HI CATHY. listen. i thought long and hard about making this some kinda wolfchildren tribute where their foreheads are pressed together and it's all deadly serious. and i liked it!!! but i loved this. flatmates..... are they fucking. are they not. who knows. they are so fucking weird. ughhhhhh........
"Ah, fuck, Barty, stop wriggling," Bella punctuates her words with a slap to the back of the head, and Barty, obedient to the last, stills. "I can't see anything with all your fucking hair in the way."
A wrist lifts up from the bathtub, an elastic band rolled around it. She bats it away, twists her wand so his hair is slicked away from his face, like he's in a wind tunnel.
"You're so fucking Muggle."
Their eyes meet in the mirror across the way. He looks really young like this, like he did when she first saw him, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed trailing behind his father in the corridors of the Ministry. She wrinkles her nose.
"If it works," Barty says, and she pricks him in the shoulder with the needle, just to be contrary. "Ouch, be careful, Bells!"
"You know there's a spell to do it, right? We don't have to—"
"Obviously I know there's a fucking spell to do it. This isn't about that," she can't see his face but she knows he's wincing, the ice held up to his earlobe burning rather than numbing.
"And you only want the one?"
"You can spell the other side," he twists his neck to grin up at her. "Just like me, innit, half magic and half—"
"Can we not talk about your Mudblood mum for one fucking day," Bella sighs, takes the melty ice out of his hand. "Okay, are you ready? One, two—"
She drives the needle in before she reaches three, and he hisses through his teeth.
She smiles, draws back to look at her handiwork. Blood is welling up around the safety pin dangling from Barty's ear. Barty turns his head this way and that, angling the hand-mirror in his hand, admiring himself, the peacock. She stills his head with both hands and licks at where the blood is creeping down at the hinge of his jaw.
"Stop— Bella! It'll get infected!"
"That'll teach you— honestly, the fucking Muggle way, did I teach you nothing—" Barty cuts her off, spinning round and tackling her to the floor of the bathroom. She hits at his back, cross, but he betrays himself, curling one hand around the back of her head to stop her from banging it on the tiles. He lands on top of her, scrabbling at her waist, trying to get a reaction out of her.
Bella smiles at the ceiling. He's so obvious.
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