unspeakable | jegulus

don't feel the pain

chapter title: so messed up by the damned

Barty Crouch (Junior) was petrified on the ground, robes all around him like snow angel wings, his wand useless in his frozen hand. His eyes bounced between James and Regulus, pitch black, darker in the dark. Regulus kicked him in the stomach.

"Reg," James protested, weakly.

"We need to obliviate him." Regulus was bright red with embarrassment.

"You're not obliviating Barty." James crouched at his side, and took a scrap of familiar parchment out of his hand. "Oh dear," he said in dismay. "He has the map."

"What?" He sounded angrier than James had ever heard him. His voice was low, dangerous. "Merlin, I should kill you both."

"Mischief managed." James tapped the map with his wand and tucked it in his robe pocket. He looked down at Barty inquisitively. His ink-black eyes were fixed on him, probably pleading to be set free. "We can't obliviate him. Is there a blood spell, or some other kind of spell, that you know for something like this?" Regulus sighed.

"Do you think there's blood magic for everything?" James shrugged. "You're useless."

"Thanks." He tilted his head at Barty quizzically. "Did you enjoy the show?" His black eyes stared at him like doll eyes, blank and unreadable. "Regulus..."

"I don't know what to do." Regulus paced, back and forth, leaving a line in the frozen, sandy dirt.

"We can't just leave him petrified like this, we should talk to him—"

"Incarcerous." Ropes shot out of the end of his wand and bound Barty tightly from neck to ankle. "You wanna talk to him? Talk. Finite Incantatem."

Barty instantly started laughing. Loud, hysterical, hyena-like laughter. Regulus glowered.

"Do you want me to petrify you again? I'll leave you here for the rest of the night. Don't think I won't."

"No you will not," James asserted. Regulus turned his glare on him, and he quailed. "Or... you can do whatever you want."

"I did enjoy the show, James. Thank you for asking." Barty winked at him from the ground. "Does Regulus always spit in your face, or was that just foreplay—ouch—!"

Regulus stuck the tip of his boot in between Barty's ribs harshly. "It was obviously foreplay. James likes being degraded. Go ahead, try it. Call him stupid, he'll suck you off." James felt a pang of very real hurt in his chest. Regulus met his glare with an equally poisonous look in his eye. Fighting with him made him feel sick, and sad, but it was also electrifying in a way that made him uneasy. "What's your problem?"

"Who says I have a problem?" James wasn't well versed at this dance, but he was learning the steps pretty quickly. Tension crackled between them, stifling with heat, even in the winter cold. Neither of them moved. Regulus' eyes burned with frigid anger. They were the only two people on earth, the sun appraising the moon, night appraising day. It felt like a competition. He didn't even blink. He wouldn't look away first.

"Sorry for interrupting your fight. You seemed like you were enjoying it." Barty got another kick in the ribs from Regulus. He laughed again. "That map is pretty handy, were you planning to keep it for yourselves?"

"I made it." James narrowed his eyes, finally looking away from Regulus and back at their problem, tied up on the ground like a disobedient animal. "Did you think we just happened to find it?"

"I mean, yeah." Barty raised an eyebrow. "You made that thing?"

James didn't know what to do. "Are you planning to keep him tied up like this for the whole night?"