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With one little exception, dating Barty Crouch Jr. turns out to be just as Evan has always imagined.
Evan isn't exactly certain the awkward - due to the lack of practice on Evan's side and the fact that Barty is... well, Barty - kisses in the storage rooms can be called dating; however, their friendship over the past few years has already become so similar to a long-term marriage that an extra bonus of Barty's tongue in Evan's mouth is a rather nice than unexpected change.
Dorcas spots a hickey on Evan's neck the very next morning and corners him in the hallway, her face so fierce Evan gets scared for his life. She opens her mouth and delivers a speech that ends with "You, Evan, aren't another one of his achievements." Evan raises his eyebrows. Dorcas raises hers, too, and they stand there for an indefinite period of time with the embarrassing "was it too much?" and "yeah, probably" between them, right until Pandora appears out of nowhere and throws herself at them, babbling about some flowers she needs for the potion she's working on. Barty catches up with her in a heartbeat, as excited and full of nervous energy, and the conversation dies before it even starts.
Evan would possibly like it to...
Nope, not that.
Barty is an amazing kisser. Evan vaguely recalls a long, tedious lecture from Regulus back when they were thirteen and had the misfortune to stumble upon Sirius Black sucking Mary Macdonald' s face with the passion of a starving man. Evan vaguely recalls something about nerve endings in the lips, hormones, and that the kisses are, in fact, overrated. Regulus never took those words back, but his gaze lately keeps drifting somewhere below Potter's eyes every now and then, and Evan...
Barty smells surprisingly nice. His presence during the kisses gets even more suffocating than it usually is - Evan genuinely believed that wasn't possible - Barty wraps himself around Evan like a vine, presses hungry fingers into the back of his neck, fills every single sense Evan has with himself. The kisses are soft, sweet, almost innocent. They leave Evan out of breath, with an aching need for something more - more kisses, more touches, more Barty... just more.
Regulus walks in on them a week after the start of their makeout sessions. Barty pulls away, amazingly breathless and even more disheveled than usual, mutters something about his promise to study with Dorcas in the library, and storms out of the dorm before Regulus even has a chance to finish his "what the fuck". Evan almost gives into the sudden urge to follow Barty and set his pants on fire for leaving him with Regulus, who looks so confused as if they summoned his grandfather's spirit in their bedroom without consulting him first.
"What's going on between you two?" Regulus asks cautiously. Evan pokes him in the nose with his finger, and Regulus gets a very complicated expression on his face, as if he can't decide what he wants more - to curse Evan or just go out the window here and now. With visible effort, he settles on something in between, "Evan."
Evan shrugs. What does Regulus want to hear from him, anyway?
"You know Barty."
Regulus' shoulders tense.
"That's the problem, I know Barty," he looks at Evan expectantly, waiting for him to pick out some hidden meaning. Evan blinks bluntly:
"Reggie, I'm not-"
"Does he force you to do anything?"
And this... This question catches Evan off guard. Regulus keeps talking, clearly not noticing Evan's struggles, his glance more serious and gruesome than ever:
"Because you have to know that if anything like this ever happens, I will support you no matter what. Cas and Dora will, too, and if he does anything you do not consent to, you can always tell us. Pandora did research on your family curses, and I-"
Evan isn't precisely keen on the idea of finding out what his best friend and sister are going to do to Barty Crouch. His brain is still stuck on the question, the gears in his head are spinning, but none of that can really give him a clear answer to his mental query to the universe: "what the hell is going on right now?"
"Reggie," Evan interrupts Regulus' nervous tirade and gets a look that conveys more emotion than Evan has received from Regulus in the past six years. "What the fuck are you talking about?"
"So," Regulus visibly relaxes, an unbelievable expressiveness from a person like him. "You two didn't have anything."
Evan opens his mouth. Closes it back. Opens his mouth again and freezes like that. Regulus looks at him with something remotely similar to hope in his eyes, and suddenly Evan is so sick of this whole interaction he can't quite bear staying in this room any longer.
"I don't understand what the hell you're talking about," he says. His mouth is so dry it hurts; bitterness rises in his throat; the heaviness in his lungs grows like a weed in his lungs under Regulus' relieved gaze.
Evan storms out of the dorm as fast as Barty did just a couple of minutes ago. The stairs fly under his feet so fast that he feels like he's about to take off - an unprecedented contrast to the fact that his insides are pulling him to the ground.
Dorcas, of course, finds him first. Evan tucked himself away in the farthest stall of Moaning Myrtle's Bathroom with a clear intention not to talk to anyone except for Dorcas - Moaning Myrtle, as sensitive as always, took it personally and retreated resentfully to Salazar knows where.
Dorcas opens the stall door, and the sight of her soothes something deeply in him, something that needed the presence of his best friend. Dorcas tries to catch his eye, but Evan looks away, choosing to direct all of his attention at the spot of unknown origin on the ceiling. Dorcas breaks the silence first:
"Evan," she says.
Evan looks up at her reluctantly.
They have already sat in this exact stall once - when their friendship only started to really deepen, when sharing such a close proximity didn't feel odd anymore. Dorcas, the fourth-year, with a twisted face and a sticky potion-stained shirt brewed by her dull, racist roommates, and Evan, the third-year, the first one to have found her here. They sat in silence until Dorcas, who was plotting her neighbors' murders judging by the look on her face, said abruptly:
"It has never been just about my skin color or blood status."
Evan then stared at her questioningly. Dorcas, in all her fourteen-year-old splendor, seemed to the thirteen-year-old Evan like a goddess descended straight from heaven - gorgeous, smart, and extraordinarily brave Dorcas had always seemed flawless to Evan. He couldn't comprehend the idea of Dorcas being bullied not because of senseless prejudice.
Dorcas kept talking uncharacteristically fast, as if she was trying to get rid of the words before she could change her mind:
"I don't know how they could... piece it together, but I just feel it. It's in the way they look at me when they discuss guys, or how attractive the goddamn Sirius Black is, or how lucky Narcissa is to be engaged to Malfoy," she cut herself off. Evan listened to her, fiddling with her dreadlocks mindlessly, still not really understanding where she was going with it. "You're not-" Dorcas jerked her head suddenly, and Evan took his hands away instantly. Dorcas, clearly not noticing the change, blurted out, "I don't like men."
Evan froze. Dorcas did, too, and the way she looked at him, with her eyes widely open, made Evan admit to her back to do anything in order to get that vulnerable expression off her face:
"Me neither."
Dorcas let out a half-stifled laugh:
"Of course you don't like men, you are not a-"
Evan interrupted before she had the time to say anything they both would've not liked:
"I'm not into women," he said, staring at the wall behind Dorcas' shoulder. His entire body froze, awaiting a blow for those daring words - from his father, from his classmates, from the world as a whole - but it was dead quiet. Moaning Myrtle had already lost any of her initial interest in them, and Evan suddenly felt as if he and Dorcas were the only people alive, as if there wasn't anything left outside of their tiny bubble confined by the stall walls. It was only him, her, and the words between them. "I'm not into men either."
Dorcas licked her lips nervously.
"I am into women," she said, pronouncing each syllable slowly and distinctly. Evan reached out to her, and she gave in to his touch, desperate for consolation. "And you-"
"And I don't like anyone," Evan shrugged. He would've given much more than that for the trust Dorcas was offering him.
"I didn't know that was a possibility." Dorcas' thoughtful gaze suddenly reminded Evan of Pandora. Dorcas fit in their group so naturally, as if she were just occupying a place that had already been assigned to her and had simply been waiting to be filled in. She blinked, and her expression altered into something close to Barty's grin. "I want to drench their beds with that one shitty poison you and Dora and Crouch came up with last week."
The expression Dorcas has on her face now, three years later, makes Evan think of Regulus' furrowed brow. This time it's Dorcas who joins Evan on the floor; the stall has grown tighter over the years, making their legs intertwine, leaving no space between them.
Dorcas starts off immediately:
"He didn't mean anything."
Evan remains silent.
"Barty is looking for you everywhere."
Evan lets his eyes close.
"Dora promised to hex him."
Evan shakes his head. Dorcas understandingly falls quiet, and now the ping pong ball in the still one-sided dialogue is obviously flying to his side.
"I'm just," Evan takes a deep breath. Clenches his fists. Counts five things he sees - his frankly dirty shoe, the inscription “Dumbledore is a jerk” on the wall of the stall, Dorcas's hairpin, the edge of the textbook sticking out of her bag, his chess set falling out of his to the floor. Exhales. admits, "I just wasn't ready."
Dorcas does not react, expecting him to continue, and Evan struggles out of himself:
"I'm broken anyway, and Barty doesn't even want me. He slept with literally everyone except for me at this point," he chuckles. "Is he so disgusted by the idea of dating me that much? Or does he not want to fuck me that much? I mean, then..." He rubs his eyes with the back of his hand, trying to calm the sting in his eyes. "And then Regulus asked me about it, and if you only saw the look on his face, he was like, 'Oh, hooray, Bartemius Crouch Jr. decided not to waste himself on such a useless piece of shit that had never even been kissed in his life,' and-"
"No," Dorcas spits out so angrily Evan flinches. She immediately tries to pull herself together, her fingers frantically clutching the hair tie on her wrist. "Evan," she says in a calm, measured tone. Evan wonders if she's been rehearsing this speech all last week. "We know you better than anyone else in the world."
Evan nods. This is sort of obvious. Dorcas continues, slowly, as if explaining to a five-year-old:
"And I, and Dora, and Regulus... we know you're not..." She purses her lips, obviously choosing her words. "Not interested. And then all of a sudden you show up with a hickey on your neck, and Barty looks like he got a free case of butterbeer and a joint of weed, and you don't tell us anything.…"
Evan straightens up, the familiar protective fire ignites in him.:
No," he spits out, "Barty didn't persuade me to do anything, and he wouldn't. Ever. How could you have even assumed that," he gasps. Dorcas looks guilty exactly to the extent that inflames him, rather than calms him down. "How have you-"
"It's Barty," Dorcas says, as if that would explain everything. "You're in love with him, he's obsessed with you, and we just assumed," she shrugs. Her words make Evan feel both worse and better, and he cannot wrap his mind around the meaning, not really.
"He doesn't want me anyway," Evan pauses. A collection of Barty blossoms in his mind, pulling away from their kisses as soon as they become a little more heated and languid, his vague excuses along the lines of “Oh, McGonagall asked so much, have you started writing her essay?” as if they hadn't spent a good twenty minutes in the broom closet exchanging saliva. Evan was willing to do anything to get those twenty minutes, to get at least an echo of what it could have been like to be with Barty not only as a best friend, but also something else. This something else has been nagging Evan for months, ever since he first saw Barty kissing some Ravenclaw at their Quidditch team's victory party. "He doesn't want me anyway. Not like that."
"And you?" Dorcas's eyes sparkle. "What do you want?"
"Everything," Evan responds honestly. It's useless to lie to Dorcas anyway, and the weight resting on his chest is getting so heavy that he can no longer carry it alone.
"I thought," Dorcas says, "that you didn't like anyone."
"Yes," Evan admits, "but it's not anyone. It's Barty."
Dorcas breaks out of the image of their serious dialogue, elegantly wrinkling her nose. Evan snorts, which is more like the panicked gasps of a drowning man; Dorcas snorts at this sound, and after a few seconds they bend over in hysterical, relieved laughter. They laugh and laugh until Evan feels better, and then Dorcas suddenly regains her serious expression and says:
"It’s Barty." She looks at Evan as if she's trying to broadcast her thoughts to him. Evan looks at her blankly, she sighs and continues, "Barty knows you better than anyone in the world. Just like us, of course, but he does, too, for sure. Have you ever thought that he also thinks that you don't like anyone? Not like that?"
"Not like what?" Evan asks stupidly. It all seems to him that today everyone is constantly trying to convey something to him, and he is the only one not able to catch up, and he suddenly gets almost exhausted of not understanding the hidden subtexts.
Dorcas waves his hand impatiently in the air:
"In terms of sex, of course. Since you've never slept with anyone or kissed anyone, and we all know that, maybe he's pulling away from you because he thinks so too," Dorcas looks exactly the way she usually does after a particularly successful exam. "I'm not sure even Barty fully understands what's going on in his head, but," she shrugs. "That would explain a lot."
And that really, Evan understands, would really explain a lot. He instantly tries to extinguish the hope building in his chest, but it's too late - Dorcas' words add to the memories of kisses, and flood his head so fast he can't stop them like he usually does. He asks Dorcas in a strangled voice:
"Does it always feel like that when you're in love?"
She looks at him mockingly, not at all reminiscent of her caution and circumspection a couple of minutes ago.
"Don't even answer," Evan says, butterflies blooming in his stomach. "I'm not that interested."
***
Pandora is the first one to hug him back in the dorm. Regulus looms as a dark gloomy shadow in the background, and Evan meets his eyes over Dora's shoulder. "I don't know what I did wrong but you have my sincerest apology nevertheless" is stated so clearly in his eye Evan almost mocks him for that. Instead Evan smiles back at him with a non-verbal "your sincerest apology has been accepted", and Regulus takes a breath which seems to be his first one in the total hour and a half of Evan's absence. In that moment Pandora gets enough of Evan not paying his attention to her, and she simply pulls him into a tight hug, clinging to his whole body like a leech.
Evan returns the hug, and they embrace, swaying from side to side, an old habit from their childhood. After a while Pandora leans away and asks, businesslike:
"Better?"
Evan nods. Dorcas took off to the library, to study for her N.E.W.T.s, Regulus and Pandora have clearly spent all their time at the dorm while Evan was... away. Judging by Regulus' slightly more than usual pale face, the subject of their discussion was not particularly pleasant. Evan would linger on this fact a little longer if it wasn't for…
"Where's Barty?"
Pandora says “well, I gotta go,” slips out of his arms and disappears from the room. Regulus sighs.
"What did he do?" Evan says, businesslike. It doesn't matter if Barty has been sticking his tongue in his mouth since last Saturday, Evan still feels like a single parent sometimes. Regulus doesn't answer, and Evan says in disbelief, "you told him!"
"I expressed my extreme disapproval and dissatisfaction," Regulus keeps his voice flat. "And he snapped at me and ran out of the room again. And anyway," Regulus with a surprising venom in his voice, "it's for James."
"James? Not Potter anymore?" Evan raises his eyebrows innocently. Regulus's face freezes like a wax mask, and Evan will remind him of this mistake until the day they graduate. Until the day their children are born. Until the day they die. After the day they die. Hope and relief flow through Evan's body after his conversation with Dorcas, and he laughs maliciously. Regulus flies out of the dorm after Pandora, as if it's not too late.
And Evan is left all alone.
His head is swarming with thoughts like bees in a hive, and he's standing in the middle of the room where he and Barty were kissing two hours ago, and Barty pulled him by the neck, and Evan kissed him breathless with all his experience over the past week, and Barty smiled into the kiss... until they got interrupted by Regulus, and everything that had been finally starting to make sense between them didn't go to hell, returning to its starting point.
Did it?
Evan is off to find Barty, already knowing where he is.
Barty Crouch Jr. seems to many to be a natural disaster, something that can be seen from afar rather than stopped or predicted in any way - and only a few realized that there were certain easily distinctive patterns in his behavior. When Evan accidentally voiced this in the third year, Regulus and Pandora stared at him as if he had grown a second head. Considering the fact that those two had bonded in the first year and seemed to have become closer than Evan and Pandora, it was a little hypocritical, but that was not the point - Barty's brain often functions according to already worked-out scenarios. Failures never frighten him, but the reaction of others does. Quarrels with regulus don't touch him half as much as quarrels with the usually cheerful Pandora. When Barty needs to stop thinking, he either finds Evan, or gets drunk, or…
The Room of Requirement looks more like a cubbyhole than a room. Evan thinks to himself, “I want to hide,” and finds himself in a familiar space - a small room with a mattress spread out on the floor. Posters of Pandora's favorite muggle bands hang on the walls. Next to them are the small lights that he and Barty saw on that one visit to Dorcas' house during the summer holidays.
There's also Barty.
Evan sits down next to him without a word, pressing his shoulder to Barty's. Barty leans slightly, somewhat distantly, towards the touch. They sit there in silence, and Evan feels peaceful for the first time in a long, long week.
"Regulus is an asshole," Barty's voice cuts through the silence of the room after a couple of minutes of blissful calm. Evan grunts in agreement, but Barty continues, his voice oozing malice, "The fact that he even had the idea I could use you," he turns away. Evan wants to turn him back around, look at his face. "and Cas and Dora, too," comes in a muffled voice.
"They were worried," Evan says, and even for him, it sounds too far-fetched. Evan prepares for Barty's for once justified anger, but suddenly finds himself face to face with Barty, who asks almost madly:
"You know I wouldn't, right? You not wanting to fuck me has never been a problem. I wouldn't ask anything of you..." he blinks. "Fuck. I should have said that."
"You should've said that," Evan agrees. He doesn’t quite expect him to continue, yet Barty carries on, with something close to manic intensity:
"I want to be with you, and it doesn't make any difference if we're going to have sex or not," Barty dramatically waves his arms. Evan's heart stutters midbeat in his chest, ta-dum-ta-dum, ta-dum- full stop. Barty clearly doesn't notice the shift in the room, rattling on, "It doesn't make any difference if I am gonna have sex. Sex is fun and cool, and Hogwarts obviously will miss me, but…"
"You want what," Evan manages. His voice is hoarse, as if he's been yelling for hours. It suddenly seems to him he has. "You…"
Barty studies him for a few long seconds, and drawls, slow and deliberate:
"Rosier, are you- What do you think I was doing all this time?"
"I don't know! You haven't really specified your fucking intentions!" Evan makes excuses. Evan never makes excuses, but now for some reason he feels like he has to. Barty, if he were a normal, adequate member of society with more emotional intelligence than that of a teaspoon, would give any normal, adequate reaction. But Barty, of course, bursts into laughter.
Evan punches him in the stomach. Barty dramatically falls on his side, onto the mattress, still laughing like a hyena, and Evan falls on top of him. They just freeze like that, with their faces a couple of dozen centimeters apart. Evan, as much as he would like to shorten the insignificant distance, suddenly inspired, says:
"What if I wanted to fuck you, though?"
Barty's breath catches in his throat. The practical lack of any distance between their faces gives Evan an exceptional opportunity to trace at least ten different shades of expression on Barty's face. Eventually, it settles on something that Evan would describe as a “holy fuck".
"Evan," Barty hisses, his face the reddest Evan has ever seen on him, "you can't just say that."
"Or what?" Evan flirts. This time, with Barty underneath him, in the safety of the Room of Requirement it comes to him as natural as breathing. "Maybe we could do it the other way around, I don't really care."
Barty swears out loud.
Evan laughs.