"You two make such a sweet couple."

Rabastan, who had been lying still and silent in his brother's arms and watching a faint line of sunlight appear on the horizon, winced at the sound of Bellatrix's voice. He didn't turn over to face her. He didn't think he could look at her without seeing the way she had smiled at him over the Dark Lord's shoulder while he…

"I see you finally made it back," Rodolphus said flatly, and Rabastan felt his brother's fingers tighten a little on his arm.

"I told you I would be out all night."

"You didn't tell me you'd be with the Dark Lord."

"I take it your brother did." Rabastan felt the mattress shift under him as she sat down. "But why should that bother you? It meant you got to spend the whole night with your dear brother… and it looks as if you two had a perfectly good time."

Rodolphus sat up abruptly, dislodging Rabastan. His face was flushed and he was shaking visibly.

"Go home, Rab," he said.

"But–"

"I said to go home!" Rodolphus had never spoken so harshly before, but Rabastan knew him well enough to hear a trace of tearfulness in his voice. "I want to talk to my wife alone."

"Poor Rab, cast out as soon as I come home," Bellatrix crooned, and Rodolphus slapped her. Rabastan reeled, shocked, and practically tumbled out of bed. Bellatrix clutched her cheek where Rodolphus had hit.

"How dare you!"

"Rabastan, go home," Rodolphus ordered, and Rabastan scrambled for his robes. His hands shook as he pulled them on, and he barely had them fastened even as he stumbled out the door.

He was only a few steps down the corridor when he heard a sharp crack of flesh against flesh, and he froze in place.

"Haven't I told you never to hit me?" Bellatrix's voice was low and dangerous, and Rabastan – against his better judgement, and contrary also to how he had learned to take Rodolphus's orders – crept back to the door and stooped to look through the keyhole.

Rodolphus's cheek bore an angry red mark to match the one on Bellatrix's, and Bellatrix was half on top of him, pinning him to the bed.

"I think an exception can be made when you're out- whoring yourself out to the Dark Lord!"

"It's a bit rich of you to say that when you're in bed with your brother, don't you think?"

"It's different!"

"Yes, I suppose it is." Bellatrix leaned over him, and her hair obscured her face from Rabastan's view. "For one thing, unlike myself, you don't need to go to someone else just to get off. If I were as inadequate a lover to you as you are to me, I might have been able to forgive you."

Rodolphus flinched visibly, and his hands curled into fists in the sheets.

"And for another," she continued, and she sounded so smug that it was quite sickening, "I didn't go to the Dark Lord tonight just to go to bed with him."

"Oh, didn't you? It was all perfectly innocent, was it?" Rodolphus spat. "Do you honestly expect me to believe that?"

"It's the truth. He, ah… had something for me."

"Oh, I don't doubt he had something…"

"Don't be vulgar, love."

"I shouldn't be vulgar? How are you acting?"

"I'm trying to give you good news, Rod – don't go interrupting."

"There's good news?" Rodolphus spluttered, and he struggled against her, his face turning positively crimson. "You tell me there's good news when you come home after spending the night with your lover – who also happens to be Rabastan's lover, as a matter of fact–"

"Well, he's not being faithful to him, is he? I may be married, but Rabastan is married and has you – it's a bit greedy of him to want the Dark Lord as well, don't you think?"

Rabastan swallowed hard. A lump was forming in his throat. Part of him wanted to throw the door open and scream that no, it's not greedy, and how dare she criticise his behaviour, but he restrained himself.

And there was a whisper in the back of his mind too – she does have a point

"In any case," Bellatrix continued, in her infuriating, self-satisfied, sugar-sweet voice, "I went to the Dark Lord to take the Dark Mark."

Rodolphus stopped struggling immediately. He went limp underneath her, and Rabastan could see the flush draining from his face.

"You- you- what?"

Bellatrix pulled back her sleeve. Rabastan caught a glimpse of the raw red and black lines – just as he had seen last night, un-bandaged and proudly on display – and Rodolphus let out a weak little groan.

"Oh- Bella, why?"

The pet name made Rabastan cringe.

"I've wanted to serve him for years." Bellatrix sat back, and Rabastan could see her face again. There was a smile on her lips and she looked practically transported. "I thought he wouldn't have me, because I'm a woman… and then, it was Rabastan who gave me the idea of how to do it."

"W–" Rodolphus swallowed hard. "What are you talking about?"

"Well." She tossed her head and lifted one shoulder in a little shrug. "If he'll take that useless little prat just because he goes to bed with him–"

"Don't talk about him like that," Rodolphus interrupted, but his voice lacked conviction, and Bellatrix ignored it.

"He'll obviously take anyone who can get him off. It was just a matter of getting him to give me a chance… after a few nights, he was all too eager to have me in his ranks."

"Slut," Rodolphus hissed, but Bellatrix appeared quite unfazed by the slur.

"Call me whatever you want. I have everything I want and more, now – the Dark Mark, the Dark Lord, and a chance to fight on behalf of my blood. Do you think I care what you think of my methods?"

"You should!" His voice rose again, almost to the point of sounding hysterical. "I'm your husband. I'm your husband!"

"Hush." She reached out and patted his cheek lightly, and he didn't even push her hand away. "There's no reason for you to be upset. You have your own lover, after all."

"I'd sooner have you."

Rabastan felt as if he'd been struck about the head. He clung to the doorframe, and when Bellatrix laughed, it echoed in his head until his ears pounded.

"Don't let your dear brother hear you saying that."

He was going to be sick. He could feel bile rising in his throat, and he put one hand over his mouth and swallowed it back even as he stumbled to his feet.

How could Rodolphus say that, how could he?

Rabastan fled away and down the stairs, barely managing to keep upright and not caring in the slightest about the noise he knew he was making. As soon as he was out the doors, he fell to his knees and vomited into the grass of the gardens.

He stayed on all fours, heaving, long after he'd spat up what little food was in his stomach, and the longer he knelt and coughed, the more hot tears gathered in his eyes.

How could Rodolphus say that, after he'd spent the night with Rabastan in his arms, after he'd made love to him – after he had invited him into his bed – and knowing that Bellatrix was unfaithful? How could he?

This was as bad as those long, painful months in which Rabastan had been aware of how he felt towards Rodolphus and had been unable to tell him. This was worse.

He couldn't mean it. It had been said in a moment of passion, a moment of anger. Rabastan simply couldn't bring himself to believe that his brother, his own brother, his lover would sooner have Bellatrix than him. Especially not when she had just made it so clear that she had no interest in him.

Damn her. Damn her!

There was a small part of Rabastan – probably the same part that had concurred with Bellatrix' assessment of his greed – that knew it wasn't entirely her fault that Rodolphus, at least, was so inexplicably devoted to her that he would suggest even for a moment that he'd rather have her than his brother. She would probably – no, she would clearly – have wished for Rodolphus to be happy with his affair and leave her free to go to the Dark Lord's bed. She was probably as angry that Rodolphus said he would rather have her as Rabastan was.

But it was easier to blame her.

It was easier to think of her as the whore who had stolen away both the men Rabastan felt for – his brother, who he loved, and the Dark Lord, to whom he was devoted, than it was to think that she might be unhappy with the circumstance as well.

It was easier to hate her than to try to hate Rodolphus.