Everything about Lissington from the way his hair seemed to bounce, to the sharpness of his perfect blue gaze seemed to pierce Basil in the soft under tissue of his intestines. It was as if someone had reached directly into his gut and grabbed a hold, ready to yank. This had been a bad idea. What had he possibly imagined could keep him from falling apart once he’d landed here and shoved the box forward? Even if Gus accepted it and opened it right here and now, there was nothing to say that anything in there would change how the other felt about what he’d done (or failed to do.) Basil sucked in a shallow breath and held it, praying against everything he believed in that Gus would just… try.
I.
The fire was roaring again, just beside them, and Basil could feel its warmth on his profile. He was comfortable here in this little house, in this little country, far away from everything he knew and loved. Well, almost everything. The thought sparked something in his gut, a small flutter that the Ravenclaw was not inclined to dissect. He just brushed a hand from Gus’ cheek to the back of Gus’ neck, gently threading his fingers through the redhead’s curls. He wanted to say something. He wanted to say many things, actually, but fear kept them all bottled up inside. On the one hand, he wanted desperately to tell Gus how much he missed him - now, before, always. But it had taken so much heartbreak to get them here, to this single moment of peace, that he couldn't bring himself to set them down a dangerous path. All roads led to the inevitable discussion that he was trying to avoid: that same clashing of understanding that had fractured their friendship in the first place.
In the end, Basil didn’t say anything. He closed his eyes instead, taking in the warmth of the fire and the comfort of having Gus so close. Maybe it was cowardly, but he just wanted to hold onto this - to them - for a little bit longer.
The first memory trapped inside the confines of the box: Christmas Eve, 1892. His first time sharing any real intimacies with Gus. There was so much in that moment that Basil wished now he’d had the courage to communicate. So much he'd wished he'd said but didn't have the words for. Still didn't. He knew this one wouldn't make too lasting of an impression but it felt significant for Gus to know what that moment, that evening, had meant to him.
II.
Basil was still fuming the next morning when he woke in his big, cold bed in Wellingtonshire. He hadn’t slept a wink all night and his entire reception home was blurry, as if he’d dreamt it. Instead, the Ravenclaw’s mind was filled with roiling memories of Gus Lissington. Good memories, sweet memories, and then the hell that had rained down upon them yesterday. Basil screwed his eyes shut at the thought. He was in a cold sweat and the sun had yet to rise over the horizon, his room still dark. He knew he couldn’t possibly sleep any more than the tiniest bit he already had. His mind was too involved in the waking nightmare of his new reality. Standing from the bed angrily, Basil frowned into the darkness. He knew his desk was piled with things from Hogwarts he had yet to unpack; quills, parchment, texts. All things he valued once upon a time.
The very sight of them made him sick now.
On a whim, Basil stormed over to his desk and shoved the whole pile into a heap on the floor. It crashed down with a boisterous noise that probably would have awoken his entire house had their rooms not been so spread apart. Basil didn’t care. He plucked the nearest quill and wrinkled piece of parchment from this mess and began to scrawl angrily across it.
The second memory: 1881 the day after graduation, seventh year. The day after they’d fought so wretchedly. Bits and pieces of the letter swim around in the memory for Gus to see, sentiment and heartbreak alight as the image of the broken seventh year scribbles out the only words he can fathom to make sense of what happened. Words and letters that were never shared before.
There is nothing in this world that I could ever cherish as dearly as you, my darling Gus, and yet you’ve ruined me forever.
How could I ever expect to be happy again? How can I even pretend at happiness without you at my side?
My heart, for what it’s worth, has always, and will always, be with you. Even as it burns and turns to ash without your soul next to mine, fueling it for all eternity.
The third memory is the worst of them. It's a swirling mixture of confusion and fog, the force of amortentia tinging the edges around that night. Now that Basil understood what it had been, it was so obvious why something felt unusual. Why his ‘love’ hadn’t made sense, had made his gut roil. His heart hadn’t ever truly been in it, not even under the potent will-bending power of the strongest love potion in existence.
III.
It was a strange feeling at first, kissing Victoire, one that set his mind reeling. Despite grey eyes flickering closed and his free hand pressing against the bindings of books behind her, it felt off balance. Basil had never… actually kissed a woman before. She was soft, and warm, and so fragile around the edges he was almost worried about hurting her. There was none of the same drive that pulled him forward when he’d kissed Lissington, or even Macnair once upon a time but— there was still that twisting in his gut. A feeling that was familiar as it warmed him from the core.
Basil felt like he was floating, untethered. He was full of hot air and soaring somewhere high above the rest of reality but… by force, almost. Not of his own genuine accord. He tried to focus on the feel of his love’s lips against his own but for whatever bloody reason Lissington’s face floated across his mind’s eye. That was terribly unfair to Victoire, especially when she was the one here before him, the one he was determined to prove himself to. To marry! The moment was only a few seconds long, but it felt like an eternity in which his desires waged war on his mind. His body was reacting to Ms. Victoire, physically, but his heart and his brain were adrift.
To make matters worse - and perhaps to Basil’s credit, sharing this particular mess - he’d only continued the trend later in the evening with Atticus. Gus had to understand, to feel the reality of his confusion that evening. It had never been real, and the regret was overwhelming. He’d even admitted it, however unwittingly.
It all felt forced, like some hand was pressing against his will, bending it and trying to convince him this was what he wanted. With some distance now between them, not obligated to see the lady’s pretty face five centimeters from his own, he could start to rationalize some of the fog.
Basil paused suddenly in the middle of the room as a strange thought occurred to him. “You know,” he mumbled to his brother without thinking. “It was nothing like kissing Lissington. I felt… an urge, but it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t as distinctly overwhelming.”
The fourth memory: August, 1881.
IV.
Sheets felt like razors against his skin. Atticus’ hand against his shoulder was a dead weight, the only thing keeping Basil from drifting off into the nightmare that was his thoughts. He forced his heaving body to still, breath held against his better judgment. It wasn’t fair, some small part of him cried out for the billionth time. Why did it have to end like this? Why did he have to leave? “Basil…” His brother’s voice was far away, undulating as if wracked by sound waves. “Basil, breathe.” No. There wasn’t anything he could do to force oxygen into his system. The only thing Basil could think at that moment was of Gus. Was it truly his fault? What could he have done to keep the other here? “Basil! You have to breathe for me, please.” Atticus shook him and distantly the brunette felt something release in his spine. His brother’s worried face came into view above him. There was pure anguish slapped across that familiar visage but Basil didn’t see it. Blind and deaf and numb.
Atticus lifted the blanket to tuck it more closely around his shoulders without the younger’s notice. His own eyes were rimmed black from too many similarly sleepless nights, worrying about the broken shell that had come home in his baby brother’s stead.
The memories of those days were weak. Foggy around the edges, and tinged with a certain illness of the mind that was embarrassing. Basil didn’t know when he pulled that one from his brain if the depression would suffocate Gus. He’d… debated about including it at all. It had taken a number of treatments to finally come back into his own, diving too far over the other side into his studies thereafter. Atticus had been the only one who knew even a fraction of the truth. Perhaps that was why he’d always been so hard on Lissington since he’d come back? Perhaps not.
V.
Accepting the offered glass in silence, Basil looked around the room with Gus. He nodded, a soft, amused smile coming to his face. “It looks like you,” he said gently. “Everything here… it reminds me that, I guess, there’s just so much of you that is so familiar. So safe.” Basil turned to look at Gus with an earnestness in his expression. “Sometimes I just… forget,” he admitted, an uncomfortable feeling twisting in his stomach. He stepped closer to Gus so that he was facing the redhead and tangled his fingers in the man’s sleeve. “I know you didn’t plan that,” he agreed, quietly. “And… I know we don’t really have a lot of chances to be alone, just us.” He dropped his gaze then and pulled awkwardly at the back of his neck. “I just… I get nervous around you sometimes.” It felt stupid to say it aloud, so Basil didn’t elaborate. He didn’t want to admit to Gus he was scared of the other running away again. He didn’t want to admit to Gus that everything about this, about them, still terrified him. He didn’t want to ruin this moment, here in this house, that was supposed to be special.
The fear was paralyzing. Going back there into that headspace was his worst nightmare come to life. It was why he’d originally bolted from Gus on Christmas Eve and so many other times over the course of this past year. Why he was so hard on the pretty redhead when it sometimes seemed like he should just give in. Basil only had one true fear in life: going through the loss of something that broke him to that degree. Again. And still - against all better judgment and all lessons their past had supposedly taught him - he'd let the redhead in again. He’d… crossed that line.
VI.
“Gus I—” Was it warning, was it confession? The world would never know. Basil knew in that moment however, as he shuddered and came undone under the pretty redhead’s touch, that he loved Gus. And he’d never quite be able to push that reality aside, again.
Gus made Basil feel safe and comfortable in a way very few people in his life had ever managed. He was the ray of sunshine that shone through the perpetual grey, cloudy storm that was the brunette’s academically driven life. It didn’t even matter that he was a male, Basil had never been interested in the parts he carried around, it was always just… Gus. His smile, his laughter, the way his dimples moved when he grinned and talked at the same time. Everything about the pretty redhead made Basil need him, in every way that he possibly could. There was no turning back.
He loved Gus Lissington.
The realization in that moment had been clouded by other more primal distractions but, in his heart of hearts, Basil had finally felt it. The confused misalignment of what his brain was taught and the fear in his heart had finally been forced to yield. He bloody loved Lissington and… Basil didn’t know what that meant. Or what it would look like in the future, if anything at all. But he did know that the last memory in the box, one from this past January, was the one he was the most terrified for Gus to see.
VII.
Sitting at his desk locked away in Ravenclaw Tower, Basil tipped the last of a bottle of firewhiskey down his gullet. He’d long since moved away from the pretty little glass, a pretense that he was just blowing off steam. Darkness crept in through the large window beside his bed. A fire roared by the wayside. Regrets and resignation weighed heavily on the memory. It was tinged with a lens of pain that was bound to make Gus seasick, drunk as Basil was in that moment. Intrusive little thoughts plagued him, nondescript but insinuating. Worthlessness. Toxicity. What was his reason for existing if he made everyone around him so bloody miserable? Gus, Victoire, Anthony, Atticus… They’d all be better off if he simply ceased - to exist, to breathe, to get in their way, to cause such anguish. It’s too bad he was too much of a coward to solve everyone’s problem. At that realization, and fear from the dark thought itself threatening to draw him back into that headspace, Basil threw the bottle with some force.
Glass shattered in the fireplace with a blast that he didn’t regret. It was time to reach out to Atticus.
His brother, his lifeline, the only person Basil dared to turn to when he was at his worst. However much they fought, Atticus was the only person on the planet that Basil trusted with his mind. With his heart. Gus had to know this, and accept it, if they were ever to repair anything. If they were ever to even touch upon the topic of friendship again. But he also had to know... how badly Basil feared for them. He loved Gus yes, but was it enough to overcome the challenges of their society, and of his own personal issues? He didn't know, and he wouldn't make that choice for Gus either. But... for the first time since they'd met, or re-met, Basil wanted to arm the pretty redhead with everything.
Standing there then, with his heart in his mouth, Basil remained utterly silent. It was the longest moment of his life. He was sure he was about to keel over and curl into a little ball any second-- but then Gus turned the box over - curiosity likely getting the best of him - and for the first time since they'd met, Basil was almost glad he was a curse-breaker at heart. It yielded a sense of interest in bizarre little objects that was working to their advantage here. The brunette let out the breath he’d been holding and watched, wearily, as the other turned on his heel and padded back inside. He hesitated at the doorstep, unwilling to encroach any more than he already had.
Ultimately Basil realized he had no choice. He stepped over the threshold and shut the door behind himself with a small click. He stood there, leaning against it, willing his heartbeat to settle. He wanted to give Gus privacy to explore the memories in that box on his own. Slowly, deliberately, the brunette moved through the cottage until he reached what looked like a living room. Gus was planted on the couch. He settled awkwardly off to the side and laced his fingers behind his back to wait. This was it. This was the moment that would define anything they could possibly be to one another ever again. He could be patient for that, right? (Perhaps. If his stomach contents didn't accidentally interrupt by spewing all over the nice clean floor.)
Eventually, Gus seemed to return back to the present and Basil swallowed a heavy lump. He had to say something first. He knew he did, but the words simply wouldn't formulate. They stuck in the back of his throat, lodged as if by magic.