Sunday Night on Circe Street

Sully came by on Sunday, a sight for sore eyes, leaning against the doorpost with his serious smile. New robes just this side of posh, and a case of ale under his arm that probably cost a week of Stan’s wages.

He was in the newspaper the other day, so Stan had been figuring on him showing up. The honest-to-God Daily Prophet: Junior Auror captures dastardly Diagon Alley burglar, single-handedly saves world. Well, not word for word, but close enough for ministry work.

He looked good. He looked all grown up.

Once upon a time, when they were first years, Seleucus Finn had been a pale, plump boy with too many curls. He and Stan would wrestle and roughhouse in the Hufflepuff common room until one of the prefects would gently kick them apart and send them to bed, and Stan would always win, because he was skinny and quick, and had two elder brothers who weren’t half so merciful as he was. But by the time they were fifteen, Sully had grown into the star Chaser on their house team, golden and broad-shouldered, and could pin him with one hand tied behind his back.

Stan never did figure out just when it had happened, or why he never quite seemed to catch up. He’d left school a year later, for a job with his mum’s uncle.

They’d kept in touch. They would go walking through Diagon Alley on holidays, with Sully showing off some new charm or such, and Stan picking bottle caps and lost knuts out of the gutter. Saving up for someday, he’d say.

Now here Sully was, looking so fit and fine under the single flickering lamp that lit up Stan’s shabby little flat at the wrong end of the Alley. Here they were in “someday.”

In the paper, they’d said that Sully saved someone’s life. Some Ministry bigwig’s daughter. Prometheus Miller had been cornered in her bedroom, and had taken her hostage. But Sully had saved her. He was a hero, and maybe Miller was going to Azkaban; the paper hadn’t said. This was just a few blocks away, up on Crescent Avenue. They were talking about it everywhere.

So Sully had come to stay with him now, for a day or a week, until owl owl came and he got sent off on another assignment. Beat paying rent while the office wasn’t putting him up for the job. He would stay, and feed Stan’s cat, and make Stan leave the flat on his night off to go down the pub. He would make Stan love the Alley again. He would make Stan’s life seem interesting again.

Stan would make him supper.

Shepherd’s pie tonight. Stan had his mum’s recipe scribbled down on a spare bit of parchment that he lost and found at least once a week. It was the only thing he knew how to make that didn’t come spell-shrunk; it involved measuring cups and both his cookpots. Topped with a bit of cheese if he was feeling fancy. They had Sully’s ale on the side, and ate off their laps.

After dinner they walked to the pub at the edge of Knockturn. A small, dirty window in a quiet corner; a crooked old door that let in the draught. Inside it was rickety tables and greasy light. Men who’d buy you a pint, or fight you outside. Women you could have for a drink, women you could have for a coin. It was the only pub that Stan liked; even his brothers wouldn’t drink here. He was a regular, from time to time. They knew him here.

He and Sully leaned into each other at the bar, away from the smoke and noise, and Stan looked up at the angles of his cheekbones, those pretty lips that had looked so odd on him when he was younger. Sully’s face had grown into something made for long, slow looks.

All the girls loved him. They pulled on Stan’s sleeve, giggling, whispering in his ear, “Do you know if he’s got a girlfriend?”

Sully in turn watched them like they were mermaids, beautiful but dangerous. He asked Stan to translate: scarves and ribbons and sideways glances. What did they mean? Which girls were honest, and which were for sale, and sometimes the answer changed from week to week.

Sully bought him shots of firewhiskey, trying to get him drunk. They always got drunk together, got smashed, got stupid.

In the small hours they stumbled home, off their faces, almost too done-in to speak. They collapsed on the ratty chesterfield, heads bobbing. It took him a moment to notice when Sully started mumbling about something. Quietly. Halting.

Something about how they’d had a party for him at the office, now that he’d made full Auror. How it was an initiation thing, a bonding thing. How one of his instructors and some of the younger officers had stayed late on into the night with him. Drinking. How Sully had passed out next to the punch bowl. How he’d woken up getting dragged into the middle of the floor, his robes up over his head. A beater’s bat, he said. And then the handle. Everybody laughing. He’d bled.

“It…it makes us brothers, y’know?” Sully said, staring at the wall. His hands were wringing themselves to death.

Stan picked one of the empties up off his milk-crate coffee table. He scratched at the label, peeling it off in little shreds that fluttered to the floor.

“M’sorry, mate.”

Sully was the first person that Stan had ever kissed. Second year, kneeling on his bed in the empty dormitory with the curtains pulled tight. It had taken them forever to do it without laughing, and Stan had been secretly terrified of missing Sully’s lips. He remembered big blue eyes, rimmed with their curly ginger lashes, so patient while he worked out all the angles.

Now Sully slapped a hand on his thigh. A signal. Stan turned to kiss him. He didn’t miss. The room spun a little – off with his shirt, down with his trousers. They slid to the floor and rolled over and over, banging into milk crates and sending his stack of Quidditch Digests spilling. The cat yowled and took off to the sound of skittering claws.

His back kissed the cold floorboards. He was biting Sully’s ear. Then Sully was touching him. Then Sully was fumg fog for what was left of his ale.

It didn’t last very long.

When it was over, Stan sat up. They un-stuck like wax seals. He was bleeding just a little, he thought. He got to his feet, and lit a candle off the lamp to take into the loo with him. He got a look at himself. Turned out he was bleeding more than just a little, but not quite a lot. It hadn’t hurt that much. He stared at the mess on his fingers, thinking about the first time they’d done it, his last day at Hogwarts, up in the North Tower. He’d bled then too, and that time it had hurt because they hadn’t known enough to use anything but a little spit to ease the way. He hadn’t told Sully because Sully would have felt sorry. He hadn’t told anyone, not even when he kept bleeding for two days after. Just prayed a lot.

He filled the basin, dunked his head, and then cleaned himself up. He was leaning against the wall, letting the cold seep into his bones. The plaster was cracked and uneven, scraping against his skin. Eventually he staggered over to the toilet and sat down hard, dripping and shivering. He looked at his reflection in the dark mirror, his scrawny, spotty self, no different at twenty than at sixteen. He curled his head over his lap, feeling drunk, sick, sorry.

When he finally crept back out, he found that Sully had transfigured the chesterfield into a lumpy looking queen-sized bed. He was lying face-down in the middle of it, under the quilt that Stan’s granny had made. There was an icy space beside him, and Stan stretched out on top of the covers. He sighed, and it rattled in his chest.

With any luck, he thought, Sully would still be there in the morning. With a little more, he’d stay over while Stan was out on his route tomorrow night. Maybe he’d tidy up as he sometimes did, and Stan would come home to the quilt airing out, and his clothes hanging on the laundry line outside. A new houseplant or something on the ledge, groceries in the icebox.

Maybe this time it would be a while before Sully left – his crisp robes back on, dragonhide holster riding low on his hips. A little tired, but smiling. Always with a quick kiss on the side of the mouth for Stan, and off he’d go. Away on another adventure.

Maybe this time he would stay a good long while.

Stan wrangled one hand under the quilt, and pressed it against Sully’s warm bare back, feeling the steady rise and fall of his breathing. And he slept, dreaming what he saw every time he closed his eyes: dark streets and dim lights, and maps he knew to heart. The grand old Knight bus, hurtling along at the speed of anything. Travelling everywhere. Going nowhere.