tysm my darlings @lifeisabitch-butimcute and @moon-seas for the beautiful tags <33 i’ve been back on the rodolhov train recently….
Rodolphus punches him again, in the face this time, hearing the sound of the other man’s nose crunching under his fist - maybe they’re matching now, two bloody, broken noses.
Nobody talks about Bellatrix like that. Especially not stuck-up foreign arseholes who’re meddling in affairs that don’t concern them. And yet, Dolohov insists on bringing her up - as if he’s worthy of even thinking about her.
“I should cut out your fucking tongue,” Rodolphus growls, punching him again just for good measure.
Dolohov laughs, blood on his teeth too, straining his neck to bring their faces closer together, “Just fucking try it.”
Then, he leans even closer and licks a line up the side of Rodolphus’ face.
fae my darling this is my favourite can of worms in my collection thank you so much for asking me to open it <33
okay so a bit of antonin backstory… for me he’s like ten/fifteen years older than rodolphus (who’s around bella’s age imo. born early 1950s) and he comes from a long line of russian pureblood aristocracy so his family lives in russia and he went to durmstrang. so when tom was on his little world tour, post borgin and burke’s hepzibah smith debacle, he meets antonin, like circa 1965.
and antonin obvs is big on the dark arts (which is cultivated at durmstrang) and i personally think he’s super into like spell-crafting and digging into Magic itself and the way it works (source: the unidentified purple spell he uses on hermione in the battle of the dept. of mysteries. i think he made it himself) and that would’ve appealed to tom who wants to know Everything Ever so they like keep in touch. and when tom is back in england and putting pieces into place for his war, i reckon he gives antonin the pitch and it works, so antonin is also one of the earlier death eaters, roughly around the same time as rodolphus…
now getting properly into it!! i think by dint of them both joining around the same time there’s just this immediate tension between them, immediate visceral hatred. like antonin thinks that rodolphus is an entitled, talentless wanker who’s only been allowed into the death eaters bc of his surname and his money. rodolphus thinks antonin is a stuck-up, pretentious arsehole who’s sticking his nose in places where they don’t belong (namely wizarding britain’s politics).
so everything they do starts just being in order to one up the other. they’re making snide comments about each other in all the death eater meetings. they’re fantasising about killing each other whenever they’re out on raids etc etc (and we’re gonna ignore the like. secrecy vibes of the first war and the fact that most of the death eaters wouldn’t have known who else was a de. to me ant and rodo both climb the ranks fairly quickly and in the inner circle there would’ve been less emphasis on the masked vibe bc basically everyone would know each other anyway)
in my little canon one-shot that i’ve been very slowly writing since like. october. the catalyst that turns their enemies into enemies who fuck is voldemort sending them on like an extended mission just the two of them. and they’re trying to make each other look bad the entire time, maybe trying to kill each other a little (‘i can say you just died on the mission, you’re replaceable sweetheart, the dark lord won’t mind’) and eventually, inevitably, the tension reaches a boiling point and they just have to fuck it out
it’s very violent, and bloody and obvs a complete secret, and in many ways for rodo it serves as another little outlet for his anger, and all his suppressed desire yk the vibe, and it’s about the power dynamics and who’s winning their game, and antonin has this whole thing about bella (‘does your crazy wife fuck you like this, roddy?’ <- calling him roddy bc that’s what bella calls him, always mocking) and rodolphus always punches him when he insults her, and it’s all very sadomasochistic and it drives me insane they’re my boyysss. my actual boys. they’re like my main mlm ship i think and i’ve been keeping them in my heart for so long, it feels so good to let them be free
hello!!! due to unforeseen circumstances (tea-based procrastination) the end of my essay took like double the time i thought it would… horrid :( but it's done now (yippee!!!) so i would be MORE than happy to tell you all about rodolhov (although literally none of this is gonna be novel info for you jen you live in my brain and know everything already)
okay so. as i mentioned in this post i made about them, rodolhov to me are enemies to enemies who fuck and my little one-shot of them is a sort of canon-compliant thing that i've been thinking about excessively in recent weeks....
so voldemort gives them a long-term mission of some sort wherein they have to spend a lot of time together and bc of the Tension between them (which i go into more in the post i linked above) they're basically just in one big dick-measuring contest. like they're trying to one up each other in order to win the dark lord's favour (which actually now that we mention is actually how i view quite a lot of the death eater dynamics in the first war, and i think tom probs cultivated them to be this way. but w rodolhov it's like ridiculously intensified).
both of them think that they're a thousand trillion times better than the other but in reality they're like. basically on the same level. both of them think the other isn't worthy of the dark lord's attention and spend the entire mission trying to prove it via sabotage and making the other look bad... like purposefully forgetting to tell each other about important updates or meeting points, maybe trying to kill each other a couple of times when they're in battle, that sort of thing... yk how it is
and anyway, the one-shot begins like soonish after a Big Battle in which rodolphus like. steps in front of curse that was heading directly for antonin. and they're having a big confrontation w a lot of punching each other in the face bc antonin 'doesn't need rodo's protection' and rodo is violent by nature and is enjoying the iron tang of blood in his mouth and the force of ant's fist knocking his head against the wall and then also the feeling of ant under his own fists. this is where the hot and sexy slay comes in if you couldn't tell....
i'll get a little snippet hang on, but also i should warn you that i haven't acc written anything new for this since like. december. i've just been pondering deeply and will be getting back to it when i'm less consumed by uni:
“Admit it, sweetheart,” Rodolphus moved his face closer, almost nose to nose with Dolohov now, “If I hadn’t hopped in front of it, that curse would’ve taken you out long enough for Moody to kill you”
Dolohov squeezed at his neck slightly, smiling cruelly, “Does your crazy wife know that you jumped in front of a curse for another man?”
Rodolphus punched him again, his face this time, hearing the sound of the other man’s nose crunching under his fist - maybe they were matching now, two bloody, broken noses.
this also lets me bring up antonin's Thing about bella which is so fucking funny to me, he haaates her, thinks she's fucking insane (which. yeah.) and always calls her roddy's 'crazy wife' bc he knows that it'll rile him up... it's funny to me firstly bc it's like so obviously some form of jealousy and secondly bc rodo like. agrees that bella is crazy. and he's not in love w her, doesn't even really care about her at all, but he'll always go on the attack when antonin mentions her bc of his like 'duty' to his marriage if that makes sense
like we were talking about the other day, jen, bella is doing something objectively insane and antonin is giving rodolphus a look like 'Crazy Wife!!!' but rodo's just looking back 'wdym? this is normal? watch your mouth.' while internally completely agreeing.... so silly to me
anyway also! the confrontation they're having in the snippet eventually leads to them fucking nasty <3 and then the next time they're in a battle, rodolphus pushes antonin into the trajectory of a curse that nearly kills him <3 they fuck again when he gets better <3 etc etc etc
“Is that the best you can do, Dolohov?” (Rodolphus was ignoring the fact that it was probably better than what he could do) “No wonder the Dark Lord didn’t think you could do this mission on yo-“
He was cut off by another punch to the face, Rodolphus could still taste the blood, feel the throbbing ache of the repeated hits, and then Dolohov was shaking him, slamming his head against the wall and he was seeing stars.
“I could kill you right now, you know?” Dolohov said, snarling in his face, “Then show the Dark Lord how much better I could do this mission without you”
Rodolphus laughed, blood on his teeth, “You’d be dead without me, sweetheart”
spreading my rodolhov enemies to enemies who fuck nasty agenda and YOU CANT STOP ME!!!!
