"Paint Me"
I went another way. Still Accepting
Regulus is sixteen when he goes to visit his cousin and ends up with her husband. There’s seven years between them but it feels more like two. Or twenty. Or the opposite as Regulus perches on one of the couches sipping tea and eyeing the other man. He is a man, after all, despite the shiny fabrics he chooses for his robes or the touches of lace.
Regulus has been told by classmates that wizard fashion is a few steps out of time–not always, not reasonably, but haphazardly. Looking at Lucius, Regulus is not sad over it. He wishes more of the muggle fashion world would stop seeping into their clothes. Its so much easier to… deal if things are black, blue, gray, and green. When Regulus Black goes to the robe shop, no one offers pastels (not that he’d ever want them), or deep pinks and purples (wouldn’t suite at all).
Even still, Regulus sits and watches and wants to touch–this strange purple and green iridescence that Lucius wears like it’s his due. Regulus’ mother would be appalled if he wore such a thing. His cousins would say…something. But Malfoy’s have always gotten away with being visibly eccentric the way Black’s have always gotten away with being socially eccentric.
“Well, come along.” Lucius says and Regulus doesn’t know better to say no –not yet. He wants this relation to like him, in a quiet desperate way that hasn’t yet been smothered. There has been enough loss and he doesn’t want to be the cause of more of it, following along is–reasonable. “I know what to do with you.”
Regulus blames Lucius later. Lucius and his ridiculously over the top vanity. Sitting and staring in abject confusion as Lucius layers creams and powders and swirls of color. Its like a dream, but not and its–
A house elf, one Regulus doesn’t know, pops into the room and says, “Mrs. Malfoy has returned.”
Lucius swans out. Regulus stares and sways on the seat, stares and waits.
Then washes it all off in the nearest bathroom, leaving smears of magical concealer and shimmering green all across the porcelain. When Lucius cries, “All my hard work!”
Regulus curls tight, “You made me into a joke!”
As though it was not, in some ways, a distorted picture of the man in front of him.
