Ashe_writes

I am a minor, so I won’t be taking nsfw reqs, but other than that, I’m majorly comfortable writing anything.

The universe was having a go at him, Barty was sure of it.

Ever since he’d broken the summoning circle, crafted with the help of Pandora, his sister-in-law, he could have sworn that Evan was still lingering within the walls of the home they’d bought.

He never saw the man. Never heard his voice. But he’d feel a brush on his elbow, like Rosie was trying to get his attention. Evan’s favorite books would disappear from the shelf, then turn up in his old armchair, the one now occupied only by the cat, whom missed Evan almost as much as Barty himself did.

Sometimes he even thought he caught a glimpse of his husband in the mirror, or the reflection of a window, but whenever he turned, there was nothing there. When he’d look back at the glass, Evan’s image was always gone.

It felt like a sadistic game of hide and seek that Barty couldn’t help but play, and he was starting to get sick of it.

It went on like this for a week, until that night. When Barty finally decided to play a video game again. He used to play daily. The action and thrill had been like a micro-addiction. Something to distract him, that could keep him busy for hours. But he hadn’t played in over a year.

As the usual set of headphones slipped over the man’s ears, a voice came through the speakers within. This in itself, wasn’t that surprising. Barty often played with Regulus, James, or even Sirius, but this didn’t sound like any of them.

“Barty please, I know you know I’m here, could you at least acknowledge me? I swear, I’m going mental.” The plea made Barty’s breath catch in his chest, and his chair slid back across the floor a couple inches.

“Rosie?”

The headphones went silent, and Barty ugly gasped for breath, clearly terrified. “No. No, don’t you dare leave. I’ve already lost you twice, I can’t do it again, I won’t survive it. Rosie please.” His voice was barely more than a whisper, but he heard a soft sigh through the headset.

“I knew you loved me.” And Barty half laughed, half sobbed, and he felt what was almost a hand brush his shoulder as Evan’s voice crackled through the small speakers settled on either side of his head once more.

“You’ve been ignoring me for days, Bee. I’ve said your name, and even though you’re looking right at me, you act like I’m not even here.” Despite the bitter nature of the accusation, Barty thought something brushed his cheek comfortingly when he sobbed in earnest, shaking his head.

“I thought I was going crazy.” He whispered, “I stopped taking my meds, so I thought…I don’t know. I thought maybe the hallucinations had come back.” His voice comes out in a rasping croak, and if you’d have asked, he’d tell you that lips touched his forehead, the same way his husband had kept him grounded since their teenage years.

“I never heard you say a word. I only ever saw your reflection.” A furtive silence, followed by an unexpected question: “Bee, d’you still have those hideous sunglasses?”

Barty snorts weakly, rubbing at his face as he responds. “They’re fucking fabulous, Rosie.” A scoff, followed by a half-hearted request, like the man on the other end wasn’t very confident in his idea. “Grab them, would you?”

Puzzled, but intrigued, Barty stood, crossing the room and rifling through a drawer until he found a pair of heart shaped, chartreuse sunglasses that he’d bought the second he’d run away from home, as his first act of independence, the purchase made solely to spite his father.

The frames slide on easily, the weight familiar, but strange, after so many years without wearing them, or even his reading glasses. When Evan’s voice asks him to turn around, the confused twenty-something obliges, spinning on his heel and freezing, heart suddenly in his throat.

“Bee?”

The one word made Barty’s heart feel like stopping, and he nearly choked.

“Ev….” He hadn’t been sure it would work. The ritual was so intricate, so technical, even the most trivial error would render every shred of effort over the last two years pointless, but there was no mistaking that voice. Before Barty even opened his eyes, he knew. That was him. That was his Rosie.

When Barty dared look, there he stood. Less than opaque, but certainly more than invisible, grey eyes piercing Barty in a way he’d never thought they would again.

“Bee, how did you do this?” Evan’s visage whispers, and it nearly is enough to make the brown-haired young man sob, to hear that voice, so awesome and adoring.

“I’m a genius, Rosie. You know that.” He breathes instead, and the projection of his husband smiles, the same sharp-toothed smile Barty had fallen in love with, some five years ago.

“Yeah,” Evans confirms, looking around at the items, carefully placed in a circle around him, his eyes loving. “I know that.”

Barty starts as he remembers, “Dora helped! She’s in the next room.” He watches as Evan’s expression turns wistful at the thought of his sister. “Could I see her?”

His voice is hopeful, and Barty instantly springs to his feet, saying that of course he could, and prattling on about how he should know by now, the man would do anything for his Rosie, stepping backwards towards the door, and his eyes are warm, for the first time in years.

Another step backwards. Barty feels his heel bump something, and the image of Evans vanishes.

A whimper passes the short man’s lips, and he looks down, frenzied. A black candle lay on its side, extinguished. A candle. And Evan was gone again, lost for the second time to the after life, hopelessly out of reach.

For a second time, Barty never got to say goodbye. His knees gave way beneath him, and this time he does sob.

His Rosie, gone agin. Because Barty was careless. Because of a fucking candle. One that he had put there, oh so carefully.

The first time he lost his husband, it had been his own fault. No matter how much Pandora tried to convince him otherwise, Barty knew that much. They had been cornered, and he’d been stupid. Distracted him when he really shouldn’t have. 

Now, after losing Evan for a second time, it was still Barty to blame. He knew that immediately, and he knew he would never forgive himself for either mistake.

Barty was accustomed to being alone. Growing up, his friendships had been few, fleeting, and far between. His father usually pretended he didn’t exist at all, and with his mother falling too ill to pay him mind, he grew used to solitude.

What Barty didn’t realize, was that there was a difference between absence, and non-presence.

Nobody had ever come close enough for Barty to care much when they left. His parents didn’t leave him, but only because they were never there to begin with.

It wasn’t until after Evan had gone, wasn’t coming back, that Barty truly understood the meaning of the word absence. To turn over his shoulder, asking a question of his husband, only to find the flat empty, as it had been for weeks now.

Cooking for two out of habit, then throwing out the whole meal and eating nothing at all, spending the night silent and mourning.

Speaking to others, and bringing up his spouse casually, before tapering off, his eyes clouding over dangerously as he shut down completely.

Because, despite thinking he was okay with the absence of others in his life, that he’d become used to such an existence of isolation, Barty had accepted only the non-presence. The notion of no one wanting to come close, and him wanting them to stay away.

Evan’s death was different, from when others abandoned Barty. Other people didn’t leave an impact when they left, because neither party cared enough for them to.

Evan created a void. A blackhole of despair, fury, longing, and a million other emotions in Barty’s heart that he didn’t dare name, and couldn’t get past.

And so, Barty figured, it was only right to mend the tear in his soul, and the only way he could think to do that, was to see Rosie again.

So, for two years, Barty, along with Evan’s twin sister Pandora, worked together, reading books on occult rituals, and ancient forms of magic which could allow you to communicate with one who was departed.

It took two full years, plus some change, but now, here Barty was, in the basement of he and Evans’s once newly purchased home, standing just inside a circle of carefully placed candles, skulls, and various keepsakes.

He had the incantation written down, the candles were lit, and now all he had to do was read.

“I call to the realm of the lost,” Barty whispers. The spell was a long one, taking several minutes to completely read through, and as he finally finished, his eyes slid shut.

As his voice tapered out, silence filled the basement’s stagnant air. He took a breath of disappointment. He’d failed. But before he could open his eyes….

Barty had long since come to the conclusion that he was unlovable.

His mother pretended to love him, but the illusion was one born of convenience, and while his father would never say it aloud, he hated him outright. Barty knew both of these things, and had come to accept them with time.

Even Regulus, the first person that Barty had truly let in, and whom he had loved, for the better part of their third year, left him in the end.

But then there was Evan. The two, that is, Evan and Barty, had been best friends, some might even say inseparable, since first year, and Barty had never really looked for anything past that.

That is, until one Evan Rosier left the sixth year boys’ shared dorm bathroom, wearing nothing but a towel and asking ‘Avery, where the fuck has my shirt gone?’

Barty’s brain had rewired in that moment, and he never quite saw his tall blond friend the same way again.

Thus started a year of unnoticed, mutual pining between the pair of teens, which was followed immediately by a year of finding the couple in varying broom closets, bathrooms, and hidden corridors, scarring for life many Hogwarts students, staff, and spirits alike.

Only a couple of years after graduation, the boys wed, buying a home to share, which truthfully was more of a standalone flat, than a house, but it was theirs, and they were damn proud of it.

Barty knew, by now, that Evan loved him. Really, he did. But sometimes he just wanted to hear it out loud. To see it proved before his eyes in glowing neon letters. To dispel that doubt that sometimes festered. To hear all of the reasons why he did.

It had been one of those days. When Barty tried too hard for Evan’s attention. When he would do anything to know he was seen, and that his Rosie still cared.

He drew the attention of an auror on purpose. Just to see if Evan would step in.

He had. Of course he had. Evan Rosier loved his husband more than anyone or anything, and he would do anything at all to show him that. So when Barty taunted Alastor Moody in that moment, Evan had no trepidation stepping in front of the wand to protect him from the first hex that flew from it.

Barty was allowed to watch, as Evan did everything in his power to keep him safe. For much of the fight, Barty wore a wide smile. Evan was winning.

But then…Barty didn’t know why he did what he had. He just wanted to see those gray eyes on him.

“Hey, Rosie.”

Evan turned instinctively, scanning his spouse for any sign of distress. A flash of light, and those eyes went blank. Every muscle in Evan rosier’s body went slack as he fell to the pavement under foot, and even someone as smart as Barty, couldn’t think fast enough to understand what he had just witnessed.

All he knew was that Rosie wasn’t looking at him anymore. He wasn’t sure he was looking at anything. Barty didn’t even think he was breathing.

In a swirl of panic, Barty apparated from the scene. He didn’t know where he was going, but he couldn’t stay there.

As his feet touched solid ground once more, he couldn’t see. He couldn’t breathe, the terror and the anguish and the anger making his lungs feel tight, and unwilling.

His heart was going too fast, or maybe it wasn’t beating at all. He couldn’t hear, but for the blood rushing in his ears, the faint sound of a tv somewhere nearby.

He realized suddenly that he still had no idea where he was, or if he was in danger, but the rational part of him was still reeling, unable to get a hold on himself.

It took thirty long minutes for Barty to piece himself back together enough to focus, but the time since the occurrence didn’t matter.

As he realized he had come home, to that flat that he and Evan had only just bought, months ago, his eyes and ears focused on the tv before him, and even in his state, the news headline was easy to understand.