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Angela Carter, The Company of Wolves The bloody chamber, and other stories

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Jia Li (Chinese, b.1964), Summer Light, 2015, Watercolor on paper

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i love how sometimes shit hits the absolute fan and it seems like all and sundry are going nuts, making crazy fucking choices, doing crazy fucking things

and you're like, 'what the fuck is happening right now, is it a full moon or something?'

i looked it up. it's a full moon tonight.

explains everything

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Dennis Schnieber

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I'm inspired. I think, almost one whole year later, I finally know where this story is going.

I think my summary for revenant will be: "Evan is convinced that Barty has been possessed by some sort of spirit. Regulus is too distracted with exams, Quidditch, and the fall out of getting together with his brother's best friend to even notice."

Ahaha.

Because the idea that Evan is freaking out like, "you put a fucking demon in Barty!!!" And Pandora is like, "demons aren't real, Evan..." is just so fucking funny to me.

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excerpt: Evan would have liked to say that he knew it wouldn’t end well. From the moment Pandora had asked him and Barty to break into the Restricted Section of the library, he really should have known. Five or so years of friendship really is enough experience for Evan to be aware that when Pandora asks for titles such Ars Goetia and Liber Officiorum Spirituum and Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, he probably should start waving sage, or some shit like that.

But alas, alarm bells do not go off. Evan has thoroughly dropped the quaffle on his ‘preventing Pandora and Barty from dying’ responsibilities. Responsibilities that he would very much like to give back to Regulus, thank you sincerely. But unfortunately for him, very much unfortunately for him, Regulus has been frustratingly preoccupied with Quidditch finals and their impending N.E.W.T-1 examinations and the never-ending drama that is his love life.

The ‘fuck, this might not actually be a good idea’ feeling, in fact, strikes him the moment he sees Barty laying in the middle of the pentagram surrounded by flickering, dancing candles. At that moment, a veritable whirlwind of thoughts and emotions sweeps through Evan, starting somewhere around, ‘well shit, maybe we shouldn’t have encouraged this friendship between Barty and Pandora’ and ending somewhere around, ‘well shit, Regulus is going to murder us if we let Barty die’.

(trying to work up the motivation to finish this one-shot | making things instead of writing | maybe currently 1/3 of the way in? 🎵🎶chipping away, chipping away, chipping away...🎶🎵)

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i put my writing through one of those online "readability" websites, and it was like: you have many long sentences.

yes, i do. tell me something i don't know.

i read a lot of bret easton ellis as an impressionable youth, and it evidently...left an impression.

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I don't have a story. I have vibes.

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sometimes I can smash out 7000+ words in a single sitting...

sometimes it takes me a year to whittle away at ~1600 words...

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i think you would have the most fun writing barty x regulus x evan x james. just think about it ;)

Oh, don't give me any ideas, hahaha!

No, you're right, I would. I 100% would.

I definitely already headcanon that when Rosekiller happens alongside Jegulus, that Barty/Regulus/Evan/James inevitably occurs at SOME stages. Mainly because Barty/Regulus is always a thing in all scenarios for me, so why wouldn't their significant other be dragged into the mess! However, I don't imagine that James/Evan would be romantic in that dynamic, but more platonic with...benefits...and really only there because Regulus and Barty have lured them there.

Barty/Regulus/Evan/James is implied in some ficlets I've written for my sequence with "early morning", "mirror", "things we carry", etc, which I'll get around to posting them at some stage, because I find it entirely fun, and the idea that Sirius is a bit taken off-guard by the whole situation (and James would get flustered trying to explain it away) kinda tickles me.

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‘’I loved you before I knew you’’

- Everything,everything.

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May 30, 1929 Journals of Anais Nin 1927-1931   [volume 4]

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finally - @black-brothers-microfic - words: 825 [notes: undertones of rosestarkiller; past bartylus; implied future character death that is canon-compliant; apparently I really like writing "off to the cave" Regulus...]

Regulus does not say goodbye to Barty or Evan.

He cannot bring himself to find the words or the gestures because if he tries, he will never leave. He will cling to them, accept Barty’s offer to run (run to where, to inevitable death?). And then where would they be?

“We stay together and die together” had seemed more romantic when they were still school boys huddled together in their tight little ball of comfort and the prospect of death had been entirely hypothetical. When they’d all been so sure that they would die for each other rather than watch each other die, because they still didn’t quite grasp the reality of war.

Regulus knows now that he cannot save Barty and Evan. He does not have the power to prevent the inevitable headlong rush of death barrelling towards them. What he can do, however, is increase their chances of survival exponentially.

And so this is what he will do.

The night that Regulus leaves, Barty does not sleep. At 3am, he’s wrapped himself around Regulus, long fingers playing with Regulus’s messy curls, reading by wand light.

See, Barty never sleeps. The last time Barty slept (truly slept, not half-slept or micro-slept) was probably back in early 1977 when Regulus and Barty had come down with temporary insanity and had attempted to engage in an honest-to-Merlin romantic relationship. Of course, everything had exploded between them (because that’s what happens when two volatile and combustive substances are combined) and at the time Barty had, for some unfathomable reason, decided that the only way to truly stick it to Regulus was to actually start partaking in that thing called sleep.

Regulus too does not sleep. Not now, at least. He’s been fighting it for the better part of three hours, watching the clock on the wall rapidly tick time away, listening to Barty’s quiet humming on one side of him and Evan’s even breathing on the other.

Evan is dead to the world. And thank Salazar for that, because while Barty (for all his intelligence) often needs emotions to punch him in the face to truly pick up on them, Evan is much more socially switched on. He would take one look at Regulus and his lack of sleep and the heavy weight on his heart, and he would know.

Regulus burrows deeper under the covers into Barty’s arms, savouring the feel of Barty’s fingers tangling in his hair. Listening to the slow thud-thud-thud of Barty’s heart beat. Watching the rise and fall of Evan’s chest.

He thinks, yes, they are alive.

He thinks, as alive as we can all be.

Regulus is at peace with what is to come. It is the end of the road for him. He feels it more than he knows it. He will not emerge from the cave alive. He will try with every last ounce of strength he has to come home to Barty and Evan—he will fight until his very last breath—but if he cannot, he is okay with that. Perhaps, in fact, it is better that way.

After every atrocity he has committed and borne witness to and failed to stop, he fears what the war has made him. What it is continuing to make him and who he will be at the other end.

Would he recognise himself at all?

When Barty’s fingers stop their gentle scratches at Regulus’s scalp, Regulus peers up at him. Barty is mid-thought, deep in his book, the little tell-tale crease between his brows indicating that the cogs of his brain are turning and he is conjuring what he calls “brilliant schemes”. Schemes he will likely later take to Bellatrix, because that’s Barty’s job: to think up brilliant schemes and do the fancy, complicated magic.

Barty hums quietly and wrinkles his nose, flipping back through his book. And Regulus’s resolve cracks a little because he can’t help but despair.

Why did they waste all those months months bickering angrily in their fifth year? Why did they do that to each other and to Evan, who had been caught in the middle of it all?

Why did they spend almost all of their seventh year bickering and fighting and avoiding each other?

Why did they not try harder to keep Barty away all of this?

And why are they not doing more to hold Evan together? Because Regulus knows that Evan is already on the verge of breaking and losing him might be what pushes Evan over the edge.

Regulus reaches out and lays a hand on Evan’s chest, feeling that rise and fall, the deep and steady breaths that tell Regulus that, even though Evan may not feel it anymore, he is still very much alive.

Regulus is at peace with his own impending end; selfishly so. Though, he realises, he may not be quite as at peace with leaving Barty and Evan behind to deal with the aftermath.

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kill - @into-the-jeggyverse - words: 493

James finds the body on the floor of his living room.

It’s splayed across the floorboards in a puddle of blood, limbs askew as though it’s been positioned intentionally. As though it’s been dismantled, limb-by-limb, and reconstructed in the middle of his living space as a blatant reminder of where the mistake of existing will get him.

“Fucks sake,” James mutters. He carefully steps around it and picks his way across the room, dropping his satchel bag on the side table and his robe on the couch.

Spitefully, James tugs off a sock and tosses it this way, tugs off another sock and tosses it that way. Regulus will be on the warpath when he gets back from work, but there’s something about a thoroughly riled up and homicidal Regulus that really does it for James.

When Regulus gets angry (and Regulus, because he’s a mean and particular little man, gets angry often), he goes hunting. And then James, because James is stupidly in love with him, is dragged into the whole mess and becomes an accessory to murder.

He’s left to help mop up the blood, bag up the body and bury the evidence. After all, isn’t that what one does when they’re in love? Help their significant other hide dead bodies?

“You’re going to pick that up,” a voice says from the far corner of the room, “now.”

James stops in his tracks by the doorway leading from the living room to the kitchen. Regulus sits in what James has fondly dubbed his “book chair”, the squashy one by the fireplace, half-shrouded in darkness. Whether he’s been there the whole time, or whether he’s somehow crept in while James was unawares, James doesn’t know.

James will never know.

One of the skills that had made Regulus a remarkable seeker back when they were at Hogwarts had been his ability to materialise out of thin air. He’d won many a-game by creeping up on his opponent and swiping the snitch from beneath their nose. So of course when they got together, Regulus had started weaponising this skill against James, leaving James with this uneasy feeling that even half-way across the world, Regulus might suddenly appear from around a corner and start bitching at him about leaving his socks on the floor or his shoes by the door.

James gives an easy smile and leans against the doorframe. “Pick what up?” he asks innocently. “You mean that?” He casts pointed look at the body still in the middle of the living room floor, at the puddle of blood that will soon start coagulating in the cold winter air.

“The socks, James.”

“Ah, the socks.” James nods. “How about I stop leaving dirty socks everywhere when you stop leaving dead fucking mice everywhere!”

Regulus stares at him, unblinking, and then says in a flat, deadpan voice that James wants to laugh at (but doesn’t, because he knows not to cross Regulus when Regulus is feeling a little bit homicidal): “Meow.”