Regulus is increasingly very unhappy about what being a Death Eater is turning out to mean. This (read: Bellatrix) being even more of a problem than tea made by Evan (which is saying something), he feels strongly that flying reindeer are an inappropriate subject for discussion at this time. Severus.

Notes: Not plot, per se, but setup for plot. As will be the case for most of the domestic scenes.

#18 Dye-Urn Alley #18

"Ow!"

"Well, I'm sorry, Severus," Reg said testily, "but sometimes, you know, you just don't take a hint."

"What hint?" he asked blankly, rubbing at the fading tingle of the stinging charm between his eyes.

"Make the man some tea, Spike," Evan supplied helpfully from behind his catalogue.

"You make it," Severus said disagreeably. "I'm working."

"You're staring into space," Regulus corrected him.

And got, not unexpectedly, a narrow-eyed, irritated look. "Thinking about work is working. When did you even come in?"

Regulus hadn't just knocked, he'd rung the bell. Twice, presumably because Evan had expected Severus to answer it.

There wasn't anything odd, though, about a Severus who'd been staring into space not hearing it or noticing Evan letting him in. Jumpy though he could be, Spike having a brainstorm in a safe place was legendary. Once Mulciber and Wilkes had come in when he was mulling over a book in the common room, and they'd built nearly a full card-castle on his back before he noticed. Of course, he'd sent them off to the Pomfrey with thirty fingers each and heads that rang like bells whenever they moved as soon as he'd noticed, but by then they'd only had the left battlements left.

Therefore, Reg ignored the question. "Besides, Evan's tea's solid enough to stop the Knight Bus and thick enough to pay for the chocolate."

"Well," Severus said reasonably, "you stung me. Go on, Ev, poison him."

"Oh, I wouldn't bother making tea just for one, emerald of my sugar bowl." Ev threatened amiably, still without looking up.

"Gah." But he got up and went to the kitchen, Regulus trailing behind. He turned around at the last minute and called back, "And I was not!"

"Whatever you say, Spike," Evan called back placidly.

"Was not what?" Reg asked.

Severus gave him gimlet eyes, but he just kept looking curiously back (it was the only possible response) until Severus sighed and hunched his shoulders a little and griped, "Inappropriate."

"Oh. Yes, you were. What were you quote unquote working on, anyway?" Reg asked, tacking it on quickly, before Spike could turn it into an argument.

Severus turned and looked at him critically. "What are you working on?" he demanded. "Your hair looks worse than mine."

Regulus went pale. Crying, "It does not!" he ran to the bathroom to check it. "It does not!" he repeated with fully justified indignation, coming back. Then, suspiciously, "What are you grinning about?"

"Thank you for your participation in our study," Severus saleswizarded at him brightly, which was unutterably disturbing. "You will be compensated with one, brackets-on one brackets-off, extra biscuit."

"You're detestable," Reg sulked, dropping into the kitchen chair while his host puttered. "What study?"

Severus used less wand-work in his kitchen than most, so he was able to turn while filling the kettle. "You really believed me for a minute just then, didn't you?" he asked, his sharp face keen again, eyes digging in like they might peel back Reg's whole skull to get at his brain. Phew. Reg relaxed. "Even though I know for a fact you routinely schedule yourself a full half-hour every morning to make sure your hair is as imperturbable as it can get without being petrified and failing to flutter charmingly in the breeze."

That last was on the snide side, but Reg would have been flustered anyway. "I—well, I did believe you, as a matter of fact!"

"Caught you on an insecure point?"

"No, er…" Regulus looked uncomfortable, and said, "Look, I'm sorry, Naj, but anyone would get insecure if you told them that."

"If I, specifically, told them, or if they were told?"

Regulus thought about it, relieved that Severus seemed to be in an academic rather than a prickly mood. Using Spike's serpent tag to acknowledge you knew he could bite you hard wasn't in the least mollifying when he wasn't in a mood to be mollified. "It's worse when it's you saying it."

"Why?"

"Well, you usually go edgy when you lie, for one thing."

"Didn't I this time?" Reg shook his head, and Severus made a considering noise, cupping the kettle in his hands. It was, by now, starting to sweat. "All right, that's one thing, what else?"

"Does there have to be more?"

"Is there?"

"I suppose… why would you insult both of us at the same time?"

"Not sure I did, Felis," Severus drawled. "'As bad as' has no meaning on its own. But I see you thought so."

"I thought you were talking yourself down and me with you," Regulus snapped, embarrassed. Spike didn't often riff off his cat-snake name (being no more likely to use it for anything but humiliating Regulus than anyone else was), but Reg deserved it for scampering off to the mirror as if he were Sirius.

Severus's skepticism was punctuated by a shriek from the tea-kettle. He put it down at once, shook out his hands, and did some things with tins and wooden boxes that Reg couldn't see through his skinny back. "And why did that make it credible?" he asked over his shoulder. Clearly he didn't believe Regulus thought he'd been talking himself down, but that just as clearly wasn't important to him at the moment.

"Well… if you were just snapping at me, why take it out on yourself, too?" Reg reasoned, picking his reaction apart slowly.

"I might have been snapping at myself and taking it out on you," he pointed out.

"No, then you wouldn't admit it was about you at all," Reg said, positive.

"Got you there, Spike!" Evan called from the other room.

"Yes, all right," Severus called back in an unruffled voice, raised to include his flatmate. "But is that everyone or just me?"

"Whyyyyyyy?" Evan called back, dripping suspicion.

"Don't make me why-ne back at you; I can hold my breath longer."

"He can, too," Evan told Regulus happily.

"I didn't want to know that!" Reggie wailed. And Evan was so weird, too. If you were going to overshare you were at least supposed to be smug about it, not just happy like you expected everyone to be happy along with you. It was practically a rule. It was completely unfair the way Evan sailed over all the rules all the time and everyone just smiled back at him and flirted and sighed wistfully behind his back about what a saint he must be to put up with Snape and what nudge-wink qualities Spike must secretly have to have landed a catch like him.

"Apologize to the man, Spike," Reg's evil prat of a cousin suggested, still from the living room, full of sympathy and reproach.

"It was perfectly innocent when I said it," Severus noted dryly. "As is generally the case." He handed the tea tray to Regulus, sans kettle, and they went back in. "Well? Is it everyone, or me-specific?"

"Most people most of the time, I should think," Evan said cautiously. "Defensive and self-depreciating are mutually exclusive, as a rule of thumb. But it falls under inked, especially if the person knows they're feeling defensive and doesn't want to let on." He saw Reg's confusion and elaborated, "You Never Can Tell. YNCT: inked."

"Move," Severus told him, holding the kettle only slightly menacingly.

"What."

"Move."

They eyed each other for a moment. Regulus took that to time observe that Severus, the rat, had arranged the biscuits into an ungraceful but distinct pattern. It would be obvious if he snuck one before the tea was poured, and then everyone would smirk at him.

Evan sighed with a little smile, and moved from the armchair to the sofa. He was followed threateningly with a loaded kettle until he'd crammed himself up against the arm of it.

Severus put the kettle on the tray, and lay down. He had his head in Evan's lap and his unshod legs folded up against the sofa's other arm. "Evan doesn't think my hair is disgusting," he said in a put-upon voice, eyes closed.

It still took Reg aback when he did things like that. A bunch of kids crowded on the floor around Spike's legs (and very respectfully not talking to him at all except to ask the occasional question) had been a common Common Room sight in his last few years at school. And it was true that he'd spent quite large portions of his last few train rides to school napping on Evan and Narcissa, who'd never seemed surprised about it. So clearly his standoffishness had been a public-spaces thing, a public-face thing, and Reg really was pleased that he didn't seem to trigger it on his own.

Still, different years visited each others' bedrooms far less often than girls visited the boys in their year, as a rule, and if he'd acted differently in his dormitory than in the Common Room, Reg hadn't seen him do it. He still wasn't used to this more relaxed Spike, who didn't shuffle around with knife-slitted eyes and his shoulders by his ears, or watch his tongue, and didn't hesitate before smacking the Rosier heir upside the head or curling up in his lap.

"Evan knows it isn't," Evan confirmed, lacing a gentle hand into the aforementioned hair. Which, honestly, Regulus would not have liked to try, although it moved like it was clean despite the unhealthy oily sheen, no clumping or clinging. "Unlike your current exhibition of table manners."

"I'm not sitting at the table, or eating. Table manners do not currently apply." After a moment, "What would you imagine I'd rather be doing right at this moment?"

"I'm still here!" Regulus said hastily.

Spike opened one eye and grinned evilly at him, snaking a hand behind Evan's back. "Nothing that can't be done from here, then? Nice image, Reg?"

"Lovely image," Evan agreed, perking up hopefully.

"Oh, tea!" Reg exclaimed desperately. "Who'd like some nice tea?"

"And nobody thinks I want to stay at a party I leave early," Severus said speculatively, turning his head back into Evan's slow-stroking hand and letting his eyes fall shut again, "but they wouldn't assume they knew whether anyone who's still there wants to be there, would they? Barring unpleasantness and poorly-controlled expressions."

"You have a theory," Evan decided, in the tone that meant he was getting an idea what it was. So was Regulus, for that matter.

"Someone does," Spike said, putting a bit of an emphasis on that 'someone.' "Use what you've got, and all that." He turned back to Regulus, peeling his eye open again, and asked, "What are you working on, anyway? You haven't got bags under your eyes yet, puss, but you are getting a rather strained look."

"Look who's talking," Evan said fondly, and bent down—presumably intending just to kiss his forehead, but Severus arched up enough to meet him partway.

"He is, though, look," maintained Severus, settling back down.

"You are, too, Reggie," Evan agreed, looking at Regulus critically.

Reg scowled. It was just like being back at school again, sharp black eyes on you and then suddenly Evan or Narcissa blithely sailing up to be concerned and inquisitive and prefectly. Presumably Regulus was supposed to take it as a nod to his age that Spike was siccing them on him to his face now.

"Drawn," Severus said sadly, his thin lips pulled wickedly up.

"Pale," Evan put in, shaking his head.

"—er than usual," Spike, who had no room to talk, evidently couldn't resist. He added in horrible delight, "You'll be getting lines between your eyes."

"I hate you both."

"But you know we must love you, because we tell you the truth," Severus crooned, all darkest treacle and evil with evil sauce and black-honeyed evil on the side.

"And I know it's the truth because it's rude?" Regulus mocked his 'theory.'

"So I hear."

"But really, Reggie, what's wrong?" Evan asked, his overdose of concern thoroughly distracting a startled Reg from how evasive Spike had just been.

"Oh, don't give me your doe eyes," he snapped defensively, coiling himself around his teacup. "You think I don't know where half our intel comes from?"

"At least a tenth, anyway, I suspect, now Narcissa's not so mobile," Severus said meticulously, turning to bump Evan's side with (Regulus thought uncharitably) his beak. "What sort of doe has blue eyes? Not albino, that'd be pink. Wouldn't it?"

"Such flattery," Evan said modestly, fluttering his long, not at all dark lashes. "Sometimes, though, I think. What are you asking me for? You're the one who took Creature Care."

"Care of Magical Creatures, Ev; we didn't do deer. And you had that commission for that ranch in Norway last year, you remember, the one with all the elves—"

"Those were reindeer. Flying reindeer. Definitely magical creatures."

"Anyway, they were albino…"

"Just white, heart. Winter coats and all."

"Oh. Well, can't blame them. It was bloody freezing up there; I can't remember the last time my on-automatic magic wasn't enough to keep me warm."

Reg knew what that meant, more or less. Severus was always the person to stand near in bad weather and infamously never used cauldron thermometers, just like Becca Goldstein had never been known to get lost no matter what the Hogwarts stairs did to her. Evan, though he couldn't see in the dark, had as good a feel for lighting charms as old Flitwick had had for acoustics. Still did, presumably.

"We were there for a week," Evan pointed out, bemused.

"And a most productive week it was," Severus allowed in a your data, while correct, is not relevant voice. "Fascinating lichens. Also: freezing."

"Well, Hat-stand, if you'd eat something once in a while…"

"Nonsense."

The interesting thing was," Evan told Reggie, suddenly enthused (which looked rather odd on him), "their bellies were blue. Which is only sense, of course, but you somehow expect black, even knowing reindeer aren't noct—"

Regulus, who had had his eyes clamped closed and been breathing with forced regularity for the last several minutes, raised his voice. A lot. "You think I don't know where half our intel comes from, tricking everyone's families into chatting with you while they pose…"

"It's not a trick, Reggie," said Evan mildly, tilting his head at Reg curiously. "It's 'not being wasteful of what I hear in chats I'd have anyway.' If it worked when you weren't really inclined to like them, anyone could do it. Spike could."

"Too kind."

Evan ignored him, beyond a brief grin down. "Besides, you don't do as good a portrait if you don't get to know them."

"And you know Evan's asking because he's worried," Severus put in sharply, turning over to rise onto an elbow, "so why digress into how he mines his targets?"

That was nasty. With do you think you're a proper target for the tricking hanging in the air between them all, Evan cuffed Severus lightly around the top of his head and murmured, "Hood down, Prince Charming." Then he turned to Reg and said, "And you, claws in, if you please. Honestly, Reggie, what's the matter with you today?"

They were both giving him piercing, frowning eyes now, and that was so much harder to fight than Evan's untrustworthy innocent-concern look.

And he must have wanted them to nose in. Because had he really thought he could drop in here, on these two, and avoid it? Narcissa, maybe, especially with her sister involved. Narcissa didn't just use good manners, she had them. But Evan would saunter casually after you forever like he had nothing else to do, whistling, and a Ravenclaw hunting down a citation in NEWT year had nothing on Spike when he thought something was wrong.

And Reg knew it. You had to be honest with yourself, at least. He collapsed a little, and muttered, "Bella thinks I'm too soft."

Evans' hissed breath was swallowed by Spike's gulped, "Oh, hell."

Before Regulus had time to blink again, he was on the couch with them. Evan held him down to let Spike, straddling him with eyes hard and cold and remote in diagnosis, run his wand up and down. It wasn't an Ollivander wand, Regulus noticed. This wasn't new information, but it was something to notice instead of how humiliated and small and taken-care-of and shrivelingly grateful he felt. He'd probably never been smaller than Spike physically, but some people took up more space than their bodies did. Reg wasn't one of them.

"He'll do," Severus told Evan over his head eventually, sitting down on Reg's legs. "Not hurt, no untreated curses or important curse residue. Something odd when I check for mind-magic effects, but it doesn't look like a confusion, a compulsion, or an attack. More of a muddle, really."

"She's teaching me to shield my mind," Regulus supplied.

"Not well, then," Severus said coolly. "No surprise. Wouldn't want you able to keep her out, would she. If that's even a real thing; could just as easily be an excuse to peek regularly."

"You shut up about Bella!"

"Does she ever shut up about me?" Spike asked. Under his calm, curious eyes, Reg held out barely a few seconds before sagging. "I trust you don't flare out like that at her."

Reg shivered. "Salazar, no."

"Good. Do it over me and I'll see your tombstone has fat cartoon mice on it and squeaks alarmingly whenever anyone drops flowers." Reg tried half-heartedly to knee him, and got his hair mussed for his trouble. Evan let go of his arms, and Severus swung off him.

When he didn't get up, they curled in around him, warm and unshakable. Sharp marble on one side, solid muscle on the other. Hawkishly, vigilantly still. Safe-making, as Reggie's real brother, impetuous and restless, battering himself raw against his cage, too choked and frantic to have spare attention for anyone else, had never been.

After a while, he said, quietly, "Stakes were lower at school."

"They weren't," Spike said grimly. "You just didn't see them."

He knew they were having an eye-conversation over his head. Because Severus had been absolutely right, he knew that everyone was better off if he refrained from finding out about it. Bella had said she'd be reading his thoughts, but the books had said she'd only see his memories. And not from the outside, like in a Pensieve, either. What he didn't see or hear was safe. Probably. Safer.

"All right," Severus said eventually. "Bellatrix thinks you're soft and it's a problem. Then, how does the problem manifest, and what's to be done? And you can shut it, Ev; when your problem involves Bellatrix, you don't have time for dancing about."

"Right you are, Precision Corkscrew," Evan said in an eye-rolling voice.

"Call me a blunt instrument all you like," Severus scowled, "but she's a bola made out of two morning-stars. On fire. Greek fire. Big ones. As in, boulder-sized. Launched off a catapult."

"That's her chest."

"Evan. Image. Evan. Thorn. In my side. No. Image. Why."

"Had to be said," Evan fluted like an oboe, seraphically pleased with himself. "Walked right into it with the two boulders, you did. She is awfully well built, Spike, admit it."

"A Damascus blade is awfully well built," retorted Severus, "and I have no academic or aesthetic interest in this fact when it is lunging sharply for my head."

"Also, if anyone talks about Bella's breasts again I'm going to have to get violent," Regulus put in helpfully, cuddled warmly between them. The point of this was to not need this conversation obliviated before his next occlumency lesson. He should probably have tried harder to sound menacing. Er. He could tell her he'd been being politic? Because it was Evan. Who didn't need overkill. That might work.

"Whereas I'm merely going to have to get nauseous."

"You mean nauseated."

"So I do. Pity; it doesn't sound so well. Not so pithy. But what does Reg mean?" Severus turned back to him. "What does she think you're too soft for? Or, about."

"Well, er, you know…" he trailed off. It occurred to him that he didn't know what they knew. More, he couldn't assume that they, moving most often plausibly and in the light as they did, were supposed to know anything about what went on under the moon. "Generally squeamish."

There was another long silence, but it felt leaden. Spike swore coarsely again, dispirited. His bony shoulder sort of drooped sturdily between Reg and the door, like a bird's wing become a shield. Reg didn't know how he did that, but he did know now that they had understood him, more or less perfectly.

"Reggie," Evan asked after a while, his arm close around Reg's back, "do you think you're 'too soft'? I mean, are you having trouble… doing what you're being asked to?"

Reg nodded silently, and then there was third long pause. Like the first, it was heavy with a conversation Reg was glad not to be in on.

"Isn't anyone going to have any biscuits?" Severus asked, twanging with fabricated annoyance. "If not, I'm putting them away."

Reg tipped most of them into a handkerchief before saying, "All clear."

Spike stared at the near-absence of biscuit. "Clear indeed," he said dryly, and vanished into the kitchen with the plate, shaking his head.

He'd been promised an extra, so that was three for him, and two to bring Father, who approved of Severus's 'attempts to rehabilitate his bloodline' and also found him tolerably amusing. Two more for Aunt Lucy, who had been in some club with Severus's mum at school and had rather liked her, and two for Grandfather. Moving out of Grimmauld and in with Aunt Lucy had been good for his blood pressure, but he got lonely. Reggie would take any excuse to visit him. Look, Granddad, mystery biscuits, leading to one more attempt to convince him that Severus was worth knowing despite being descended from both a Muggle and Severus Prince, who Grandfather had detested no matter how good the family's blood was, would do nicely.

Oh, and one more biscuit: to tease the elf with.

Severus wasn't as reliably good a cook as Kreacher or the elves at school, of course. Still, his odd experiments were more likely to be interesting than passable, and, when interesting, slightly more likely to be spectacular than inedible. Reg had been keeping track. There was a chart. It cheered Kreacher up some days, and other days it made him try really hard. For Regulus, this was a win-win.

When he'd finished watching Severus walk off (not even trying to be subtle about it, for Salazar's sake), Evan looked down at Reg seriously, and said, "All right, kit-cat."

Sometimes Reg wished they'd use his snake's proper Latin name. Only sometimes: with an even slightly improper intonation, Fallax was very nearly as bad as Pussy-pusskins: the all-time low and therefore, predictably, a Gildylocks effort.

"You and me, between the threads."

"Are you on the tapestry?" Reg asked, trying to remember. When a witch married out, it didn't keep track of the line past her children. Would Bella respect that oath, if she saw it in his head, if it was with a Rosier?

"Yes, I ruddy well am," Evan said evenly, which was the Evan-equivalent of Spike hurling a paperweight at your head. "To Darius Rosier and Callisto Black, one-S. Book up, Reggie; I think Spike knows the lineages better'n you by now. Come on, 'first cousins' is not hard to remember."

"I know who your mum is! It's just—oh, never mind. Between the threads, then," Reg said hastily, seeing no reason to have his heirsmanship examined.

He knew the lineages, he just didn't like looking at the tapestry. By the time knowing it cold had become his job, his brother had been swallowed by a scorched hole, and so had cousin Andi, who'd used to take him frog-hunting and taught him to skip stones with and without magic. And old Uncle Alf, not long after that, who'd always smelled like sandalwood and tobacco and always had a big hug and a sweet for Siri and Reg and who was dead anyway.

Dad hated it, too. Dad hated a lot of things. Dad and Reggie and Granddad were the same like that, but there was just no telling Mother anything. Siri had tried and tried and tried until he went horrible and cruel and mad with it. Now he was dead to them, just a burn-mark, and they were all scum to him.

He tried quirking a little smile. Hoping to distract himself if not Evan, he asked, "And sub rosa?"

"That too," his Rosier cousin agreed, with a secretive, faraway smile that meant he was thinking about something involving that phrase, probably Spike (but potentially almost anyone they knew, given what he'd been like the year or two before his OWLs), and definitely Things Regulus Would Rather Not Think About. Going serious again, he asked, "What kind of bad is it? For you."

Regulus thought about last night, and started to feel sick again very quickly.

Apparently his expression was answer enough. "Are you going to be able to keep on?" Evan asked grimly. "Or, rather, keep up?"

"I don't know," he whispered. "It's horr—hard, Evan, it's really hard."

He could feel Evan swallow. "I can't get you out of it," his cousin said starkly. "Even if you ask me, I… that hasn't worked. Backfired. I wish I could, Reggie, believe me. I would, if I could see a way."

"I'm not asking," Reg said hastily, something withering in him that he hadn't let himself know was there.

"In fact, I don't know that I can help you at all," Evan said. "But I expect Severus can."

"Severus!" Reg echoed, dubious. "Evan, if he were so much as to say one word, to anyone, and it got back to her, or to Him—"

"Oh, he can't get you out of it, either," the fer-de-lance agreed, coolly cordial. "Should I catch him trying, you're finished."

Although Reg wouldn't have dreamed of pointing Spike at anything so dangerous and useless even without the threat, he flinched.

Evan went on, his ally, too, again, again human and warm and comforting. Almost as terrifying as Bella, when you knew it. But, up to a line Reg had no intention of crossing, on his side.

"But if anyone in this world knows about carrying on through nightmares, it's Spike. I doubt he knows how he does it, and I don't say he's gotten through without… well, without turning into Spike."

Reg made a noise that was half agreement and half urrrgh.

"But if you're not Slytherin enough to learn more than a teacher who loves you can find the words for, Rabbit," Evan went on, hugging him around the shoulders with a smile, "I don't know that there is any hope for you."

The original terrible sub rosa joke was in The Wicket Gate: June 11.