- Romance Awareness Challenge / Soulmate!AU: You can take away some of your soulmate's pain for yourself. / Prompt: knitted blanket

Word Count: 399

The Cure

and if you say you're okay

i'm gonna heal you anyway.

Regulus had been taking away Barty's pain for years.

Ever since they met and discovered that they had the soulmate bond between them, and therefore the power to reduce any pain caused to their significant other, there had been no doubt in Regulus's mind that he wouldn't take Barty's pain. He had loved Barty since he first laid eyes on him.

Barty was always getting into some kind of trouble that caused injury or accident. When they were at Hogwarts, it was usually the occasional Potion burn or a hex in the back from a bully. When they left and Barty started to deteriorate, Regulus would find Barty crouched over a razor blade in the dark, and he would close his hands over Barty's until deep red welts appeared on his own wrists. When he fell off his broom because he had always been a terrible flyer, Regulus took half of the pain from Barty's broken leg, and they suffered together for a few weeks under a knitted blanket.

But he never wanted, or expected, Barty to take any of his pain.

oOo

He returned from Voldemort's cave after drinking the poison hidden there, wrought with an unknown agony. Every pore on his body screamed with the pain of a thousand white-hot knives, and there was nothing he could do to cease the torment.

Sweat pooled in the bed that he rolled around in, and when Barty advanced upon him, holding his hands out to Regulus's, he shook his head. "No," he sobbed through the pain, holding his hands possessively to his chest. He wouldn't put Barty through it. "I'm okay."

"I want to." Barty insisted through gritted teeth. In his determined, dark eyes, Regulus knew there was no arguing with him. He let Barty take his shaking hands, and breathed a long sigh of relief as the pain subsided considerably.

Barty never screamed or cried, even though Regulus knew just how awful the agony was. He shook and sweated, and slumped down in the bed beside Regulus, staring ahead with wide, unseeing eyes.

They lay together until the sun set and the torture was over.