Gus watched Basil closely. He watched more emotions flicker across his face and while he wished he could reach out and touch him he knew he couldn’t. Basil wasn’t his anymore. It was unfair that he was still in love with him; he’d been with partners who were less selfish, more tender yet it was always the Foxwood he’d compared them to. What spell had Basil cast at seventeen that ensured Gus’s heart would always belong to him? (None. He was just everything the redhead wanted in a partner wrapped up in one; he wasn’t daft enough to put him on a pedestal or call him perfection. He was simply… Basil. Once upon a time he hadn’t been afraid to bare everything for him - he’d been delighted to find someone just like him.)

The brunette nodded and Gus found himself rising to his feet before he could think better of it. What would this one think of the letters he would write in the future? Well, at least in his head. There was no taking them back now. Shuffling over to the unmade bed, Gus bent down to pull a trunk from under it. He tugged his wand free from his robes to unlock it before he tucked it away in favor of popping open the locks. It took him a few more moments to shuffle around the items - thank you extension charm for making the inside infinity larger than what it appeared - before he pulled free a much smaller box. Inside, as he carefully opened the lid and frowned at the contents, were a stack of letters tied together with a strand of blue ribbon.

A few of the envelopes were more worn than others, others stained while others had been crinkled, perhaps from heavy hands as he glossed over the words. Gus picked the pile up and shuffled back over the Basil, where he held them out to him, careful to keep his distance. “Some might be from mam, da or Fig.” He mumbled. He’d kept all of Basil’s letters - why? - and only kept the ones from his family he deemed important. This seemed like a terrible idea. A terrible, terrible idea that was going to blow up in his face.

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