For Amber, winner of the Globetrotter Drabble Competition, very hard. For the Star Challenge, Arcturus. This is my first BartyReg and I loved writing this.
/..o../
There is only a splash of sunlight when he wakes up to the cold, gasping and panting.
What did he expect?
The intangible dreams slip beneath his reach, and the furious beating of his heart slows down to a steady march. He pauses for a moment, feeling the biting cold of the winter wind sneaking through the cracks in his walls and nipping at his face and feet.
There had never been any heat in this house.
By now, Regulus should be used to the chill that seeps into his feet when he walks forward.
For the last few weeks, he'd been in the crossfire.
The icy flames in the middle - he's the perfect child and he knows it, but when it really comes down to it, would he pick the cold or the heat?
The heat is him. It's Barty, it's the sheets in their dormitory and the whispers of nobody has to know, really. It's the thrill that races up his spine when they're touching parts that maybe, just maybe, they shouldn't, but it feels so good and he can't stop, not when this makes him feel more alive than ever.
He's already packed for Hogwarts, trunk at the bottom of the stairs. His mother pretends to care and his father is blatantly indifferent - oh, they would care about him so much more if he wasn't a perfect child. They don't even blink at him when he heaves his trunk up. He's seventeen, now, and proud of the fact.
The air twists around him as he disapparates, and he's sure they don't even notice he's gone.
The platform is crowded, as usual. He sneers and scowls and shoves his way through, lines heavy set on his face when he hears the crooning of his brother and the other Gryffindor idiots.
Regulus can't see Barty just yet.
His trunk is large, and it manages to get people out of the way. He manages to get an empty compartment - to hell if he lets any first-year brats share with him.
The train has only just left the station when the door to his compartment is opened, and a figure with an almost painful looking smirk is staring him down, a tilt of the chin. Regulus can almost feel the arrogance coming off of him.
"I was expecting you to come," says Regulus casually. Barty hasn't changed over the Easter break, to no surprise; tall and skinny, with dark brown hair flopped lazily into his eyes and the look in his eyes like he's sizing you up, deciding how much lower you were compared to him.
"Of course you were," he says, but it isn't a teasing tone, but something lower, with the slightest hint of condescension. Regulus notices his sleeves are pulled much farther down than they were last year - of course, it was a detail only noticeable to someone who pays attention to him.
Such as himself.
Barty catches where Regulus's eyes went, and his smirk seemed to stay etched on his face. He moves the slightest bit, and something black moves from underneath his robes.
Regulus grins at him.
"This is where the going gets good," says Barty, shifting in a way so that the soft material of his robes falls downward and reveals the mark in its entirety.
Barty doesn't miss the way Regulus' eyes snap to the compartment door, clearly checking if anyone could see them.
"Scared?" he murmurs, leaning closer and finally shutting the compartment door behind him. Barty's still out of reach, as far away as he could be in the compartment as possible.
Regulus glares and Barty laughs - a high, mocking, chilling tone.
"Of course you are, Reg." The train lurches, throwing Regulus forward. Barty miraculously manages to stay on his feet.
"Very eloquent today, Reg," he says, whispering the last part of the sentence like it was the word, the one word, that lit their flame, that kept their secret.
"I always am," says Regulus. Barty just raises his eyebrows.
"You certainly are," he says in reply, and the low tone, deep and intense, speaks volumes. The three words catch him in a catastrophe of sleepless nights in the dorm, seeing, hearing, feeling. Promises that were made at the stroke of midnight, and roughness that always made him - made them - feel so much alive.
Regulus has a feeling Barty knows what he's thinking about, and he's almost sure Barty's mind is flickering with the images of the past, and the images of the present, and what he knows is going to come.
"Does Daddy know?" Regulus asks, breaking the silence that quieted their minds.
There isn't a smirk on his face, his lips form a straight line. His eyes sink, and his whole body takes on a stiff, rigid tone. He's always known the right buttons to press to get Barty like this; angered, emotional. It's the only time he isn't cocky or arrogant.
But Barty pulls himself together just in time, and nods his head. "What would the fun in that be, Reg?"
Regulus just looks at him. Barty takes a seat right next to him - for a remarkably cold exterior, Barty does seem rather… warm. His thigh presses into Barty's, and he feels the flame reignite, the burning that flays him alive but melts the ice that stiffens him. The closeness only reminds him that really, it's Barty who has his soul, and with every step farther, it's killing him.
For a moment, he can't wait to get back to Hogwarts - the foolish, idiotic school that it is, he still doesn't mind the dormitory sheets tangled beneath his legs and even the way they cling to his legs when he's sweaty.
He loathes the school, the people, the professors. He can't stand them, and knows Barty can't either. Barty can't stand his dorm mates, his parents, his family. They want, need to get out of the filthy Mudblood loving school. Show their true alliance.
But when Barty's hand drifts up, up, up, he can't help but want the heat, the fire, to melt the ice that makes the crossroads and stay tangled up in everything he shouldn't be forever.
/..o../
fin.