Who: Albus Dumbledore and Gellert Grindelwald Where: 26 Quills - Albus’s place When: BACKDATED to Thursday night What: Ah, to sleep, perchance. Status/Rating: PG-13 for blood and some nudity, nothing special / COMPLETE
Albus very nearly had the balance correct.
The real challenge, he thought, was mitigating the way laudanum seemed to dull his senses. It made his dreams blur a little too much-- and he needed his dreams. He found sense in them. His mother had always been prone to divination. From her, he’d learned the difference between knowing what will come and knowing what one needs to believe to make it so. It was invaluable; and Albus was hardly prone to tea leaves or crystal balls. He found sense and meaning in his dreams. And now, when he needed both more than ever, they were vague and wispy things.
The sting of metal, he barely noticed at all as it sang at the bend of his elbow. Just a slight pinch, as it slipped through skin and into a vein. Tourniquets, he’d stopped using long before. A simply constricting charm about his upper arm was quite sufficient. Like this, so perfectly alone late at night, it was easier to simply unwind, to do with magic what he could have easily enough done by hand. However, he could explain no better than he could deny that it provided another sort of relief, to simply let little flares of magic flutter into the air about him.
It only took the barest of impulses, and the needle was gone from his hand, back to the desk in his bedroom, clinking lightly as it rolled and came to rest against a glass vial etched with the date and a batch number. He was keeping track; eventually he’d find the perfect balance of sedation and clarity. He was getting closer. Slowly but steadily, the sense of it crept through him, the way his limbs felt weightless, but sinking. Even the way he let himself fall back against the small mountain of pillows assembled along the headboard of his bed seemed slowed. The sleeve of his robe tumbled down his arm, even slipping off his shoulder as his feet stretched languidly along the bed. As he drew a full breath of air, he could help marveling over how exquisite the fabric against his ankle felt.
Gellert could see the light glimmering in Albus’s bedroom window from the street. He had come to bring Albus a copy of one of the few books Gellert had been able to find that catalogued his early reign with what he considered to be acceptable objectivity. It had been written while he was still in power, in fact -- about a year into Gellert’s own future. He had not been able to help feeling mildly disappointed to find that Aunt Batty never wrote about the twentieth century; he would have liked to have seen her take on his rule. He’d always admired her as a focused and detailed historian.
Still, Gellert did not like the idea of Albus wandering around Lockewood with either no knowledge of the years that separated their memories, or at best a cursory introduction provided by the biased voices of the other inhabitants of this place, or historians who lived too far in the future to realise that the loser always, always became the villain.
Gellert knocked on Albus’s door and waited, but heard only silence. Perhaps Albus had seen him approaching, illuminated by the glow of the streetlamps. Or perhaps he was engrossed in a book, and cared not to abandon his studies to entertain company. Neither option was acceptable, so Gellert simply unraveled the wards on Albus’s front door and let himself in.
The knock, Albus hadn’t heard at all. The only reason he knew someone had entered at all was because they were his own wards being coaxed open; it took a moment longer to recognise the magical signature. Dull and muted in the back of his mind, something like alarm registered-- though even ‘alarm’ seemed a little too zealous. All that existed was the simple fact that he should not have Gellert in his home. Especially not when he was in such a state. He still had time before sleep overtook him entirely, but not much.
Albus pushed himself up, shrugging his robe back onto his shoulders properly as he made his way to the door. In a passing sort of way, he hoped Hermione remained asleep. It was all well and good to say he didn’t wish to see Gellert, but explaining Gellert’s presence in his own home in the middle of the night, well-- actually, Albus couldn’t. Which was concerning. He didn’t bother to don anymore clothing. Gellert had, after all, seen him in less than pyjama bottoms and a dressing gown.
Keeping his eyes more than half open forced a sort of placidity into the rest of Albus’s features, but he supposed there was little for it. Gellert, he suspected, would hardly be ignorant of what he was up to. Other people were easier to fool, but Albus had to attribute that, in part, to an absence of experience on their part.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, voice sounding almost hoarse as he descended the stairs.
Gellert met Albus at the foot of the stairs, extending an arm to rest his fingertips lightly atop the handrail, gazing up at what he could see of Albus in the dim light the moon cast into the house. “Is that the sort of greeting you give to an old friend?” he said, the smallest of smiles playing around the edges of his lips.
He stepped upward, ascending the stairs to where Albus stood. Even in this semi-darkness, Albus’s pupils were constricted. On its own, that was evidence enough, but when coupled with the way all of Albus’s limbs looked as if they were weighted down by some invisible burden, the skin beneath his eyes turned to bruise, it was impossible to ignore.
“Oh, Albus,” Gellert said, reaching out to press a hand atop Albus’s wrist, feeling his bones delicate as those of a bird’s beneath his touch. “What sort of chicanery have you gotten up to this time? Laudanum, perhaps? Or is it heroin or morphine?”
Albus was always a bit hard pressed to find a succinct term for what he and Gellert were to each other, but every time he tried to conjure one, it got too convoluted in what they could have been, what they ought to have been, and what they couldn’t ever be. ‘Friend’ hardly seemed sufficient.
His gaze fell to Gellert’s grasp of his arm; for as much as the rest of Gellert’s appearance had evolved, his hands seemed almost entirely unchanged. Absent the ink stains Gellert’s fingertips had sported so often, the elegance along the curl of his fingers was just the same. Albus’s thoughts had to be fraying, because they gently cracked into the distinct potential progresses of that simple touch of Gellert’s hand-- the dizzying lurch of Gellert’s thumb trailing softly along the inside of his wrist, the sound that would be made if Gellert’s hold shifted and tightened enough to break his wrist, the numb sort of void against his skin that would follow if Gellert simply withdrew.
Not wishing to much consider any of the options, Albus lifted his gaze. “I don’t believe it’s any longer your concern, what vices I elect to acquire in my own private time,” he said, content to poach the phrase from their last conversation. He didn’t really wish to discuss what, he supposed, could be called a habit. Nor did he want to discuss that motivating factors involved. What he wanted was to be left alone, and to sleep. Beyond that, he scarcely trusted himself to want for much of anything. “And few of even my closest friends drop by, unannounced, in the middle of the night.” As he spoke, his fingers fanned out a little, as though he was contemplating pulling his hand away.
For a moment, Gellert’s smile was brittle -- but the moment passed quickly enough, his expression fading back into sweet pleasantry, the smile a little vague even if the gaze of his eyes was sharper than ever. “And I have known you closer than any other,” Gellert said, climbing one more step to stand only one rise below Albus himself, the abrupt sense of physical intimacy bringing with it a breath of a memory of what things had been like before, when touching Albus was like touching fire and Gellert craved desperately to be burned. “I feel that gives me the right to certain liberties.”
It had occurred to him as well that in such a state, Albus was likely to be in poor control of his faculties. It would be only too easy to convince him to speak and put to words all those things Gellert had glimpsed within his mind that day they had met in this very house to exchange knowledge for silence. Who knew what else Albus may confess to? Gellert was not certain how much Albus’d had time -- or desire -- to read of his own future since arriving in this place, but if he had read or heard of what transpired between the two of them in the years to come, then it was of paramount importance to ascertain his sentiments on the matter … and not just for purposes of soothing Gellert’s curiosity. Know a man’s thoughts on the past, and you can take but a small measure of him. Know his thoughts on his future, his hopes and fears, and you can peer into his very soul.
“Come,” Gellert said, his hand falling away from Albus’s arm as he rose one more step, turning sidelong so that he could stand beside Albus instead of before him, “show me your hospitality. Invite your guest to join you in your chambers.” Even the shadows could not entirely conceal the amused twitch of Gellert’s lips.
Something seemed to thread along Gellert’s instruction, and Albus couldn’t fight an illusion of déjà vu that harkened back to a non-existent memory of having a wolf at door. There would have been a little temporary wisdom in complying; in his own room, Gellert would be easier to conceal if Hermione awoke. Of course, the mere thought only served to highlight his desire to hide his interactions with Gellert. It would, however, look far more untoward, were someone to see him leaving Albus’s room in the middle of the night. But the prospect of convincing Gellert to--
A sudden twist of dizziness challenged Albus’s balance. The one hand tightened around the banister, and the other thoughtlessly, reflexively, perched itself on Gellert’s shoulder as his eyes fell shut. And it felt absolutely perfect, to blot out the world and its questions, it’s problems, along with his sight. He was really starting to think he’d found the proper balance of fluxweed.
“Gellert, I am already...” He’d meant to say ‘asleep,’ but by then he’d opened his eyes. Albus gave the wayward hand on Gellert’s shoulder a small frown before pulling it back. It really would be a very bad idea to attempt to entertain Gellert at the moment. Turning, Albus took back up the stairs, saying over his shoulder, “Some of us do prefer to sleep during the night. What could possibly be so pressing?”
Only belatedly did he realise he hadn’t told Gellert to leave, but he was quickly telling himself that it was fine. Gellert could offer some reason, Albus could deny it, and then he could tell Gellert to go away. Politely, if he could manage it.
Oh yes, Gellert thought as he followed Albus up the stairs, his shoulder still feeling the phantom weight of Albus’s hand -- this was going to be far easier than he had hoped. Albus was half-intoxicated by whatever it was he’d ingested, and such substances made yielding to temptation only too tempting. And Albus was tempted, whatever he might pretend. He was always tempted in Gellert’s presence.
“I brought you a book,” he answered, though that goal was now as good as forgotten. He couldn’t resist letting his gaze flicker down to rest on Albus’s arse a time or two, either. Albus was no longer eighteen, but the years did not seem to have stolen any of his beauty. His arse was still round and firm, and it was difficult not to want to touch Albus’s thighs when the movement of ascending the stairs pulled the fabric of his trousers taut against them. But Gellert kept his hands to himself, of course. The next time they touched like that (for Gellert was certain that they would, eventually), it must be Albus initiating the contact. And Gellert ending it.
“I also wanted to talk to you about our future together,” he continued, because now he needed a real reason to have come. He wondered if Albus’s roommate was still awake; it wasn’t that late, and voices carried. He’d never met the girl, though. Perhaps it was time to change that. “Our future in the real world, not in this place, of course.”
For a moment, Albus’s feet stilled on the landing. ‘The future’ was awfully vague. Gellert could mean anything, from the years that separated them to the something beyond. Decades stretched out for them, with precious few intersections-- though what their interactions might have lacked in frequency, they more than made up for in... significance. Albus had read a few different accounts of what was to come, and they’d all been woefully incomplete. No one could prove he and Gellert hadn’t had any contact before 1945. No one seemed to know how or why either of them had agreed to the duel. It was hardly a surprise, given his own nature, but it left him with the sense of trying to play exploding snap with only about a third of the deck.
“One possible future, among a literally infinite number of potential eventualities,” Albus corrected over his shoulder. Chief on the list of things he did not wish to discuss was the matter of his own non-involvement, especially since it was already in existence. Any excuse to dismiss the topic became viable in Albus’s mind. It was hard to imagine any good coming from giving voice to the good he still thought Gellert could do, still believed Gellert capable of. The need for distance had his feet moving again, down the hall toward his room. He didn’t quite manage to keep his gaze from flickering in the direction of Hermione’s door as he neared his own.
Turning, his shoulders fell back lightly against his bedroom door even as Albus clasped his own hands behind his back. He had no intention of letting Gellert any further, and letting the door bear his weight was something of a relief. “Did you really come to pick apart hypotheticals?” he asked, meaning to sound just a little critical of the idea, but little in his tone actually changed.
“A potential future -- a hypothetical, if you must -- that every single person in this village seems to have experienced. The only future laid out in the books in this place. Perhaps in another universe, we have a different future. But in this one, to pretend we finish in any other way is to choose to be blind.” Gellert did not like the way Albus seemed to be blocking them from progressing any further, refusing to allow them to enter his room. What did he think, that Gellert was going to throw him down on the bed and start stripping off his clothes? Hardly. Or perhaps he was more worried about his own self-control.
Regardless, this was not a discussion that Gellert wished to hold in the corridor, with Albus’s roommate potentially listening in. Nor did he wish to allow Albus to cling to that which kept him comfortable. So he had to make him uncomfortable. Albus’s roommate was right across the hall, she could come out at any moment -- and still Gellert reached forward to rest his hand on Albus’s shoulder, drawing in a bit closer, his thumb skimming the base of Albus’s throat.
“Perhaps you would rather discuss what you wish to be true,” Gellert murmured, leaning in just a bit, his fingertips slipping into Albus’s hair, one of them dipping beneath the collar of his dressing gown. “What future is it that you hope comes to pass? If you could choose, from amidst that infinite number of potential eventualities -- what would you desire most of all?” It would be so easy to simply kiss him like this, and if anyone were to see them in that moment, it would certainly look as if that was what Gellert intended. But would it unnerve Albus enough to want to remove them from the scope of his housemate’s sight?
For a moment, the only thing about which Albus could think was the smouldering heat of Gellert’s touch. He didn’t understand why it was so startling, why it dominated so entirely the rest of his senses. After all, he remembered well enough the near-burn that seemed to linger just beneath Gellert’s skin-- surely the memory had paled so entirely. Perhaps it was just that Albus’s own pulse had slowed, that it was he who was cooler by comparison. As it was, there was something a bit magnetic in that warmth, something that softly said that he could rest, when every other instinct within him was insisting that he withdraw.
The question, however, registered at last, the little wisps of sound from Gellert’s lips forming proper words in Albus’s mind. But it was two questions-- what did Albus hope for, and what did he desire. The one was difficult enough to confess, the latter being practically unthinkable. He couldn’t even bother to obscure the guarded veil that fell behind his eyes. He ought to know better, of course, that revealing you had something to hide only ever confirmed the fact that one had something to hide.
Only when Albus closed his mouth did he realised his lips had been lightly parted. And only then, how very close they were. It seemed terribly sudden, that he found himself so easily ensnared. His eyes darted down the hall, because if Aberforth-- No. No, Hermione. And her room was just across from his own, from this. It was practically a spasm as Albus’s hand moved for the doorknob. His grasp missed it entirely, but the immediate release of magic didn’t. The loss of the door at his shoulders, however, left Albus practically stumbling backwards into his room. One had found the steadying edge of his desk as he tried to dispel the humidity that was creeping through his mind.
“You should--” What a ridiculous word. “You need to leave.” Or, more accurately, he needed Gellert to leave, before Albus did something entirely too stupid. He could practically taste how easy it would be, to blame some level of indiscretion on the drug within him, at least for a little while.
Gellert tried not to look too pleased when Albus opened the door -- or too amused when he tripped back into the room. He followed Albus, entering his bedchamber in a few quick strides and shutting the door behind him with a small thread of magic. “Since when have you known me to do what I should do?” he asked, his smile not unkind.
Another spell turned the lock and Gellert was stepping past Albus, his gaze scanning the room, taking in both the books strewn across his desk and the vial of clear liquid with its empty syringe with equal neutrality. There was much to be learned about a man from the things he marked as valuable, though Gellert doubted there was anything about Albus that he did not already know. Their fellowship may have been brief, but it had been intense, and Gellert had not stopped paying attention to Albus simply because land and water separated them.
“Been busy, have you?” Gellert said, trailing a hand along the sill of Albus’s window before turning to sit down on the edge of his bed, leaning back on his elbows, as comfortable on Albus’s mattress now as he had been at age sixteen.
Gellert’s penchant to simply do as he pleased was, of course, the trouble. Gellert was unique in quite the number of ways, not least among them being Albus’s inability to compel him to comply with Albus’s wishes. Other people were easy; they responded quite predictably to plethora of social scripts and cues.
The door, and its lock, Albus failed to notice. Far too commanding of his attention was the fact that Gellert was in his room, moving about with exact same ease and assumption of ownership, simply worn on a longer gait. He looked at Gellert too directly. Too plainly. Too obviously, it wore on him, his desire to look hand-in-hand with the desire to not himself be seen. “Always. And rather predictably, it’s exhausting. Gellert-- this can wait till morning,” he said, willing to barter for the time. He found himself willing to agree to meet Gellert later if he could procure solitude now. “I need to sleep.”
No. No, you have to stay awake.
Albus’s half-closed eyes snapped open. Despite that, he couldn’t help wondering if he wasn’t dreaming, or half-dreaming-- but into his waking mind kept flickering echos of the past. Of another room, another life, that had been just down the hall from Aberforth, when Gellert slipping into his room at night wasn’t so very uncommon. But that had been an age ago, and a different drug in a different needle. What had followed, of course, was practically unforgiveable. Or at least, it would have been, were Albus not able to assume that Gellert had simply wished to know what Albus would do under the influence of cocaine. Albus was no longer quite arrogant enough to not realise when he’d been manipulated himself.
Nor was he able to overlook his real vices, or a certain pattern of behaviour that followed a decidedly self-destructive trend whenever Gellert and altered states of consciousness were combined.
Gellert was enthralled by the weight of Albus’s eyes, the way blue kept flickering in and out of sight as Albus struggled to remain awake. Gellert knew the sensation all too well, though he never fought it. He never slept unless he forced himself to, at which point the encroaching heaviness of slumber was more than welcome.
“So you’ve said,” Gellert smiled, two fingers of his right hand picking at a loose thread on Albus’s comforter. “Many times.” Albus really was going to have to come up with a better excuse than his own exhaustion if he wanted Gellert to leave. Surely they knew each other well enough by now to have figured out that such things were never an excuse. How many nights had they forgone sleep in favour of finishing a book chapter or a set of equations or working out the theory of a new spell? How many times had the sun risen over the horizon with their quills still in hand, or Albus’s lips still kissing paths along Gellert’s skin?
“How long have you known?” he asked. He felt he did not need to specify what it was he was referring to; surely Albus knew. For all his pretense at considering it but one future among many, surely it still occupied a good portion of his waking thoughts, just as it did Gellert’s.
Had he? Albus couldn’t actually remember much of anything he’d said. His thoughts were turning thin and sheer, tearing under the lightest pressure.
“A couple of weeks,” he said, because he could think of nothing to do but answer. Forcing a breath deeper into his lungs than the shallow things he’d been drawing a moment ago, Albus turned from Gellert. His hands began to move without his conscious thought; too much of his mind was preoccupied with trying to predict what would happen when he lost consciousness. Surely Gellert wouldn’t linger, unless his had designs to revive him. The notion was decidedly unsettling. Picking up the empty syringe in one hand, the other inverted the potion vial. Slipping the needle through the rubber stopper, he drew out twice what he’d given himself before Gellert’s arrival.
As he worked, eyes only barely open, operating more by the blurry sensations at his fingertips, he said, “It took some time to work through the first half of the century.” And Albus had gone chronologically, doubling back for different authors, different perspectives. To have jumped to the end of their particular tale would have been prejudicial. “History,” he muttered, sounding critical-- which he was. Bias and insufficient evidence littered nearly ever page. Over his shoulder he asked, “Would it have killed your aunt to turn her gaze to something a little more modern?”
“Maybe,” Gellert said, watching Albus with a slight frown settling across his expression. “But then, Bathilda always did have a rather salubrious composition. I expect she could have managed it, if she’d had the heart.” Somehow, Gellert rather suspected that old Batty couldn’t bring herself to write a book in which she’d be forced to call her own grand-nephew a tyrant and a murderer. And label him thus, she must. After all, she was an Englishwoman. Their perspective on the war was very specific, and though she’d always seemed fond of him in Godric’s Hollow, he did not doubt that distance and the fact that he lost managed to, in their time, turn him into quite the villain even in her historian’s eyes. Even so, Gellert thought she would have been kinder than the others. Surely she would have retained some measure of objectivity, even if her critics would be all too quick to label it as bias in favour of her relatives.
His thoughts and attention kept turning back to the drug in Albus’s hands. He still wasn’t quite sure exactly what it was (though he thought he had a pretty good idea), but he could see its effects on Albus. Some sort of narcotic, to be sure, and there was no telling how much Albus had injected already.
“Don’t you think you’ve had quite enough of that for one night?” he asked, voice a shade softer. The rate he was going, Albus was going to end up sprawled on the floor, choking on his own vomit -- and Gellert would be damned if he was going to help him.
Albus’s brow lifted, as if in concession, even if Gellert couldn’t see his face as he set the nearly empty vial back atop the desk. Bathilda could be generous, he supposed, but he’d come to think that extended some sort of objectivity, to simply accept. Her view on Gellert, however-- well, Albus found himself altogether at quite the loss as to decipher the family dynamics of the Grindelwalds, and even their extended family.
Gellert’s last comment, however, had Albus turning. He was almost surprised to find the laden syringe in his grasp. Its purpose, he didn’t immediately see. It didn’t concern him; he could barely see anything in the room. “You’ve very little idea what all I get up to in one night,” he murmured in the instant before clarity struck him. He knew what it was for-- who it was for, what he’d been planning without his own notice. “Besides...”
It was more a response to need than conscious thought. Apparation wasn’t an option. Such transference affected potions. Grasping, almost blindly, at formless possibility, Albus simply broke himself into pieces, and syringe with its potion along with him. Propelling himself through the space that divided them, he reformed himself, his clothes, and the syringe, with one of his knees on either side of Gellert’s hips, sinking the needle into his neck the barest instant after he resumed solid form.
“-- it’s not for me,” he finished, the pad of his thumb already having depressed the plunger, his eyes a bit more open once again. A small portion of his mind couldn’t help fascination, especially with regard to symmetry. One night, Gellert had dosed Albus with cocaine to keep him awake. It only seemed fitting to balance this particular equation.
Gellert’s wand was in his hand before Albus ever even touched him -- but he did not use it. Maybe he should have, the moment the rise of power in Albus’s aura suggested that he was going to perform a spell. Or maybe he should never have let himself belief that Albus, trashed and holding a syringe of some unknown drug in a large quantity, was someone to be trusted. But when he felt the sting of the needle in his neck and the cold of whatever fluid the syringe used to hold streaming into his jugular vein, he couldn’t help thinking that he should have seen this coming.
The effect was almost immediate. An expression of irritation flashed across Gellert’s face, but a split second later he could feel his limbs growing heavy, his mind starting to tilt toward oblivion. He managed to seize enough of his magic to send his wand back to the secret place where he kept it before the strength of his arms gave out and he fell back onto the bed, the room reeling wildly overhead.
Unlike with heroin, with this drug (or maybe, he thought vaguely, simply with this dose) there was no rush. There was only effect. The tail ends of his thoughts slipped through his fingertips even as his vision started to darken, all emotion leveling out beneath the soft black weight of opiates. He took in a sharp, shallow breath -- and then he remembered nothing else.
Albus pulled the needle from Gellert’s neck as Gellert fell back against the bed, at which point it occurred to Albus that he didn’t really have anything planned for what would come next. He hadn’t quite expected the effects to take Gellert so quickly, but Gellert’s physiology sometimes confounded Albus, even on the best of days.
Vanishing the syringe, because he scarcely trusted his own aim, Albus began to peel himself off of Gellert-- this new Gellert. This body he didn’t truly know anymore. It somewhat distantly occurred to him that Gellert now surpassed him in physical strength. Not that such matters were truly relevant, of course. It took Albus a moment to realise that the faintly shifting shadows along Gellert’s face were caused by his own hair. And then Albus noticed that he hadn’t really moved so far from Gellert; on ankle was still caught on Gellert’s knee. Moving, however, felt practically impossible.
He really should have planned this a bit better.
When Albus blinks open his eyes again, the glittering night sky seems close enough to touch. The constellations are familiar ones, and perfectly reflected in the lake that lay not so far from his home. It was a comfortable sort of insulation-- the night so quiet and their privacy so total that he can’t help feeling as though they are the only two sentient, self-aware things in the world.
The sly fingertips slipping between the buttons of Albus’s shirt turns his head until he faces Gellert as they lay, comfortably sprawled, in the tall grass. He speaks and Gellert laughs, the curve of his lips leaving Albus with an echo of confusion as to whether Gellert laughed at what he’d said, or if it was simply because Gellert had guessed his words before he gave them voice.
Little of their potential cold is present in Gellert’s eyes. The sharpest of his angles seem visible, absent layers of muscle and inches of height to conceal or smooth them. He is still young, they are still their younger selves, when Albus’s hand finds Gellert’s forearm, when his lips brush along the inside of Gellert’s wrist. These are familiar dreams.
They shift, and the world shifts with them.
Instead of summer-warm grass against his bare back, he finds cool, soft sheets. He knows this room, even if he’s never seen it before. It’s his own. It’s theirs. From the damask that shields them from garish mid-morning light to the delicate carving around the mirror-- the mirror that lets Albus watch the shift of muscle under Gellert’s skin as he pulls his shirt over his head-- Albus knows every inch of this room.
Gellert will be late. For what, exactly, seems unimportant. And Albus’s voice is more amused than chiding as he points it out. Gellert, for his own part, isn’t fooled in the slightest. It’s a mess of hands and magic and a new-found impatience to send the rest of their clothes to the floor. It’s sudden, nearly desperate, and perfectly heady as Gellert sinks himself onto Albus’s cock. Albus is scrambling, straining against the way his back wants to bow in order to push himself up a bit, to chase Gellert’s lips with his own. But Gellert’s hand is at his shoulder, pushing aside a garment Albus hadn’t realised he’d been wearing moments before. When he tries to lean closer, Gellert’s hand keeps him at bay. When he lifts his gaze to catch Gellert’s eyes, everything is different.
The colour is right, that haunting blue, but they’ve lost all trace of warmth-- even if the predatory gleam is a close imitation. This room is not his room, or even their room. It’s Gellert’s room. Gellert’s room as remembered by the broken shell of a young man who’d survived what had been done to him here. Fear darkens the room. It’s this body, this form, that has never before entered his dreams. Not these sorts of dreams.
“Gellert--” But Gellert’s mouth is biting at his own, even as Albus attempts to push himself back. There is, of course, nowhere to go. Every crystal-clear detail of the room, made sharp by dread, fades. They are simply no competition to the way the world explodes in pain, its every hurt centered in the middle of Albus’s chest.
Someone screams.
Albus is nearly sure it isn’t him; it hurts too much to breathe to even think of screaming. He can’t tell if he’s trying to push Gellert away or pull him closer as molten agony dripped down his front. The Wand is there, he knows it is, and that makes it worse. Because Albus knows what comes next, and even if he might deserve it, it’s only natural to struggle for survival.
Reality crashed into the dream like a wave of cold seawater and Gellert surged upward toward the light, scrambling to hold on to something solid as his eyes flew wide open. The first thing to register in his consciousness was that he was not alone. He was naked, his limbs tangled up with another’s, and there was something warm and wet smeared across his chest. It took several moments for his sleep- and drug-hazed brain to identify the acrid copper smell in the air as blood.
The world around Albus seemed to tear at itself. Or perhaps it was just that he felt torn apart. Unable to perceive much of anything around the throbbing sear down his front and the ominous hum of Gellert’s magic, Albus could detect no difference between the dream and the waking world. A tight, rough sound welled out of him as he tried to move, tried to push himself back, tried to calm the swarm of his panicked thoughts.
“You’re bleeding,” Gellert said, and he didn’t think to disguise the thread of alarm that shot through his voice as he scrambled to disentangle himself from Albus, his hands unable to get a solid grasp of Albus’s blood-slickened skin -- and Gellert realised belatedly that the blood was not on Albus alone, it was staining his hands and arms nearly to his elbows, was in his hair, as if he’d run his fingers through it as he slept.
He was trying not to too quickly make a connection between the dream he’d just woken from and what he was seeing before him, but it was difficult to avoid such conclusions. He had no idea what Albus had injected into his jugular vein, and performing magic in one’s sleep was hardly an unheard of phenomenon. Who was to say the drug hadn’t made Gellert translate dream into movement and magic all-too-easily?
Such considerations were temporarily set aside, however, as Gellert’s gaze dropped to Albus’s chest. The gash in his flesh was long and deep, and though it didn’t look life-threatening, it was pouring blood at a rate far too quickly. Albus would lose consciousness (again) if it wasn’t stemmed. Gellert pressed his palm flat against the laceration, trying to apply enough pressure to keep the blood loss to a minimum. It was, he thought, about as effective as he could hope for -- but he couldn’t sit there and hold Albus together until the blood started to clot.
“Just wait here for a moment,” he instructed Albus, trying to keep his own voice calm and steady, to provide a counterbalance to what must be Albus’s own panic. “Try to take some deep breaths. I’ll be right back.”
It was with a vague sort of confusion that Albus’s brow knit just a bit; of course he was bleeding, he’d been-- but he’d been dreaming, hadn’t he? He knew he had. But he was awake now. This room was real, as was the flare of pain under Gellert’s hand. Something, however, seemed unnatural. Something was off. And he couldn’t help thinking that it was something in Gellert’s tone. The element of surpise had Albus wondering, however mutedly, which one of them had done this.
Never before had the potions Albus made - consisting always of a base of laudanum and fluxweed - inclined Albus to actually perform magic in his sleep. Well. Not that he knew of, anyway. It could have been either the influence of the new formulation, or the novel proximity to Gellert, or Gellert’s own will, that had been the cause. Much as he wanted to consider all the options, keeping any thought for long was virtually impossible.
Deep breaths? Albus tried, not understanding why he thought Gellert leaving or returning might help. The swell of his chest, however, only flooded him with a new wave of pain, only made him more aware of how his hands had begun to shake. He tried to partition his mind, tried to segregate entirely the sensations from his conscious thought.
It wasn’t until Gellert was halfway to the bathroom that he realised he was still nude, and covered in Albus’s blood, and Albus’s roommate was sleeping in the room just across the hall. Of course, it was too late to go back -- and Gellert rather thought that making sure Albus didn’t bleed out in his bed was more important than explaining to his housemate that some sort of sexual experiment had gone awry.
Gellert stole two pairs of towels from the bathroom, glancing at Albus’s roommate’s closed door as he passed by on his way back. The situation looked more concerning upon his return than it had at first look. From the doorway, Gellert could see the way blood had soaked onto the sheets beneath Albus, puddling in the wrinkles in the fabric. At least the cut on Albus’s chest was clean; it would heal nicely on its own. And Gellert had no intention of using magic to aid its progress, not when the idea of Albus bearing a scar to remind him of this morning held so much appeal.
“I’m back,” he said unnecessarily, crawling back onto the bed and moving to straddle Albus’s hips. Perhaps the position was a bit compromising, but it offered the best access to the wound. Besides, it was nothing they hadn’t been doing just moments before, in Gellert’s dream. He folded one of the towels in half twice and pressed it down over the center of Albus’s chest, grasping Albus’s wrist and drawing his hand up to hold the towel there himself while Gellert summoned his wand to his own hand, transfiguring a book on Albus’s bedside table into a roll of bandages and summoning a few healing salves from his own house.
It crossed Albus’s mind, in Gellert’s absence, to attempt closing the wound himself. But it was dangerous to try to mend with magic a wound he didn’t himself understand. His magic, Gellert’s magic-- real or imagined, he couldn’t tell what had caused it. The pain was aching itself into something more dull, something around which he could almost think clearly, so long as he kept his breaths thin and small. It was easily enough accomplished; his senses were still a bit gauzy, his thoughts still a little too open and airy.
With Gellert’s return, Albus tried to respond, but he found he could barely speak. It took him several moments, and a couple of attempts at opening his mouth, he finally managed to ask, “What’re you doing?”
He wasn’t even entirely sure which Gellert he thought he was dealing with-- the one he’d known in Godric’s Hollow, the modern version of him that only existed in Albus’s mind, or the one he’d encountered in Lockewood. Little of those considerations, however, mattered in the slightest as he managed to redirect his gaze to Gellert-- naked, and blood-soaked.
“Trying to keep your sheets from getting any more bloodstained than they are already,” Gellert murmured, extending a hand to catch the jar of healing salve as it came zooming in through the window that a thread of Gellert’s nonverbal magic managed to open just in time.
He couldn’t really help the way heat was pooling between his legs, his cock beginning to stiffen. He was sitting astride Albus, after all, with both of them completely naked, on the tail of a most enjoyable sequence of dreams. And Gellert had always liked the feel of blood slipping between his fingers, especially when it belonged to a body trapped beneath his. He’d once possessed the ability to section off his mind, to keep thought and physical response independent, but whatever remained of the drug in his system was dulling his willpower and fading the boundaries between sensation and reaction.
Still, Gellert ignored it to the best of his ability, choosing instead to focus his attention on the situation at hand. Taking Albus’s wrist again, he gently lifted Albus’s arm and peeled back the now-soaked towel from Albus’s chest. The cut did look a little better, he thought. Already, Albus’s body was beginning to heal itself. A silent Aguamenti wet the second towel and Gellert wiped blood from Albus’s skin, cleaning the area around the wound as well as he could.
The ‘what’ of Gellert’s actions was almost easier to understand than the ‘why.’ It hurt, ever brush of contact, ever little touch. But even pain was beginning to feel a bit distant. Nearly everything was coming in bursts and snatches: the feel of Gellert above him, which was both too familiar and too foreign, the chill in his fingers and hands, the way something decadent but sheer thrummed through his limbs--
“Aesthetics,” was all Albus could breathe out, the roll of his eyes in his tone even if his eyes were barely visible under the flutter of his lashes.
He kept-- kept expecting more pain. He kept expecting things to continue. He kept waiting for Gellert to settle in with what came next, with what ought to come next-- but it wasn’t a mindless pain, it wasn’t the hexes or curses or anything like what seemed reasonable, from Gellert. Albus was still trying to make an effort to withdraw, but it resulted in little more than the straining of his limbs.
“Stop trying to move,” Gellert ordered him, though his voice was not quite as cold as he usually managed. He uncapped the salve he’d summoned, spreading an amount of it on a large square of gauze that he settled atop the wound on Albus’s chest. The blood almost immediately seeped through, but the medicine should still have its effect.
He picked up the book-turned-bandages from Albus’s table, leaning across Albus’s body to do so and counting on Albus being too out of it to notice the way the tip of his almost-erect cock dragged across his stomach. He did not apologise for what had almost certainly been the poor control of his own magic during his dream (though it occurred to him only now that it had been a very strange dream -- almost like he’d been experiencing only a reflection of it, like looking at someone through a pane of frosted glass). But it served his purposes to be a bit soft in the way he touched Albus as he began unwinding the bandage around Albus’s torso, wrapping it tight enough to staunch the blood but not so tight as to restrict breathing.
“You’ll be fine,” he said, tucking in the tail of the bandages and lifting Albus’s hand, kissing the inside of Albus’s wrist the same way Albus had kissed him in the dream. In the memory. “You will almost certainly have a scar, but it’s nothing you won’t live through easily enough.” He gave Albus a small smile to reassure him.
It was wholly unnerving, the tenderness of Gellert’s touch. It set the fringes of his nerves on edge because he kept expecting it to be something else, something different, something rougher and harsher and altogether unbearable. Absent some sort of restraint, he couldn’t imagine a more vulnerable posture, and he couldn’t fathom why Gellert wouldn’t take the opportunity to exploit it.
Instead, the way Gellert touched him evoked something that felt far more dangerous, something Albus knew he should know better than to trust. It was something toward which he wanted to gravitate, something that told him to relax, to rest, even if his every instinct cried to find some way to retreat. Not that he could, he found. His limbs only barely just kept from trembling, but he was fairly certain that was a purely physical side-effect. Even though he began to feel a little less splayed open, he felt far from steady.
When Gellert’s lips brushed against his skin, however, he couldn’t help but go utterly still. He hated what it played at, hated the way his chest ached in a fashion that had nothing to do with the gash in his flesh. “Stop that,” he said in a voice only a little louder than a whisper. While he appreciated the act itself of repairing his chest, he really didn’t think he could bear something so gentle.
“I’m sorry,” Gellert said. He understood perfectly what it was that Albus wanted him to stop, but pretended otherwise. It was certainly conceivable that Albus simply might not wish Gellert to touch him in a manner that too closely recalled affection, though of course with Albus it was not limited to that alone. Gellert was sure that if Albus had his way, Gellert would not be touching him at all. None of this meshed with the image Albus had built in his mind of Gellert as violent and abusive, and Gellert planned for the difference between the two opposing facets of Gellert might fester in Albus’s mind and rot into madness.
He set Albus’s arm back down at his side. “Can you walk?” he asked, moving from atop Albus to instead sit next to him, slipping an arm beneath Albus’s body to pull him slowly into a seated position. “We should get you into the shower, wash some of this blood off of you.” And if Albus could not walk, Gellert was more than willing to carry him.
With his arm liberated, Albus suddenly found himself all too free to simply look at Gellert. There had always been at least a hint of something divine in Gellert’s appearance, and that only seemed amplified now. Albus wasn’t sure if it was actual blood loss, or seeing so much of his own blood splashed down Gellert’s body that left him feeling dizzy.
He knew he ought to be more than dizzy. He probably ought to be terrified. At the very least, there shouldn’t be any hint of comfort to be had in the way Gellert lifted him up. Thankfully, the hot flare of pain along his chest distracted him from just about everything else. But when the pain dampened, the heat of Gellert’s touch remained warm against his skin.
“I’m sure I can walk,” he said slowly, the words uneven. He couldn’t understand why Gellert was doing this. Even if Gellert wished to assume some responsibility for Albus’s present state, something a bit more smug would have made sense. As it was, Albus couldn’t simply thrust blame in Gellert’s direction, given his own actions.
Moving himself away from Gellert, toward the edge of the bed, wasn’t as excruciating as Albus had anticipated. His vision only flared white for a moment, and the transition only elicited a small groan as his muscles strained. Without permitting himself time to consider how much his body’s protests might increase under greater demand, he tried to stand. It was then that Albus realised he couldn’t actually feel his feet. And when pain seemed to clutch the whole of his body, Albus couldn’t help doubling over a bit, one hand reaching out to try to catch himself. With still-drying blood on his own hands, however, his grasp slipped messily.
“Careful,” Gellert said quickly, moving forward to slip an arm around Albus’s waist before he could tumble off the bed. He paused for a moment to let Albus re-balance himself. This close, he could almost smell Albus’s own scent beneath all of the blood, however faint it was. “You don’t have to prove anything to me, you know,” he said almost idly, lifting Albus’s arm by the wrist again, settling it around his own neck. “I know your strength. But sometimes even strength of will can fail us.”
A second later, once he was certain Albus was not going to either pass out or try to push him away again, Gellert curled an arm beneath Albus’s knees and picked both of them up off the bed. Albus was lighter than Gellert had anticipated; sometimes, in accounting for Albus’s height, one forgot how slender he was, how almost feminine in his build.
“Come on,” Gellert said unnecessarily as he carried Albus across the room and out into the hall, down the corridor toward the bathroom. It was obvious that Albus was never going to manage to stand in the shower on his own, but a quick charm to widen the base of the tub and a bar of soap transfigured into a chair solved that problem. For the moment, Gellert set Albus down on the closed lid of the toilet and turned his wand first to lock the door and then to the shower faucet, adjusting the heat until a faint cloud of steam was gathering on the edges of the mirror. Lastly, Gellert charmed the bandages around Albus’s torso to be waterproof; he wouldn’t sacrifice the integrity of his work just to clean up a bloody mess.
Albus actually let out something close to a laugh, but the sound bordered on incredulous. He imagined it actually might have been a relief, had the matter only been his vanity-- but it felt like something far closer to self-preservation, that desire to keep as much space between himself and Gellert as was possible. And yet, he didn’t quite have it in him to protest against Gellert’s arms.
Well. He nearly managed to protest a little when Gellert quite literally picked him up. Between his figure, his long hair, and his inversion, he was perhaps a little more sensitive to trappings of feminization. An attempt to insist that he was not, in fact, a woman, came out as little more than a jumbled muttering. He couldn’t help it, with the way the floor felt metres away, the way his head spun.
When he became properly aware of his surroundings, he found himself in the bathroom, and increasingly aware of the fact that they were both still wearing little more than a liberal smattering of Albus’s own blood. For a moment, he just watched Gellert, too exhausted to feel particularly self-conscious. But he could commit as much as was possible to memory, to examine and reexamine and drive himself mad with later.
“I don’t understand what happened,” he volunteered after a moment. He wasn’t sure which of them had actually done it. If it had been Gellert, he didn’t know if it had been in his sleep or if it had been a conscious act. And if the latter, it made no sense, why Gellert would be piecing him back together.
“I do,” Gellert said, his tone a bit grim as he lifted Albus off the toilet seat and carried him into the shower, settling him back down in the chair he’d transfigured. For a moment he hesitated, fingers slipping into Albus’s hair, tucking a few wet locks behind Albus’s ears where they couldn’t hang in his face and stick to his cheeks. “I had this...dream....” But of course, telling Albus about it wouldn’t really solve anything, would it? So Gellert just shrugged a shoulder and knelt down on the floor of the tub in front of Albus, reaching for a washcloth. “I don’t know what you dosed me with last night, but I’m fairly certain it contributed to my ability to perform such violent magic in my sleep.”
He squeezed a bit of liquid soap (liquid soap! what a magnificent invention) onto the cloth and leaned in a bit, insinuating himself between Albus’s legs as he began to gently scrub at the half-dried blood on Albus’s upper chest. It felt the safest place to start, for now.
Albus knew this was something to which he ought to object, for the sake of his own sanity, if for nothing else. Satisfying his own confusion, that insatiable need to understand whatever it was that drove Gellert’s actions, however, seemed a far more worthwhile investment than his own sanity. Not knowing, surely, would be a far greater torment; so while he became increasingly wary, he complied with the directions of Gellert’s hands.
Acquiescence seemed well worth it when Gellert spoke, even if it raised more questions than it put down. Too much of Albus’s attention was devoted to trying to block out the torrent of sensation that seemed to tangle up in the mesh of skin and lather and soft, wet cloth for him to spare much effort to conceal something guarded in his tone as he asked, “What did you dream?”
It also conveniently side-stepped the opportunity to explain exactly what was in that vial. Oh, Gellert no doubt could still pick apart Albus’s private shorthand, but that was quite a different thing from Albus simply telling him.
The humidity rising in the bathroom had effectively reverted Gellert’s hair to its natural state, sending it from straight and sleek back to loose golden curls elongated with the weight of water, plastered to his brow and the back of his neck. He glanced upward at Albus when he spoke, and for the briefest of moments Gellert considered telling Albus that it wasn’t something he cared to discuss at the moment, that it could wait until later. But Albus’s tone was too easy to read, and the hint that Albus might be trying to conceal something from Gellert was far too tempting to ignore.
His eyes dropped back down to the work of his hands as he progressed ever lower, now scrubbing at Albus’s stomach in small, light circles. “It was all a little vague,” he said, blinking a bit of blood out of his eyes as it finally started washing out of his own hair. He didn’t want to tell Albus too much; there was no reason to give away information that Albus obviously wanted without a price. “We were in Godric’s Hollow for part of it. It ended with us in my bedroom back in Berlin. I … tortured you.” Looking back at Albus’s face, Gellert tried to discern his reaction.
Albus had, at first, supposed that the dream had been of his own making-- after all, it had started off as plenty of his dreams did. The past was an easy, tortuous retreat for his sleeping mind. Difficult as it was to entertain the idea that Gellert might look back on some of their milder moments together with fondness, Albus supposed he had to consider the possibility.
Looking at Gellert felt as though it ought to have inspired something akin to a feedback loop, with the both of them looking at each other, trying to pick the other apart a bit. For Albus’s own part, his eyes were too attentive, too focused. Too obviously trying to bar from his mind the way his muscles wanted to contract under Gellert’s fingertips. It was, however, no surprise that Albus’s pulse would attempt to quicken just a little to have Gellert discussing torture when he touched Albus with something that could have been mistaken for affection.
“And is this... a recurring theme, in your dreams?” he asked, his voice only just audible over the spray of the shower, but not quiet enough to mask the tremors of curiousity. With regard to Gellert’s practices, he was familiar. His information network returned enough information about how Gellert spent his evenings, about the low life expectancy for any of the slender, ginger young men who made it into Gellert’s bed. Killing him, in just this fashion, had to linger in Gellert’s fantasies. Afforded such a prime opportunity, Albus was at a loss to justify why Gellert would deviate into... this.
For the first time in years Albus found himself dangerously close to affording nonviolent options to just what Gellert might desire of him, if there wasn’t, perhaps, some version of the world that Gellert envisioned that entailed something-- no. Close, but not quite there.
The answer, of course, was yes, but that was hardly fitting with the theme Gellert was trying to build within this interaction, was it? To acknowledge that he frequently dwelled upon fantasies of Albus’s death came too close to acknowledging the reason Gellert was treating Albus with such gentleness. It all came down to the same ultimate goal: Albus’s body, cold and in the ground. There were many ways to achieve that end, and simply placing Albus at the opposite end of his wand was one of the more boring options.
“I wouldn’t say it’s a nightly thing, no,” Gellert said, his tone implying that this was a line of discussion that would progress no further -- and if Albus needed help turning his thoughts to other lines of inquiry, Gellert would provide it. His hand dipped a little lower, slipping between Albus’s legs as he wrapped his fingers around Albus’s cock. God, but the feel of him in Gellert’s hand, heavy, of that velvet skin against his palm … it was gloriously tempting. Gellert had not lost his ability to lust for Albus the day he decided to hate him. Blood still ran in his veins, after all; he still ached to simply lean forward and take Albus into his mouth, to hear Albus say his name with desire lacing the syllables instead of exasperation. But Gellert steeled his will and forced himself to move his hand along Albus’s cock just twice, the way he would were he washing his own, before taking the washcloth once more and turning his attention instead to Albus’s left thigh.
Albus wasn’t sure if he found the answer surprising or not. Rather abruptly, however, it almost didn’t matter at all. Albus’s hand twitched reflexively when Gellert’s grasp encircled him, eager to push itself against Gellert’s shoulder, to demand space, to get Gellert to desist. It was one thing to afford Gellert a venue for Albus’s scrutiny, but as much as he would like to deny it, he was hardly immune to the effect Gellert had on him-- still had on him.
And just as quickly as it had begun, it was over. Albus blinked several times, shifting very slightly as he tried to figure out of his he’d imagined it. Perhaps he was still dreaming. Perhaps his hold of consciousness wasn’t quite as sturdy as he’d like to believe.
Needing to say something, anything, to dismiss the silence that was growing, Albus tried to frame his thoughts around anything but a vague sort of gratitude for having lost enough blood to impair the response time of his circulatory system. It became easier when he let stray into his mind the image of Gellert above him, wand in hand, cold eyes gleaming. “It’s possible that we... shared the same dream,” he said, only half-sure it was prudent to say as much. There was, of course, never any denying that Gellert was genuinely brilliant; between the two of them, it was difficult to imagine any mystery remaining so for long.
Now that -- that got Gellert’s attention. He paused, nearly done washing Albus’s other leg, lifting his gaze slowly to Albus’s face once more. Shared dreams were not unheard of in the magical world. It was, after all, something only a step above Legilimency -- but Gellert had never personally experienced it. Before now, anyway. And it made sense. Gellert would even go so far as to say that perhaps it was not so much that they’d shared a mutual dream as it was that Gellert had somehow stumbled onto Albus’s dream on his own. The structure of it, the material on which Albus’s mind chose to focus … it made sense. It matched what Gellert had seen in his mind weeks before when Albus had allowed him to use Legilimency on him.
The corner of Gellert’s lips tugged upward slightly as he said, “What the hell did you put in that syringe, anyway?”
He was tempted to ask if Gellert torturing him was something that cropped up frequently in Albus’s own fantasies, but no sooner had his thoughts turned to the final images of the dream than it became apparent there was one major flaw with Gellert’s hypothesis. The last dream had taken place in Gellert’s own room. Not some fantasy bedchamber summoned up by Albus’s imagination, but Gellert’s actual room in Berlin, on Gellert’s actual bed. Of course, it was still entirely possible that at least part of the dream was created in Gellert’s mind, but Gellert had learned not to underestimate Albus’s ability to have access to information that he should never have been allowed to see.
“I think I shared your dream, actually,” Gellert said, his voice steady as he poured more soap onto the washcloth and started to scrub at his own body. Most of the blood had run off in the water already, but Gellert thought he could still feel it, traces of it, clinging to his skin. “And if I did, that of course begs the question -- how do you know what my bedroom looks like? Been hiring people to spy on me while I sleep, have you?”
Gellert’s first question had Albus smiling, just the littlest bit; part of him wondered if Gellert would manage to figure it out on his own, to pick apart the effects-- though he supposed that likely would yield little, given the rather notable complication.
All too quickly, Albus regretting having said as much as he had, even if the regret was superficial. Gellert was already too well acquainted with what went on in his head. He had to wonder, though, what Gellert might make of the end of such a dream. It was a scene that had featured in his dreams, though always as an observer instead of a participant. As much as he didn’t care for Gellert to learn how much he knew, there was no real way to make secrets of the fact that they kept their respective eyes on one another, despite the space and history that divided them.
“Not while you sleep, no,” Albus said, honestly enough. “Not that you bother to sleep so very often.” Discussing something other than the dream felt a bit safer, even if there ought not be anything remotely safe about being naked, wounded, in a bath with Gellert. Still, Albus hardly wished to give the impression that he couldn’t bear to look at Gellert simply because he wasn’t wearing anything, so he declined the opportunity to avert his eyes.
“So what do you watch, then?” Gellert pressed, lathering up his chest and arms, letting the white foam trail off his skin to the floor of the tub and disappear down the drain. At least there was no more visible blood tinging the water pink. Gellert had always hated that part, watching evidence of a crime disappear down a sink. It felt so anticlimactic.
He ran his fingers through his hair, scrubbing the last bit of scarlet out of his curls. “Is your interest limited to the content of staff meetings and what kind of book I read over supper, or does your gaze follow me even as I dress, and bathe, and make love?” Well, fuck, really, but Gellert wanted to see if Albus reacted at all when he applied such a term to his encounters with other men besides Albus, as if there had been or could be something gentle and affectionate about such intercourse.