Chapter 1: Good Luck, Babe!
Chapter Text
“Okay, but why do you want to go to Comic-Con so badly?”
It’s the one thing Barty can’t figure out. He’s known Regulus since they were acne-ridden prep school teenagers, and he’s absolutely sure he’s never heard him utter the words ‘Comic-Con’ until today.
“I literally can’t imagine you cosplaying as a hobbit or Spiderman or some shit like that,” Barty says, more to himself than the phone still held up to his ear. And then, for a very entertaining moment, he tries to picture it. Regulus Arcturus Black—the man who won’t be seen during the day in anything other than a bespoke Italian suit while he makes his stock trades or his PowerPoint presentations or… honestly, Barty never really bothered to learn what exactly Regulus does at his 'investment banking' job. But he genuinely tries to picture his best friend in some kind of technicolor anime outfit and—“Yeah, no. I just tried to imagine it, and my brain force quit.”
The other end of the phone is silent, but Barty knows the call didn’t drop. This is just Regulus. He gets all quiet and introspective when he’s deliberating about something, running different scenarios in his head, and Barty has learned the best way forward is just to wait it out. He keeps his phone pressed tightly to his ear while he lets his own mind wander. This was supposed to be an Idea Walk anyway. He’s sure if he loops around the entirety of Central Park enough times, he’s bound to solve his fucking plot hole. Barty has never dug his way into a ditch he hasn’t been able to claw his way out of before. Sure, the number of point-of-view characters might have gotten a little out of hand in his latest novel, but worst case scenario he can just kill them all off and then—
“I don’t know,” Regulus finally spits out. He pauses again, and Barty’s eyes trail one of those giant bubbles people in Central Park make with that thing that looks like ropes on sticks (Barty wonders where he can buy one). The bubble morphs into different shapes, iridescent in the afternoon sun, until it finally pops on a bare tree branch. “It’s been… on my bucket list. Andromeda always talked about it when we were kids. Anyway, I thought you said you could get us in anytime you wanted to.”
Barty groans to himself. He says a lot of things, and somehow this is the one that Regulus decided to latch onto? He would not have predicted this in a million years. He’s pretty sure Regulus has never even read a fantasy book other than Barty’s own, even though Barty bought him the complete works of J.R.R. Tolkien two Christmases ago to try to expand his horizons beyond all those history books and dusty old French poetry.
“I did," starts Barty, "but—”
“And I quote: ‘A Song of Snow and Lava’ has been on the New York Times Best Seller list for the past five years running, and all I’d have to do to get into that nerd festival is pick up the phone.’ ”
“That is the worst impression of me I have ever heard.”
“I knew you were full of shit. Bet you made up the books being optioned as an HBO show too.”
“Did not! I’m meeting with the producers next week—Dick and Dylan, or something like that…”
“Sure, sounds very real.”
“It is real!” Barty bites the inside of his cheek, flooded with annoyance. Just because he spends most of his days doing things like watching the Subway rats fight over a slice of pizza or watching the guy at the corner of 59th and Fifth swirl hot nuts in that sugary stuff… that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a real job. And Dom and Dustin from HBO are real too. He’s pretty sure. “Listen, we can go to Comic-Con, Reg. I’ll hang up with your annoying ass and call my agent now.”
A tiny part of him is hoping that this is the part where Regulus starts laughing and tells him this is all a joke. That Barty is a moron for actually believing he would want to go to Comic-Con in the first place.
“Oh. Excellent. I’ll have Kristin make my plane reservations.”
Well, fuck.
Okay.
It’s not that Barty actually thinks getting his agent to send him to Comic-Con is a problem. Of course she’ll be able to do it. Pandora Rosier is magic. It’s more that… alright, well he’s not avoiding her per se. He’s just leaving her texts on read and not answering her emails and screening her phone calls.
And he’s not trying to be rude. He loves Pandora, really. It’s just… how many times can you have the same conversation? He’s well aware that his last book came out more than three years ago at this point. He knows that Meadowes is breathing down her neck for a draft of book six. But it’s not his fault—he’s been busy. A montage of pizza rats and hot nuts and Central Park bubbles plays in front of his eyes. Okay, well, maybe not busy. Just… waiting for the right ideas to find him.
Which they will. When the time is right.
He stares at another oversized wobbling bubble until it pops in mid-air, and he sighs. Maybe if he starts walking back to Hell’s Kitchen (the only acceptable place to rent an apartment in New York City), he’ll get a few new thoughts about how to get his beloved Morganeyra out of her current pickle. Or at least he’ll get a slice of ninety-nine cent pizza.
Wiping the pizza grease on the sides of his jeans (he’ll wash them tomorrow), he sits down at his desktop computer and opens WordStar. Barty knows he’s probably the only millennial who even has DOS installed on their computer, but what can he say? He likes to write on a program that makes him feel like he was born in a different century. It helps him get in the zone.
He stares at the blinking cursor on his screen for a full minute. Then at the pigeon standing on the ledge outside his window. Then the computer again. Then he remembers that one exceptionally hot runner he passed just outside of the apartment building and considers having some special alone time in the shower, but—no. Come on. He has to at least try to write a few more new pages before he finally picks up the phone and calls Pandora.
Barty flexes his fingers and starts to type: ‘Morganeyra Mistborn, daughter of wings and ruin, bringer of peace and war, first of her name and rightful Empress of Centra Terra will escape from this dungeon. The false Emperor is no match for her wit, and she has a plan.’ She has a plan. Which is…
Which is…
Barty gets distracted and plays Tetris for a bit before pulling up the San Diego Comic-Con website.
~~~
“No? What do you mean ‘no’?”
Pandora’s eyes soften, although she keeps twirling a lock of wavy blonde hair between her fingers absentmindedly. “Oh, Barty,” she sighs like a summer breeze. “I’m sorry. I know you wanted to go, but there’s only one panel for fantasy writers, and well… rules are rules.”
“But what are the rules, exactly?”
“I emailed them to you.” She looks across her desk pointedly, well aware that Barty stopped opening her emails sometime in the fall. “Like I said, there’s only one panel for fantasy writers, and they want each author to have completed at least one entire series.”
“I’ve completed five books!”
“I know, love. But the panel organizer was very… insistent.” She bites her lip like there’s something else she’s not saying. Barty’s brow furrows, and he wonders whether he should press more about what exactly the panel organizer said, but before he can, she continues, “I don’t know if it’s even your scene anyway. The other writers already confirmed for the panel aren’t exactly—”
“Who else is on the panel?”
“Well… there’s Dolores Umbridge.”
“The self-insert vampire book lady?” Barty makes a disgusted sound in the back of his throat.
“And Gilderoy Lockhart. And… and James F. Potter.”
“James Potter is going to be there?” Barty’s hands ball into fists, and his knee starts bouncing in agitation. Of all the so-called fantasy authors at this publishing house, no one is more annoying than the James ‘darling of BookTok’ Potter. “His books are practically novellas! What was the last one called? A Court of Smut and Pandering?”
“I’m pretty sure you know that’s not what it’s called…”
“Those books are like eighty thousand words long at the most! And it’s all just shitty romance on a backdrop of some generic fantasy setting. How does the magic system even work? No one knows!”
“Listen, Barty—”
“No, no, hold on, I need to talk about this more. In his third book, there’s that whole sequence where they need to go on a magic carpet ride because the main character hadn’t learned how to teleport yet… but then in book four, Potter invents side-along teleportation and says it’s always been a thing! Why did they bother with the magic carpet chase then?”
“Barty, I don’t think it—”
“Or, or wait—that whole 'magic trace' thing! None of it makes any sense!”
“I’m not saying it does, Barty,” Pandora says gently, still twirling her hair with apology in her eyes. “But James’ series is technically complete, and yours isn’t. I did my best, really, but the panel organizer won’t budge on this.”
Barty quiets, rising to his feet so he can walk around Pandora’s midtown office and stretch his legs a bit. Process everything. It’s not so much that he cares about disappointing Regulus. Reg will give him shit for talking out of his ass again, and Barty will endure it for approximately forty-eight hours, and then they’ll move onto the next thing. But now that he knows that Potter is on this panel…
James F. Potter and his "romantasy” books, whatever that means.
In the three years since Barty released his most recent tome, Potter has hit the fantasy scene like a wrecking ball. But rather than releasing carefully crafted volumes filled with airtight rules of magic and the gritty realism of battle, his brightly-colored paperbacks are full of nothing but sexual tension and random side quests.
And it’s not like Barty didn’t enjoy reading them. That might have been the worst part.
The horrible truth is that they were fun to read. He should have been more annoyed about the fact that the only scenes that made sense were the scenes where the main characters were fucking (especially that dining room table scene, oh my god), but he couldn’t put the stupid things down. And every time he sees Potter’s face on another article or on the short list for this year’s Hugo Awards, he wants to punch something.
If James F. Potter is going to be on this panel, Barty Crouch Jr. is going to be on this panel. End of.
“I want to talk to the director.”
“Of the panel?”
“Of Comic-Con. The whole thing.”
Pandora shifts in her seat, and for a second, Barty is worried she’s going to finally give him a lecture on hunkering down and writing his unfinished series instead of wasting his time trying to go to California for no clear reason. She bites her lip, and once again, Barty has the unfamiliar sensation that there’s something she’s not telling him. But then she lets out a long, slow breath and simply says, “Okay.”
~~~
Morganeyra the rightful Empress of Centra Terra might still be trapped in the dungeon, but Barty is definitely getting better at Tetris.
He drums his fingers on the desk after he wins his latest game, then taps out a series of random letters on his keyboard, then deletes them. He stands and stretches. He checks how many more minutes are left until he can bother Regulus at work. He makes a sandwich.
The problem is that Morgie’s dragons were supposed to come rescue her from the dungeon, but if they cross the Silver Sea now, they won’t be able to bring her ex-mother-in-law who Barty resurrected from the dead in book four. And she’s still on her revenge mission in the mid-country. And if there’s one thing Barty hates… it’s characters in fantasy novels traversing large distances in an unrealistic amount of time.
It’s too bad Morgie can’t get herself out of the cell. But Barty’s magic system—unlike some—has strict rules, and it’s already been established that no one can perform magic within an iron dungeon. And unlike some authors, he’s not just going to invent some new magical object as a deus ex machina to be summoned for no reason other than to move the plot along…
Ah, thank fuck.
It’s 4:01 PM, and the New York Stock Exchange has officially closed. Regulus is still at work, obviously, but the rule is that bothering can begin as soon as there are no time–sensitive trades to be made.
Me: reggie bear
Reggie Bear: I will literally never respond to that.
Me: is this you not responding?
Me: no wait don’t actually stop responding
Me: i’m dying over here
Reggie Bear: Why?
Reggie Bear: Are you still Trapped In The Dungeon™️?
Me: 💀💀💀
Me: wait
Me: i don’t think we’re allowed to make r kelly jokes in the year of our lord 2025
Reggie Bear: I don’t see nothing wrong with a little…
Me: the cops are on their way to arrest you
Reggie Bear: I’ll go willingly.
Reggie Bear: This place has been shit since Sirius quit. And I didn’t think having my dad as my boss could get any worse.
Me: no one should work for their dad
Me: you should gtfo, your brother had the right idea
Me: speaking of
Me: when’re you going to cave and give me his number?
Reggie Bear: I’m not having this conversation with you again.
Me: oh come on
Me: there’s no way that thing with him and the professor dude is going to last
Reggie Bear: They’re literally married.
Barty chuckles to himself, reclining in his chair and throwing his feet up on the desk right next to his computer. Pestering Regulus for Sirius’ phone number has always been a fun bit. Of course, Barty got Sirius’s number years ago and was blocked almost immediately after sending some… fun photos. How was he supposed to know Sirius was engaged at the time? Well, other than Regulus telling him that repeatedly—but how was Barty supposed to know it was true?
Anyway, Regulus doesn’t need to know all that.
Me: okay then what if
Me: you give me both of their numbers
Me: your brother speaks french, right? think he knows what ménage a trois means?
Reggie Bear: Bartemius.
Me: oh come on, the professor could get it too
Me: i’m into that sexy dr house thing he’s got going on
Reggie Bear: I’m not letting you come over tonight if you continue this train of thought.
Me: you wouldn’t!
Reggie Bear: I’ll tell the doorman you’re the one who pulled the fire alarm at two in the morning that one time. See if he lets you up after that.
Me: in my defense, the plants in your apartment looked like they needed to be watered
Me: and I was very high
Me: oh! but that was the night when we listened to midnights over and over and I came up with the maroon wedding in book 3
Reggie Bear: One of your more iconic scenes, I will admit.
Me: see I get all my best ideas at your place
Me: when can I come over
Me: just kidding I’ll be there at 8
It’s a very satisfying feeling, being one of the select few who has managed to crack through Regulus Black’s icy exterior. Barty knows he’s a sweet and sensitive little freak under the impassive mask, although he’d kill anyone who accused his best friend of being those things publicly.
Phone still in his hands and feet still on the desk, he lets his eyes fall closed. Maybe he can try visualizing. He pushes open the doors of his mind palace (a Grand Central-sized combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell), and strides past the salad bar to the door that will transport him into his mental version of Westerness. As soon as he pushes it open, he’s accosted by a flurry of snow, and in the distance, just beyond the cloudy haze, he can make out the flapping wings of a—
Bzzzzzzzzzzz.
Eyes flying open, Barty lights up at the unexpected sound of his ringing phone. It’s an unknown 212 number—probably just spam, like most calls from local area codes are—but he’s so desperate for a distraction that he would even chat with a scammer for a few minutes. He swipes to answer the call.
“I’m sorry, the old Barty can’t come to the phone right now.”
“Why?” the voice on the other end replies, with the exact right inflection, as if he can’t help himself.
“Oh! ‘Cause he’s dead.” Barty grins. Maybe he’ll chat with this scammer for a little while longer.
There’s a pleasant chuckle on the other end of the line, before the caller clears his throat and says, “Um. I’m sorry, this is Mr. Crouch, right?”
Barty makes a guttural sound and answers, “No. Mr. Crouch is my estranged father. It’s just Barty.”
“Okay, well. Then I’m just Evan.” The other man’s voice is quiet, but smooth and self-assured. Barty smiles again, relaxing back into his swivel chair. He wonders what exactly Evan is selling. He might buy it.
“Hi, Evan,” Barty says back, putting on his phone-flirting voice. This is way more fun than trying to reason his way out of a plot hole. “What can I help you with today?”
“Oh,” Evan answers, sounding slightly surprised and pausing for a moment before he continues, “I was told that you requested a call.”
“I did?”
“Yes, Pandora—er, your agent—said you wanted to speak to someone from the Convention?”
“The Convention?”
“San Diego Comic-Con.”
Oh.
But… no, what? He was sure this was a New York City number. It hadn’t even occurred to him that this call might have anything to do with the Comic-Con thing. He’s not sure why his cheeks feel hot, except that he doesn’t like feeling one step behind in any conversation.
“Ah,” he responds, trying not to sound too caught off guard. “Am I speaking with the director of the Convention then?”
“Unfortunately, no,” says Evan. “Mr. Riddle is out of the country at the moment. He won’t be back from Albania for a few more weeks, and I wanted to see whether I could address your concerns in the meantime.”
“Wait, so if you’re not the director of Comic-Con, who the hell are you?” Barty asks, his previous sense of intrigue giving way to annoyance. He can’t remember a time he’s ever had a request that Pandora wasn’t able to make happen for him.
“I’m the director of the fantasy authors event,” he replies, voice still calm.
“Oh,” says Barty. “So then you can put me on the panel!”
“I wish I could,” Evan says, and he sounds like he means it. “I’m such a fan of Snow and Lava, really—that scene in book three where Morganeyra blows up all those ships lives rent free in my head, and don’t even get me started on Ron Frost, what an absolute—ehrm,” he cuts himself off, clearing his throat again. “But… I’m sorry. Rules are rules.”
“What kind of rule is that though? All the books in James Potter’s ‘A Court of This and That’ series combined are shorter than my last novel!”
“I know, Mr. Cr—Barty, but I don’t make the rules. Riddle does. And the rules for this writers panel state that every accepted author has to have written a completed series.”
“Evan.” Barty swings his legs off the desk and plants his feet angrily on the floor. “Do you know how long it took for me to finish ‘A Dance with Demons’?” And that was without any glaring plot holes to solve. “I’ll be working for years before this series is done.”
“Years?” Evan asks, almost a whine, and the line goes quiet again. Just as Barty is wondering whether he’s going to get his way after all, Evan lets out a deep sigh. “Okay. Well. We do have this panel every year. I promise we can put you on as soon as you finish the series.”
“But I want to go this year.”
“Why?”
Something about Evan’s tone makes him think of Pandora. Of all the meetings they’ve had over the past few years. He can almost imagine that behind the non-judgmental “Why?” there’s a silent “Shouldn’t you be working on your current book instead?”. Barty shakes off the strange feeling.
“It doesn’t matter.” Sure, Barty wants to be a good best friend and get a VIP experience for Regulus, who apparently has always wanted to go to Comic-Con. And sure, he would love to fuck with James F. Potter in person. But if he’s being honest, the only real reason he wants to go is that they’re telling him no. Now that this Evan person is saying he can’t be on the panel, it’s the only thing he wants to do. “When’s the deadline?”
“Sorry, the what?”
“When do you finalize the panel?”
“April 19th. Why?”
“And if I have a completed series by April 19th, then you’ll put me on the panel?”
“I mean, sure, but…” There’s a barely-audible gasp from the other end of the line, and without trying to hide the excitement in his voice, Evan asks, “Are you saying you might publish ‘The Icicles of Winter’ before April?”
Barty brushes off the pang of guilt and embarrassment and snaps, “Of course not. But if James fucking Potter can manage to do it with half a brain cell, then I can do it too.”
“Sorry, you’ve lost me. You can do… what exactly?”
“‘Romantasy’,” Barty says, doing little air quotes (that Evan can’t see) with his free hand. “Those books are all the same. I bet I can do a whole series in a month.”
“How good can it be if you write it in a month?” Evan blurts back.
“You didn’t say it had to be good,” Barty counters, a devious grin breaking out across his face. “You just said it had to be complete.”
“So,” Evan says after a moment, sounding like he’s still processing. “So… just to confirm… you won’t be working on ‘The Icicles of Winter’?”
“I’m sure I’ll go back to it eventually.”
Chapter 2: Red Wine Supernova
Chapter Text
Barty’s eyes narrow the moment he walks into the Upper West Side Barnes & Noble.
Not five feet into the store is a giant table labeled 'Hot on BookTok', and front and center are those neon-colored paperbacks he can’t seem to get away from. Sure, he’s read them. But on his Kindle because he doesn’t even want the atrocious things in his apartment. They’re hardly better than those ice skating stories—you know where one of them is a rugged hockey player and one of them is a dainty figure skater, and you’ll never guess what happens next! Except Potter added a half-assed fantasy world as a backdrop and gave them fairy wings and inconsistent magical powers.
And Barty can do it too.
Of course, Barty isn’t a romance writer. He likes to write gritty, angsty fantasy that you need to pay close attention to to understand. He likes his books to have so many characters that if you blink at the wrong moment, you’ll miss one. Over the past five years, he has constructed an entire world with multiple continents, races of creatures, dozens of languages, and thousands of years of lore. ‘A Swirl of Swords’ won a Hugo Award—a feat he was incredibly proud of until Potter went and did it too.
He rolls his eyes a final time at the obnoxious table display before side-stepping the works of his writing arch-nemesis and heading to the ‘Romance’ aisle of the store. He scans over row after row of titles: ‘Fiery Rivalry’, ‘The Love Conjecture’, ‘50 Hues of Beige’, ‘Icemelter’… Why do so many of them have covers that look like children’s book cartoons? Is it supposed to be deliberately misleading about the contents of the novel?
Finally, after his eyes drift past a series of what look like Regency-era stories (albeit with very period-inappropriate cover art), he finds what he came for.
It’s still a bit too early to show up at Regulus’ place, so Barty orders a dirty chai and plops himself into one of the deliberately uncomfortable wooden chairs at the Barnes & Noble Starbucks. He flips his just-purchased book around in his hands a few times, price sticker still on. If he were a normal person, this moment might make the whole silly situation feel too real, and he might remember that he has an actual book he’s supposed to be working on. But well… there’s no denying he’s still stuck with his Snow and Lava plot at the moment. And petty acts of passive aggression have always been Barty’s love language.
So he cracks open the book. “Romancing the Plot,” he reads under his breath, “How to Structure a Romance Novel”. Okay. So all he needs to do is transpose some random fantasy characters onto these romance plot beats and… voilà. He’ll have a Potter-style Best Seller by Easter.
Okay, well… maybe not an actual Best Seller. It didn’t escape his notice that most of the cartoony covers had a young, attractive man and a young, attractive woman on them. He’s been told before that’s what the market wants, and he’s caved to publisher pressure to relegate his LGBT content in Snow and Lava to supporting characters and side plots. But if Barty is going to bang this out as quickly as possible, he’s going to have to write what he knows. If there’s not as much of a market for it, so what?
“Okay,” he sighs, reading on. From what he gathers as he skims the pages, every romance story has one of a few entirely predictable plot arcs. Very formulaic. He flips to the first example structure: ‘Meet Cute, No Way #1, Falling In Love, No Way #2, Deepening Desire, Inkling of Doubt, Retreat, Break Up, Grand Gesture, Epilogue’.
Should be easy. He’ll just break it up into, what, like three books? Maybe throw a red herring love interest in book one. BookTok will really eat that up. 80 thousand words a piece like Potter’s? He should be done in a month or two.
So, where to start? He looks back at the example structure. Okay, start with ‘Meet Cute’. What exactly qualifies as a meet cute? The first thing he pictures is two people bumping into each other in a coffee shop, but Barty imagines the meet cute is allowed to be a lot less cute when it’s romantasy. He thinks back to Potter’s books. He’s pretty sure every single couple in the entire series was trying to murder one another during their first meeting. And well… Barty could definitely do that. Actually, people on BookTok seem very into the ubiquitous murder and violence in these otherwise frivolous novels.
Barty smiles to himself. Maybe the sexy romance will be new territory, but murder and violence are kind of his thing. He grabs a pen out of his bag and starts scribbling in the margin: ‘Meet cute… they try to murder each other.’
Okay, strong start. Now, where are they when they try to murder each other? He’s already decided this world is going to have only one continent. Why do more than the bare minimum? He’ll call it… hm, not Ireland… but Landire. Yeah, that’s good enough. There will be a North part and a South part—obviously—and they will be at war—obviously . He chews on the end of his pen, bouncing his leg on the chair.
Now, what about a more immediate location? He could do a manor or a castle like Potter did… but he’d rather not. Hmm. He’s racking his brain, flipping through his mental rolodex of his favorite books growing up. Now, school settings always go hard in fantasy novels. Magical academies and the like. But you can’t exactly do a plot centered around sex and murder if your story is set at a school…
Or can you?
‘Sexy murder academy?’ he scrawls in the margin.
He’ll keep kicking that one around for a bit. Okay, next order of business. What kind of characters are these? They have to have some kind of magical… something. But they can’t be wizards or fairies. He doesn’t want to outright copy Potter. So what else would be hot? Mermaids? Yeah—wait, no, how do they even fuck? Okay, mermaids are out. Werewolves and vampires are definitely overplayed, so those are both out too. And he doesn’t want to venture too far outside of the mainstream. He thinks that sexy zombies or mummies are probably a bridge too far to convince Pandora to put in print, even as a Bartemius Crouch Jr. novel.
He glances at the clock on his phone. 7:25PM. Almost time for him to make his dramatic entrance chez Regulus, but not quite. He has half a mind to go for a loop around Central Park while he waits, to see whether any ideas hit him, but no… he paid for this romance writing book, and he should probably read it all. The plot beat after ‘Meet Cute’ is supposed to be ‘No Way #1’. As in, there is no way these two characters can possibly be together, even though it’s obvious they are going to end up together. And well, that’s easy—they just tried to murder each other.
As the American poet Ariana Grande once said, “thank u, next.”
Ah. Next up, ‘Falling In Love’. Barty knows just what to do with this one. A tragic backstory for the morally grey, murder-y male love interest that instantly excuses all of their horrifying behavior and makes the main character swoon. Did he grow up in an abusive home? Hmm, no. Not tragic enough. Barty really needs to say “VIOLENCE” with his whole chest. This should be a cakewalk for him; he still gets hate mail about that time he murdered a newborn baby in ‘A Clash of Crowns’. Maybe the love interest’s whole family got murdered. Right in front of him.
Ah, no. Potter never does anything quite that dramatic. He only ever kills a sibling or a parent or a—
“Excuse me, sir?”
Barty realizes he had been doodling a knife in the margin of his romance writing book when he looks up to meet the eye of a nervous-looking teenager. There’s a flush creeping over her tawny cheeks, and she’s twirling a strand of frizzy brown hair.
“Yes?” Barty asks, tempted to be miffed at the interruption of his thought process until he sees the hardcover book in her hands and instantly recognizes the artwork—his own name in embossed letters across the top.
“Are you Bartemius Crouch Jr.?”
“Well… no one calls me that except my publisher,” he replies, closing his own book and tucking it out of sight. He gives the girl a crooked smile, and she seems to relax a little. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Hermione Granger.”
“Well, Miss Granger, since we are now acquainted… I’m Barty.”
“Oh. Hi, Barty.” She smiles nervously back, flush deepening over her cheeks. “I just wanted to ask you—well, I’m a huge fan of your work, and I’m on my third reread of Snow and Lava, and I’ve been following your blog for years and…” The girl trails off momentarily, looking like she summoning the courage to ask a question. For a heart-dropping second, Barty thinks she’s going to ask him why he’s sitting in the middle of the 82nd Street Barnes & Noble and not working on book six, but then she asks, “Would you possibly sign my copy of ‘A Meal for Crows’?”
He’s flooded with relief and gratitude. It’s not too often that a fantasy author gets recognized in public, and it’s still the coolest fucking thing in the world to him. Because he was that kid reading Dune under his covers with a flashlight after his dad yelled at him to go to bed.
“I’d be honored,” Barty says truthfully, taking the worn-looking hardback from her.
“Thank you so much,” Hermione replies, beaming. “These really are some of my favorite books ever. I love the way you write Morganeyra—she just jumps right off the page. My favorite part was when she got double crossed by those warlocks in book two, so she locked them in their own vault with no food and water and just sailed away.”
Barty pauses, book open and pen in hand, to look back up at Hermione’s wistful expression as she remembers one of his own favorite moments of unhinged revenge. His fans are the fucking best.
“Oh, and of course the dragons,” Hermione adds, still looking a bit lost in thought. “Everyone loves dragons.”
Barty grins, looking back down to the open copy of ‘A Meal for Crows’, and writes:
‘Hermione,
Never change.
BCJ’
And you know, she’s got a point.
Everyone does love dragons.
~~~
Barty knows Regulus knows he’s here. The dick. He had to give his blessing before the doorman would let Barty into the elevator. And Barty caught the doorman giving him a funny look that made him wonder whether Regulus did end up telling him about the fire alarm incident just for fun. He bangs on the apartment door even harder, deliberately trying to scuff the pristine white paint.
“Reggieee! Let me in! We’ve got stuff to do!”
He keeps drumming his fist against the wood, and he’s doing it with such vigor that he almost falls through the entryway when Regulus finally swings the door inward.
“What ‘stuff’ do we have to do at eight o’clock on a Friday night?” Regulus has already taken off his tie and is working on the buttons of his dress shirt as Barty barrels past him into the living room. “I literally just got home.”
Barty treads the familiar path past the gleaming kitchen with expensive appliances that Regulus almost never uses, through the art-lined hallway, and into the living room whose spotless glass windows overlook Central Park. Or, they would if it weren’t already dark out. The only view at the moment is the gleaming lights of the Upper East Side in the distance.
He dumps the contents of his bag onto Regulus’ coffee table—his new paperback book, pens, a bag of gummy bears, his laptop. When Barty looks up, he meets his favorite judgmental silver stare. Regulus has stopped unbuttoning his shit halfway down and is standing at the edge of the room, eyeing the table suspiciously.
“Well,” Barty says, cherishing the deepening confusion on Regulus’ face when he gestures to the table like his hodgepodge of items should be self-explanatory. “Do you want to go to Comic-Con or not?”
“I already told you I do, but I thought you hadn’t heard back from the director yet, and—wait,” Regulus stops, voice jumping up in pitch as his eyes find Barty’s again, “does this mean they called you?”
“They sure did.”
“And they said you could be on the panel?”
“Yes.”
“Oh god, what a relief. I was worried for a second I was going to have to cancel my—”
“I just have to write three novels first.”
Regulus blinks quickly three times then gives an almost imperceptible shake of his head. “Sorry, what?”
“I feel like you heard me.”
“Okay... I don’t get it though.”
“Don’t get what? I thought you had to be smart to be an investment banker. A quick thinker, even.”
“Yeah, but I don’t get the joke.”
“There is no joke,” Barty answers. “If I write a complete series by the date they finalize the fantasy authors panel, they said they’ll put me on. Easy as that.”
“But…” Regulus presses fingers to both of his temples, like he’s trying to stop a headache in its tracks. “But Snow and Lava is only two books away from being done. Why would you write three new books?”
“Ah come on, Snow and Lava’s a lost cause. Morgie will probably still be in the dungeon in April,” says Barty. “So… I’ll just bang out a few short books that no one will ever read, call it a complete series, and voilà—am I the best best friend, or what?”
Regulus scrunches his delicate features again. “Do you want an honest answer?”
“No,” Barty answers without missing a beat. “So, are you going to help me?”
“Okay, hold on. Just rewind for a second.” Regulus’ eyes move back to the pile of items on his coffee table, then back to Barty, and he looks like he’s doing mental math. “You want me to help you do… what exactly?”
“We,” Barty answers with gusto, “are going to write a romantasy series. We’ll just pick a trope—I’m thinking enemies to lovers—and copy/paste the standard romance plot beats onto a generic fantasy background. You’ll bounce ideas with me, I’ll write the thing, and Pandora will publish it.”
“She will?”
“Pssh, sure. Having a BCJ book on the shelves this year will get Meadowes off her back, even if it’s not Icicles.” Barty opens his romance writing book back to the page where he left off and uncaps his pen. “Comic-Con, here we come!”
“Barty,” Regulus starts again with trepidation, although he does take one cautious step toward the coffee table, so Barty is pretty sure he’s winning. It may just take another minute of convincing. “This makes no sense.”
He gives his best friend an exaggerated sigh. “I really don’t see what you’re not getting. It’s the most straightforward plan I’ve ever come up with.”
“I mean,” Regulus considers, “okay, maybe, but… I don’t think I’m going to be as helpful plotting this, uh… genre with you. I know I help you brainstorm all the battles and scheming and dragons, but—”
“Oh, worry not! This will have battles and scheming and dragons. But also fucking.” Barty flips the pages until he finds one with more space to scribble down ideas. “Lots of fucking.”
“And…” Regulus takes another cautious step toward the coffee table. One more step, and he’ll be on the couch with Barty. “You think romantasy readers are interested in your kind of sex scenes?”
“Oh, please.” Barty rolls his eyes. Just because the sex scenes he’s written so far are of the violent and horrifying variety doesn’t mean he can’t do the romance novel spice thing. Barty is versatile. “I can write a sexy sex scene. I just choose not to.”
“So you—Bartemius Crouch Jr.,” Regulus says pointedly, and Barty scoffs, “the writer of scenes including twin incest that ends in attempted child murder—are going to write actual smut.”
“Yes. Sheesh. I really didn’t think I-bankers were allowed to be this slow on the uptake. I’m thinking I should warn your clients…”
Regulus squints, and he tilts his head one last time looking like he’s really considering before he promptly turns on his heel and walks straight back toward the kitchen. Barty is unconcerned. He’s known Regulus long enough to be at least fairly sure he’ll be back eventually. And sure enough, he strides back into the living room after another minute holding a stemless glass of red wine.
“Thank you, my love,” Barty smiles victoriously.
“It’s for me.” Regulus continues across the room and slides into position next to Barty on the couch. “Okay, I’m not saying I’m helping, but… what do you have so far?”
“Thought you’d never ask,” says Barty, clapping one hand on Regulus’ shoulder so he almost spills his wine. He makes intense eye contact and simply says, “Dragons.”
“Dragons,” Regulus repeats back flatly.
“Okay, so, I ran into a fan in the bookstore today, and it got me thinking. Everyone likes dragons, right?”
“Sure…”
“So this whole world is going to be run by dragons. They’re in charge.”
“I thought this was romantasy,” Regulus says, a crease re-forming between his brows.
“It is.”
“Wait, so are the dragons the ones doing the… how did you so eloquently phrase it? ‘Lots of fucking’?”
“I mean, yeah, they can fuck too—why not?” Barty laughs to himself, scribbling Regulus’ words into his book. “But no. Here’s my idea. The humans ride the dragons. And then the humans ride each other.”
“Right,” Regulus says blankly before swallowing the entire contents of his wine glass in a single gulp.
“So the two leading men, let’s call them—”
“Wait, the books are going to be gay?”
Barty tsks at his best friend before answering, “Of course they are. I don’t have time to delve into the mysteries of the female orgasm. I’m going to write what I know.” A flash of anxiety crosses Regulus’ face, and Barty heads it off, “Oh, please, I’m not going to write about you.” Barty’s pretty sure his high school experimentations with Regulus aren’t fodder for titillating smut scenes anyway. “Plus, these characters have to be rugged. Masculine.”
“Rude.”
“You love me because I tell the unfiltered truth.”
“Well, I make a half million dollars a year,” Regulus says indignantly. “I could pay to have your rugged, masculine men murdered in their sleep.”
“That’s the spirit!” Barty replies, then chews on the end of his pen, trying to remember where he was in his thought process before Regulus interrupted. “Okay, now the main character, let’s call him… mmm… Maglor. Yeah, I like it. And as a pet name, the morally grey love interest can call him ‘Murder’.”
“Barty, what the fuck?”
“No, it’ll be hot. Trust me.” Barty doesn’t look back up to see the skeptical expression he knows Regulus is currently wearing. “Alright, and when they meet each other, they’re going to hate each other instantly. I’m thinking like… bad blood between their families? Classic recipe for enemies to lovers.” He keeps writing as he talks. “Maybe their parents were on opposite sides of the war, and so Maglor…” His pen pauses mid-stroke, the name of his hypothetical main character lingering in the silence.
“What?” asks Regulus.
“Shit,” Barty says under his breath. “You know what? I think I subconsciously lifted Maglor from Tolkien.” He groans, putting the opened book face-down on the coffee table to keep his place. “God, coming up with names is the worst part of writing, I swear. Do you have that copy of the Silmarillion I gave you? Let me just go check.”
Barty rises to his feet to head for Regulus’ bedroom, something he’s done a hundred times, if not a thousand. He practically lived here while he was writing ‘A Meal for Crows’. But as he moves, he sees Regulus’ grey eyes widen in a wild panic. “No, I’ll get it!” Regulus yelps, putting a hand on Barty’s chest and trying to press him back down onto the couch.
Naturally, Barty simply must know what’s in Regulus’ bedroom that has him acting like this.
He lets himself be pushed back down until he’s sitting on the couch again, pausing for a moment to make Regulus think he’s acquiesced, before he springs upward and sprints straight for Regulus’ closed bedroom door.
“Wait!” shrieks Regulus. “Barty!”
Regulus is quick on his feet, but Barty has gotten the drop on him. He’s through the door in seconds, and before Regulus tackles him to the floor from behind, he sees it—on his best friend’s bed, ‘A Court of Pewter Fires’.
“Regulus Arcturus Black,” Barty grits out, struggling to breathe with the full weight of Regulus pinning him to the ground. “Are you reading… fairy smut?”
“It’s not fairy smut,” he protests weakly.
“It absolutely is,” Barty says, shoving Regulus off him and getting back to his feet. “I’ve read them.”
“You have?”
“Of course I have.” He steps to Regulus’ bed, picking up the famous orange-covered book so he can glare at it. “If you’re going to have a writing nemesis, you have to at least read all their books so you can hate them properly. I just had to figure out exactly how someone like James fucking Potter could—” Barty cuts himself with a gasp. “Oh! Oh no. Oh my god, Reggie.”
Regulus shakes his head, but the look on his face is so transparent. So guilty.
“I knew you didn’t want really want to go to Comic-Con, you fucking asshole!”
Barty watches a thousand possible responses play out behind panic-stricken silver eyes, but the room stays silent. Until it isn’t, because Barty finally allows himself to crumple into full-body laughter.
“James. Potter,” he chokes out, making only the feeblest attempt to collect himself. “You—Regulus Black, the most posh twenty-six-year-old in Manhattan—secretly read fairy porn and want to be a VIP guest at Comic-Con so you can suck James F. Potter’s dick. Tell me I’m wrong.”
“I just wanted to meet him,” Regulus grumbles, snatching back his copy of Pewter Fires.
“Reeeeggie.” There are actual tears in Barty’s eyes now. “You and your family are like, bazillionaires. You have your own literal skyscraper. Potter lives in New York. I’m absolutely certain you could arrange to meet him any time you wanted to.”
“Yeah,” Regulus snaps back, sounding a bit more like his usual self. “But it wouldn’t be organic.”
“Oh,” laughs Barty. He gestures broadly in the direction of the living room, where his new book is still open to the ‘Deepening Desire’ section. “And this is real fucking organic.”
“Well, I didn’t realize you were going to write a whole novel!”
“Novel series.”
“Listen, Barty,” says Regulus, his porcelain cheeks stained crimson, “this was dumb. You really don’t have to do this, it was just a stupid idea. We can forget it ever—”
“And miss a front row ticket to the reprise of the Reggie gay panic show?” Barty interrupts. “There’s no way I’m not doing this now.”
Regulus holds his orange book close to his chest, continuing to war with himself mentally while Barty watches in fond amusement, until Regulus finally sighs and says, “Okay. Alright, fine. Let’s do it. How can I help?”
Barty hasn’t felt such pure excitement and joy since he first dreamed up Snow and Lava (after falling asleep to a War of the Roses documentary Regulus was watching in this very apartment). “Here’s what you’re gonna do,” he says, locking eyes with his friend from across his room. “Take that fancy black credit card. Go down to West Side Wine. And buy a bunch of that super expensive Pinot we drank at your dad’s Christmas party last year.”
“Sure.”
“And then get your skinny ass back here. We’re going to outline this whole thing.”
Barty makes himself right at home on the couch, not bothering to take off his shoes since no one is here to scold him. In the time that Regulus is gone, he speed reads the rest of the romance writing book. It’ll work, he supposes, although he’ll have to be at least the tiniest bit creative to stretch this out into at least three books—he assumes that’s the bare minimum to call it a “series”. How can he keep the two main dudes together then apart then together then apart for three whole books?
He closes his eyes, pushing open the doors of the Taco Bell side of his mind palace and finding a place to settle in. His brain runs free, watching different murder scenes and sexy fights and potential magical powers play out before him. He’s debating the merits of his main character having the power of creating ice with his bare hands, or wait… no, it’s giving Elsa from ‘Frozen’, which is of course a fantastic movie, but—
“Get your dirty shoes off my fucking couch.”
Barty opens his eyes and tilts his head back so he can see Regulus, upside-down but clearly holding enough bougie wine for an entire party. So he obliges, sitting up and swinging his shoe-clad feet back onto the floor. Regulus only disappears for another few seconds before he returns with another stemless wine glass and one of the bottles of Pinot.
“Good man.” Barty grins and opens his old MacBook on the coffee table. He thinks he’s got enough general ideas that he’s ready to start typing into a real document.
“What happened to ‘I only write on my ancient desktop app’?” Regulus asks as he sits and fills both glasses.
“Pssh,” Barty responds, not taking his eyes off the screen as he opens a Google doc and tastes the wine simultaneously. “Desktop is for serious projects only. If I haven’t made up at least five continents and two functional languages, it gets the laptop.” In bold letters at the top of the document, he types out the words:
THIRD FLIGHT
“Honestly,” Barty mumbles, downing the rest of his glass and earning a scathing look from Regulus that he knows is for not ‘appreciating the vintage’ or some shit like that, “I still haven’t ruled out just writing this in the Notes app on my phone.”
“Any big breakthroughs while I was out?”
“Mm, I don’t know. Let me just bounce some stuff off you,” says Barty, refilling his glass to the tippy top. “Okay, so. We’re in a generic fantasy world. It’s vaguely modern but vaguely not modern. And I was thinking… they’re at school together.”
“Barty, dude, you can’t do underage stuff in these—”
“No, no, no. I know this isn’t Snow and Lava. They’ll be in their twenties or something.”
“So then… they’re in college?”
“Yes! Perfect! They’re in college.” Barty types that directly into the doc before looking back up at Regulus. “And at this college, everyone’s main extracurricular activity is trying to murder each other.”
“Barty.”
“No, I swear it makes sense because… because they’re training for battle. With their dragons.”
“So it’s a military academy?” asks Regulus, and Barty instantly cringes. His dad went to West Point, and it has always sounded like the least sexy place in existence.
“Not a military academy,” Barty insists, nose wrinkling at repeating the words. “It’s a war college.”
He holds Regulus’ unblinking stare for as long as it takes his best friend to finally sigh and say, “You know what? Sure.”
“And our young hero, Remus Lu—”
“Absolutely the fuck not.”
“—pindale. Remus Lupindale.”
“Dude, you can’t name your main character in a smut book after my brother-in-law.”
“I don’t know what you mean, it’s a completely different name. Different number of syllables and everything.” The two of them stare each other down, and they’re locked in a silent standoff until Barty is hit with the perfect solution and grins wickedly. “Fine. I’ll name him Regulus. That’s weird enough to be in a fantasy book.”
“Remus Lupindale it is.”
“Excellent,” Barty smiles, taking another drink and making an exaggerated ‘ahh’ sound of refreshment. “Right, so young Remus starts his first day of school at… hmm, what are we naming this college?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t sign up to help you name stuff.”
“Alright, let’s just look up a random Irish word.”
Regulus’ brow furrows, and he asks, “Isn’t that a little, I don’t know… culturally disrespectful?”
“Eh, I’m sure no one will care. Here, I’ll just pull up Google translate.” Barty enters the words ‘death school’, and it spits out ‘scoil bháis’. “Cool, so Remus is starting his first day at… Bascoil War College.”
“Okay, I mean. I guess that seems okay if you—hey, wait, I’ve got something!” Regulus says, and there’s that rare little burst of eagerness that Barty loves to see. “What if you have to murder someone to gain admission to the school?”
“Oh, now we’re talking,” says Barty, rubbing his hands together like a cartoon villain. “Although… I don’t know if we want Remus Lupindale to be a murderer right off the bat, do we? A main character needs room for growth.”
“Fair enough.”
“Maybe after the inevitable training montage. Then he can commit his first murder.”
“Oh, I like that. His first time should be special,” Regulus smirks. “Okay, then how about… you need to survive a deadly obstacle course on your way to campus?”
“Incredible. I love it, no notes.” Barty’s hands are flying over the keyboard now; he’s not even looking as he transcribes the past few minutes of their conversation. “And the odds are against Remus from the start because he has, say… terrible arthritis or something.”
“Barty, Remus actually has arthritis.”
“Does he really?” Barty’s hands stop typing, and he looks up at Regulus in genuine surprise. Then he shrugs. “Ah, well. Art imitates life, et cetera, et cetera.”
“He’s really going to hate this,” Regulus mumbles under his breath, and Barty pretends he doesn’t hear.
“And at the very end of the deadly obstacle course is… the hottest dude Remus has ever seen. No—the hottest dude anyone has ever seen.”
“Sounds about right.”
“He’s tall, jawline that could cut glass, jet black hair, silver eyes…” Barty pauses, and Regulus’ eyes narrow. “And he’s wearing a leather jacket, and he’s got these sexy runic tattoos right in the middle of his chest—”
“Come on, Barty.”
“—and his name is… Xirius.”
Regulus buries his face in his hands, and Barty wonders whether he’s silently screaming. He chuckles while Regulus collects himself. Then, his friend’s willowy fingers drag down his face, pulling his bottom eyelids down and making him look uncharacteristically goofy before the familiar scowl reappears.
“Is there going to be an original character in this entire book?”
“No,” Barty answers without missing a beat. “We’re not trying for original, we’re trying to complete a series in under two months. Borrowing from real life is better than subconsciously plagiarizing Tolkien again.”
“But Barty, your name is going to be attached to this.”
“You’re forgetting that my name is also my dad’s name. I would love nothing more than to put it on a completely derivative dragon porn book.”
“Oh, god, I wish I could see your dad’s face when he—hold on, wait. Where exactly are the dragons in all of this?”
“Come on, Reggie, we don’t want to blow our load too early,” Barty says, refilling his glass of wine yet again, starting to feel quite pleasantly buzzed. “I think we can build up the tension for at least… fourteen chapters before we whip out the dragons.”
“Ah, so they’re just looming in the background. I do like that. Maybe one flies overhead every now and then to build the suspense?”
“Excellent thinking, my friend. And when they finally show up, I was thinking Remus—you know since he’s all skinny and his joints hurt and stuff—he should bond with the biggest, most legendary dragon ever.”
“How is he going to be able to ride a dragon if his joints always hurt?”
“Ummm… I don’t know, we’ll circle back to that. So Remus and… let’s call the big dragon… Kreacher.”
“As in… my childhood dog?”
“I told you we’ll go a lot faster if we don’t waste brain cells on original names,” Barty explains, hands pausing on the keyboard to give Regulus a pointed look. “Plus, that dog was the best. So old and grumpy.”
“So your badass, legendary, giant dragon is going to have the personality of an elderly English bulldog?”
“I think it’s perfect.”
“Barty, it’s—you know what, that could be pretty good actually.”
“Although I liked that German Shepherd you guys had too. Remember he was always antagonizing Kreacher, but they still slept together every night?”
“You mean Dobby?”
“Yeah, Dobby!” Barty smiles fondly, remembering the nights he spent in the Black penthouse back in high school. “Loved that little guy. He can be Xirius’ dragon. And, ooh—the dragons will be mates too!”
Regulus’ nose crinkles again, and he asks, “Mates like how Australians say ‘mate’? Or like… sexual mates?”
“The sexual kind.” Barty wiggles his eyebrows at Regulus suggestively.
“Wait, I’m sorry, so the dragons are gay too?” Regulus asks, downing the contents of his wine glass and taking a breath. “Everyone can’t be gay, Barty.”
“Why not?” Barty rises to his feet, making a beeline for the kitchen counter, where he assumes Regulus left the wine opener. This plotting session is going to need one more bottle minimum. “I’m the author,” he calls back over his shoulder. “It’s my universe.”
“Yeah,” Regulus raises his voice from his spot on the couch. “But you really think they’ll publish a story like that?”
“They should. I mean, Pandora’s gay.” Aha! The wine opener is right where he assumed it would be. Better grab a third bottle too, just in case. “And Meadowes is gay,” Barty adds, walking back into the living room, where Regulus is massaging his temples with his fingertips. Grey eyes snap up as he processes the words still hanging in the air.
“I didn’t know that,” Regulus says. “They’re both g—are they together?”
“Reggie,” Barty says with feigned outrage. “They’re not dating each other just because they’re two lesbians in the same workplace. Very homophobic of you.”
Regulus rolls his eyes. “I am also gay.”
“Well, now you’re just proving my point.” He holds the bottle opener and one of the unopened bottles out toward the couch, because Regulus has already learned the hard way that Barty, bottle openers, red wine, and white carpets don’t mix. “Everyone’s at least a little bit gay, even if they haven’t realized it yet. Who knows? Maybe dragon smut will help the closeted masses see the light.”
“I’m sure,” Regulus deadpans.
“And speaking of our very fabulous cast of characters…” Barty trails off, momentarily mesmerized by Regulus’ dextrous fingers twisting his overpriced wine-opener into the cork. Every movement of his hands is so precise that Barty is certain the equally overpriced carpet below is in no danger. He thinks that Regulus might have been a great surgeon in another universe.
“Yes?”
“Oh. Right. I think Remus needs an ex,” says Barty, snatching back his glass the moment Regulus is finished pouring. “Someone for Xirius to get jealous of. BookTok goes feral for a possessive man.”
“Mm, true,” Regulus agrees, flopping back on the couch, starting to look more relaxed and less Regulus-y by the minute. “Only thing better than ‘you belong to me’ is ‘who did this to you?’.”
“Oh my lord,” Barty sighs. He thought he knew absolutely everything about Regulus Black, but this night is proving him wrong at every turn. It’s all very disturbing. “Alright, anyway, so let’s call this ex… Thames.”
“Thames?”
“Thames… Spotter.”
“Try again.”
“Thames Ceramicist?”
“Jesus Chris. Okay, if you insist, what about… Mikos? Like keramikós in Greek.”
“Sure, don’t care.” Barty jots down the name in his Google doc. “And his dragon can be called—”
“Winky?” suggests Regulus.
“What?!” Barty reacts instantly. “You would give my beloved childhood cat to James?”
“I thought it was Thames.”
“Right. Yeah. Thames.” Barty still glares at the name he just typed onto the page. “But no! I loved that cat. She was hilarious.” He should have thought of making Winky Remus’ dragon. Although, wait… fuck it—Remus is the main character, isn’t he? He can totally have two dragons. “New plan. Remus has two dragons because he’s extra special. Kreacher and Winky are his. Thames’ dragon can be called… Hokey.”
“Kind of a lame name for a dragon.”
“Yes, exactly!” Barty beams, sneaking in another sip of Pinot before he lays his hands back on the keyboard. “And I’m thinking his power should be equally lame. Too bad I can’t make his superpower writing shitty books.”
Regulus ignores the jibe. “What about mind reading?”
“Oh, come on. That’s way too cool for Thames.”
“No, hear me out,” Regulus implores, setting his half-full glass down on the coffee table so he can gesture accordingly. “He’s a central character, right? So you can’t give him a totally stupid power, even if you wanted to… but what if it’s limited by distance? Just powerful enough to create some drama and intrigue, but totally useless in battle.”
“Ahhh,” Barty nods, mulling it over. This is why Regulus has always been his favorite brainstorming buddy. He can work with this idea. “What if,” he bounces back, “he has to be touching the person to hear their thoughts? Or see their memories?”
“I guess that could work…”
“All he’d be good for would be like, interrogating people. Like a dragon school cop.”
“I already know what you’re go—”
“ACAB. Right, man?” Barty chuckles to himself. He can’t imagine a worse ending for a book than for one of the central characters to end up as an in-universe version of a cop. “Anyway, so Thames will just be a wet blanket for the whole first book, and then he’ll do something really shitty like use his mind reading to try to get—”
“Barty,” Regulus interrupts him sharply. “You can’t make the Thames character a villain. I’m sure James Potter isn’t stupid—”
“I don’t know, his entire fantasy world is controlled by a giant magical bucket.”
“Fine, but if he does realize what you’re doing here…” Regulus stops, giving Barty an appraising look. “I thought the point of us doing this whole thing was because you wanted to be a supportive friend and help me meet James Potter. Not start some kind of Kendrick and Drake thing.”
“Okay, well, first of all, I better fucking be Kendrick in that metaphor,” Barty says, and Regulus’ eyes narrow. Barty will admit that, at this point, his motivation is almost one hundred percent his own pettiness… but he does want to be a good friend to Regulus—Regulus, who has always been there for him, albeit in his own unique, prickly way. “Okay, no. You’re right. We can give him a really good redemption arc.” Barty sighs dramatically. “I guess.”
There’s a flash of a smile on Regulus’ face before he attempts to school his features back into his usual icy neutrality; unfortunately, he’s had enough to drink at this point that the smile keeps flickering back at the corner of his mouth. “Okay,” he says, clearly going for business-like, “so what are everyone else’s powers?”
“Well, for Remus’ power… as the main character, it has to be something awesome, right? I was thinking… lightning.”
“Oh, damn. Yeah, that’s pretty good.”
“Right? Lightning bolts from the back of a dragon. It’s gonna be sick.”
“Okay, and what about Sir—Xirius?”
“Easy. Shadows.”
“Shadows,” Regulus repeats back flatly.
“Yeah, no,” Barty nods, feeling like Regulus’ clear skepticism is a reasonable reaction. But he’s very sure about this one. “I know. But listen, man,” he continues, “don’t ask me why, but TikTok thinks ‘shadows’ is the hottest superpower a dude could have.”
“What, so he can make it… shady?”
“No, no,” Barty shakes his head, “like, corporeal shadows. Think of the main guy from A Court of Courts and Fucking.”
The response is instant, words flowing out of Regulus at uncharacteristic speed like he is powerless to stop them: “But Trystan didn’t just have shadows! It was so much more than that. He could fly, he could teleport from place to place, he could delve into people’s minds and shatter them, and he could shapeshift into a giant—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it. Potter is teaching a masterclass on overpowering his lead characters and then not being able to explain why they don’t just use their insane array of powers to fix every situation. Listen, I’ve spent enough time dicking around on TikTok while you’re busy working for The Man to know that the thing romantasy readers want most is to be fucked by literal shadows.”
“But do you feel like you’re going to be able to pull it off?”
“What? The shadow powers? I would have you recall that I made a whole murderous shadow baby in book two of—”
“No, not that. The—the sex,” Regulus half-whispers, before returning to his normal volume. “I know you have a lot of sex in your books, man, but it’s all so… well, frankly a lot of it is pretty disturbing. I think the stuff TikTok wants is probably a whole new kind of writing for you.”
“Pssh,” Barty says, pouring more wine and trying to hide the tiny spill he made in the process.
“Barty, people read these books because they want to feel… something.”
“You can say ‘horny’, Reggie.”
“Whatever,” Regulus says, rolling his eyes, although the gesture does nothing to hide the bright pink splotches making their way across his cheeks. “I’m just saying.”
“Oh, come on. Ye of little faith! The smut should be the easy part,” says Barty, giving Regulus a little wink to watch his blush deepen. “All I need to do is manage to avoid the phrase ‘velvet wrapped steel’, and I’m golden.”
“It wasn’t that bad in James’...” Regulus mumbles so indistinctly that Barty can’t make out the rest of the sentence at all.
“Regulus, please. Have just the tiniest bit of dignity.”
Barty downs another glass of wine, making the room finally start to spin around him, and rolls up his sleeves. He hadn’t realized Regulus had it quite that bad for James freaking Potter, but if he’s willing to excuse ‘velvet wrapped steel’... Well, now it’s his own pettiness combined with the desire to watch Regulus spontaneously combust in James F. Potter’s presence that are motivating him to bang out this outline in record time.
“Okay,” Barty says, starting to type again, even faster than before, like the wine is flowing from his brain down to his fingertips. “So now we just put the romance plot beats on the murder school background. Add dragons. Add a nebulous villain who probably has some kind of tragically relatable backstory that we won’t learn until book three… yep, I think we’ve got this.”
Regulus nods, reaching for the bottle opener yet again. “Let’s fucking go.”
Chapter 3: HOT TO GO!
Chapter Text
Too bright.
Way, way too bright.
Barty’s head is throbbing, and he’s not sure what woke him up, because he feels a bit ill but not sick enough to actually need to make a run for the bathroom (or, more realistically, the kitchen sink). As he slowly regains consciousness, he realizes he’s sitting mostly upright on the floor, his sweaty cheek pressed flat against the glass surface of Regulus’ coffee table. His eyes refocus, landing first on the tiny puddle of red wine he doesn’t remember spilling and then his open laptop, screen black. Before he has a chance to lift his head, there’s a noxious buzzing sound whose vibrations carry through the glass itself. Oh. Was this what woke him up before?
“Pick up your fucking phone,” says a familiar voice, muffled against the couch cushions behind him.
Barty groans, summoning Herculean strength to lift his head first, then his arm. He scrambles for his ringing phone before Regulus can throw something at him, and it’s ‘Pandora Rosier’ illuminated on the tiny screen. He swipes to answer.
“Hel—” His voice gives out mid-way through the word, so he clears his throat and tries again. “Hello?”
“We love it!”
“What are you talking about?”
“The outline,” Pandora says, voice like a wind chime, and Barty can hear her smile through the phone. She’s entirely too chipper for the early hour of—he looks back down at his phone screen to check the time—oh. 2:37 PM.
“The outline?” he asks back stupidly, still trying to catch up, grasping at the fragments of hazy memory from last night.
“Yes, Barty, my love,” Pandora answers patiently. “The forty-page outline with entire narrative arcs, a whole cast of named characters—really creative names, by the way, how did you come up with Xirius? Anyway, I just had to send it to Dorcas, even though it’s Saturday. And she read it, annnnnd…” She pauses dramatically, sounding pleased with herself, but Barty is way, way too hung over for whatever is happening right now.
“And what?”
“And we reached out to Comic-Con! If you can get this thing written by their deadline, they want to launch the series there!”
“They what?”
“Honestly, Barty, keep up. This is so unlike you.” From anyone else it would sound like an insult, but from Pandora it sounds loving. “If you can finish by April 19th, we’ll have time to get it to the editors and do a first printing well before Comic-Con starts. They want the series to drop on the first day, and then you’ll be on the panel on the last day.”
“Oh, I… wow.” Barty doesn’t quite remember the contents of the majority of this alleged outline, but this is undoubtedly good news. “Thank you?”
“I’ll be totally honest, Barty,” Pandora continues on the other end of the line. “This isn’t what anyone was expecting from you this year… but it’s obvious this is a story that you’re just burning to tell.” Oh, desperately, Barty thinks to himself. He rolls his eyes and winces when the motion causes his headache to worsen. “You have our blessing to take a break from Snow and Lava while you work on this,” she says warmly. “Just, hey—don’t make us wait like fourteen years for book six, okay?” She chuckles to herself.
“Promise,” Barty replies before hanging up, letting out another visceral groan, and dropping his head back onto the cool glass table.
~~~
The fighting, scheming, and murder flow out of him effortlessly. It’s like going for a jog around the block when he’s used to running marathons.
And that is how Bartemius Crouch Jr. finds himself staring at a nearly-hundred page document, cursor blinking back at him mockingly. He’s sitting on the same couch where he and Regulus originally outlined the series, a spot he’s been occupying almost daily for the past two weeks, in a writing fugue state while his best friend goes off to do whatever he does with the stock market. Ironically, Barty’s last clear memory of the night they had outlined 'Third Flight' was telling Regulus that writing the sex scenes would be a cake walk. And yet, here he is.
His main character, Remus, has gotten all worked up after some very violent War Games (like a midterm exam at murder school), and he’s finally alone with Xirius in his own bedroom. And it should be easy from here. The enemies have basically become lovers after a bit of forced proximity, although Barty has still managed to keep some of the tension alive. Now all they have to do is…
“Fuck,” Barty curses, running his fingers through his hair in frustration. He will die before he admits to Regulus that he is having a hard time with this. He was able to write a horrifying, non-consensual wedding night for Snow and Lava with his eyes closed, but this… he’s not even sure where to begin. Unlike Morganeyra’s wedding scene, he’s pretty sure he can’t just jump right into it.
Well, actually, Remus and Xirius are both dudes, so he’s quite sure they would both jump right into it at this point. But that’s not what the romance readers are going to want. He’s almost one hundred percent sure the readers need some buildup. A bit of foreplay.
Suddenly—and strangely—Barty feels more vulnerable than he ever has before while writing. When he wants to elicit a horrified feeling in his readers, he thinks about what makes him feel horrified. So if he wants to turn his readers on…
Why does the idea of his friends and family potentially reading something that gets him off feel so much more invasive than them reading all the most fucked up ways he can imagine torturing someone? Seems like a question for a therapist, if he’d ever agree to see one. He tries to shake it off and go back to the blank page in front of him.
Okay, so his characters can’t jump straight to dick-in-ass fucking right now, but maybe—wait, damn it. Barty’s just now realizing that they’ve just been in battle for hours, and it’s very clear that neither one of them has showered recently. Does Barty have to rewind and give them a shower scene? That’s going to be a little hard to accomplish in a glorified boarding school. Should he rewrite the entire fucking book so Remus has a shower in his bedroom? No, of course not, that’s insane. Could they just… do hand stuff? No, that’s definitely not hot enough after all of the build up.
Wait, and now that he thinks about it, do STDs exist in this universe? Does he need to invent some kind of magical condom? Ugh, no. Magical fairy condoms seem like something James F. Potter would make up. This is Barty’s universe. STDs don’t exist if he says they don’t.
Alright, so he can just… rewind and write a little paragraph about how Remus stops to shower before he and Xirius have their sexual tension-filled argument in his room. Maybe Xirius comes to check on him right outside the showers, and that sets the whole thing off, because Remus doesn’t want to be seen as weak or someone that needs to be checked on after a little casual classmate murder.
Yeah, that’ll work.
Okay, so now everyone is very clean and alone and all amped up. Now what? “‘I need a distraction,’ Remus says,” Barty types to start the next paragraph, “Isn’t there anything you could do to help take my mind off all this?”
Hm, okay, and then maybe Xirius says he has an idea. And he starts to take off Remus’ leathers (Barty is still unsure what exactly “fighting leathers” are, but he has it on good authority from BookTok that this is the hottest possible battle outfit). Xirius should probably spend some time kissing all over his (freshly cleaned) body, palming his hard cock through the pants of his leathers before he ultimately takes those off too. He can press every muscle of his body into Remus, pushing his own cock right into his hip so Remus can feel it. Then he shifts his body just so, so that their cocks rub together as he kisses him filthily a final time. And then maybe he can drop to his knees and take his cock—
No. That is just way too many ‘cocks’ for one paragraph of text.
There has got to be a better way to do this. Barty tries deleting each ‘cock’ one by one and replacing it with something different. But somehow, going back and forth between ‘dick’ and ‘cock’ seems to make it worse, just drawing attention to the sheer number of cock mentions. He stares at his computer, considering whether alternatives like ‘length’ or ‘meat’ or ‘manhood’ are acceptable or cringe-inducing. ‘Penis’ is definitely out of the question.
Maybe the best thing is to just… imply the word whenever he can. Instead of ‘Xirius palms his cock through his fighting leathers’, he could say ‘Xirius palms him through his fighting leathers.’ The readers will get it, right?
Although now Barty is staring at the sheer number of ‘he’s and ‘him’s and ‘his’s. Fuck, maybe he should have made this whole thing heterosexual after all, because ‘He presses his lips to his throat as he drags one hand down his side and across his abs to undo the laces of his pants’ is quasi-unintelligible. Barty tries substituting their names in for the pronouns, but he can’t imagine this many proper nouns in one paragraph could still be sexy. Could it?
“Ughhhh,” he groans into the empty living room.
He keeps going, trying to strike some kind of cosmic balance between his ‘he/him’s and his proper nouns. A bit of hand stuff, reciprocal blow jobs, some fingering—Barty has made the creative decision that Remus has, in fact, had lube in his bedroom cabinet all along—and then finally the main event. After Barty has finished (more like Remus and Xirius have finished, he chuckles to himself), he stands up to stretch. This scene is definitely adequate.
Barty thinks he deserves a little treat after that effort, so instead of sitting back down at his laptop, he strolls over to Regulus’ kitchen. And he’s pleased to see it looking a bit messier, more lived in, than it usually does. It’s a mark of how invested in this project Regulus is that he’s letting Barty practically live here, making little messes and eating all his food as he burrows himself further into the nest of blankets he’s made on the couch. Regulus has taken to bringing him hot nuts from Central Park and Halal Guys takeout so that Barty doesn’t have to break his writing trance for anything, including dinnertime.
Regulus is even letting Barty mess around with his coffee machine, which looks just like the one from Starbucks and has to have cost at least two grand. Through some trial and error, Barty has figured out which of the spaceship control knobs give him a doubleshot of espresso. He makes his fifth one of the day and crawls back to his blanket nest like a zombie raccoon.
Okay, what next? He glances back over his outline document. Now that Remus and Xirius have finally done the deed, they’re supposed to be pulled right back into the action with another dragon battle so one of them can get injured and the other can nurse him back to health. He drags his bleary eyes back to the smut scene so he can figure out how to best transition, and—he’s overcome by the urge to hide his face from his own computer screen.
Something about the barrage of ‘cocks’ and ‘tongues’ and ‘thrusts’ he’s met with make him cringe viscerally. It’s so much worse without reading the buildup. So Barty backs up even further and reads the entire scene back from the beginning. Okay, it’s definitely less bad when you read it the whole way through, except… His brow furrows, and there’s a twist of frustration in his gut. He’s realizing that, while it wasn’t horrible, rereading the entire sex scene start-to-finish didn’t make him feel anything at all. And sure, he’s consumed a medically concerning amount of caffeine and hasn’t properly slept in a week, but there wasn’t even a twitch of interest from his own cock as his main characters did all manner of nasty things to each other. He must be missing something here.
Barty taps his phone to check the time. 4:12 PM. He’s got hours until Regulus will be home, so he’s pretty sure he’ll be safe doing what he plans to do next.
Still wrapped in his mountain of blankets, he downs the rest of his doubleshot, stands with his laptop, and makes his way down the hall. If Regulus didn’t want Barty in his bedroom, he should have locked the door. Barty sets his computer in the middle of Regulus’ bed and then gives his best friend’s bookshelf a disgusted look before pulling the entire set of James F. Potter novels down and throwing them down on the bed too.
Barty’s never met an exam he didn’t ace, so he’ll just have to do this college-style. He lays every Court of Things and Stuff book around him like he’s studying for the Bar (if all the questions on the Bar Exam were pornographic), and he compares every dirty scene—from the orange book especially—to what he’s just written.
And then it’s obvious.
There are so many sentences about feelings. For every one sentence of sticking something somewhere, there are two or three about hammering hearts and tingling nerves and breathless anticipation. Okay. Barty can edit this kind of stuff into his scene, surely.
He keeps reading Pewter Fires until he’s really got the feel for it. God, why are these Potter characters’ throats always bobbing? And why does he keep using the phrase ‘bundle of nerves’? Barty doesn’t like that. In fact, it’s right up there with the least sexy phrases he’s ever heard.
Although… he can admit that some of this really isn’t bad. His cock doesn’t disagree. And so he starts making a list of all the feelings phrases that don’t make him totally cringe. Then he opens up a thesaurus like English isn’t his native fucking language, but at least seventy-five percent of the suggestions are even more terrible than the ‘cringe list’. He’s almost tempted to plug the word ‘cock’ into the thesaurus too, but after careful reflection, he’s decided a whole array of ‘cock’ words is definitely worse than just sticking with the classic. He’s thought the word ‘cock’ so many times it’s starting not to sound like a word to him at all.
Once his list of ‘I don’t hate it’ words and phrases seems long enough, he goes back to take it from the top (just like Xirius, he cackles to himself). After a period of time—he’s genuinely not sure if it was fifteen minutes or five hours—he’s created something that at least has Barty Jr. Jr. standing at attention. He leans back into Regulus’ pile of fluffy cushions, hand sliding underneath the elastic of his sweatpants, because after all of that exertion, he definitely deserves a little—
“Barty, what the actual fuck?”
“Oh, hey Reggie!” Barty slips his hand back out of his pants after an additional ten seconds of lethal glaring from his best friend.
“I honestly don’t even want to know what you’ve been doing in here, but get the hell off of my bed immediately.”
“Roger that,” Barty says, hurrying to scoop up his computer as Regulus darts around picking up every one of his Potter books and placing them gingerly back on the shelf. Then he turns back around to face Barty with his brow furrowed and nose crinkled.
“When was the last time you showered?”
Chapter Text
Four months later
“Home, sweet home,” Barty says, tossing his suitcase down on the king size bed. One of the two king size beds in the nicest hotel suite Barty has stayed in since the Blacks flew them to Singapore for their college graduation.
“Are you nervous?”
Barty hadn’t even heard Regulus come in, the quiet bastard. Last he had checked, Regulus was painstakingly trying to get wrinkles out of a dress shirt in his own bedroom across the hall.
“Nervous about what?” Barty asks without bothering to look behind him. He unzips his suitcase and starts throwing clothes and shoes and sunglasses on the bed around it, not entirely sure what one wears to the world’s nerdiest welcome dinner.
“People are going to read 'Third Flight' tomorrow.”
“People have already read it,” Barty shrugs, holding up a white silky shirt with a pattern of alternating blue crocodiles and flowers. Yeah, this’ll do. “Pandora sent out like fifty ARCs.”
“Have you gotten feedback from any of them?”
“Nope,” says Barty. “Told Pandora not to tell me. Don’t care.”
“Barty.” Regulus is probably giving him that classic sharp look from where he stands in the doorway. “I know you don’t consider this your magnum opus, but you did work on this thing for like two months straight. You really don’t care what people are saying about it?”
“No,” Barty says emphatically, eyeing the pair of shorts he brought and wondering whether that would be too casual. He already knows what Regulus’ answer to that question would be.
“But—”
“I’ll tell you what I was anxious about,” Barty cuts him off, finally turning back toward the door. “That one Snow and Lava YouTuber—you know, Presley something—finding out my next release wasn’t going to be Icicles. And you know what? It wasn’t even that bad. He only cried a little bit!”
“So even if the New York Times roasts it…”
“It won’t matter, because the whole point of writing it—you may recall—was so you could meet Prince Charming,” Barty says, and Regulus gives him a scathing look. “Now go get ready for the ball, or you won’t have time for all twelve steps of your skincare routine before we have to go.”
“It’s just dinner. Not a big deal,” Regulus says, sounding like he’s trying to convince himself more than anyone else. “And you promised you’d be normal.”
“I’m always normal.”
“Barty.”
“Fine, fine, I’ll behave!” Barty puts up his hands like he’s under arrest. “As long as Potter does.” It’s the first time Barty will be meeting his own personal writing nemesis in real life, and—regardless of what his best friend allegedly sees in this guy—he’s prepared for the worst.
Regulus sighs, then turns to walk back across the hall, grumbling something that sounds like, “And it only has eight steps.”
~~~
Turns out, San Diego in July is pretty damn nice. Barty has paired his crocodile shirt with khaki pants (because Regulus said he would not speak to him if he wore shorts or jeans) and Ray-Bans, and it’s the perfect outfit for this seventy-degrees-and-sunny evening. Regulus, on the other hand, is wearing a bright white, definitely wrinkle-free dress shirt and looks like he’s sweating.
If Regulus is already this much of a mess, Barty can’t wait to watch what happens when he pushes open the doors of this restaurant and they see—
“Pandora?!”
“Hi, Barty!” In a quick motion, he’s wrapped in willowy arms, and there’s a mess of long, blonde hair against his cheek. He hugs her back long enough not to be rude, but then retreats to give her a quizzical look.
“What are you doing here?”
“Oh, I couldn’t miss the big release,” she says, brushing him off like it’s a silly question. Right. Why wouldn’t his agent who lives in Manhattan be at this random French restaurant on the other side of the country? “Plus,” she smiles, “it’s not every day that two of our imprint’s biggest authors are at the same event together.” Pandora gestures to a table in the far corner of the room, where Barty immediately recognizes the two men having cocktails as Gilderoy Lockhart and James F. Potter.
Barty’s first impression of Potter is that, despite the fact that he’s seated, he seems taller in person. Although his jet black hair is every bit as messy, and his round, wire-rimmed glasses every bit as ridiculous. He’s smiling warmly at the man with perfectly coiffed blond hair at the table with him, a hint of a dimple visible on his golden skin. Barty wonders how Potter is feigning this degree of interest in whatever it is Lockhart is telling him.
“Oh, and speaking of,” Pandora says, drawing Barty’s attention back to where he’s standing. Barty actually cannot recall what they had been ‘speaking of’ a moment ago. “The panel organizer was in touch with me…” Oh, right. The panel. “He’s sorry he couldn’t make it to the welcome dinner, but he said he’d see you all on Sunday at the event.”
“Right. Sure.” Barty hadn’t actually expected the guy he talked to on the phone to be at this dinner tonight, although now that Pandora mentions it, he would sort of like to put a face to the name of the dude who refused to put him on this panel in the first place.
“And who did you bring with you?” asks Pandora, now turning her attention to Regulus.
“Oh,” Barty says, realizing he should have introduced them already. “This is my best friend, Regulus. Regulus, Pandora. My agent.”
“Pleasure to meet you,” Regulus says, extending a hand. It’s polite, but a bit stiff. And when Barty looks over at him, those grey-blue eyes are flitting to the far corner of the room every fifteen seconds or so. He suppresses the urge to laugh maniacally.
“You doing okay?” he asks under his breath, well aware that he’s not keeping the amusement from his voice.
“Yes,” Regulus answers in a curt whisper. “I am perfectly fine, thank you.” He wipes obviously sweaty hands against his slacks, and Barty finally can’t take it anymore, erupting into a tiny fit of laughter. “Shut up,” Regulus hisses almost inaudibly.
“I didn’t say a thing.”
If Pandora is curious about what’s going on between the two men, she doesn’t say anything. She simply looks amused, waiting another polite beat before changing the subject. “You know, Barty, the presale numbers for 'Third Flight' are looking pretty good. Dorcas is very happy with you.”
“Eh,” Barty answers, his own eyes returning to the table in the corner where Lockhart is now sitting by himself, talking into his phone like he’s doing a TikTok live. Actually, Barty is certain that is what he’s doing. He glances at Potter’s empty chair and frowns before looking back at Pandora. “I’m sure people are just buying it because of Snow and Lava. I bet they’ll be disappointed when it’s not what they were expecting.”
“Mm, I don’t know,” Pandora says mysteriously. “I know you didn’t want to hear the feedback from advanced copy readers, but all I’ll say is… I think people like the unexpected.”
“Guess we’ll find out tomorrow.”
“Well, actually…” She gives him an apologetic grimace, although it looks a bit insincere. “One of the ARC recipients is here.”
“Who could possibly be here who got an adv—Pandora!” His eyes follow her gaze across the room to Potter’s still-empty seat. “You did not give James F. Potter an advanced copy of 'Third Flight'!”
“You’re part of the same imprint,” she protests. “And he was so excited when the press release for the series came out. He asked to be put on the ARC list the same day, and—oh, okay, please just be nice, Barty.” Her eyes refocus somewhere behind Barty, off to the left, and Barty immediately knows who he’ll see if he turns around. “James! So glad you came over, this is—”
“Bartemius Crouch Jr.!” Potter says, stepping around Barty and into full view, and he looks so genuinely happy that he’s practically bouncing on his heels. “It’s such an honor to meet you.”
“It’s Barty,” Barty says, wondering what exactly Potter’s angle is here. Is he trying to lull Barty into a false sense of security by behaving like a human golden retriever?
“Oh,” says Potter, nodding and smiling. “Okay, Barty then! I’m James. Wow, it’s so great to finally meet you. I’ve been following 'A Song of Snow and Lava' for years, and I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed 'Third Flight' too.”
“Thank you,” Barty says curtly, refusing to let his guard down. “I appreciate you reading it in advance.” He shoots a little glare at Pandora, who is conveniently looking up at the ceiling.
“The chemistry between Remus and Xirius was just so good,” Potter goes on, radiating warmth, almost forcing a reflexive smile out of Barty. “I really feel like I could be best friends with them, ya know? Especially Xirius—he was just the coolest.” Oh, yeah, that’s just what the world needs. James F. Potter being friends with Barty’s best friend’s brother. “But you know who my favorite character was?” he adds, and Barty chooses to treat the question as rhetorical, which doesn’t seem to bother Potter at all. “Thames!”
Barty snorts, but Potter still seems unaffected and keeps talking. “The way he could read people’s memories just by touching them? So cool! And I mean, sure, some of the stuff he did in book one wasn’t great, but I could tell from the jump that he was just misunderstood,” Potter says earnestly. “I was so glad you gave him such a good redemption arc!”
“Ah, well,” Barty says, finally seeing his opening and running with it. “You’ll want to thank this guy for the redemption arc, actually.” He gestures dramatically at Regulus, who he is just now realizing has been standing behind him, slightly outside of their little circle. As much as Barty wants to laugh at Thames being Potter’s favorite character, he didn’t come all this way to not at least try to be a good wingman.
“Hi,” Regulus says quietly, and Barty watches the moment James Potter’s vision locks onto his best friend. His hazel eyes widen behind those ridiculous glasses, and his breath visibly hitches like some kind of absurd anime character.
“Hi,” is all Potter says in response.
Oh, these two absolute morons. Thank god Barty is here to provide some social lubrication.
“Potter, meet my best friend—nay, my muse—Regulus Black.” Barty then turns to face the man right next to time and says, “Regulus, this is James Potter. He’s written some books.”
“It’s so nice to meet a friend of Barty Crouch Jr.,” Potter says, flashing Regulus a nervous smile. “Especially such a charming one.”
How can Regulus possibly be into this dude? It takes every ounce of strength he possesses to suppress the snort of laughter that’s begging to surface and instead turn toward the spot where Regulus is still completely silent. And Barty has known Regulus long enough that he can practically watch the meltdown happening behind his eyes. The motherfucker cannot take a compliment on a good day, let alone in the very first moments of meeting his celebrity crush (“celebrity” used very loosely). Fortunately, Potter doesn’t seem the least bit uncomfortable and mostly just looks lost in Regulus’ eyes.
Barty clears his throat, ready to resume his wingmanning duties. “Ahem, yes. So, as I was saying, Regulus is my best friend in the world. As such, anyone would be lucky to meet him. He’s the total package—he’s pretty, he’s rich, he’s an evil genius. And he’s great at sucking cock.”
“Sorry, what?” asks Potter, turning to face him and blinking like he didn’t quite hear any of what Barty just said. Barty can feel Regulus’ eyes finally sparking back to life to stare daggers straight at him.
“I said he’s great at trading stocks,” Barty clarifies pointedly. “Regulus works on Wall Street. Did I mention he’s rich? He’s got the most beautiful apartment, highly recommend checking it out in person.”
“Thank you, Barty. That’s enough,” Regulus snaps. Barty grins and slides his hands into his pockets, content that he successfully managed to bring Regulus’ brain back online. Now that some of his cylinders are firing again, he just needs to say something to Potter. Anything. “I’m, um—actually, I’m a big fan of your ‘A Court of Stems and Flowers’ series.”
There ya go, bud, Barty thinks to himself. There is nothing writers like to talk about more than the shit they write. Now Regulus won’t have to think of any new conversation topics for the next half hour, minimum.
“Are you really?” Potter looks taken aback, his cheeks turning red beneath his golden skin.
And—while Barty is happy this is clearly about to go very well for Regulus—he is now trapped in his own personal version of hell. The conversation between his best friend and his writing nemesis becomes a free-flowing discussion about every facet of Potter’s ill-conceived fantasy world that continues until everyone in the room is sitting around the corner table, eating excessively fancy, excessively tiny food. At least there’s free alcohol. So Barty gulps down his second Jack & Coke, trying to decide which of the conversations happening around him would be least painful to listen to.
To his right, Regulus is still chatting more animatedly with Potter than Barty has ever seen him chat with anyone (at this point, he’d honestly prefer it if they just fucked right here on the table). To his left, Pandora is listening patiently while Lockhart lists off every award his YA dystopian series has been nominated for. Barty vaguely remembers it’s called the 'Hedge Sprinter', and is the eighth series this year that sounds like a complete ripoff of that other, more successful series. Although the longer he listens to Lockhart talk about it, the more sure Barty is that he didn’t actually write any of it. He seems to have no idea what his own books are even about.
Barty signals the waiter for another Jack & Coke, mumbling something noncommittal when Pandora tries to loop him into their conversation. He’s almost wishing the other panel member would have shown up—that Mormon lady who is weirdly obsessed with virginity and who wrote an arc where a full-grown dude falls in love with a literal baby. Barty has a lot of questions for that lady, actually.
He’s jolted out of his own internal musings about the 'Sundown' series by the sound of his own name.
“—gave me the inspiration to start writing in the first place.”
“Really?”
“Yep!” comes Potter’s overly-cheerful voice from Regulus’ other side. “Back in college, I used to think I’d play soccer professionally—I had this dream of playing for the LA Galaxy. But when I tore my ACL the second time, it was pretty much over for me.”
“Oh, I—I’m sorry.”
“Well, it all worked out,” Potter answers, and Barty can hear the smile without looking. “I always liked creative writing growing up too—used to dabble in Wattpad back in high school. Mostly kept to the happy romance stuff before, but then I was stuck in bed for weeks and weeks after my surgery, and my friend Pete sent me the entire Snow and Lava series.”
Oh. Oh, no. Barty can’t help but look at Potter, who’s still laser focused on Regulus like they’re the only two people in the world. And this—this isn’t fair. He can’t start to like this guy. James Potter is supposed to be his mortal enemy.
“So, anyway, I absolutely devoured them. It was all I wanted to read. Read ‘em three times in a row, actually. And then I got pretty into, uh… Roneyra fanfiction, which is—”
“Ron Frost and Morganeyra, yeah, I know,” Regulus finishes his sentence. Jesus Christ.
“And then I started writing stories where they got to have a happy ending, because I love Snow and Lava so much, but I have a feeling the ending is going to hurt me,” Potter pauses then chuckles to himself. “I’ll probably have to go on a beach vacation afterwards to recover.
“I like beach vacations,” Regulus says quietly.
“Do you really?”
“Yeah, do you really ?” Barty cuts in, unable to recall a single time that he witnessed Regulus doing anything remotely outdoorsy. He’s never seen Regulus get into a pool, let alone the ocean. Barty secretly suspects the man doesn’t even know how to swim.
“Yes,” Regulus grits back, whipping his head around to face the person who broke into his blissful bubble of conversation with Potter. “Just because we’ve never been to the beach doesn’t mean I don’t like beaches.”
“Whatever you say, dude.”
“Oh, I—” Potter leans forward so he can see Barty properly around Regulus. “Uh, I didn’t know you were listening. But I was just telling Reg—” Reg?! “—that, well—honestly, you’re the whole reason I decided to try writing fantasy in the first place.” Even in the dark corner of the restaurant, Barty can clearly see Potter’s cheeks flushing again. “Shit, I was trying to be cool tonight. But guess I can’t be. I really feel like I owe you everything, man—my whole career. I just—I mean, it wouldn’t even exist without Snow and Lava.”
“Oh.”
Well, fuck. How exactly is Barty supposed to go on hating James now?
“I can’t even properly explain how much it means to me to meet you,” James says. “Sorry,” he adds with a sheepish laugh. “I guess I’ve completely given up on trying to play it cool.”
“Playing it cool is overrated,” says Regulus, in the most un-Regulus turn of phrase Barty has ever heard in his life. He thinks his friend might need some medical tests when they return to New York to confirm he hasn’t been body swapped. “And Barty really, really likes your books too, James. Don’t you, Barty?”
Barty groans internally, looking back and forth between the two unfortunately likable idiots beside him. “You know what?” Fuck it. “Yeah, I do.”
~~~
Barty has mixed feelings. He may no longer have a nemesis, which is of course upsetting, but he does have a family sized bag of Twizzlers and a joint he bought from some guy on the corner who said his name was ‘Texaco Mike’. He sighs, almost one hundred percent sure he’ll have this giant hotel suite to himself for the rest of the night.
“Hey, Siri.” Barty’s phone makes the little ding-ding sound. “Play ‘Not Like Us’.”
“Now playing ‘The Story of Us’ by Taylor Swift.”
Barty sighs but doesn’t have the energy to move from where he’s already burrowed into his king size bed. The open window next to the balcony is starting to make the room chilly. He fishes for the lighter he knows he has somewhere in his pocket, and he has every intention of lighting up exactly where he is. If this hotel gives them a fine, he can send the bill straight the future Mr. and Mr. James F. Potter.
And so Barty sits in his mind palace, gets high, and consumes 3200 calories of Twizzlers.
When he wakes up in the morning, Regulus still isn’t back. And even though Barty’s wayward best friend pops by the room intermittently to shower and change into clean clothes throughout the week, he ends up spending the whole Comic-Con trip actually going to fucking Comic-Con. It’s an outrage.
Barty does not go to Comic-Con. Barty goes to La Jolla beach. And the San Diego Zoo. And the ‘Haunted San Diego’ ghost tour. And whale watching. True, he only saw one whale—but how many whales did James and Regulus see this week? Fucking zero. (Probably.)
On the morning of the panel, Barty texts Regulus angry face emojis until he finally materializes to help him find a suitable outfit, which turns out to be a black t-shirt with a black blazer over it and dark jeans. Regulus assures him this is what “people” have been wearing at the other panels this week, and Barty genuinely doesn’t give a fuck, so he goes with it.
He’s in the middle of deciding whether a single dangly snake earring is over-the-top when his phone starts buzzing on the bathroom counter.
“Yes, Pandora?”
“Hi!” she answers breezily. “I haven’t seen you around the convention all week.”
“That’s because I haven’t been there.”
“Oh.” The line goes quiet for a second, and Barty decides to go with the snake earring after all, sliding it into his ear and tilting his head back and forth to admire the look. “Well, that’s too bad. But listen, we really need to talk about the week one numbers because—”
“Ugh, no,” Barty cuts her off, shaking his head even though she can’t see it, and Regulus gives him a perplexed look from the other side of the bathroom where he’s attempting to steam Barty’s blazer. “I told you, it doesn’t matter to me. If we have to talk about it, can we do it after the panel?”
“I think you’ll really want to kn—”
“After the panel, Pandora. Let me just get through this thing, and then I’ll get a fucking drink and we can talk about stats and numbers and schedules and whatever your heart desires.”
He can hear Pandora inhale and exhale on the other end of the line. “Okay, Barty. I do think it would be a good idea to talk now, but if you’re sure.”
“See you at the panel,” Barty affirms, and he thinks he catches a softly muttered ‘I’ll be there…’ as he hangs up and sets the phone back down on the bathroom counter.
~~~
“My question is for Bartemius Crouch, Jr.”
The words bring Barty sharply out of his reverie. All in all, this panel thing has been pretty easy so far. The first part was moderated by that guy from that one late night show, and he turned out to be a pretty big fan of the 'Sundown' series. So Barty answered a couple softball questions about why he chose to take a break from Snow and Lava, giving some vague, cliché answers and providing reassurances (mostly for Presley on YouTube) that he’ll be back to working on 'The Icicles of Winter' soon. And then he zoned out while the host asked Dolores Umbridge a million questions, swirling around that little cup of water they put in front of all the panelists, trying to guess what could be going on with the numbers that would prompt Pandora to call him while he was getting ready.
He shifts in his seat when the first person in the audience Q&A line says his name, bracing himself to provide more reassurances that his next Snow and Lava book will be out sometime soon. And he’s not quite sure what he expected to see when his eyes jump to the person at the microphone (probably someone more like Presley), but the question is coming from a very attractive, twenty-something girl.
And she’s wearing a tight black shirt that says ‘I’d Let Xirius Ride My Dragon’.
What in the world? Barty just stares at her blankly from the high table at the front of the room.
“I just wanted to say that I loved this series so much,” the girl says with a nervous smile. “And I guess my question is… what was the inspiration behind Kreacher’s character? He was my absolute favorite.”
“Oh, my best friend’s dead dog,” Barty says quickly without really processing. “Wait, I’m sorry, did you read the entire series? It just came out las—where did you get that shirt?”
“I made it!” She beams, glancing down at her apparent handiwork.
Barty gapes at her, but then his eyes refocus and he really takes in the scene in front of him. At least a third of the people standing in the Q&A line appear to be wearing leather. Barty would have assumed it was for the Potter-verse fans, but… about ten people back, there’s another, slightly older woman wearing a shirt that says ‘Xaddy’s Girl’. Jesus fucking Christ. And he’s pretty sure he can make out ‘Bascoil War College Alumni’ on someone else’s hoodie. Does everyone at this event… make clothing ?
Barty sits up in his chair, mumbling indistinct praise and thanks to the first questioner and continuing to scan the room, trying to spot a familiar head of blonde hair. Someone asks Umbridge a question about whether the stars of the first 'Sundown' movie are actually dating in real life, and she answers with a sickly sweet laugh. Barty continues trying to process what just happened as the next few questioners come and go. Is it possible that this many people have read his series in just under a week? Not even the first Snow and Lava book got that kind of instant reception.
“—have any comment about that, Mr. Crouch?”
“About what?” Barty asks, blinking and turning to face the panel host.
“I think you might need to repeat the question,” the host says, cadence like he’s telling a hilarious joke. Barty wants to punch him a little bit, but the entire auditorium erupts into laughter. When Barty looks back toward the microphone, there’s a middle-aged man dressed entirely in leather, biting his lip like he’s not sure whether he should really repeat himself.
“Uh—sorry,” Barty says into his own microphone. “I just, um, didn’t catch the end of your question.”
“I was just asking,” the leather-clad man starts again, “whether you could address the rumors that Maroon Castle Books has already signed you for a sequel series?”
And then, like there’s a magnetic draw straight to her, Barty locates Pandora in the crowd. She shrugs and makes a face that clearly communicates ‘I told you so’, then she nods, wordlessly confirming that, yes, Maroon Castle will be demanding a sequel series.
“Um, yes,” Barty says slowly, eyes flitting from leather man to Pandora and back. “I can’t comment on the specifics.” Because this was brand new information to me one second ago. “But there is more 'Third Flight' on the horizon.”
The man at the microphone almost giggles with delight, thanking Barty and going back to find his seat. Barty supposes he’ll be taking a longer hiatus from Snow and Lava than expected. Oof, poor Presley… he’ll have to have Pandora send him an Edible Arrangement or something.
The next person steps up to the microphone wearing pointy elf ear prosthetics, and Barty breathes a sigh of relief. “I have a question for James F. Potter,” she says shyly.
Barty tunes out again, locating Regulus in the front row and trying to communicate with him with only eyebrow movements. Did Regulus know all these people at the convention were reading his books? Come to think of it, Barty did see someone holding a book with very familiar cover art when he was at the San Diego Zoo, but he had dismissed the possibility out of hand. Regulus just gives him a little shrug, like the extent of the audience response to 'Third Flight' was a surprise to him too. Barty scowls—certain his best friend would have noticed someone wearing a ‘Save a Dragon, Ride a Flightleader’ shirt if he had been paying attention to anything other than James all week.
“—and as for that last question, you might just have to wait for the next book in the ‘Court of Stems and Flowers’ series to get your answ—”
“What? ” asks Barty without thinking, causing James to pause mid-sentence and turn to meet his bulging eyes. “Sorry, what do you mean the next book?”
“The book I’m working on right now. Book six.”
“You mean A Court of Something and Something isn’t finished?”
“No?” James chuckles softly, a little crease between his brows, and scattered audience members join him in laughing. “Why did you think it was?”
“I…” Barty’s voice trails off, and he looks at Regulus, who doesn’t seem shocked by the statement at all. Did Regulus know the entire time?
“Well, I couldn’t end it after Pewter Fires,” James continues affably, turning his attention back to the question asker. “We’ve got to have Elise’s story, I mean, there’s a whole unresolved love triangle!”
“Team Lucy,” the girl at the microphone says in immediate response. Then someone in the audience yells, “Boo! Team Ariel!” and the whole hall breaks out into laughter again. Now that Barty thinks about it, it did seem odd to have such a major plotline unresolved (also, he thinks Lucy and Ariel should just date each other because Elise is annoying)...
His eyes find Pandora again. She gives him another, slightly guilty shrug, and Barty expects to feel a flash of anger, but… not quite. Instead, the feeling is some odd combination of mild annoyance mixed with humor and pride. Because if the convention invited James to be on this panel knowing full well that his series was incomplete, then that would mean… but no, Pandora couldn’t have just made up the panel’s supposed rule all by herself. Barty had spoken to someone from the convention that had said the same ridiculous thing. The ‘panel organizer’ who was conspicuously absent at the welcome dinner and then again during set-up this morning.
And Barty can’t explain how—but when his scanning eyes land on the man in the very back of the auditorium, leaning right under the exit sign with his hands in his pockets and a wicked smirk on his face, he knows exactly who it is.
Notes:
(Any Dr. Glaucomflecken fans in the house?)
Chapter 5: My Kink Is Karma
Chapter Text
“You,” is the first thing Barty says to the man who he’s now one hundred percent sure is ‘Evan from Comic-Con’.
“Me,” Evan grins back. He’s probably an inch shorter than Barty, but broader in the shoulders, and the crisp white dress shirt he’s wearing is unbuttoned around the collar in an effortlessly informal way that Regulus Black would never abide. He takes a hand out of one pocket and runs his fingers through his short blond hair. It’s an oddly familiar shade.
“The completed series rule wasn’t a real rule, was it?”
“Ah, you got me.” Evan slips his other hand out of its pocket to put both arms up in mock surrender. There’s an devilish sparkle in his clear blue eyes as he pushes off from the wall and closes the distance between him and Barty. The confidence is, frankly, ridiculous. It’s annoying. It’s… so undeniably hot. “Wanna know a secret?” Evan asks, voice so low Barty almost can’t hear it over the din of the auditorium behind them.
“What?” he asks sharply, trying to let annoyance be the only feeling he broadcasts.
“I don’t even work here.”
“You—what? ” Barty’s mind goes blank for a half-second, temporarily distracted by the little dimple that forms as Evan chuckles at his own admission. “So, how did you…” Barty trails off, starting to fill in the blanks for himself, spinning his own theories as he speaks, realizing he cares less about the how and more about the, “Why? ”
Evan shrugs. “Dora thought it might be a creative way to motivate you to finish ‘A Song of Snow and Lava’. She’s sort of an… ‘outside the box’ thinker,” he adds with a fond look on his face. Barty supposes Pandora has always been a bit unconventional, but... this? He glances back at the crowd filing out of the hall but can’t locate his wily agent. “She mentioned you wanted to come to Comic-Con, and our dad actually knows Tom Riddle pretty well, so—”
“Our dad?” Barty asks, whipping around to face Evan again. “Pandora has a brother?”
“A twin,” Evan says, gesturing up and down his own body. “Evan Rosier, nice to meet you.”
“You devious fucks…” Barty says, shaking his head, now certain he’s failing to hide the impressed smile that’s been threatening to surface since he crossed the room.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Evan says, suggestively raising a brow in a way that makes Barty want to lick his face. “Worked out pretty well for you, I’d say. But if you’re mad about it, I could always… make it up to you.”
Barty’s mouth goes a little dry, tongue darting across his own lips like a reflex. He doesn’t miss Evan’s eyes flicking down to follow the movement. “What exactly did you have in mind?”
~~~
Barty likes Evan’s mind. Because as it turns out, Evan Rosier’s idea of an apology is ditching Comic-Con and buying Barty an absurdly expensive glass of whiskey at the hotel bar. And then another, casually giving Barty his running commentary on the cosplay-wearing adults who walk through the visible portion of the lobby. All the while, Barty is trying not to stare at the spot where Evan’s shirt is unbuttoned at the top.
“So,” Barty says when the people-watching specimens start to become a bit more sparse, hundreds of dollars of whiskey coating his tongue and lowering his already-low inhibitions. “You and Pandora talk about me?
“Occasionally,” Evan replies, pausing and looking like he’s deliberating something, although he doesn't break eye contact with Barty as he takes another sip from his own glass. Barty looks back, unblinking, until Evan finally exhales and says, “To be perfectly candid and risk embarrassing myself… I’m a bit of a Snow and Lava nerd.” Whatever Barty had expected Evan to say next, it wasn’t that. “I’ve been known to watch some Presley Jacobson YouTube videos, and uh… I may or may not do a reread of the entire series annually.”
“Really?” Barty asks, trying not to look too pleased with himself.
“Mmhm. I’ve been asking Dora to meet you for ages, but she always said no. Well, until she came up with the idea for this—”
“Why’d she say no?”
“Oh.” Evan stops again, although now there’s a devious glint in his blue eyes that Barty really, really likes. “She was worried I was going to hit on you.”
Barty sets his glass down on the table, missing his coaster by a few inches because he’s still looking at Evan. At the burning heat behind sparkling pale irises—like ice and fire all at once, making Barty involuntarily lean in. “And should she have been?”
“Yes.”
Evan lets the word sit between them—neither of them moving. Neither of them breathing. And Barty is fighting for his life trying to keep his face impassive, but somehow that one word out of Evan’s mouth (which Barty is now staring at, fuck) has made his body stop responding to his brain. After a few slow blinks and a steadying breath, he finally finds the strength to get it together.
“Hm, well,” he says, relieved to hear his voice sounds every bit as bratty as he intended. “Allow me to reassure her. I’ll tell her we’ve been sitting here for a half hour, and you haven’t done anything remotely disrespectful.” Barty reaches into his pocket, pulling out his phone threateningly. “It’s very disappointing.”
Barty unlocks the screen and clicks open his most recent thread with Pandora, but before his left hand can make contact with his phone to start typing, Evan catches it by the wrist. Their eyes meet again, and Barty lets himself grin, lifting a brow in obvious challenge. Then he holds his breath, heart jumping, as Evan slowly pulls his hand toward him. Pinning Barty in that fiery blue stare, he wraps his lips around Barty’s index finger and withdraws them slowly, sucking and swirling his tongue until Barty's fingertip is resting on the plush center of his bottom lip. He lets it linger, and Barty can feel his own throat bob. Shit, maybe that really is a thing. But he can’t think about that now because all the blood has left his brain, and he’s just staring back into wicked blue eyes—until Evan moves Barty’s hand again, nonchalantly placing it right back on his phone.
“Still feel like texting my sister?”
“My room’s upstairs.”
The four-minute wait for the barman to return with Evan’s credit card is excruciating. The moment the card is back in his wallet, they wordlessly head for the elevator. Barty has every intention of jumping Evan as soon as the doors slide closed until an elderly lady carrying a tiny dog in her purse follows them in, looking delighted that the button for her floor has already been pressed. The little dog yips at Barty, like he can smell the desperation, and Barty glares back at him, counting the dings of the elevator as it ascends.
It takes an eternity for the doors to finally slide open again, and when they do, Evan gives the old lady an overly cheerful ‘have a nice day!’. Barty can’t help but snort when she blushes, although there’s no way his own face isn’t every bit as flushed. He’s incinerating from within, his feet carrying him down the long, carpeted hallway on autopilot. It’s not just that Evan is hot (which—he is), but there’s something about his energy that’s immediately intoxicating. The longer Barty is in close proximity to him, the more glimpses he catches of unabashed sinfulness under the professional veneer. And, well… like calls to like.
The door of his suite hasn’t even swung fully closed when Barty snaps. The tension that’s been pooling inside him since his eyes first landed on this suave fucking devil has finally boiled over, and his hands are on Evan instantly, grabbing hold of his fancy white shirt and yanking it out from beneath his belt as their lips collide.
It’s immediately filthy, just like Barty knew it would be, and yet it’s even more electrifying than he would have believed. He’s now acutely aware that all of the sex he has had recently was in his imagination, so the reality of Evan’s lips and teeth and tongue is almost overwhelming. Hands roaming free over the planes of Evan’s body underneath his shirt, Barty can’t fight the smile and the little huff of laughter that escapes him. Evan doesn’t stop or slow though; he licks into Barty’s mouth again, turning the hint of a laugh into an eager moan.
“I knew you’d be hotter in person,” Evan speaks the words right into his mouth, and Barty takes the opportunity to twist his fingers through soft blond hair and pull sharply backwards, exposing Evan’s neck.
“Hm?” he asks, lips already passing the corner of Evan’s jaw, moving further down as he waits for Evan to elaborate.
“I mean… your picture–ah–is in all your books…” His voice is replaced by panting breaths as Barty does his best to suck a bruise into the pale skin on his neck. “But,” Evan finally goes on, “as soon as we talked on the phone, I knew you’d be hotter in real life.”
“Oh yeah?” Barty asks, loosening his grip on Evan’s hair to start undoing the excessive number of buttons on his shirt. “Because I thought you’d be a complete tool in person after we talked on the phone. Full offense.”
A burst of laughter rises from Evans chest, and Barty can feel it as he pops open button after button, until finally he’s got the thing off and it’s on the floor. He then resumes his task of trying to make Evan unfit to go back out in public without a scarf on.
“I know, I know,” Evan says, his own hands trailing down Barty’s back, pulling their bodies flush together. “I wish I could say I was sorry, but—ah…” Evan’s fingers slip beneath the hem of Barty’s shirt, hot against the smooth skin of his back, and Barty steps away for a breath to let Evan pull his shirt up and off him.
“But you’re not sorry at all.”
“What can I say?” Evan grins back, throwing Barty’s black shirt unceremoniously on the floor beside his white one. “It all worked out.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes,” Evan closes the distance between them, meeting Barty’s mouth again while his fingers start unfastening the button on Barty’s jeans. “I mean,” he clarifies as they break apart, dropping his eyes to better see what his hands are doing. “I got an advanced copy of the 'Third Flight' books too. Most fun I’ve had all year.”
Barty grabs Evan by the belt and yanks him closer so he can find the spot on his neck he’s already bruised and sink in his teeth. Evan hisses, and Barty runs his tongue over the raw skin before asking, “The most fun?”
“Jesus Christ, the most fun I’ve had while reading,” Evan says. His tone is appalled, but his eyes are pure delight. “You’re really a violent little thing, aren’t you?”
“Oh my god, are you quoting my own book to me?”
“Might be,” Evan says, the corner of his mouth twitching like he’s trying to hide his own amusement. “Why? Did you like it?”
Fuck, why did Barty like it? He decides the best path forward is to ignore the question. “You actually read the 'Third Flight' books?” he asks instead, kicking off his shoes and stepping fully out of his jeans, well aware that his aching erection is now in full view beneath his briefs.
“I actually did,” Evans replies. The hunger in his eyes as they rake over Barty from head to toe makes Barty’s stomach flip. “You know which scene I liked a lot?” Evan evens the score, ridding himself of his own shoes and pants before moving closer again. Barty can feel the heat radiating from his skin.
“Which one?”
“That one right after the War Games in the first book.” Evan’s hand closes around Barty’s cock through the fabric, and Barty can’t stop the desperate sound that leaves his mouth. “Have you ever actually broken any furniture by fucking before?”
“No,” Barty exhales, incapable of additional speech while Evan is touching him like this.
“Want to try?”
“I–fuck,” Barty’s hips cant forward, desperate for more friction, more pressure, more everything. What his brain wants to do is make a snarky comment that if they break something, he’ll just send the bill to Regulus, but all he manages to say is, “Yes.”
Evan’s smile widens, and he starts stroking Barty slowly. It’s enough to make Barty’s knees buckle, but it’s still nowhere near enough. “Mm, and since you like talking about your book so much, here’s another question for you… would you say you’re more of a Xirius or more of a Remus?”
After a half-second of confusion, Barty realizes what exactly Evan is asking in this context. “Are you–ah, fuck–are you asking me if I like to top or bottom?”
“And they said you were slow.”
“No one has ever said that about me in my entire life,” Barty manages to snap out in a single breath before Evan tightens his grip over the head of his cock and he gasps again. “And… Remus.”
“Noted,” Evan says coolly, but Barty sees a flash of something hungry in his eyes.
“What about—ah, what about you?”
“Dealer’s choice.”
Barty’s breath catches, and he grips Evan by the wrist, pulling his hand away so he can bring their bodies together, finally drawing a moan out of Evan as they resume another filthy kiss. Barty can finally feel Evan’s length pressed hard against his own cock, and it’s enough to drive him half insane, but he manages to choke out, “Noted.”
“Fuck, you’re so hot,” Evan says, and the praise makes Barty a little lightheaded, causing him to rut his hips harder against Evan’s like he has no control over himself. “Barty, I—oh ,” Barty interrupts his words by sliding his hands beneath the waistband of his briefs and gripping his ass tight, digging in his nails. “Oh, fuck,” Evan says, letting Barty pull them tighter together still. Barty breaks the kiss, panting, dropping his head into the crook of Evan’s neck and tasting the sweat there. After a handful more heaving breaths, Evan asks, “You know what other scene I liked?”
“Which one?” Barty murmurs into Evan’s skin.
Evan inhales sharply and says, “The throne scene.”
Barty’s motion stops, and he raises his head to meet Evan’s blue eyes, pupils blown wide. Evan gestures toward the corner of the room, and Barty’s gaze follows until it lands on an ornate arm chair that, yes, he would definitely be interested in ruining. Their eyes meet again, and Evan seems to take Barty’s unyielding eye contact as permission to walk him backwards across the room until Barty sinks into the plush fabric.
Evan drops onto his knees in front of the chair, looking up at Barty darkly as he says, “My house. My chair. My man.” He says it without a hint of irony, and Barty is thoroughly appalled at how much he liked it. “Or something like that,” Evan adds with a smirk.
“Yeah,” Barty says breathlessly, then clears his throat. “Something like that.”
Evan grips the elastic of his underwear, and Barty automatically raises his hips so Evan can slide them downward, finally freeing his leaking cock just inches from his mouth. It’s so close that Barty can feel the heat of his breath over his own wet, sensitive skin, setting all of his nerves on edge. He tries very hard not to think the words ‘velvet wrapped steel’.
“Do you think you can stay nice and still for me?” Evan asks. “And real quiet? I intend to be here for a long time, wouldn’t want a noise complaint getting in the way.”
Barty is tempted to comment on the boldness of the assumption that Evan is going to be here for a long time—but he can’t because he’s pretty sure he would let Evan stay forever if he wanted to. He’s pretty sure he would let Evan crawl into his own fucking skin at this point. So ultimately, he just nods.
And Evan devours him. Lips wrapping around him so instantaneously, it knocks the wind out of Barty and his vision momentarily whites out. There’s no slow teasing. It’s zero to one hundred, and Evan takes in nearly his whole length, bobbing his head and hollowing his cheeks like he’s been waiting years to do this. When Barty feels Evan swallow around him, a loud moan starts to form deep in his chest, but something in the back of his brain manages to stifle it—barely.
“That’s right,” Evan says, sliding his mouth off Barty, eyes dark, “good.”
Barty’s muscles tense, cock twitching as a fresh wave of arousal washes over him. He might have made another tiny, strangled sound, although he can’t be completely sure. Evan’s eyes gleam and he lets out a huff of laughter that Barty can feel maddeningly over his spit-slick, aching cock.
“You know,” Evan muses, giving Barty the only smallest amount of relief by wrapping one hand around his length to stroke him slowly while he talks. The spit is starting to dry enough to make it almost uncomfortable. “I have this theory…” Evan pauses for dramatic effect, and Barty wants to scream, but that little voice in the back of his head is still telling him be quiet . “...That anyone who writes professionally… has a bit of a praise kink.”
Barty is about to laugh when Evan leans back in, sticking out his tongue to lick an obscene stripe from the base up the shaft of Barty’s cock. Just as he’s about to reach the most sensitive spot, he stops, tongue retreating back into his mouth. This man is so infuriating, so hot, so ridiculous—downright fucking evil. Barty is captivated.
“What do you think?” Evan asks innocently, like he’s discussing a purely academic question.
“I think…” The words sound hoarse because Barty’s entire throat is dry from his ragged breaths. “It’s…” What is Barty even talking about again? He’s almost completely lost the plot, just staring at Evan’s swollen lips and flushed cheeks for another long moment before he remembers. “It’s plausible.”
Evan smirks and grips Barty hard underneath his thighs, tugging him forward until his ass is almost hanging off the edge of the arm chair, spreading his legs wide. He lets go of one leg, lifting his hand, palm-up, until it stops in front of Barty’s lips.
“Spit,” he says, and Barty complies without even thinking. “Good boy.”
Barty's head spins, his breath catching and entire body thrumming with the praise. Well, that’s an interesting piece of self discovery for the day. He’ll tuck that one away to examine later, perhaps as inspiration for the ‘Third Flight’ sequel series. For now, his entire world narrows to the sensation of Evan teasing at his rim with one wet fingertip.
The moment Barty can feel Evan’s tongue on the head of his cock again, his hips practically jump off the chair’s edge to meet him, thrusting forward into the tight, wet heat and biting back another groan. Evan’s free hand presses into his hips, pushing him back down on the chair, pinning him in place while Evan resumes sucking him off, every bit as vigorously as before. Barty can already feel the tension starting to crest when Evan pushes in with his fingertip.
“Fu–,” Barty almost curses, but he manages to swallow the rest of the word before Evan can do some other horribly evil thing like stop. Instead, Evan hums around him approvingly, nose almost touching the thatch of hair at the base of his cock. Barty feels like he’s on fire, pleasure building, cresting over him in bright waves as Evan swallows around him again. And when Evan’s finger is deep inside him, crooking forward until Barty throws his head back in a silent scream, he can’t hang on for a second longer.
“Evan, I’m—”
Evan doesn’t stop, doesn’t slow. He keeps Barty pinned in place as he explodes right down his throat. Chest heaving, brain barely functioning, Barty looks down at Evan—still on his knees and staring up at Barty through his lashes as he lets Barty slide all the way out of his mouth. But he keeps his finger right where it is, making Barty squirm in his chair with every slide against that oversensitive—oh god damn it, why is “bundle of nerves” the only phrase he can think of?
“Ah–fuck, fuck,” Barty hisses, “Evan, please .”
“Please what? What do you want, Barty?” Evan asks, looking amused. So in control. Barty never would have thought he could be this absolutely feral for someone an hour after meeting them. “Good boys get what they ask for.”
“Fuck me,” he breathes. “I want you to fuck me, Evan—please, god.”
“Which god are you calling out f—”
“No, no more ‘Third Flight’ quotes. Just your cock. Inside me. Now.”
“Oh, now he’s bossy.” Evan makes a playful tsk tsk noise, and Barty shivers.
“Please?”
“Well, since you asked so nicely.” Evan slides his hand out of Barty, moving to stroke himself lazily through his briefs. “You have lube somewhere?”
Shit. Of all the things for Barty not to pack. But like, come on. It was a four-day trip to freaking Comic-Con. How could he have ever predicted… this?
He groans, running his hands through his sweat-damp hair. “Fuck, I’m sorry, I didn’t bring… anything. But I could just run out to—”
“I’ve got it,” Evan says without missing a beat.
“You’ve got what?”
“Everything.”
“What, in your pockets?” Barty asks, eyes darting to their pile of clothes on the other side of the room, brows scrunching in question. “Sorry, do you just walk around with lube and condoms in your pockets all the time?”
“Nah,” Evan answers, mouth twisting into a crooked smile. “I was feeling optimistic today.”
Barty feels a fresh burst of arousal, even though it’s still too soon for him to start filling out again. But something about being so brazenly wanted is exhilirating.
“I’ll be right back.” Evan rises to his feet, but before he turns to cross the room, he bites his lip, a playful malice in his pretty blue eyes. “So no more ‘Third Flight’ quotes, right?”
“Right,” Barty answers emphatically.
“Fair enough.” Evan takes a step toward Barty and leans over him, the outline of his neglected cock stealing Barty’s focus until he feels Evan’s teeth nip at his ear. “Then why don’t you go into the bedroom, and… put your hands on the headboard.”
Evan pushes up just enough that Barty can see him raising a brow, challenging him to say something about the James F. Potter line. But Barty wants it so much that he realizes he doesn’t even care. All he knows is that he wants to be good for Evan, and Evan asked him to go put his hands on the headboard.
So Barty does.
Chapter Text
Sirius
It’s always a pleasant morning when there’s something in the mailbox other than bills and ads and the hundred million academic journals Remus subscribes to. Sirius actually has no idea what this particular package is, but it’s fairly heavy and hardly fit in their apartment mailbox, so that’s promising.
“Hey, babe, guess what?”
He shuts the front door behind him, kicking off his shoes and walking toward the smell of brewing coffee.
“Hm?” asks Remus without taking his eyes off his crossword.
“We got a package!” Sirius answers, grinning and setting the parcel on the kitchen table next to Remus’ still-full cup of black coffee, careful not to jostle the cane perched precariously on the table’s edge.
“There’s no return address,” Remus says, eyeing it suspiciously. He sets his pen down on the newspaper.
“Ah, come on. What could be more exciting than a mysterious package from an undisclosed sender? Where’s your sense of adventure?”
“That’s exactly what you said when that unknown number started texting you,” Remus says flatly. “And how did that one turn out?”
“Oh, well that was a completely different kind of mysterious package.” Sirius had thought the photos were sort of artistic, actually, but he would never say that out loud to his husband. “Relax, babe, I’m sure this one is going to be completely dick pic free.”
He rips open the wrapping before Remus has the chance to further protest that the contents could be salacious or dangerous, and out slide two copies of a shiny, black-and-gold hardback book. There’s a yellow post-it note stuck to the top copy, on which is scrawled in sloping cursive letters:
Don’t blame me. –R.A.B.
Huh. Sirius wonders what that means, and his eyes refocus on the book itself. “Third Flight…” he reads aloud. He continues scanning over the glimmering geometric artwork featuring clouds and lightning and dragons, then to the additional text below. ‘Book One’, followed by a name he recognizes immediately: ‘Bartemius Crouch Jr.’
“Shit, I had no idea he was writing another series!” Sirius isn’t sure why he thought Barty was still working on his first series, but he must have just missed hearing about the end of it—he’s not really a fantasy guy.
“Oh, yeah,” Remus says thoughtfully, taking one of the copies and inspecting the front and back cover. “I saw a headline about this in the Times—it’s your brother’s best friend, right? The series just came out a few days ago, but the headline said it’s going viral.” Remus takes a slow sip of his coffee before setting it down and flipping his copy open.
“Wow, that’s great,” says Sirius. Barty Crouch has always been a little odd, but it’s nice that he’s having such a successful career. “You know, I don’t think I’ve seen Barty since he and Reggie graduated from—”
“Sirius, what the hell?!”
“What?” Sirius feels a rush of pure panic, eyes flitting around from Remus to the coffee to the book and back, unsure exactly what could be wrong.
“Remus Lupindale?” Anxiety giving way to extreme confusion, Sirius watches Remus whip his phone out of his pocket and start frantically typing. “Oh my god…” Remus says with a look of horror, continuing to scroll and scroll. Sirius picks up his own book, is briefly distracted by the row of dragons sprayed onto the edges of the pages, but then flicks through chapter one until his eyes do indeed land on his husband’s name—well, sort of.
“Oh my god,” Remus repeats, still looking at his phone with wide eyes. “Sirius, there’s someone who’s dressed up as… and it says he’s supposed to be… Christ, I don’t even know what to do with that.” Before Sirius can lean over the table to see the picture Remus is talking about, he scrolls again. “And—oh my god—this redditor said their favorite part is in chapter 28, when ‘Remus’ gets his…” Remus’ voice cuts out, cheeks bright pink behind his pale freckles. “I can’t even say that out loud.”
He slides the phone to Sirius, who does his level best to keep a straight face as he consumes the entire reddit thread, start to finish, mouth falling open when his eyes land on someone in a ‘Xirius’ cosplay, which apparently just means tight black leather from head to toe. Sirius doesn’t hate it. He finally gets to the part that describes the events of chapter 28 in explicit detail, and an unintentional snort of laughter breaks through the silence.
He looks up to find Remus looking half indignant, half physically ill. “In all fairness,” Sirius says cautiously, “we have done that before.”
“We can sue, right? I’m going to sue.” Remus pushes his chair back from the table, grabbing his cane and rising to his feet. “I’m calling my lawyer.”
Sirius bites his lip. He doesn’t think it will help the situation to tell Remus he’s extra adorable when he’s doing the righteous indignation thing. “Um, babe, do you have a lawyer?”
Remus blinks, silent for another beat before saying, “I’m getting a lawyer,” and starting down the hall to their home office.
Still holding Remus’ phone in his hands, Sirius scrolls back up to the ‘Xirius’ cosplayer, clicking open the additional thread of comments beneath it.
kreacherandwinky: dammmmmnnnn remus better watch out <3 <3
Snoo73956271: 🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠
futuremrscrouchjr 🍰: it’s giving “should I get the flightleader?” LMFAO
JamesFPotterOfficial: thames cosplay next??
Sirius is confused but intrigued. He picks up his copy of 'Third Flight' again, flipping through the pages quickly, skimming the text until something catches his eye and he goes back a few pages to find it. ‘Xirius Black.’ He reads out loud:
“Xirius is tall, with windblown black hair and dark brows. The line of his jaw is strong and covered by flawless ivory skin and dark stubble, and when he folds his arms across his torso, the muscles in his chest and arms ripple, moving in a way that makes me swallow. His features are so harsh that they look carved, and yet they’re astonishingly perfect, like an artist worked a lifetime sculpting him, and at least a year of that was spent on his mouth—”
Sirius barks a laugh. “This book is fucking awesome.”
Notes:
If you have somehow read this entire thing... I don't know what to say. Thanks for being unhinged with me? <3
See you at Comic-Con!
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