Here, he only wishes to kiss it. Regulus obliges, a brief meeting of lips is all they have energy for. "I always win." Reg whispers, winding their fingers tighter to let Severus know who is the prize.
They close their eyes, and the night falls back into the dark flow. Regulus dissolves away, and Severus is left alone. His hand is cold, his chest empty, and his face wet. When morning comes, this will be just one more grey night to settle on the pile – but now, as he lives it, it is eternity.