Chapter 1
Regulus Black felt indisputably and magnificently alive. Was he a little drunk? Of course, but everyone was. Were his fingers split open and painting the strings of his guitar crimson? Also yes, but it wasn’t like he could feel his hands anyway. Was he probably going to lose his hearing before age 30? No comment.
To sum it up, Regulus Black was in his element: his head was clouded in euphoria while his vocal cords did their job. He knew all of the band’s songs by heart—obviously, since he’d written most of them—and the night’s crowd was incredible. They cheered when they were supposed to, they scream-sang the fast, angry bits, they hummed along when the songs slowed.
Anarchists for Entropy were on their last song, and Regulus was leading them into the final chorus, digging one hand into the neck of his guitar while the other gave life to the chords echoing through the packed venue. The rest of the band ramped up to match Regulus’ intensity, as they always did, and the crowd’s deafening cheers drowned out any last message the band might’ve had for their fans. The drummer, keyboardist, and bass guitarist—who also served as their back-up vocalist—took their bows, and Regulus followed suit, exiting the stage.
Their dressing room behind the stage hardly blocked out the audience’s screams, but Regulus threw himself onto the crusty pullout futon dressing rooms always seemed to have and closed his eyes as the door slammed closed.
Barty Crouch—the bassist—and Evan Rossier—the drummer—settled into the chairs across from the Regulus. Their keyboard master, Pandora, was at the table in the corner, rummaging through her bag. She found what she was looking for and made her way to Regulus, yanking his hands up from where they were wrapped in his torn shirt.
“Did you have to rip your shirt, Reg?”
Regulus snorted into the couch cushions. “Gotta keep the masses pleased, Panda.” He said, hissing through his teeth when Pandora doused his hands in rubbing alcohol, “Must you?”
Pandora rolled her eyes. “You can’t ‘please the masses’ with no hands,” she argued, dabbing away dried blood and soaking up the fresh blood as it beaded from where he’d butchered his fingertips with his guitar strings.
“I can do plenty with no hands, actually,” Regulus said, turning his head to enjoy the pinched disgust that contorted her face. She wrapped his hands in bandages without another word and dropped them unceremoniously back onto the couch, smiling when Regulus winced.
Evan snorted from across the room and showed Barty his phone. “They’re already making edits of the set.” He flashed the phone towards Reggie and a slowed video showed Barty sliding up behind Regulus and slipping a hand low on the front of his hip, crowding close enough to Regulus to force him to crane his neck to meet Barty’s eyes. The edits of Barty and Regulus were nothing short of sinful, but Regulus spent an embarrassing number of hours scrolling through them at night, sending the best and worst ones to Evan and Barty. Pandora begged them to never, ever show her another one after one had popped up on her phone and left her traumatized.
They made a hot pair, Regulus knew it. He knew exactly how he looked when Barty manhandled him, and he knew how desperate he came off. It was intoxicating, especially when they would have a particularly incredible show, followed by a few too many drinks, and Regulus would find himself in Evan and Barty’s bed, full and aching.
During this particular show, Barty’s hands dipped almost to Regulus’ crotch on more than one occasion. The crowd always screamed when Barty’s first solo began and he took Regulus by the chin and forced him to look at him. He curled his lip and kicked Regulus’ feet out from under him, crouching by where the lead singer’s head landed.
Regulus arched his back and turned his head towards the audience, a breathy moan slipping from his lips when Barty pretended to step down between his legs. The moan wasn’t audible over the crowd, and Barty didn’t actually step on Reggie, but they knew how to make it look real, and Reggie was really fucking good at crying on command.
So, Reggie finished the show with streaked eyeliner, bloody skin, and dried tears smeared around his cheeks, but he was high on the audience’s incredible enthusiasm—they’d been ear-splittingly loud from the band’s opening until minutes after they left the stage.
Pandora gagged. “That shit is gross,” she muttered.
Anarchists for Entropy were an alt-pop-rock band, leaning on the gothic side of each genre, and the roots of many of their songs were incredibly explicit. They set out to depict the intensity and power of queer love in a hetero-dominated genre. Many of their songs were angry, frustrated anthems about the injustices the band’s members had faced. It was freeing to scream the lyrics and hear an entire stadium of people matching their intensity, uniting a community many people tried hard to deny the existence of.
The sexual nature of many of their songs was a reclamation of pure, queer love. They were proud of their identities, and they wanted to pave a path for generations to come.
And their fans ate it up like they were starving for it.
***
Their next show of the tour went just as well as the last one, and Reggie was damn near euphoric when he collapsed onto the sofa in their dressing room. Pandora was beside him in an instant, bandaging his hands with a pinched frown—the cuts were deeper than they’d been the last time.
Barty cleared his throat from across the room. “Photos of your naked torso are already going viral, Reg. If I have to see one more thirst trap of you, I’m leaving the band.”
Evan laughed and leaned over to peer at Barty’s screen, eagerly participating in the routine of checking which parts of their set were most clipped. He tapped on a video and a poorly rendered audio of their most popular and explicit song, Death Eaters, began to play.
“That’s hot,” he muttered, “Ha! They got the part where you dance up on Barty…. Jesus—the people in the comments need to take a cold shower—”
Barty moved his phone out of Evan’s reach and turned it off. “I know we talked about it beforehand, but I can’t believe you actually did that, Reg,” Barty said, running a hand through his hair.
Regulus grinned and shrugged as best he could against the couch. The part Barty was talking about was during the riff in their second to last song, when Regulus went up behind Barty and ran his hands along the man’s sides down to his legs. He dropped to the ground with a knee on either side of one of the man’s feet and performed his section of the instrumental solo with Barty’s hand wrapped tight in his hair. Near the finale, Barty yanked him to a straight-backed kneeling position as they finished it out together, and at the end of the song, Barty tossed Regulus onto the floor. The move was carefully executed so Regulus landed on his back with his head hanging upside down over the edge of the stage, making eye contact with a lucky fan as Barty stepped on his chest. When the stage lights had faded out, Barty helped Regulus to his feet before the next song began.
They’d talked it through as a group multiple times before the night’s show, giving Evan the final say; Evan and Barty were married, and anything Evan vetoed—though there wasn’t much he didn’t approve—was immediately cut from the performance. The four band members had been friends since grade school, and Regulus trusted each one of them with his life. He was certain Evan would approve the bit, and he was correct—Evan had even been excited to see it.
Regulus liked to be dramatic, sue him, and he’d never pass up the opportunity to make a scene onstage. He had no shame, according to Pandora, and he refused to tone down his showmanship onstage, no matter the time or place.
And so what if he loved it when he could feel every single pair of eyes in the stadium on him: their weight, their intensity, their energy…. There was nothing that compared to the ecstasy that came with cradling his microphone in both hands and singing his heart out, hearing the rasp of his voice hit exactly the right pitch. The last note of his solo was the hardest note he’d ever had to hit, and he’d worked with a voice and breath coach for weeks to be able to hit it perfectly—it was well worth it, for it drove the crowd crazy every single time.
Regulus was proud of how he’d been singing, and the rest of the band played spectacularly, especially given this was the largest venue they’d ever played in. There were thousands of fans in the audience, and the high of performing for such a responsive crowd was unparalleled.
“By the way, earlier today I got an email from Inside Inquiries, do you—”
“The talk show? With Brenda Brash?” Evan and Regulus spoke at the same time, their attention flying to Pandora.
Pandora raised her eyebrows. “You’ve heard of it?”
Barty snorted, “It’s a pretty popular show. The publicity will be awesome.”
Regulus blinked at Pandora, trying to process the words Pandora was saying. Inside Inquiries was a show for celebrities. They weren’t celebrities, right?
“She invited us to join her this weekend, the day before our next show. Are you guys down?” Pandora asked, and her eyes swept over each of them, landing on Regulus. “This is next level publicity, so you’ll have to channel your media training, okay?”
Media training was a bit too formal a term for the session they’d endured with a member of Pandora’s extended family who’d worked for a record label. In reality, they’d been told to not say stupid things and don’t tell the public anything personal. Simple enough.
The only thing was that Reggie was exceptionally bad at being professional. He preferred short, curt answers when questioned, and his usual cold monotone was often seen as rude or pretentious.
Barty and Evan weren’t any better, though Evan was far more civilized than Barty. They were excellent about PDA—largely because they didn’t want the public to know they were married—but Barty spoke almost entirely in innuendos, and Evan laughed at everything. And god help them all if Reggie sat next to Barty, the man with no self control.
The customs when doing interviews were as follows: Barty and Reggie never sat next to each other, Evan and Barty preferred to be next to each other, and Pandora was the unofficial “leader” of the group. Evan was her second in command. Reggie and Barty were pretty much powerless.
“Let’s do it,” Evan said, nodding.
***
Brenda Brash was a very loud talker, and her peculiar intonation made his head hurt. But thankfully, he wasn’t known for smiling, so he focused instead on keeping his glare neutral. The interview went surprisingly well, aside from the interviewer’s occasional jabs at Reggie’s cold demeanor. After the third instance of a slightly too personal question—“Are Barty and Regulus dating?” “According to our sources, Reggie isn’t known to appear at fan meet and greets after performances. Is there any reason for this pattern?”—Evan shut the interviewer down and Pandora thanked her for letting them join Inside Inquiries. They ended the interview and were out of the building within the hour.
Back at their hotel, Evan settled into the bed and scrolled through their Twitter hashtag, relaying comments from the live interview that he deemed entertaining. The video already had almost a million views, and the comments were largely positive, much to Reggie’s surprise.
Pandora’s head popped out of the bathroom and her eyes found Reggie sprawled across their bed. “Can we talk about tomorrow’s show?”
Barty hummed in agreement from his spot on Evan’s legs. “The new choreography is all still a go, yeah?”
The question was meant for all of them, for even though Regulus and Barty were the ones acting, Pandora and Evan had just as much say in what they did onstage. Pandora was the final judge to ensure everything they did was smooth and perfectly straddling the line.
“Go through it once more,” Pandora said, emerging from the bathroom with her hair in an impressive towel wrap. Evan counted them off at the appropriate beats per minute of their songs and Reggie slid to the floor between the beds, facing Pandora as if she were the front of the stage. They usually did their last rehearsal without music to cement the moves into their memory, and under Pandora’s careful gaze, they went through the motions.
“Stop. Right there,” Pandora interjected, and Regulus froze in a kneel between Barty’s legs. Pandora approached them and toed Regulus’ knees open wider. She tapped Barty’s leg and moved it in between Regulus’ thighs.
She nodded to herself. “Barty, can you wear your steel-toed platform boots?”
Barty grinned. “Of course. Are you telling him to ride my fucking shoe?”
Regulus’ face flushed obscenely and Evan cackled. “Damn, Panda. I didn’t know you had it in you,” he laughed from across the room.
“Can you blame me?” Pandora muttered, shrugging.
They continued the dance until the second to last song, when Pandora stepped in again.
“Stop. When you throw Reg to the floor at the end of the song, have him land on his front. Kneel or step on his back—not on his spine!—and Reg, when you both sing the last line, have
Barty pull your head up by your hair.”
They gave it a try and Evan wolf-whistled. “Make sure you’re grinning like a maniac, Reggie. You gotta look fucking insane.”
Regulus huffed a laugh and they tried the move again. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t a little turned on.
“When the lights dim at the end of the song, Barty should toe Reggie to his back. Or pull him to his feet by his neck.”
They tried it and Reggie only got to his knees before he was hissing in pain as his neck strained and Barty’s fingers cut off the blood flow to his head. “Fuck,” Reggie breathed, and Barty immediately let go. Reggie sunk back to the floor, coughing. “That’s not gonna work,” he muttered.
Barty’s hand ran gently through Regulus’ hair, his apology. “What if I pull him up by his hair? Or just to his knees?”
Pandora hummed, eyes narrowed in thought. “Oh! All fours.”
Barty choked on air, “What?”
Evan was cackling again and Reggie had to laugh at the absurdity of the request by Pandora of all people.
“All. Fours. Then you can crouch by his head and grab his jaw in that patronizing way you do in the beginning.”
Barty and Reggie exchanged a glance and a shrug and gave it a try. From Reggie’s position on his stomach, Barty pulled him by his hair to his hands and knees.
“Wait—” Evan cut in, “sink down into your heels and thighs, Reggie, baby. Kinda like before in between Barty’s legs.” Reggie felt distinctly like a doll, but he did as he was told. The position was far more comfortable and took pressure off his battered knees.
They finished out the performance and Pandora nodded. “That’s good. Not too much, not too little.”
“A little too much,” Evan drawled from the bed, his voice huskier than it was before, but Pandora just rolled her eyes.
“If we’re all good, I’m gonna go get dinner. I’ll bring some back for you all.” She grabbed her jacket and keys, eyeing them one last time. “I will kill you if you fuck on my bed. I’ll. Kill. You.”
And then she was gone, and the door was still closing when Reggie was picked up and tossed on Evan and Barty’s bed.