Chapter Text
Act I: Summer
The weather at home was never consistent. On Monday it would be a hurricane and Tuesday it was clear skies. That was how Regulus knew something was coming.
Summer had just begun, and his family was already back from their trip to France to visit their cousins. He’d been staring out the window all week. It didn’t rain once. There wasn’t a gray cloud in sight. He took it as a warning. Something was coming. Something that would change his entire summer.
---
“Regulus, you’ve slept half the day away!”
Sirius, Regulus’s only brother, snatched his warm blanket right off of him.
“It’s summer. You can’t just sleep in every day. We have things to do.”
Regulus pulled another blanket out from underneath his bed and covered himself once again.
“That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
Sirius huffed and walked out of their shared bedroom.
When Regulus was sure he wouldn’t come back, he sat up. He wasn’t really sleeping the day away. He was spying on the new neighbor.
The Crouch’s moved in across the street while the Black family was in France. They had already seemed to be settled in. There would be no need to bake a pie. The other neighbors had probably already given them enough baked goods the day they moved in. That’s what Regulus’s mother said at least. Maybe she just didn’t want to deal with the dishes that came with baking something.
The neighbors were a family of three, not so much smaller than the Blacks’ four. There was a mother. Caterina Crouch. A father. Barty Crouch Senior. And a son. Barty Crouch Junior. Crouch was a bad enough last name, in Regulus’s opinion, but to have Barty for a first name? That was even worse than the Black family names.
Regulus stared out the window with wide eyes.
Barty Crouch Junior was dressed like a city boy. Regulus didn’t use that term often because he didn’t like being called a country boy, but there was no other word for Barty. He was just... a city boy. His jeans were ripped and baggy, something his mother called “ghetto.” His t-shirt that he’d tossed aside earlier was black, even though it was summer. And he had obnoxiously dark hair. He looked like someone Sirius would like on a TV show. He looked like someone his mother would roll her eyes at. He looked like someone the kids at Regulus’s school would look up to.
To Regulus, he looked like trouble.
“Aha! I knew you weren’t really asleep!”
Regulus sighed.
“Quit your theatrics. I’m just looking out the window. Is that a crime?”
“Stalking is a crime,” Sirius said, crossing his arms and shrugging his shoulders.
Regulus sighed again.
“You’re so immature.”
Sirius didn’t say anything at that, so Regulus continued looking out the window. That was one of the perks of having a bedroom in the front of the house. You could see the whole street from here. Not that there was much to see on their rural street. It was just fields of red carnations that their family grew. The street was even named after their farm.
Barty looked up from where he was leaning on his basketball hoop, a thing Sirius had been begging for for years, and waved.
Oh shoot.
Regulus waved back and quickly shut the curtains.
“Have you been staring at that boy all morning?” Sirius asked.
Regulus’s poker face was excellent.
“No.”
But his older brother saw right through it, of course.
“Both of us can’t like boys, you know,” Sirius said, sitting down on his bed. “Mother would be so disappointed if she didn’t have grandchildren.”
“Heirs, you mean.”
Sirius nodded, looking more like their grandfather than the seventeen-year-old boy he was.
“Well, you don’t need to worry about me. I think Barty’s obnoxious.”
Sirius snorted.
“You haven’t even met him yet, and you’re already judging the poor boy.”
“You know they say you can tell a lot about a person by how they dress,” Regulus pointed out, “he dresses like a hooligan.”
“Ugh. You sound like mother.”
Regulus found it funny how Sirius pretended he didn’t care much for their mother, then proceeded to kiss her feet when it really came down to it. He was a mama’s boy. He was ashamed of it, but he was still a mama’s boy.
Regulus peeked through the curtains again. Barty was back to playing basketball.
“Do you want to go say hi?”
Yes.
“No!”
Sirius smirked.
“I’ve been catching your lies since the day you were born. You might be able to fool everyone else, but not me.”
“If you’re so eager to say hi, then go,” Regulus said, resuming his stalking.
“It looks like you're the eager one.”
Regulus rolled his eyes, even though he knew Sirius couldn’t see his face. He did want to meet Barty. When he was a kid, he dreamed of the boy next door, just like any teenaged girl. Except he wasn’t. A girl, that is. He couldn’t help it if his mind went straight to romance when he found out the new neighbors had a kid his age. It most certainly didn’t help that Barty was so attractive. That he was so casual about throwing off his clothing to play basketball.
“What if he’s not what I want him to be?” Regulus said, suddenly shifting the conversation’s tone.
Sirius knew him better than anyone. He knew that when Regulus built fantasies in his head, it broke his heart after they turned out to be just that. Fantasies.
Sirius moved from his bed to Regulus’s.
“Your soulmate doesn’t need to be the boy next door. He doesn’t need to be prince charming. Your soulmate might just be a regular old guy. And that’s okay. You get hurt because you expect so much from people. People are just people, Reg. They’re not fairytale characters. It’s not like your novels.”
People are just people.
“That’s the problem. Why can’t it be like that?”
Sirius shrugged.
“Just the way of the world, I guess. Now do you want to meet the boy or what?”
---
Barty was still outside by the time Sirius picked the perfect outfit for playing basketball at ten in the morning. He wasn’t playing basketball, but he was still shirtless, laying on the ground typing something on his phone.
“It’s Barty, right?”
The boy sat up at the sound of Sirius’s voice.
He was even prettier in person. His hooligan clothes didn’t seem to matter so much anymore. There was a very faint spattering of freckles on his nose that Regulus couldn’t see from the window. His eyes were the most gorgeous shade of brown Regulus had ever seen. Like gold bars and dark chocolate mixed into one.
“Yeah,” Barty said, standing up with a grin on his face.
The brothers nodded.
“Sick names”
It was the tiny differences that Regulus noticed first. Barty’s posture, for instance. He was slouching even though he wasn’t sitting down. Regulus had been taught to sit up straight, no matter what. Barty didn’t say ‘nice to meet you,’ a phrase drilled into Regulus’s brain from his birth. A prominent difference, though, was his staring. His eyes wandered all over the boy’s clothes and hair. Like he was studying them as Regulus had been studying him all morning. Regulus was taught that staring was one of the rudest things you could do.
“You don’t have to lie,” said Sirius, rolling his eyes, “we have stupid names. We know.”
It was easy for Sirius to make conversation like that. His self-deprecating jokes were laughed at. Regulus always got an ‘are you okay?’ when he made them.
Barty chuckled.
His laughter was one of the prettiest Regulus had ever seen. His canines were sharp, like a vampire’s, when he smiled. His eyes were sparkling like his mother’s pricey champagne.
Regulus was a goner.
“Mine’s definitely worse," Barty said, running a hand through his hair, “You guys play?”
He gestured to his hoop.
“I’m on the school team,” Sirius said, “Reg is more of a... poet.”
Barty finally turned to Regulus, eyes wandering up and down his figure.
Regulus suddenly felt very stupid wearing a long sleeve button-up in 98-degree heat. At least he had the common sense to wear jeans instead of his usual slacks.
“You write?”
“Novels,” Regulus explained, “not poetry.”
His heart was racing already. He’d barely said three words.
“That’s cool as hell. What do you write?”
Ah. The dreaded question. Regulus didn’t think he could bear saying “romance” in front of Barty. It sounded trivial when you said it aloud, but it was much deeper than that. His writing was so much more than the cheesy books the stores displayed.
“Depends. What do you like to read?”
Was this flirting? Regulus’s mouth was speaking before his mind could have a chance to come up with something to say. Stupid mouth.
Barty smiled again. Regulus never wanted him to stop.
“Bold of you to assume I read.”
Regulus shrugged.
“Well, if you don’t read, I’m afraid this won’t work out.”
Shit. Stupid stupid stupid.
“What is ‘this’, if I may ask?”
Regulus wished the ground would open and eat him whole.
“Teach me to play basketball,” Regulus said abruptly, hoping Barty would take the bait.
Sirius snorted behind him.
“Shut up,” Regulus muttered underneath his breath.
“Yeah, I’ll teach you,” Barty said, looking amused.
So, he did. The trio spent the rest of the morning playing HORSE. Once, Barty came up behind Regulus to teach him how to shoot. Regulus had been replaying the moment in his head the entire morning. Barty’s hands on his. His shirtless chest on his back. For Christ's sake, he just met the boy, and Barty was already making his heart pound.
By noon, the boys were laying in a row in Barty’s driveway, breathing heavily after the intense game they’d just played.
“You guys aren’t as lame as I thought you’d be.”
Sirius turned to Barty, scandalized.
“You thought I, Sirius Orion Black the third, would be lame?”
“God, even your name is pretentious.”
“You’re getting me mixed up with Regulus. He’s the pretentious one.”
“Leave me out of this,” Regulus panted.
He pushed his sweaty hair off his forehead. He’d never been this comfortable laying next to a stranger before. He’d never felt this comfortable with a stranger period. It was new and foreign, which Regulus usually hated.
Barty turned to Regulus, his cheek against the hard concrete. His hair flopped onto the ground. On the underside of his hair was a bit of blond hair peeking out. Even though he’d only known Barty for a few hours, Regulus couldn’t picture him blond. He wondered why Barty dyed his hair.
“Let’s go somewhere.”
His answer came quick.
“Sounds like trouble.”
Barty winked. Who winked in real life?
“You know me.”
“I don’t, actually. I just met you.”
Barty grinned again. Those vampire teeth had Regulus’s heart skipping a beat.
He turned to Sirius. Regulus could see the concrete left a mark on his face. His beauty wasn’t marred, though. Not one bit.
“You, Siri?”
“Nicknames already? What’s next? Inviting me into your bedroom?”
“Take me to dinner first, Black. What do you think, though?”
Sirius pretended to think about it. Regulus already knew his answer. He was so desperately trying to impress the new kid. The city boy.
“Yeah, let’s go somewhere. Oh shit—actually, I have riding practice.”
No, he didn’t.
“Riding practice? Like horses?”
Sirius nodded.
“Oh my god,” Barty cackled, “you are pretentious! You and your whole family!”
Sirius huffed before standing up.
“Some of us have hobbies besides playing sports half naked.”
“Hey! The ladies love when I do that.”
Sirius rolled his eyes.
“See you later, guys!”
With that, he ran across the street and went inside his house.
Curse you, Sirius! The worst part is that he probably thought he was doing Regulus a favor, so Regulus couldn’t get back at him.
“So, you won’t go somewhere with me?”
Barty was a hell of a lot harder to say no to when there was no one to stop him from embarrassing himself.
“What’d you have in mind? Small towns don’t offer a lot to do.”
“Not sure. Back in Houston, me and my friends would usually just go to the park and play on playgrounds.”
Regulus laughed at that.
“When there were kids around?”
“Hell yeah,” Barty said, like it was obvious, “One time, I made friends with this kid, Percy. We emailed back and forth for, like, a month afterwards. His mom had to help him type. I even babysat for them once.”
He laughed again. It was easier to be himself when he knew Sirius wasn’t going to make fun of him for it.
“Well, we have one park. Kids don’t play at it, though. It’s considered a safety risk. It’s been abandoned for a few years.”
“Sounds like fun.”
And, well, Regulus couldn’t say no to those eyes.
“I hope you can drive. I suck at it.”
Barty sat up.
“You don’t have your license?”
Regulus bit his lip, embarrassed.
“Took me four tries to get it.”
Normally, Regulus didn’t like people laughing at him, but when Barty did it, it sounded like heaven.
“Really?”
“Yeah, they made me take additional classes,” Regulus said, scratching the back of his neck.
Barty smiled, an adorable one, with crinkled eyes and fangs on display. Regulus was already obsessed with it.
“Good thing I drive. Let me get my keys. Be right back.”
While Barty was away, Regulus finally had time for himself. He let go of a breath he’d been holding since he walked across Carnation Drive.
Barty Crouch Junior. Barty. Crouch. Junior. Barty Crouch Junior.
The enigma. The legend. The boy next door. The object of Regulus Black’s affection. Barty Crouch. Junior.
“I’m so fucked,” Regulus said, dragging his hands across his face.
“Why’s that?” Barty asked, spinning his keys around his finger.
Regulus almost flinched when Barty materialized before him.
“I’m listening to you. I must have gone mad,” Regulus said smoothly. It was like Sirius said. Regulus had everyone fooled.
Barty raised an eyebrow.
“Must have,” he said after a moment.
His face returned to normal. He held out a hand to help Regulus up.
“Thanks,” Regulus mumbled, standing up after what felt like hours.
They crawled into Barty’s Jaguar (and he was calling Regulus pretentious), and pulled out of the driveway.
“Where to, Black?”
“You can’t call me and my brother Black. It’d get confusing.”
“Should I call you mine instead?”
Regulus knew that no matter how fast his heart was racing, it wouldn’t show on his face. For that, he was glad. Good thing he was an actor.
“Smooth. I’ve never heard that one before.”
“Hm. Usually works better when we’re in the Jag.”
Regulus felt his face getting hot. He wouldn’t laugh though. He couldn’t. It’d give him away too easily.
“The Jag?”
“My ride. Don’t you like her?”
Shit. Regulus didn’t know a thing about cars. All he knew was that he couldn’t drive this car. His mother didn’t even trust him to drive the cheapest car on the market, whatever that was.
“What year is it?”
Jaguars had years, right?
“2021.”
"Used?”
“Of course. I’m not new sports car rich.”
“Right.”
The drive stretched on into what Regulus thought would be an awkward silence, but it wasn’t. He spent a lot of time telling Barty about what the town had to offer (not much) and the kids at the school (not many). Barty spent a lot of time telling Regulus what city life was like (way more interesting).
When they finally arrived at the park, Barty was still bright-eyed and gesturing wildly with a hand that wasn’t on the steering wheel. He was telling a story about one of the fights he got in at his old school. When he finally finished, he looked around, surprised.
“You didn’t tell me we were here, Reg.”
“You were so absorbed in your story it was kind of...”
Adorable.
“Yeah, I have, like, a million more stories to tell.” He punched Regulus’s arm playfully. “We’re gonna have the best summer ever, Black.”
His hopeful smile was so endearing.
“What makes you think I’d spend my summer with you?”
Barty shrugged.
“I have you hooked,” he said, laying back in his seat and putting his hands behind his head, “you’re not going anywhere.”
He was right. He did have Regulus hooked. Forget summer. Regulus was ready to spend the rest of his life with him.
“Now, let’s go play on some hazardous playground equipment, shall we?”
---
Regulus and Barty collapsed onto the grass, breathless.
“See? Jumping from fifteen feet in the air can be fun!”
“It’s not jumping if you have to hold onto playground equipment while you fall.”
Barty picked up a handful of grass and threw it at Regulus.
“It’s like you want me to die!”
Regulus sputtered, spitting out a blade of grass that landed in his mouth.
“You’re so annoying.”
“I know. One of my many irresistible qualities.”
“I find your qualities extremely resistible,” Regulus said matter-of-factly.
“A shame. The ladies usually fall for me within minutes. You’re being particularly stubborn.”
Regulus laughed at that. The irony! If he only knew.
“So are you.”
“You haven’t told me to leave you alone.”
“Everything I do is for a purpose, Crouch. If I wanted you gone, you’d be gone.”
Barty leaned back and cackled.
“Ooooh! Scary! So, why do you want me here, darling?”
Regulus flushed at the nickname and turned so Barty wouldn’t see.
“You’re... interesting. You’re different. We don’t get a lot of that here in the country. It’s like we never venture out of our small town, so we only know what we have. We all talk and act the same. Newcomers are my favorite people. It’s a nice break from the same old thing. Most of them don’t last long. It only takes a few months before they start acting like us or leave again but... something tells me you’re not going to change one bit.”
“So, you think I’ll leave.”
Regulus turned back to him. He was so beautiful. Not because of his pretty eyes and perfectly shaped lips, but because of the things that aren’t so normal. Like his gap tooth and his dyed hair. He was too good for the word interesting. He was too good to put into words.
So, he couldn’t stay. He couldn’t stay in this suffocating town. He wouldn’t look right among the cowboy boots and gravel roads. Regulus imagined him in New York City instead. It was more fitting for a boy like him.
“I hope so.”
Barty laughed again. A surprised laugh.
“I—I meant—”
“Nah, don’t worry about it. I know what you mean.” He laid back on the grass. “You don’t like it here, do you?”
“Not really,” Regulus sighed. He never voiced it out loud. He didn’t have many friends, and Sirius loved country life too much. Regulus didn’t want to hurt his feelings by complaining about how much he wanted out.
“I can see it now, darling. You in Oxford, studying with all the other losers—no offense. And you have, like, a ton of books. And you’ve already published five novels even though you’re a freshmen, or however British people count grades. And—”
“All that sounds nice, Crouch, but you don’t get out of a small town. Even if I did go to Oxford, I’d be back after I got my degree. It’s just how small towns work. You always come back.”
“So, we’ll come back together.”
Regulus smiled sadly.
“Newcomers don’t come back.”
“Bull!”
Barty sat up and threw an arm around Regulus’s shoulder.
Regulus flinched at the contact. He wasn’t used to physical contact. Sirius knew Regulus didn’t like to be touched. From Barty, it wasn’t so bad. Just... strange.
“Me and you—”
“You and I,” Regulus corrected.
“Yeah, that. You and I are going to be best friends, Regulus. I can already tell.”
Regulus hoped so. He selfishly hoped that Barty would never leave. He couldn’t wait for summer to start. Really start. He wanted his summer to look like the ones he read in his books. He wanted them to look like the ones in the movies. He wanted and wanted. It always turned out the same. He hoped to god it would be different this time.
“If you say so, Crouch.”