Just the Words

Kingsley ended up at the station in the late afternoon, hours before the train was due to arrive, with nothing to do but wait. It was his own fault. He had taken the day off on top of all the vacation time he could patch together, when he should have known it would leave him with too much time to think. After an overlong morning spent pacing his flat, he had finally come to the conclusion that he could worry just as well from King\'s Cross. At least the station wasn\'t so quiet.

He wandered in amongst the Muggles, and let the bustle and clamour wash over him. For a moment he stood just inside the doors, eyes taking in all there was to see. It seemed busier than he remembered it, but then, he thought, what did he know. It must have been nearly sixteen years to the day since the last time he was here, too young to be terrified, stepping off the Hogwarts Express into the beginning of the last real summer he\'d ever have. Of course the place would have changed, subtly but indisputably. So had he.

At any rate, he was grateful for the noise and the traffic, whether it be new or merely forgotten. Brought up above his parents\' shop in Diagon Alley, he had learned to appreciate a good crowd, and this one had a decent rhythm – that surge and ebb of feet and faces that you found in these sorts of way-stations, with little islands of empty space in between. Kingsley wiled away an hour or more just navigating this archipelago back and forth from one end of the building to another, letting himself be distracted by the vaguely exotic sights.

He had never really seen much of the Muggle parts of King\'s Cross before, save the distance between Platform 9 3/4 and the door, and even those were blurred in his memory by the excitement of heading off to another year at school, or eagerly returning home to sunshine and a London summer. It struck him as something like sneaking onstage during a play he had seen before, with everybody in fancy dress, and scenery that didn\'t quite look real enough close up. The building smelled like steel and sweat, and there was a strange, high buzz on the air that Kingsley thought might have been the electricity.

He walked and he watched, listening in on snatches of conversation and trailing in strangers\' shadows. His feet led him where he needed to go, further away from the things he didn\'t want to be thinking about right now. It was meditation of a sort. An exercise in being good at what he did: looking and seeing, and not being seen.

Constant Vigilance, he thought, breezing by a please-man in uniform who never even glanced up from his newspaper.

The corner of his mouth quirked. He had never found the knack for thinkin can capital letters himself. That was Alastor\'s way. \'Don\'t be stupid,\' Kingsley would be more apt to put it, but it was all the same when you boiled it down. Ears open, mouth shut, and some semblance of a working brain firing away behind them both.

Kingsley watched and he waited. Travellers came and went; families parted and reunited. He sat down on a metal bench and observed the men and women in what looked like some sort of business dress, streaming up from the Underground. They were a sight – he liked the smart click of their shoes, their strange cravats, and the baffling little devices they carried. The crowd swarmed around him, buzzing like bees. People ran to meet their trains. Parents hurried their small children along. A few lone, intriguing wanderers made off for parts unknown with nothing but the rucksacks on their backs.

Everyone seemed to have a cup of coffee except for him. The smell wafting from a nearby shop was maddening. Kingsley had a Muggle coin that he had found in the car park, but a surreptitious vigil over a young woman purchasing a scone had left him with the slightly embarrassed realisation that it wasn\'t worth much more than a knut. He could feel the beginnings of a headache coming on, a dull pressure building behind his eyes.

He pinched the bridge of his nose, and willed it away.

At around six o\'clock, he began to see the first of the others drifting into the station, in ones or twos, and the odd family with children too young to be at Hogwarts yet. Their entrances were staggered and quick, so that Kingsley caught only a glimpse of robes amongst trousers, and flickers of faces that he recognised from the Ministry or more dimly from his school days. They made subtle beelines in the direction of platforms nine and ten, and for a moment Kingsley considered joining them.

Call it nostalgia. He had good memories of that place, and Merlin knew, he wasn\'t likely ever to have children of his own. This could well be his last chance to see the old train again, to catch up with schoolmates he hadn\'t seen in far too long. He thought it might look different from the waiting end of things, feel different in the grown-up way he sometimes thought he was still getting used to; like revisiting the house where he had been schooled as a child and having to duck in the doorways. He wondered idly if that was how it had been for Alastor, going back to Hogwarts after all those years.

Then, of course, he remembered.

And he decided to think about something else for a while.

His gaze fell on a young couple over by the turnstiles, and he watched them as they made their goodbyes. They kissed, passionately, clinging to each other. The girl was leaving; she started to cry, and her young man looked away uneasily, his hands jammed deep in his pockets.

Kingsley concluded that crossing the barrier would likely fall under \'being stupid.\' Even if there was no real reason for him not to be spotted here, that was no excuse for being seen either. You never knew when something like that would end up making a difference – no putting the egg back once the hen had laid, as his mother would say. And he doubted that Alastor would appreciate the gesture.

He settled back, keeping one eye on the clock. He had two Pumpkin Pasties in his coat pocket, and he ate them slowly, picking them apart with his fingers, thinking about food, money, work, Alastor. Finally, at five minutes to seven, there was no more putting off making his way to the platforms. He walked over, catching sight of a group of Muggles crowding the area around the barrier, conspicuous in their attempts not to look it. A few were making quiet, polite conversation, but most waited silently, leaning on empty trolleys and looking at their wristwatches.

Kingsley\'s eyes lingered on them a moment longer than they should have, pitying. He wondered how many of them had any idea what had happened at their children\'s school this year. How many, if any, understood what was coming.

He went on to Platform 10 and claimed a spot against the wall, near the guard station, keeping the barrier in sight. He laid his head back against the cool stone and crossed his arms over his chest. The uneasiness that had been plaguing him all morning was suddenly back in full force. His stomach churned unpleasantly around the pasties.

He tried to think of what he was going to say to Alastor. What could he say, that was the better question. He had never been very good at figuring these things out. He liked…he liked being able to fix things, to act instead of standing back and watching. But trying to fix things with words was a lot harder than using magic or his own two hands.

\'I\'m sorry,\' came to mind for the hundredth time. But that was no good. Sorry was just pissing in the wind, and both he and Alastor would know it. He wasn\'t even certain exactly what he was so sorry about – for what Alastor had gone through, yes, be fee felt even sicker when he remembered that he had let nine months pass with nothing more than a handful of correspondence. Short letters, too far apart, and if Alastor\'s had been a little dry, a little less rambling than usual, he had put it down to being busy. After all, they had been charmed with Alastor\'s own seal, penned in Alastor\'s usual fussy script.

He\'d been stupid. Worse was the knowledge that if the shoe had been on the other foot, Alastor would have damn well come to see him in person to make sure that everything was all right. Kingsley had pored over those letters last night, reading through conversations that they had never really had. Small things he didn\'t think he could ever repeat, knowing that he\'d already said them to a madman.

\'I missed you.\'

That was a little better. So was, \'Scared the bloody fuck out of me, Moody.\' But they were just as useless. They were the words he wanted to say, but he knew just enough to figure that they weren\'t the ones Alastor needed to hear.

Right now, he just wanted to be the one who had the words that Alastor needed.

A whistle blew in the distance, andgslegsley slowly straightened up. He could just hear the faint rumble of an old steam engine, seemingly coming from a long way off. His hand slipped into his pocket, nervously toying with a piece of folded parchment. His fingertips blindly traced the words that he had read easily a half-dozen times. He still didn\'t know why Dumbledore had owled him. If it meant that Alastor talked about him, if Alastor knew he was coming, had asked for him, even.

But when the group around the barrier began to stir, all the questions turned to smoke in his head. He heard Alastor before he saw him – the uneven clunk of footsteps that he knew better than his own – and his heart lurched when he caught sight of a familiar black bowler, and then an even more familiar scowl beneath it. Alastor halted to one side of the barrier, trunk at his feet and one hand inside his coat.

It only took one look at his face for Kingsley to realise that he hadn\'t been expected. But he thought a second glance amended that he wasn\'t entirely unwelcome. His feet were moving of their own accord, closing the distance between them even before Alastor\'s hand had fully eased away from his wand.

He looked all right, Kingsley was quick to assure himself, taking Alastor in from head to toe. He felt one of the knots in his stomach uncoil. Alastor looked tired – there were lines around his eyes that Kingsley couldn\'t remember being there before – and a little annoyed too. More, perhaps, like the Alastor Moody that Kingsley had met in the last cold days of the war. But that was as good as could be expected.

The din of the station seemed to fade to a murmur as they stood silently together. He could feel the curious eyes upon them, the Muggleborns\' families and anyone else who cared to think they made an odd pair, and he wished they weren\'t. Not because he was embarrassed, but because he knew Alastor wouldn\'t like him reaching out and touching his arm in public.

\"I…\" He cleared his throat. \"Dumbledore asked me to come meet you.\"

He fumbled for the note, holding it out like it was a remissio, some official indulgence from on high that granted him permission to fuss.

Alastor glanced down, but made no move to take it. He looked Kingsley over warily, magical eye fixed forward and quivering madly beneath the brim of his hat. The realisation of just how long nine months really was sat uncomfortably between them.

\"Thought he might,\" Alastor finally said.

And for a moment after, it looked as though his mouth was working to add something, but whatever it was never came. He only nodded, and stood back while Kingsley stooped to pick up his trunk. Then he turned and started off towards the exit, leaving Kingsley to balance the trunk on his shoulder and hurry after him.

Behind him, he heard the first of the students crossing the barrier. A very motherish voice cried, \"Edwin!\" Kingsley shortened his stride and fell into step beside Alastor.

He glanced sidelong at him. \"Wrangled one of the motorcars from Sedgwick,\" he offered.

\"I\'m flying.\"

Kingsley bit his tongue. He didn\'t think \'Like hell you are\' would be the wisest choice at this juncture.

\"Dumbledore said no flying or Apparating for a week. Nurse\'s orders.\"

\"Albus Dumbledore is a henpecking old busybody,\" Alastor growled.

\"Yeah, well.\" Kingsley felt a fond smile pulling at his lips. God, he\'d really, really missed him"Tha"That old busybody could hex me six ways from Sunday if he found out I let you fly.\"

They reached the doors, and Alastor held one open just long enough for Kingsley to shoulder through. \"No skin off my nose,\" Kingsley heard him mutter, but there was no sting to his voice, and when he started off towards the car park, he wasn\'t surprised that Alastor followed.

It was still nearly as bright out as it had been when he\'d gone into the station, one of the first, sweet tastes of summer after a week or more of late springtime drizzle. The heat was still lurking around the edges of the evening, and when Kingsley felt the sun on his face, he wished for a moment that they could go flying after all. It was the perfect weather for it, a shame to waste inside a glass box. The car was all right in a pinch, of course; he had done well enough on the lessons, and it would be quicker going than loading up the trunk onto one of their brooms, but he had never taken to automobiles the way that some of his colleagues had.

Of course, he reflected as they neared the car, it didn\'t help that the Ministry vehicles looked to be the sorts of cars that a wizard would have invented, if a wizard had needed them. Big and stately, but rather old-fashioned in comparison to some of the sleek models he had seen zooming around. It was like trying to fly in a full-sized carriage. He consoled himself that at least he had managed to book one of the better ones, thanks to a case of Bootstrap\'s Old Peculiar for the head of the Department of Magical Transportation. All the bells and whistles, top speed, muffling charms and the like, worthy of the Minister himself.

Kingsley set the trunk down on the pavement behind the back wheels, and tapped the lock with his wand to get thot oot open. He heard Alastor get into the car without saying a word, and paused for a moment before deciding that the former made up for the latter. He got the trunk settled in. Then he spent a full minute just staring at it, fighting the urge to hit something.

He settled for slamming the boot shut so hard that the car rattled. He came around to the right-hand side, only to find Alastor already sitting in the driver\'s seat. He rapped on the window, and motioned for him to get out.

Alastor stared levelly back at him. Kingsley saw him tap the steering wheel, and the car rumbled to life. The expression on his face said, quite clearly, that he wouldn\'t hesitate to drive off without him. Kingsley knew better than to doubt it.

He sighed, going across to the passenger side and climbing in.e see seat slid back to make room for his legs, the seatbelt snaking over his shoulder; he batted it away.

\"Put it on,\" Alastor said, as he peered out the back and carefully reversed out of the parking space. It looked like he knew what he was doing. \"I once saw a man go straight through one of these windows. Weren\'t enough left of him to scrape off the road.\"

Kingsley eyed him carefully. \"Were you driving?\"

The short bark of a laugh startled him for a second, but he quickly recovered and grinned. He buckled up, and hit the invisibility charm on the dash as the car rattled over the kerb and down a grassy embankment to merge in with the northbound traffic. Kingsley could see the faint, crooked smile still lingering on Alastor\'s face – the sort of smile that always hit him in the belly when he knew he had been the one to put it there – and he had the sudden mad urge just to lean over and kiss him.

Which would, of course, have been stupid for a myriad of reasons. Not the least of which being that he didn\'t care to have to explain to Sedgwick what had happened to the car.

But he kept on sneaking glances at Alastor\'s mouth, watching as the shadows moved and the scars stayed fixed, and wanting nothing more than to touch him, to make sure that he was real. Selfish, maybe. But it was easier than the alternative. Because while he\'d only had two days to get his head around what they did to Alastor, Kingsley had a lifetime of practice in not kissing him.

He pressed his cheek against the window and watched his breath fog up the glass. He discovered that the thrum of the car around him was really much more pleasant when he wasn\'t the one driving. Alastor was all right, he told himself. Not fine, but all right. And he felt some of the nervous tension that had been fuelling him all day begin to seep away.

He let his thoughts tumble around in his head, and tried to pin down the words that would explain this half-happy, half-helpless feeling that he was carrying around inside him, but none of them seemed to stick. He listened to Alastor breathing. Outside, the headlights sped by like shooting stars in broad daylight.

Kingsley closed his eyes and made a wish.

~*~

The drive passed slowly. They talked at first, about inconsequential things – would it be a hot summer, and were this year\'s recruits at the office just as useless as ever, and did the Arrows have a chance, now that McElroy had retired. But as the sun went down, the lulls overtook the conversation, and they had sat in a barely tolerable silence for nearly an hour when they finally turned onto the bumpy back road that led to Alastor\'s cottage on the outskirts of Cley next the Sea.

They pulled into the driveway, and the car stopped, cutting out the headlights and leaving them in the dark. Both doors popped open, and Kingsley took a grateful breath of sweet, salt air. He got out of the car and stretched, trying to work the kink out from between his shouldersore ore he went around back to unload the boot. It was spitting out, too lazy to be called rain, and the sky was murky and starless.

He heard the crunch of Alastor making his way up the pebbled walkway. A mutter, and then a ripple like aluminium in the wind as the wards were checked. A minute later, the light came on in the kitchen window.

Kingsley hauled the trunkk upk up onto his shoulder and then, after a moment\'s consideration, reached in and grabbed the duffel bag he had stowed away earlier. Some clothes, his toothbrush, and a couple of spell-shrunk dinners in case there wasn\'t anything salvageable at Alastor\'s. He stepped back, and the boot slammed itself shut like snapping jaws.

The side door had been left open, leaving the driveway lit up just well enough for Kingsley to narrowly avoid a collision with the rubbish bins on his way inside. Once in the entranceway, he nudged the door closed behind him, dropping his bag on the floor and kicking off his boots.

Alastor was nowhere to be seen, but the door to the bathroom was shut, and Kingsley could hear the water running. He carried the trunk into Alastor\'s bedroom. Then, feeling mildly silly, but justified, he drew his wand and checked inside the wardrobe, and then out in the sitting room, and finally in the back room where Alastor kept a desk and some shelves somewhere beneath the heap of books and papers and miscellaneous artefacts.

He went back into the kitchen and looked around. Tonks and Podmore had been in to clean, and it looked like they had done a good job of it. He didn\'t imagine that Alastor had gone down without a fight. The place looked more or less how he remembered it, spare and tidy. No mistaking that it was Alastor\'s space, and not just because of the small foe-glass still mounted over the kitchen sink. The house had the feel of a man who had lived alone for most of his life – not in the careless bachelor clutter of Kingsley\'s own flat, but in a comfortable, unapologetic way that made people tack onto Alastor\'s name, \'Never married, you know.\'

He had always liked it here.

On any other day, the kitchen would have smelled like pea soup or shepherd\'s pie, or the conch stew he had taught Alastor how to make a few years back. There was usually something of the sort boiling along on the stove. Alastor cooked by the cauldron-full, putting together a week\'s worth of meals at a time. Today, it only smelled like the rain.

Kingsley rummaged around in the pantry for the jar of tealeaves, and put the kettle on. He surveyed the kitchen table and decided that it wasn\'t quite in the right place. He hauled it another foot away from the counter and then, at a loss for anything else to do, hung his coat up on the back of one of the chairs and sat down heavily.

He heard the water shut off in the bathroom, and Alastor came out a moment later, out of his coat, his stocking feet making an even more pronounced thump on the wooden floor as he walked. Even with a faint frown creasing his brow, he still managed to look dashing, his hair damp and combed back out of his eyes. For a second he seemed almost surprised to see Kingsley still there, then walked past him into the bedroom.

Kingsley heard the wardrobe open and shut. He mapped the footsteps through the rest of the house. When he heard Alastor come back, he pushed the chair across from him out with his foot. Alastor sat down, glaring half-heartedly. His eye was acting funny, Kingsley noticed. Sticking or something, as it glanced into the corners and out into the garden.

A surge of pointless anger made him clench his fists. If that bastard had gone and buggered up Alastor\'s eye...

He wanted to ask if there was something wrong with it, but the look on Alastor\'s face warned against it. He was thankful when the kettle whistled, giving him an excuse to get up. He pulled two cups out of the cupboard and put a pinch of pekoe in each. He could feel Alastor looking at him with both eyes, the weight of it focussed between his shoulder blades.

He came back with both cups, and pushed one across the table.

\"I don\'t need a nursemaid,\" Alastor grumbled.

Kingsley shrugged. \"Catch me tucking you in, then.\"

It earned him a snort and a flicker of a sm

He slouched down in his seat, stretching his legs out under the table. His left leg pressed up against Alastor\'s. It was the wooden one, but the contact made him feel a little better anyway.

They sat in silence and then, when the tea had steeped, in a gentle quiet punctuated by sips and swallows. The house felt like an ill-fitting shell around them, and Kingsley found himself trying to imagine just how he would feel if it had been him whose life had been taken over. He shuddered to think of strange hands going through all his most personal things, someone wearing his clothes, wearing his skin. Having nearly a year stolen away from him, and then being left to pick up all the pieces.

He couldn\'t imagine it, not really. Didn\'t even want to. But he doubted he would be handling it half as well as Alastor was. Even angry – at Crouch, at Kingsley, and probably a little at himself – Alastor was already moving past this. You could see it in his face, the obstinate set of his jaw. Alastor always carried on. That was the amazing thing about him. Kingsley had never met anyone else with the same sheer power of belief as Alastor Moody; the immovable adherence to his own principles, as strange as they may be. It was nothing but that simple, stubborn belief that made Alastor keep on walking, even when the world kept cutting pieces of him away.

And when that belief was focused on you, he reflected, you somehow thought that you could walk on too. Not invincible, but indestructible. Just so long as you were there with him.

Kingsley closed his eyes for a moment. He thought he would do pretty much anything, if it meant that Alastor didn\'t have to lose another part of himself over this.

\"You all right, then?\" he finally asked, softly.

\"Fine.\"

\"You sure?\"

Alastor\'s cup came down hard on the bare wooden table. \"I will be when you stop yammering at me.\"

Kingsley looked down at the little droplets of tea that had splattered over the lip of the cup. He nodded, and let the quiet fold over them again. Alastor was looking past him, out the window, his mad eye sweeping around the room. Kingsley looked at the wall. Last year\'s calendar from Gringotts showed December, having turned itself over at the beginning of each month until it had hit the end. They hadn\'t exchanged presents this year. Alastor didn\'t open packages that came in the mail.

In his mind, December gave way to August, and the last time he was here, not long after the business with the World Cup. He took a sip of tea, smiling faintly to himself. Who would have thought he would ever be grateful to Mundungus Fletcher for bringing a doxy infestation into his flat? It certainly wasn\'t funny at the time. Kingsley had only avoided being evicted by the skin of his teeth, and found himself faced with the prospect of being homeless for two weeks while the exterminators came in.

Well, \'homeless\' was a bit of an exaggeration. He could have gone to his mother\'s when he found out that the Leaky Cauldron was booked solid for the month. And his mother was a saint, he recalled telling Alastor over dinner at the pub that night, sitting in one of the corner booths with half of his worldly goods in a bag beside him.

A veritable saint, not a word to be heard against her, but for the love of god, what grown man could survive two weeks with his sainted mother and not go absolutely batty? Especially a mother who was starting to ask when he was going to settle down with a nice witch, and had an endless parade of her friends\' single daughters at her beck and call.

And Alastor, who had met Kingsley\'s mother, had nodded along sympathetically. Taken a sip of his drink. Then mentioned offhand that there was always the sofa in his sitting room. Not much, but that was what engorgement charms were for. Three square meals. He\'d hook up his Floo to the office.

No guests – this last said with a pointed look that had brought Kingsley perilously close to blushing.

There had been a hundred good reasons to say no, and they had all come crowding into Kingsley\'s head at once. He wasn\'t any good at sharing house; he got antsy whenever someone so much as stayed over for breakfast. He liked his space, needed his quiet sometimes. And to tell the truth, there were still times when he\'d been working too hard, not going out enough, when being alone in Alastor\'s company made him think stupid things.

But Alastor had been wearing that look of his, the one he got when he was particularly pleased with himself for thinking of something nice. Kingsley had a weak spot for that one. So he had hesitantly accepted, and it had turned out that none of his reservations made it past the first morning. He and Alastor already knew how to share a room without stepping on each other\'s toes, and it had been a nice change, having dinner waiting for him when he got in. Someone to talk to about work, someone he could talk to about his work. They sat out in the garden in the evenings, talking, or played cards in the kitchen, with Kingsley having to cheat well enough to make up for Alastor looking right through his hand. Somewhere along the way, Kingsley had even begun to forget why he\'d ever thought he couldn\'t live with someone else. It was all so easy with Alastor.

On his last weekend here, he\'d had the Sunday off and they packed up a lunch and went walking along Cley Beach, down to Blakeney Point. It was an overcast day, the beach nearly empty, and they had found a secluded spot to sit back on Alastor\'s cloak and look down the shingle to where a pack of seals were resting on the shore. They had even caught sight of a selkie, rare this far south of Orkney, and though she had kept her skin on, Alastor kept ribaldly insisting that he had seen her wink at Kingsley.

They had made a day of it, chatting for a while, and then keeping quiet, sitting shoulder to shoulder, each of them thinking his own thoughts. And at some point in the early evening, Kingsley had looked over at Alastor, some inanity poised on his lips, and then had just…stopped.

Sighed.

And realised that he felt really, really good.

It hadn\'t been anything world-shattering, nothing to write home about. Just good. Happy to his bones in a way he really didn\'t feel often enough. Content, might have been the word for it. The sun had been easing down slowly behind them, and he remembered thinking that Alastor looked like a gargoyle, his scars grey and his mouth shadowy, and his good eye black.

And he had thought that he\'d always been fond of gargoyles. They kept the demons away.

It had been a funny thing, to feel like the world was all right, when he knew better than nearly anyone that it wasn\'t. And so, in the end he had said nothing, only smiled. Alastor had passed his flask over, and they had stayed for a while longer, just looking out at the sea.

Words would have spoiled it, but Kingsley had spent some time thinking on just how different things were between him and Alastor fifteen years ago, ten years, five. Looking back, it was hard to believe that Alastor had once terrified him. But even if the fear was gone, Alastor had remained the only person in Kingsley\'s life who could really throw him for a blurt. Make him smile, or laugh out loud, even when he didn\'t mean to – hurt him too, he\'d acknowledged, but the way Kingsley saw it, those things went hand in hand. Sometimes he needed a bit of a kick to the head. Alastor was the only man that Kingsley had never been able to stop wanting, with the kind of selfish need that he could put to sleep for a month or a year, but had never been able to kill.


And he had thought that they really should do things like this more often. Maybe when Alastor got back from Hogwarts.

Kingsley broke away from his thoughts with a twinge. He gritted his teeth. Kept him in a fucking trunk.

\"I\'m going to bed,\" Alastor said suddenly, pushing himself to his feet. \"Don\'t bollock around with theds ods on your way out.\"

He hobbled over to the sink and poured himself a glass of water, then disappeared into the bedroom.

Kingsley sat for a moment longer, still thinking about that day at the beach, wondering what would have happened if he had laid back on the gravely sand and pulled Alastor down on top of him. If he\'d kissed him. If they had stayed to watch the stars come out.

Forget about whether or not he would have still gone back to his flat the next morning. Forget about whether he would have been there on the night they came for Alastor. That was a pointless journey.

But if he had touched Alastor\'s hand when he\'d passed the flask back, if he had brushed his lips over Alastor\'s cheek, would it have been worth it?

If nothing else, he thought, at least he would be standing here remembering Alastor, and not a lonely night spent on the couch.

He got up and dumped the cups out in the rubbish bin, pausing for a moment to examine the dregs. He squinted, but saw only wet leaves; he had never been much good at Divination. He couldn\'t find the dish soap, so he spelled the cups clean and put them away. He leaned back against the counter.

He took a shaky breath.

This, he realised, was how the house would look if Alastor hadn\'t come home. Too clean, too quiet. They would have come in and packed up his things, gutted every room, stripped off the charms, and sold the place to the highest bidder. An empty kitchen had never looked so frightening. He swallowed hard. Somewhere along the last few years, he had gone and forgotten what it was like to know that the people he loved could die. He wasn\'t likely to have that luxury much longer. He looked at the bedroom door and saw that Alastor hadn\'t closed it, not all the way.

He decided that was as good a sign as any tealeaves.

The floor creaked under his feet as he walked slowly over to the doorway. He peeked in through the gap. Inside, the bedside lamp was lit, silhouetting Alastor\'s eye floating in the water glass. Alastor himself was sitting at the edge of the bed in his shirt and undershorts, his robes hung up on the bedpost. He was curled forward, elbows on his thighs.

He didn\'t look up when he said, quietly, \"Go home, Shacklebolt.\"

Kingsley hesitated, and then stepped over the threshold. He grasped for some way to explain that being alone just wasn\'t a good thing for either of them right now. That there might be enough loneliness heading for them, and Alastor had always been there for him, and now Kingsley didn\'t want to be anywhere but here.

He shut the door behind him.

Alastor shrugged, and Kingsley watched as he unbuttoned his shirt and tossed it on the floor. He flushed a little, realising that alone might have made him cream in his pants when he was eighteen, back in the days when having Alastor and not having Alastor were two of the most frightening things he could think of, besides the obvious.

No, he thought, eyes tracing the curve of a shoulder. Not even Alastor. It was Moody, then. Kingsley had idolised him, and not just because he was clever and fearless, but because he had somehow known from the moment they met that Alastor was like him. Strange, in the way that he was strange. But not soft, never soft, nor girlish nor frail nor weak. Only himself, and damned what the rest of the world thought.

This would have been too much for the boy he had been.

But Kingsley had grown up, and now the sight of Alastor\'s body only sent a pleasant shiver through him. He memorised it to heart. Alastor was built like an old oak, thick and solid and a little gnarled. A few scars had been bared, including a spidery starburst right over his heart that must have been from before Kingsley\'s time, but all in all not as many as he would have expected. Salt and pepper hair all over. Skin that glowed a ruddy gold in the lamplight.

Alastor carried on as though Kingsley wasn\'t there at all, turning down the bedclothes behind him, and plumping his pillow. Then he pulled ofs wos wooden leg.

Kingsley had to bite the inside of his cheek, clamping down on a noise in the back of his throat.

Something hot throbbed in his belly. It struck him as a startlingly intimate thing; Alastor seemed more naked than if he\'d taken off his pants. He found himself staring, unable to stop. The leg ended smoothly, right above the knee. It was red at the end, chafed, with a pink indentation where the wood had dug in. It looked as though it hurt.

Kingsley suddenly very much wanted to touch him there. It was something he could fix with his hands, soothing the raw skin, knowing that Alastor was letting him. He took one step forward, then another, and a third brought him down to his knees next to the bed. He didn\'t dare look up, too afraid of losing his nerve. His hands curled gently around Alastor\'s thigh. It felt warm and soft, then rough where it rounded down to a thick callus, edged by a fine tracery of thin white scars.

\"Kingsley.\" Alastor\'s voice was softer than he\'d ever heard it before, like all the gruffness had been sanded away, leaving something bare. \"Kingsley, go home.\"

That wasn\'t a no. He dug his fingers into a hard knot of muscle, and Alastor let out a soft grunt. He did it again, working into a firm massage, rubbing until he felt the tension begin to ease. Alastor\'s skin flushed pink under his touch. He let his fingers creep a little ways under Alastor\'s shorts, watching as his breath stirred the soft, silver hairs. He paused with his mouth hovering halfway to the place where the leg ended, still expecting Alastor to push him away. But Alastor\'s hands stayed curled around the edge of the mattress, and Kingsley moved just a little closer, pressing his lips against warm, rough skin.

He traced a long, fine scar with the tip of his tongue. In his periphery, he could see the eye in the glass staring intently at him.

He shivered. \"Can you feel that?\"

Alastor gazed down at him unfathomably. His eye didn\'t need magic to pierce him, and Kingsley realised with an unpleasant ache, just who the last ones to make Alastor vulnerable like this had been. What it must have taken for Alastor to look him in the face and slowly shake his head.

He bent back down, feeling Alastor\'s thigh quiver in his hands. He pressed a wet kiss just a little higher.

\"There?\"

\"No.\"

His hands roamed up Alastor\'s leg, up under his shorts, to touch his bare hip and the hot juncture where his thigh met his trunk. Alastor was getting hard, and so was he, a low, slow fire that burned in his belly. He moved his lips higher, up to where the scarred skin became pale and smooth.

\"There?\"

Only silence for a moment, and then he just barely heard Alastor whisper, \"Yes.\"

His own smile took him by surprise.

\"Good,\" he said, rubbing his cheek where his last kiss had fallen.

He felt one of Alastor\'s hands hovering over the back of his neck, and leaned back against it. The butterflies that had been fluttering around inside him swarmed to form something quick and secret. He wet his lips, wondering if he should tell Alastor that he loved him, had always loved him, and probably always would. But then he thought that if Alastor didn\'t know that by now, he wasn\'t half as clever as he pretended to be.

Kingsley very carefully reached into his pocket, and drew out his wand hilt-first. He set it down on the nightstand beside Alastor\'s.

\"The car\'s not due back until Sunday,\" he said.

And then he slid his aro around Alastor\'s hips, and kissed his chest, and his belly, and then down between his thighs.

Alastor\'s breath caught in his throat, and the hand that had been just skimming over Kingsley\'s shoulder suddenly clutched at him. Kingsley breathed in the warm and musky scent, and then began tracing Alastor\'s cock, mouthing careful, wet kisses through the worn cotton. It thickened and shifted under his lips, and he heard Alastor softly moan.

The sound made his own cock twitch eagerly, and he trailed one hand down Alastor\'s leg and rubbed himself through his robes.

\"Exstinguo,\" Alastor muttered, his voice strained. The lamp snuffed itself out, letting the darkness fall around them.

Fingertips brushed over Kingsley\'s cheek, following the curve of his ear, tracing small circles over his scalp. His arousal was keen, aching with the knowledge that it was Alastor touching him, Alastor\'s soft sighs, and Alastor\'s hcuppcupping his jaw and gently pushing him back. He felt hot breath against his cheek, and then Alastor was leaning in to kiss him. Wet. Hungry. Alastor kissed like he was starving. Hard, slow, devouring kisses that made gooseflesh spring up all over, and Kingsley met them with his own painful hunger.

He felt himself being tugged up by his sher, er, pulled towards the bed. He followed eagerly, and they both landed back on it in a twist of limbs, hands everywhere as Kingsley tried to shuck his robes without having to stop touching. He managed it somehow, and they squirmed under the covers, ending up face to face on their sides, and breathless.

\"You\'ve been holding out on me,\" Kingsley said, nipping Alastor\'s chin to hear him gasp. \"Making me sleep on the couch when the bed\'s plenty big enough for two.\"

\"Cheek.\" Alastor pinched his hip. He seemed to hesitate for a moment, and then slid his hand under the waistband of Kingsley\'s pants and tugged until Kingsley wiggled them off.

The mattress bumped and dipped as Alastor followed suit, and then Kingsley kissed him again, breathing in the familiar comforting smell of him. A hand settled on his shoulder, and then curled around his bicep. He flexed it, and Alastor squeezed harder, then slid his hand up under Kingsley\'s undershirt and scored his nails down his back.

Kingsley hissed happily at the pleasant burn. He tasted Alastor\'s lips, his jaw, his throat, and arched up wherever Alastor\'s hands touched him. He felt dizzy, like he was sixteen again, his body ready to burst out of his skin at the slightest caress. He inched forward, his cock brushing up against Alastor\'s belly. He moaned softly, afraid to push any further or else lose himself right here.

This was just how he had imagined it, on too many guilty, sleepless nights. Alone in his own bed, pushing into his own hand. Even when his fantasies had been nameless, facel not nothing but the ghost of hot flesh, he knew that in some corner of his mind, this had been it. Alastor\'s hands, brusque but honest. The echo of how Alastor panted after a rough duel, breathing hard through a grin. The smell of him, like copper, lightning, fresh blood.

He realised that he was shaking, not too cold but too hot. He twitched and twisted against Alastor\'s body, his heartbeat a pounding drum that echoed all the way though him. He felt Alastor push back against him, pressing them together. He bit his lip as a finger trailed down his tailbone.

Alastor rocked against him, rubbing, sighing, stroking Kingsley in all the familiar delicate places, seeming to reis bis body like a map. Kingsley clutched him, holding him tight. He worried, dimly, that he might be hurting him, worried that he might leave bruises.

But Alastor only sighed, \"Kingsley,\" and pushed him over onto his back, clambering on top of him.

Kingsley spread his legs obligingly, and breathed out hard when he felt their cocks rub up together. Then Alastor began to rock against him, and Kingsley held on even tighter. And he soon found he couldn\'t worry about anything at all anymore.

~*~

When they had finished, shivering through the echoes of it, Alastor kissed him like he was afters, all soft nibbles and little flicks of his tongue, with a delicacy that Kingsley wouldn\'t have thought him capable of.

He melted into them, trying to remember the last time he had kissed like this. Like there was something sweet to be savoured once the hunger had been sated. He couldn\'t.

He sighed when Alastor finally rolled off of him, then stretched, luxuriating in the heavy rush of blood through his body.

Through his haze, he heard Alastor reaching over on the nightstand, taking up his wand. A cool whisper of motion swept over him.

\"Semina detergo.\"

A prickly tingle spread across his belly as the sticky remains of his orgasm dissipated. He felt the covers pulled up over him, and then heard Alastor put his wand back on the nightstand.

He listened to one breath, two breaths, three. Then a soft snore.

Better than warm milk, he thought, and smiled in the dark.

~*~

He woke up cold.

A noise had jolted him out of sleep, and the first thing that occurred to him was that he was freezing. It was still pitch-dark; he didn\'t think he had been out long. He patted the bed clumsily until his hand brushed something solid. Alastor had rolled away from him onto his side, taking most of the blankets with him.

Kingsley could feel him twitching, wracked with tremors.

\"Alastor,\" he murmured, his voice weak with sleep.

Alastor didn\'t wake up. He made a dry noise in the back of his throat. \"...no.\"

Kingsley hesita rea reached out and touched his shoulder, then drew his hand back when Alastor thrashed, fighting against the bedclothes.

\"Alastor, wake up.\"

He was afraid to touch him again. Alastor was too close to the edge of the bed, and too close to both their wands.

\"Alastor,\" he said more firmly.

Alastor moaned, deep in his throat, a bruised, broken sound that made the hairs on the back of Kingsley\'s neck stand up.

He did the only thing he could think to do: he brought his fist down on the mattress as hard as he could, jolting it.

Alastor gasped, nearly rolling off the bed, just barely catching himself with his foot on the floor. He teetered for a moment, then collapsed on the edge of the mattress. He was panting, and Kingsley could just dimly make out the outline of his shoulders, shaking. Alastor took a deep br and and then shuddered.

Kingsley sat up.

\"Damn it,\" Alastor croaked, his voice rough. \"Damn it. Go back to sleep.\"

He was almost grateful that in the dark, he didn\'t need to see the look on Alastor\'s face. He heted,ted, and then crept forward, wrapping one arm around Alastor\'s middle and resting his chin on his shoulder. He could feel Alastor\'s heart racing.

Alastor stiffened, but didn\'t push him away.

He pressed a soft kiss under Alastor\'s ear. \"It...\"

\'It\'ll be all right,\' he meant to say. But that was a useless lie, the kind he knew would dissolve like fog in the morning light.

\"You first,\" he said instead.

He felt Alastor relax infinitesimally, and after a few ragged breaths, they lay back down, sorting out the covers. Kingsley waited until Alastor had settled in, then turned over onto his side, laying his arm across his chest.

\"Said I didn\'t need a bloody nursemaid,\" Alastor gred, ed, but Kingsley didn\'t move, and after a moment, he felt a hand briefly settle atop his own.

He stayed awake long after Alastor had drifted back into sleep. Touched him, just softly, stroking his side. He thought, for the first time in a long while, about just what it meant for Alastor to have tried to bring in every Death Eater he captured alive. Even after he had lost friends. Even when he had lost family.

\"You let yourself get as bad as them...\" he remembered Alastor saying, \"...you do that, and they win, no matter what.\"

It hadn\'t meant a lot to him backn. n. They were the good guys, and that was that. But when he remembered the hurt, animal sound that Alastor had made in his sleep, Kingsley didn\'t want to be just as bad as Barty Crouch Jr.

He wanted to be worse.

It was a long time before he could fall back asleep.

~*~

The next time he awoke, it was morning. The sunlight was streaming in through the window, and he could smell coffee on the brew. He rolled over, hugging a mound of blankets that smelled like Alastor. The events of last night crept into his consciousness, and he opened his eyes.

The bed was empty. Leg, eye, and wand were gone.

He glanced at the alarm clock and made a face. It made one back, blowing a raspberry with the hour hand. Rolling his eyes, he got to his feet and padded blearily into the kitchen. The coffeepot was still filling itself, and an open jar of blackberry jam sat next to some crumbs on the counter.

Kingsley followed the sound of splashing water into the bathroom, and peeked in just in time to get a prime view of Alastor hauling himself up by the edges of the bathtub. The muscles in his arms bulged, and his hair slapped wetly against his shoulders. He looked like Poseidon himself, rising up out of the deeps, only short one trident.

Kingsley grinned. Or maybe not.

Alastor got his good leg under him, kneeling up to grab a washcloth from the built-in shelf.

It was, Kingsley considered, not a bad sight to wake up to.

Alastor sat back, and then glanced over at him. He seemed to take an equally long time in looking hi and and down. It was only then that Kingsley realised he was only in his socks and undershirt, with nothing in between. He smiled ruefully, and shrugged. It was too late to be embarrassed about it. And besides, he thought he rather liked that look it had earned him.

He leaned against the doorframe, watching Alastor run the washcloth over his shoulders, down his arms, across his chest. Certain portions of Kingsley\'s anatomy were quicker to wake up than others. He wondered, briefly, if he was meant to say something about last night – that was to say, the sex – or if not mentioning it would be a tacit agreement that everything was all right. He found himself rather hoping for the latter. This felt all right. More than all right.

\"You\'ll be Flooing into the office today,\" Alastor announced.

Kingsley blinked, tearing his gaze away from Alastor\'s chest. \"I took the week off.\"

Alastor didn\'t turn, but his mad eye spun around to peer at him. \"You\'ll be telling young Tonks that we\'ll be meeting her at the Cauldron at noon tomorrow.\"

\"What for?\"

\"We\'ll be taking her to meet some people.\"

He frowned. \"Who?\"

Alastor rolled his eyes, which was always an event. \"Funnily enough, the same people you\'ll be meeting.\"

\"And where are will we going?\"

The washcloth hit the surface of the water with a splash. Alastor glared at him. \"Did I teach you to ask so many questions?\"

\"Yes.\" Kingsley smiled. So they weren\'t going to be sitting on their hands any longer. The thought cheered him. \"I\'ll catch her on her lunch break.\"

He eyed the tub. He had discovered, to his pleasant surprise on his last visit, that it was more than big enough for someone his size. Alastor didn\'t take up an inordinate amount of room, and the water didn\'t look to be sitting too high.

\"Budge up,\" he said, and pulled off his socks. He dragged his undershirt up over his head, swallowing a yawn as he stretched.

When it was off, he found Alastor peering at him intently. \"Go back to bed if you need it,\" he growled. \"No use to anyone otherwise.\"

Kingsley tried not to smile. He shook his head, stepping into the tub behind Alastor. The water was hot, and he eased himself in carefully, sliding his legs down on either side of Alastor\'s body. He sighed, resting his head back on the edge of the tub.

Thers a s a long pause before Alastor leaned back against his chest. Kingsley wrapped his arms around him, hands sliding over smooth, wet skin. He looked at them both, reflected in the vanity mirror. They didn\'t look any stranger than they usually did.

\"I slept just fine,\" he said, and he caught Alastor\'s reflection showing just the hint of a crooked smile.

And if that wasn\'t thet pet perfect thing he could have thought to say, well...

He closed his eyes and let his hands drift well under the water line.

...it was close enough for now.