#florsial this one’s secretly for you 👊😔

[deathnguts]

Regulus and rabastan understand each other better than anyone else and that is both wonderful and awful for both of them.

Regulus can only cry around Rabastan. Like truly cry with more than two tears and real sobbing and whimpering out his emotions through babbles and sniffles rather than stealing himself even more and rushing away from the situation as fast as possible. Being around rabastan makes the smaller parts of himself, the parts he’s ashamed of -the little girl who used to cry at every turn- feel… ok. When it’s just the two of them he doesn’t scramble to hide that part if himself the way he naturally does around everyone else. Because even his closest friends are only allowed past a certain point of his walls. Rabastan has been around and encouraging about letting himself be human and waver from his families expectations since the beginning. It’s hard not to give into the beckoning to let it all go when it’s safe ti do so around him.

Rabastan is really only his true self around regulus. Or, the better half of his true self. The kinder, softer half. He never learned to be generous with showing it to others because well he’s a pure blood too. His twin brother was never his best friend the way regulus and Sirius used to be. Rodolphus has always been the perfect heir and Rabastan always wasn’t. He was either pointedly ignored or scolded and scoffed at with eye roll and wave at every turn. He learned ti feel a natural sort of anger and annoyance around others and didn’t learn to hold it back. He’s angry at the world and it’s everyone’s problem. He drinks, he talks shit, he lounges about and lets himself look disheveled in public, he’s just the picture of the family fuck up and he hates it. But he’s not around regulus. He’d always felt softer towards him, albeit for fluctuating reasons through the years. Like @florsial said in one of their posts I think he had a very ‘blind leading te blind’ relationship with him when they (really just regulus honestly) were young. Like he hated the family, but he wanted to ‘save’ regulus. And he kinda did, providing a safe space most if them never have and harvesting a genuine love there.

But the problem is, they’re both very jaded people. They’re both bitter and angry and can only provide so much comfort for such an amount of time. They love each other and unexplainable amount and they never doubt that, but it’s hard to be around each other when it’s not easy, yknow? Like when one of them is in the bitter mood, they can work it out and help the other. When neither is, that’s great! They bask in what they have and it’s wonderful. But when they’re both in an awful mood? Clear the area, there’s about to be an explosion.

When they fight, regulus gets mean. He’s used to not being able to actually participate in fights, it’s always his parents scolding at him, Sirius degrading at him, it’s never a debate or a conversation it’s always just him lying there and taking it. So when he fights someone he feels safe with, he jumps to get his word in. He can be cruel, he says things he doesn’t mean just because he wants ti get a rise. And he does, it hurts rabastan beyond a way he can describe to hear these things. It feels like he personally failed in saving regulus and he’s just another Black.

So when they fight, rabastan runs away. He leaves and he gets drunk and he stays with whoever will begrudgingly take him in for a few days. He doesn’t want to see regulus that way, he wants to forget he did. He wants ti forgive forget. He wants to wait it out and come back when it’s easy again. Because he loves regulus, but he will not be scoffed and scolded by him like everyone else. It makes him mad and he doesn’t want to do something he’ll regret.

And regulus hates it because above all else, he doesn’t want to get left behind again. That’s part of why he fights like he does, he wants to know if he pushes it too far if rabastan will still come back after. He wants to be seen as the person and sometimes ‘monster’ he is but not left alone again. He can’t be alone again. He’ll do anything to not be alone again. So that leads to a lot of their fights ‘ending’ in an even bigger fight where now it’s Rabastan yelling and regulus begging him to stay and standing in his way of doors and eventually they fuck it out with pulling hair and biting words and teeth and when regulus wakes up in their bed, rabastan left anyway. He gets mad and it stews until Rabastan comes back and they both pretend nothing happened, no matter how serious the fight was, because above all else, they just want to love one another. They love each other so much and it only takes a few days of angry separation for them to remember that literally nothing in the world could matter enough to keep them apart forever.

Everything else in the world makes them angry. Everyone else in the world is locked away from deserving forgiveness. But not them. Never them. They can kiss each others wounds, even if sometimes they’re the ones who put them there. They can come home after a fight that almost ended in the killing each other and hold one another close and sway ti a song on the record player like they’ve never fought before.

They love each other. That’s all that actually matters.