Viktor Krumlov (vityas) wrote in snitchers, @ 2017-09-30 19:04:00 |
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Entry tags: | char: kevin entwhistle, char: viktor krum |
Who: Kevin Entwhistle and Viktor Krum
Where: Viktor’s flat
What: After Kevin gets out of the hospital, he and Viktor discuss the recent Golden Dragon attack, Kevin’s Dementor attack, Daily Prophet article, and Witch Weekly as well as their respective lives. Kevin had a hell of a weekend.
When: Monday, September 25 (backdated)
Rating: Low
Status: Complete
Cold air stung Kevin's face when he leaned out the window to send the last message with Viktor's owl. He caught his reflection in the glass - pale and wan - and ran his fingers through his hair to tame it before striding across the office to pick up his bag. The entire floor was empty, lit only by a few lamps around his desk and the reflection of muggle city lights all around the building.
Kevin hadn't thought about going back home that night - or that morning. The thought of crawling into his bed, no matter how comfortable he'd made it, still scared him. He imagined waking up in his childhood home again, small and cold, backing himself into a corner while grown ups bossed him around and made him do things he didn't want to do. The thought made him ache, and panic; so it was either work, or his friend.
He stared at his wand, now in hand, and worried about what he was about to do. He hated Appariting - he hated the way it made his body feel like it was vaporizing into nothingness. And doing it this tired couldn't be good. Chances of splinching himself were high.
Still, he took a breath, and thought of the scrolls of paper he had neatly stored away in his bag. They didn't weigh anything at all, but holding them now, he could feel something. Warmth.
Closing his eyes, he focused, and in a blink he Apparated to Viktor's - no, Vitya's - given location, looking down at himself with laboured breath as he was surprised and relieved to find that he still owned all of his limbs.
Viktor was looking at his flat with different eyes. It was not the kind of place that anyone would expect a former international Quidditch star to live in, unless he had spent all of his money on drugs, but it was where he had ended up. The room was cramped but tidy. Much of the furniture in it had been bought from secondhand stores and it was all brightly-colored, contrasting with the peeling walls that some long-ago landlord had painted a urinal yellow and forgotten about. He had done small things to make it look less like a rathole--hung an icon he had bought at a marketplace, covered the tables with doilies that his grandmother had made. Tiny carved animals lined the main window in a circus parade--elephants and tigers and unicorns mixing with alley cats and the occasional hippogryff.
But like all decent wizarding flats, it had a fireplace. And for tonight, he had laid in a supply of logs that were piled up next to it. The fire was beginning to crackle and warm the chill of the room. Just in case it wasn't enough, a stack of old quilts teetered on the edge of the orange sofa.
Viktor was not sure about inviting the journalist in to see where he lived, now that he was examining his home with critical eyes. Kevin would think it childish at best and this was why he rarely let people into the flat. It was simply too difficult to explain how it was that he stayed in a place like this.
He sat down on the edge of the couch, his hands folded as he waited for the knock.
It took Kevin a moment longer to get over the fact that he was all in one piece, and when he did, he finally remembered to put one foot in front of the other and head for the exterior stairwell leading up to the row of doors above. He stopped outside of Viktor's, and ran his hands over the front of his coat after putting his wand away. He felt clammy, and he knew he didn't look good either. It was making him feel - well, shy.
When his knuckles made contact with the door, he stood back and waited, shouldering his bag and holding a thin arm loosely across his chest.
Viktor wished, as he stood, that he had some way to hide the braces that surrounded his legs. Metal and powered by some magic even he wasn't clear of, he thought that muggles might have done it differently. But they had done what they could in Sofia, leaving him able to walk, and for that at least, he was grateful now.
Still, the clanking of the braces and his heavy clomp could be heard outside as he walked.
He opened it with a smile, half-trying to hide the lower half of his body behind the door. "Come out of the cold."
Kevin really wished Viktor wasn't trying to hide. He avoided possible offense and awkwardness though by not pointing that out, even though he wanted to ask the older man more about it when he felt more comfortable.
So he met his gaze instead of looking down, and nodded, slipping past the threshold and into an apartment that looked small but comfortable. And certainly eclectic. It was brighter than its own, with all of its trinkets and colours, and Kevin found himself immediately warming to it even though he'd never really been a fan of anything kitsch. It reminded him of tradition, though, and he wanted to know more about Viktor's. Like his story.
"I probably smell like ink," he said, running a hand through his dark hair again.
Viktor smiled as he shut the door. "You have been working."
He was not sure why he had always tolerated Kevin when for so many years, he had hated reporters. Then again, Kevin had brought him business and Viktor was used to doing things that he hated. But this had blossomed into a friendship and he was glad of it.
"So this is my home," he clomped into the center of the room, giving up on hiding the braces. He gestured to each corner with a firm point, extending his arm broadly in each direction. "Kitchen is that way. The..." He tried to remember the word. "Laboratory is there. Bedroom to the right. This is all."
"I like it," Kevin said immediately, following Viktor's gestures intently, and smothering a grin at his little mistake.
"Lavatory," he corrected gently, pulling off his bag and carefully setting it down on the floor beside a chair. "But you can just call it 'the loo'. It's less formal."
Thin, cold fingers shook slightly as he worked open the buttons of his jacket, and he clenched and unclenched his fist a little when he was done.
Viktor visibly relaxed as Kevin said that he liked the flat. Then he noticed the slight shaking of the other man's fingers and frowned.
"You are cold. Come. Sit. I stoke the fire." He gestured to the sofa and the pile of quilts. "Take blankets." Braces rattling, he walked back over to the fireplace, picking up a poker and jabbing it at the flames. Viktor began stacking more wood on the fire, watching the embers and not Kevin as he spoke. "How is your day? This paper....it will bring attention, yes? You will have what you want?" He wasn't sure exactly what Kevin's goals were for his career but Viktor thought that the reporter might tell him.
Kevin put his jacket on the back of a chair, and pulled the sleeves of his brown sweater down over his knuckles as he circled the sofa and took a seat beside the multicoloured quilts that looked like they'd been made by sweet old women in a tiny Eastern European village.
"It was my first serious article," he admitted, dragging one of the blankets onto his lap, curling his fingers into the soft material. He frowned, and looked into the flames of the fire too, feeling their warmth radiated across his face. "I'm proud of it, and I feel that people have a right to know, but..." Could he really afford to be critical of the Ministry? And what did people think, of someone like him, a proverbial bottom feeder on the lower rungs of the reporting ladder, investigating something as serious as this?
"I'm overthinking it," he said, rubbing the skin under his eyes and leaning his elbows forward on his knees. "I'm just glad I was able to get something out."
"Better to overthink than not to think," Viktor said, jabbing at the fire one last time. "But what?"
He rested the poker against the fireplace neatly and stumbled over to the sofa. His hand braced the edge and he lowered himself down on the floor slowly, sitting a few inches from Kevin's feet so that he could look up at him. The fire was already starting to cast flickering shadows in the dimly lit room, throwing light on the other man's pale skin. Viktor marveled at how cold Kevin appeared to be, at the slight flush of warmth that was starting to creep back into his cheeks. Then he remembered that he needed to make something hot to drink and he braced his arm against the couch again so that he could rise.
Kevin shifted the blanket on his lap over his shoulders, and wrapped it around himself like someone who had just been pulled out of a cold lake.
"But am I qualified," he said quietly, frowning and still staring into the fire as it warmed him. When Viktor started to move again, he turned his head to look at him, and resisted the urge to touch his elbow. He did move a little closer, though. "I think being in hospital has rattled me."
It took Viktor a moment to rise, his arms straining from the effort of lifting not just his legs, but the metal that encased him. Not for the first time, he was glad of the strength years of sports had given him.
"Yes, that," he said, choosing for the moment not to answer Kevin's statement about being qualified. "Why were you in hospital?" He wanted to sit next to the other man but it was rude not to offer him something hot to drink when he was still so clearly chilled. He began to stumble again, this time toward the kitchen, and it was now clear as to the reason for the small pieces of furniture that littered the room. As he walked, Viktor used them as touchposts, resting his hand here and there on one to avoid using the crutches that leaned against a far wall.
Kevin watched Viktor as he moved, some wavy dark hair peeking out from the blanket he'd pulled up over his head.
"I was in Diagon Alley on Wednesday night," he said, wondering if Viktor had picked up on the other article on this morning's edition of the Prophet. "Picking up dinner so I could work late... again." It was becoming a trend. "And I got caught up in everything that happened at the Golden Dragon." He closed his eyes for a second - he'd been so traumatized by his nightmare the next day that anything he'd witnessed during the attack had faded into the back of his mind. Now, he could see it a bit more clearly.
Now in the kitchen, Viktor halted when he heard the words. The samovar sloshed as his hand bumped it, water splashing down on his fingers.
"I did not know," he said, his words quiet. He stayed where he was, not sure of how to move back to Kevin without making an awkward scene or turning the moment away from the other man. His hands started to move again as his gaze remained still, busying himself with tea as if giving Kevin that was tantamount to offering the sympathy that he felt inside his heart.
"I didn't get hurt badly," Kevin said after a pregnant pause. "A few scrapes. A slash on my right side. I lost some blood but it was nothing compared to what happened to others." He shivered a little, and tightened the blanket more firmly around himself.
"I didn't fight back," he muttered, pressing his nose against the edge of his shoulder.
Viktor left the samovar then, making his way back slowly until he found the sofa. He took a seat next to Kevin and reached out, resting his hand against the other man's shoulder in a comforting gesture.
"Tell me," was all he said.
Kevin took a breath, and kept his nose pressed against the soft fabric of the blanket, all while trying not to burrow himself any further into it. Because from this angle, he could see the little callouses on Viktor's hands, the points of his knuckles and the slope of his thumb. He could feel how warm his palm was, even through the layers of wool and cotton between it and his own skin.
"I just played dead," he said, staring. "I didn't know what else to do. There was blood... everywhere. People were screaming, and - it was relentless. I didn't want to die, and I just pretended that I already was."
Viktor wondered, not for the first time, at this strange British character, at a people that would feel such pressure to put the good of others before their own survival. Kevin, he could see, suffered from it though he suspected the other man would have denied it if asked. But here he was, his eyes glazed as he looked into the fire. Viktor could feel the fragile shudder of Kevin's skin underneath his hand, that slight catch of breath when he said I played dead.
He let the words hang in the air for a moment, wishing that the other man spoke Bulgarian as he carefully chose his own.
"There is no shame in wanting your life," Viktor said. He stopped then, unsure of his own language. Gently, he reached for a small blanket tucked in between the quilts. It was threadbare yarn, nubs of it unraveling with frayed ends that were dirty and greyed with age. He tucked it around Kevin, a little clumsily, trying to take more of the cold away from him but knowing that he could not.
"That morning I reached out to people - I wrote something, that I'd had a nightmare. It was a lie, to find out from others what was going on. To find out more about the Dementor theory," Kevin said, the words coming out of him in a rush and his head lifting from his shoulder. He let the other man fuss over him, moving this way and that, whichever way he wanted him to move. Anything that would keep those hands touching him.
"But it did happen to me, The night I stayed in hospital. And I couldn't help but think I was being punished for lying about it. Or for playing dead," he whispered, letting the blanket around his head fall away to his shoulders, sending his dark hair everywhere.
"My nightmare was about my mother. She died of illness when I was a kid and I had always been afraid of her. Not just of what was happening to her, but of her. How she looked, how she sounded. How she would look at me. It terrified me. And I did nothing to help her, if I could. I hid from her. And I hid from everyone that night, too."
"There are lies and then there are lies," Viktor said. Again, he was a little perplexed by some of the things that Kevin was saying. His own life had been filled with one lie after another and when he had been told the truth, it was more often to wound than not. "You did not do this to hurt. Now people will know what has happened. Now they can protect themselves from monster."
But the things that Kevin had said about his mother were not so easy to answer and he found himself quiet again after he had finished fussing with the blanket. That, after all, could only take so much time, however concerned Viktor felt about the man who had just witnessed hours of tragedy.
After a time, he said, "You were child. They should have seen this."
Kevin ran a hand over his face.
"When you're all someone has, sometimes it's hard for them to remember how vulnerable you can be," he said.
Viktor's throat constricted when he heard that. And he said nothing, unable to explain how he felt to hear that said. He wondered if it had been true of his own parents, though they had not been dying, and he longed to believe that it had been. But he also knew that for the Krumlovs, it was not. He had never truly been a person to them despite a life of trying to mold himself into one.
He looked at Kevin, still saying nothing. How long had the other man lived with those burdens? He wondered if the writer had ever given himself voice.
Kevin leaned forward with his elbows on his knees again, and pressed both hands flat to his face.
"I'm sorry," he mumbled into his palms, before he sat back up again and pushed them back into his hair. taking a deep breath. "I came here for tea and a chat, not to totally depress you." He looked at Viktor sheepishly, taking stock of his silence.
"I'm feeling warmer already," he said, offering him a tiny smile.
That tiny smile warmed Viktor and he leaned forward slightly.
"No. No apologies tonight. Tonight we say what we want, yes? We will talk until morning comes," His eyes searched for Kevin's, losing themselves in the blue for a moment before he dropped his gaze. "What you say...it make me think of home. That is all."
He stood, again rising. This time, he felt a little unsteady. "Let me get tea."
When Viktor leaned in, heat suddenly bloomed over the back of Kevin's neck, wrapping over both cheeks like a pair of hands holding him. He blinked in surprise of it, and he swallowed against the swooping sensation that took over his insides.
It was gone quickly, in a blink, when Viktor stood, and Kevin leaned back a little as if he'd just been dealt a blow to the chest.
"I like tea," he agreed faintly, twisting around to watch him return to the kitchen. "And I like talking. It's been a long time since I did that with someone until dawn," he added with a coy curl of his mouth.
"I do not normally talk till dawn," Viktor agreed, oblivious to Kevin's look as he reached into cabinets and cupboards to find a pair of colorful cups. He set them down and began about the business of preparing the tea. "Most times, sex. But I do not bring people here for that." He shrugged offhandedly. There was no point in hiding past history, Viktor believed. It had all been splashed across one paper or another.
He smiled as he poured black tea into cups. "I do not bring people here at all. You are one of only."
Clomping back over, he offered Kevin a cup, then wiggled himself back in the corner of the sofa with his own. His legs were starting to ache and he thought for a moment of unbuckling the braces but decided that could wait. "How old you were when mother die?"
"Seven," Kevin said, the blush lingering at Viktor's offhand comment about his past. He knew about it, of course, but mentioning it now made something inside of him shift. It irritated him in a way that he didn't really want to pay attention to, and he was embarrassed at the thought of Viktor finding out he was thinking about it.
He looked down at his lap, unable to wrap his mind around the fact that he was the only visitor to this tiny, charming apartment. It felt like a fragile gift that he was terrified of breaking.
"So... I was young," he added quietly. "I didn't really understand what was happening to her. I found it hard to love her because all she seemed to do was cause pain."
Viktor smiled a little at the blush on Kevin's face. He knew that the man was open about such things in the journals and he found it amusing that in person, Kevin was shyer than he had thought. He recollected past nights drinking with the man and tried to think of whether or not the subject had come up but before he could spend too much time on the question, Kevin had answered his.
"She did not mean that. I think...she would not want you to be sad for this. This feeling that you have about how it was." Viktor frowned, knowing that he was not speaking his heart correctly. "We do not have to talk for this if you do not want. But it is good to know you." His hands wrapped around the tea cup, thumbnail tracing the painted lines on it, red and gold and orange.
"I know that what I felt back then was wrong," Kevin said. He didn't want Viktor to think that he still believed his mother was being selfish for hanging on, for being sick and trying to reach out to him. If anything, Kevin blamed himself for not doing more for her, for hiding from her when she only had precious moments left.
He took a breath at that thought, and dropped his head.
"I wanted it all to be over," he whispered. "I wanted her to die."
"I am sorry for this." Again, it was a feeling that Viktor knew and yet, not in the same ways that Kevin expressed. It was hard for him, to see the dark head bowed in grief and yet, to have nothing to offer that could make up for the pain that he could see in every breath that Kevin was taking.
He reached out and took the cup from Kevin's hands, noticing again how cold his fingers were. Gently setting it down on a table, Viktor touched Kevin's chin just for a second to tilt his head up before pulling his hand away. He knew that some men were angered by being touched and while he didn't think Kevin was one, he didn't want to risk it. "We all feel wrong things. But you were child. You could not help this. You must try to let this go."
He watched Kevin's eyes, as always, interested in what they revealed.
The weight that had pounded Kevin's ribcage earlier returned quickly as soon as Viktor's fingers brushed his own, but when he felt him graze the point of his chin and tilt it upward, it felt even heavier.
He blushed again, and let out a slow breath when the touch disappeared - equally grateful it was gone (too distracting), and mournful for its brevity and loss.
"What sorts of wrong things do you feel?" he asked the older man, hoping he would share something.
To his great surprise, Viktor's ears burned instantly at that question. Startled, his hand went up, feeling the heat of one and dropped back down as he realized that they were reddening.
"Ah," he said, for once caught without his usual blunt answers. But his mind was swift and he looked down at his legs. Leaning down to the left, he began to quietly unbuckle one of the braces, his fingers nimble as they opened the brace, then went to the next. It was a thing that he could have done with a wand but Viktor wanted the time to recover from his own gut reaction. His legs flopped out. Although he was wearing sweatpants, now that the braces were removed, he could not hide the fact that they were weak and shriveled, a complete contrast to the muscled strength of his arms. But Viktor himself had announced that night that they would talk and although he knew that he was taking a risk in opening himself to a stranger, it felt a betrayal of Kevin not to share his own secrets. After all, they had always traded information. Just not their own.
"This," he gestured. "This was a good thing. This, I feel. And it is wrong."
The weight in Kevin's chest spun into an intense kind of hopelessness as he watched the older man stumble, which was so unusual for him. Hopelessness, and hopefulness, even though he'd spent a lot of time trying to convince himself he'd been chasing after something he could never have.
When Viktor cupped his ear, he smothered a smile, but it soon left him anyway when the older man stayed quiet for longer, working open the braces and allowing himself to be more comfortable.
Wrong, he repeated in his head, his shoulders dropping a little. "What do you feel?" he asked, backtracking to that instead.
"My legs," Viktor said. "I am glad this happened."
He rested back against the sofa, sighing in relief at the release of the braces. They enabled him to walk but that pain made every step like dancing on knives. The pain was ebbing now, there but not at the forefront. It felt like waves receding from a distant shore.
He studied his knees as his hand reached down, kneading skin. "I did not want to play Quidditch any more. I know it is what I was good for. But I hate it. I hate crowds, I hate noise, I hate people in face asking what I eat, what I like, what I fuck, blah blah blah, and I am never enough for that. Not for them, not for no one." The movement grew more intense, the lines in his face drawn. "But it is all I am good for. My family, they say this. My team, they say this. It is important for pride of country, for support of family. It is why I am borned."
Kevin frowned as he listened to Viktor, and instead of hesitating, he reached out and put a hand on his forearm, close to his leg. He was scared to touch him there because he didn't want to hurt him, but he wanted him to know that he wasn't afraid to see him this way.
"Do you really believe that though?" he asked the older man softly, keeping his fingers wrapped around Viktor's arm.
Guilt clouded over his head too, because he had been one of the people, earlier on, to ask Viktor about what he ate, what he liked, and who he fucked. He felt dirty.
"Yes," he said with a shrug. "But I try to be more. Here."
"I'm sorry I asked you trivial, stupid questions that you didn't want to answer. That you never should have," Kevin blurted, still holding Viktor's arm, imaging that he could feel blood pumping through his veins, moving around a body that was betraying the older man, but that Kevin still found strong even in its imperfections.
"For what it's worth, I think you're worth so much more than that."
"It does not matter." Viktor said. He thought of that afternoon's Witch Weekly, of the things that it had said about Kevin and also the things that it had said about himself. "I have fallen off edge of world."
Those days. He'd believed them over and that was one reason that it stung so badly. The papers were not going to let him go, he saw that now, but neither would he be allowed any sort of triumph. He was crippled and he was washed out but it seemed, not forgotten. He considered this for a time, thinking about not only that but also the fact that Kevin had gone from Myron Wagtail to visiting him. Perhaps this friendship was not all that it seemed. But then Viktor reminded himself of the way that Kevin had spoken of his mother and how he had curled himself up from the cold when he spoke about the Dementor attack. The man might be sleeping with Wagtail but Viktor did not think he found comfort in it.
You lose nothing by offering him your ear. he reminded himself. But it didn't feel true, not entirely. He had already spoken too much though it was nothing other friends did not know. But there were few who he allowed inside that circle and fewer still who were free.
"I wish I could fall off of the edge of the world," Kevin said quietly, after what felt like a very long pause. He was staring into the fire again, his nose slightly pink and his hair all messed up.
He was thinking of today's article, too, of the shame and mortification he felt when he read it, thinking of the hands it would get into. And these hands, strong hands that had wrapped him up in soft blankets passed down from generations.
"It is bad," he agreed. "But they know not your heart. That is what I tell myself." The words were soft and a little sad, remembering as he did all of the boundaries that newspapers had placed around his friendships. And, he thought, that they continued to place.
Kevin looked at Viktor, and his gaze fell to his chest. He wanted to know what was in there - his heart. What did it want? And who did he share it with?
He leaned back a little, into his cocoon of blankets, his shoulder pressed just slightly against the older man's.
"Myron Wagtail hasn't 'stolen my heart'," he muttered, holding his fingers up and wriggling them in the air. "Now I know what it feels like to be written about without any say or being able to defend myself. It's horrible." He glanced at Viktor again. "I'm sorry if I ever made you feel like this."
"Ah." Viktor said. "No. You did not. No more than any one person did." He gave Kevin another shrug. "You see, it is like this as long as I know. I do not take it personal. But there was no personal to take." He frowned, knowing that he hadn't expressed what he meant earlier.
He tilted himself a little, though his legs did not follow, so that he could look at the other man a little better. "I do not mean heart like love. I mean like self. The one that you do not let others see." His frown deepened. "Maybe this is not English thing to do." He wondered now why Kevin felt a need to defend himself. "Is it so bad people believe you to be with this man? He is famous. Maybe why you are sitting here, I do not know." The last was said with a slight stubborn emphasis.
Colour flooded Kevin's cheeks, and his eyes quickly searched the other man's face.
"What's that supposed to mean?" he asked him, hesitant and hurt.
Viktor said nothing. He himself felt a little bewildered at the words that had come from his mouth. Using and being used, these things were not strange to him. But when he had paged through that article, a strange prickly feeling had taken hold. And with it, something rarer. Hurt.
He didn't want to lie to Kevin but he also didn't quite know what the truth was.
"What you do not understand?" Viktor asked finally.
Kevin let out a little breath when he couldn't find the words - because explaining this wrong and getting the wrong impression made him feel really fucking raw. He felt guilty even though he was determined that Viktor wasn't understanding his motives correctly. He wasn't here to use him. He wasn't here because he was famous, or because he wanted something from him.
Maybe that last bit was wrong. But Kevin knew it was different too - and he didn't know how to explain that to Viktor without making a fool of himself or giving him more fuel for this fire.
"Why do you think I'm here?" he finally asked him, his voice small.
"I think that I know but I am afraid I am wrong," Viktor said, deciding to be honest. "And I decide that I do not want to know if this is so. You are here. This is enough."
He had been vulnerable enough already. Forgetting that his braces were removed, he tried to stand. His left leg buckled, sliding out from under him. Quidditch reflexes kicked in, however, and Viktor grabbed the arm of the sofa in time. Flushed, sweating, and more embarrassed, he grabbed the first brace from the floor and impatiently flicked his wand at that, then the other. The sound of the buckles and straps fastening all at once was enough to make speaking an impossibility.
He was glad of it.
"I get more tea. And we talk of something else. Is foolish to let paper trouble our minds." He picked up the cups, hoping that Kevin would not follow. When he reached the kitchen, he hesitated, looking down at the cup from which the other man had sipped. His finger touched the rim that Kevin's lips had brushed, thinking.
Kevin leaned forward again and rubbed his face with his hands, trying to resist the urge to get his things and leave - to hide.
It wasn't going to solve anything, though. He knew that the only thing it could do was to prove Viktor's assumptions right. Maybe. And he didn't want to risk that.
He curled up into the corner of the couch, pressing his nose into the blankets swathed around him and breathing in. He was ashamed to admit that it was a scent he wanted all over him until it erased his own.
It took Viktor a moment more to make the tea and to cool his anxiety through work. When he walked back in, he saw Kevin burrowed into the side of the couch, dark hair sticking out at odd ends. His hand shook a little as he walked, splashing hot tea on his thumb and the heat was enough to jolt a few more sentences from him.
"Bah. I am jealous. I think of this and say things that no make sense. Ruin friendship so hard to have." He slammed the tea down hard enough that it sloshed on the table, drenching the doily beneath. Viktor did not sit, frustrated at himself, both for driving a stake between them and for admitting his fault.
He walked over to the window where the figurines were lined up. Viktor looked out the glass at the clear, cold sky and the moon overhead and folded his arms tightly around his chest.
"I do not want you to go." His jaw set stubbornly. "I am afraid to bring you here. Not of paper, not really. I am afraid to let you see. You think of me as I am and you say, he is not such a good guy, he is wash out, he is boring, child, blah blah blah. Yes, yes." He took a deep breath, his ears now red as he rubbed his eyes. "Now. I give to you my heart. Can we talk some other thing? Please."
He picked up a small carved fox, running his fingers across the tip of the ear. Viktor hefted it in his hand, with every intention of throwing it at Kevin if he did not take the advice.
Talking to Viktor sometimes was like a puzzle - not only because of the language and cultural barriers but because sometimes Kevin frankly just didn't understand him. He jumped a little when the mug was bashed unceremoniously down onto the table, and he poked his head out, feeling his heart thrumming in his throat.
Jealous. Viktor was jealous.
Kevin pulled the blankets away, feeling warmer than ever, and touched one of his heated cheeks with the palm of a hand.
He opened his mouth to tell the older man that he didn't think he was a washout and he certainly didn't think he was boring or a child, but he closed it quickly when he noticed how straight the line of the older man's back was. He didn't want to argue.
I'll give you my heart, he thought instead. As loudly as he could.
"Where are those from?" he asked him, getting up to join Viktor by the window.
Viktor released his grasp on the fox, setting it back on the windowsill. He looked over at Kevin, slowly finding a smile.
"Plovdiv," he said. He nudged a horse and it lifted it's head and tried to whinny. It came out more like a bark and Viktor chuckled. "Grandfather make that one. Is getting old. He make some, I make other."
He leaned back into the window, tension still apparent in the muscles of his arms. He couldn't quantify what he'd said only a few moments before and Kevin's kindness in the face of his outburst startled him. "Do you have family still here?" He asked the question just quietly enough that the other man could make the choice whether or not to answer.
"In Scotland," Kevin said, comfortable to open up about it. "Not quite far north as Hogwarts, but north enough," he added with a little smile, warmth filling him further in the aftermath of Viktor opening up to him too.
He crouched down, his hands against the edge of the windowsill so that he was at eye-level with the row of animals and he could look at them more closely. Fingers wrestled with his hair, pushing it back to keep it falling over and over again into his eyes.
"Just my dad," he added, soft again. "He's a retired, grumpy, difficult old man."
"You made some of these?" he asked in awe, almost too scared to touch them.
The figurines that Kevin was looking at varied in size and shape and skill. The crudest ones were little more than blocks with sanded edges while others were so delicately carved in places that they were as thin as paper. It was a whole menagerie of animals, some of them magical, others mundane, and still more entirely constructed of imagination. A few of them occasionally stirred, hints of old magic responding to Kevin's nearness.
"Some," Viktor said, feeling a little shy about it now. He wondered whether Kevin doubted that he had a mind suited to such things. "My grandfather, he teach me. And then when I am older, I go to get wand and Gregorovitch, he show me how he do this."
He smiled a little, his cheek pressing against the glass as he watched a walrus waddle up toward Kevin. "It is the wood, you see. Not just what is inside. Best wandmaker put himself in each wand." Viktor sighed deeply. "My boss...he do not do this. He want everything now and cheap and do not understand it is art."
Kevin grinned as some of the figurines moved, and when the walrus shuffled towards him he gasped a little. Ten years in this world, and things still shocked and awed him.
Carefully, he pointed his finger out, and wondered if it acted like a real animal. He had no idea how walruses were supposed to act, but his instinct was to treat it like a kitten.
"I think it's really beautiful," he said. "All of these. And wandmaking, too. You're right, it's a craft. An art. And it's so personal, too."
The walrus poked Kevin cautiously with its tusks, wheezed, then fell over. It stiffened a little, the magic stopped.
"They are old. Magic is dying," Viktor grinned at Kevin. "It do not help that when I was a boy, I make them fight."
Tilting his head, he said, "Do you...have this here?"
Kevin's eyebrows shot up when the walrus wheezed then... seemed to die, and his expression was sheepish as he looked back up at Viktor standing against the window.
"Toy animals?" he asked the older man. "Of course. But I'm muggleborn, so none of my toys were magic. But my favourite thing to do when I was little was colour-in and write stories."
"You are Muggle?" Viktor inched a little closer to Kevin. He knew muggleborns, of course--they were often the most enthusiastic about his former sport. But it hadn't crossed his mind that Kevin himself might be.
Kevin smiled, and nodded, and finally stood up from his crouched position in front of the windowsill so they were at more of a level. He pulled his sleeves over his knuckles for something to do with his hands, and ducked his head a little as he gazed out of the window to the side of him.
"I am," he said. "So I didn't really know magic existed until I got my Hogwarts letter. And even then I thought I was uh - going mad," he admitted with a tiny wince. "All of the little things I could do... I almost thought it was all in my head. Because of everything else happening to me at the time."
Viktor realized that Kevin must have been speaking of his family and he decided not to poke that wound. He was curious, however, about what it would be like to be a muggle coming into a world like theirs. "Hogwarts gives muggles letter. Is interesting." There were a great many differences between Hogwarts and Durmstrang, he recalled, not the least of them the fact that the British school accepted muggleborns. "How do you get it? Your father. Does he know these things you do?"
His eyes were bright as he leaned forward, the darkness of the brown lightening just slightly with curiosity. He also wondered at the rest of Kevin's life. Viktor was not foolish enough to think that life would be entirely easy for a muggleborn wizard in the current political atmosphere. It certainly never had been before.
"It came in through our letterbox," Kevin said, which almost sounded unusual now because being deeply entrenched in the Wizarding world as he was, he was used to recieving owl post through windows or having it drop straight onto his desk. The mice memos though... he'd never get used to those.
"And yes, my dad - he knows. I think he still finds it unusual," Kevin admitted, leaning back against the wall by the window and letting the crown of his head rest back against it as he closed his eyes for a moment.
"He doesn't talk about it much. We don't see each other very often."
"I do not see father either," Viktor said. "As little as possible." He picked up the small fox carving again, cradling it in his hand. It was the one his grandfather had given him when he went to school. He'd managed to keep it hidden somehow through those hellish years.
He thought about asking Kevin more questions for his curiosity was insatiable this night. There was still that delicate tension between them, however, and every so often, when he caught a glimpse of the shadows in Kevin's face, he didn't want to deepen them.
Why Wagtail? Viktor puzzled silently as the thought came unbidden to his mind. He knew the answer was obvious--Wagtail was clever, attractive, and whole. It made perfect sense, even if Viktor didn't quite like thinking about it. He wondered why it nagged his thoughts so.
His thumb stroked the tail of the fox, calming himself just like he had then when he was first at school, hiding in a cabinet, too afraid to suck his thumb or make a noise. Afraid that he would be found and punished for his fear. Punished worse if he dared to show that he could feel at all.
But at least in the wizarding world, there were healers who could hide the scars.
Realizing that he was brooding, Viktor said quietly, "I am sorry. Was thinking about fear. The Dementors--they teach you this at Hogwarts?"
Kevin cracked his eyes open and looked across at Viktor. The light of the moon illuminated his face, highlighting his soulful eyes. There was that chest pain again.
"It was complicated," he said with a ghost of a smile as memories filtered into his tired mind. "Azkaban sent them to guard the school during darker times. It was - frightening." He'd never seen anything so closely resembled to a nightmarish monster.
He shivered a little, and tucked an arm across his waist, the sleeves of his jumper still hanging over his knuckles.
Viktor fumbled with the figure again. It was hard to look into those deep blue eyes and turn away. But it was growing late and the moon was casting deep.shadows and so, he did not.
"There are no Dementors here," he said. His voice was fierce as if he intended to take on each one of them himself. "And we have Patronus. Now we know, we can stop this if it happen."
The tightness in Kevin's chest didn't waver. He didn't know whether to attribute it to fear, or to the unspoken protection in Viktor's tone and the way that he looked at him.
"I've never been able to cast a Patronus," he admitted, worried. His arm tightened a little across his chest, but exhaustion stopped him from holding himself more tightly. "I shouldn't put you in danger," he added faintly, glancing at the door.
"If you can not cast Patronus, I am not one in danger," Viktor said. It was his legacy from Durmstrang - though Viktor struggled with some of the trivial charms, he knew the magic that came from darkness very well.
He, too, glanced at the door, afraid for his friend.
"Stay." He almost added "please" but stopped himself shy of it. "I have bed. Sofa. What ever you need."
Kevin tried not to look as relieved as he felt at the offer, even though he still worried that he would invite something unwanted into Viktor's home.
"I'll take your sofa," he said shyly, looking back at him and not voicing that he kind of wanted to lay next to the older man. "You should sleep in your bed."
"Besides," he added with a tiny grin. "I'm only small."
"I do not need bed," he assured Kevin. A grin crept on his face at the comment about size. They were not much different in height but the combination of leg braces and muscles made Viktor seem much taller. It was not the first time someone had commented on it.
Then he remembered that Kevin might have other reasons for preferring the sofa and his ears reddened at the tips.
"You sleep where you want. I have thing to do so it is no problem." He said, hoping that would smoothe over any difficulty with the sleeping arrangements. He himself planned to switch out the tea for coffee and spend the night reading.
Things to do, Kevin thought, wondering what. He chewed at the inside of his lip and nodded. "Thank you," he said softly, after a second of just looking at the other man. "For letting me cover over here. For talking. For being kind," he murmured, glancing down at himself. He'd be warm as he was, he decided, and he wasn't going to take any clothes off to sleep. He'd done enough to make Viktor feel awkward for one night. Or, rather, early morning.
"Will you talk to me until I fall asleep?" he asked him, looking up again.
"No thanks," Viktor replied, then laughed. "You do not need to thank, is what I mean to say."
He looked at Kevin and smiled. "I will talk till then. Put you to sleep." Quietly, he stood and walked over to a wall, murmuring a charm. The wall slid open to reveal stacks and stacks of books. Selecting one, he folded it under his arm like a mother hen protecting a chick, then closed the wall again. It would give him something to do when Kevin fell asleep.
He stood there, waiting to see where the other man would choose to go.
Kevin had been brought up to learn that he shouldn't put anyone out, even when they asked, and although he was staying he still chose the sofa. That way, if Viktor did decide to go to bed, he'd have somewhere to go.
He walked over to it, running fingers through his hair, and sat down at the edge to pick open the laces of his boots. As far as disrobing went, that's about as far as he was going to go.
"What are you reading?" he asked the older man curiously as he sat back up.
Seeing that Kevin was choosing the sofa, he tugged a pillow from it and slowly lowered himself down to the floor. Resting the book next to himself so that the Bulgarian lettering could clearly be seen, he began tugging at his own boots.
"Is book about country, from country. Bulgaria," he clarified with a little yawn. "About factors that lead to...how do you say..." The man scratched the back of his neck, trying to recall the word. "Is word for what happens after revolution?" He scrunched his nose a bit. "I mean what happen there. All revolutions are different, yes?"
Kevin settled back after he rearranged the blankets to cover himself, and turned onto his side, their heads on the same end. He tucked his chin over the edge of the blanket, silently praying a chill wouldn't settle over him the more tired he became.
"Very different," Kevin agreed. One downside of going to Hogwarts instead of secondary school was the lack of education in world history beyond what happened in the wizarding world. Muggle studies just hadn't cut it.
He smiled. "Do you enjoy reading, then?"
"Yes," Viktor beamed. Without even thinking about it, he picked up the book and set it in his lap again, petting it as if it was a cat. "English is hard but this is much easier." He waved it in a gesture. "This is why I start letters. Hermione and I write to improve English so I can read books she love." There was a fond look on his face as he remembered her constant recaps of Hogwarts: A History. Words, and those who loved or created them, had always been irresistible to him.
"I do not always read politic books. But I want to understand how it is England not the same," he added.
Kevin felt a blush creep onto his cheeks at the mention of Hermione. He remembered fourth year, the ball, and how close they seemed even though he always assumed she had something going on with Potter. He wondered how often Viktor thought about her, and he tried to not only quash the jealously he felt, but the little voice in his head that was telling him he was an idiot for being interested in a straight man.
Jealous, though - Viktor said he was jealous. And that had thrown him in a loop so hard that it left his head spinning.
Self doubt and self hatred were powerful things, though, and he couldn't help the little frown that drew his dark eyebrows down.
"Do you prefer to read factual books? Or fiction?" he asked him curiously, trying to divert his thoughts - because reading was something he too loved and at least he could maybe offer something and steer his mind away from dangerous areas.
"Fiction," Viktor confessed. "My father... he did not like it. He did not like me to read much at all. The factual, I could say to him it was for school. But fiction, this was harder to do."
He tapped the book. "But this takes all of my mind. It will be harder to sleep because I will think about it. Fiction, is easy to fall into dream about the people or places. Not so much fiction in my country. Is not same as here. Was hard to get book sometime. We did not have same ways of shopping or so many choices." He still sometimes struggled with shopping because of it. In some ways, Viktor appreciated that about wand making. You did not choose the wand--it chose you, and in that regard, it had some resonance with his own upbringing.
Kevin nodded, and propped his head up on his hand as he rested his elbow on the sofa. He curled the blankets a bit more toward himself, and suppressed a yawn.
"I like fiction too," he admitted shyly. "I probably read too much." He toyed with his next words, not sure if he should admit them. He never really spoke about this particular hobby with anyone, because whenever he did it was usually met with probing questions that made him feel too raw. But something told him that he wouldn't mind if Viktor wanted to ask anything.
"I like to write, too. Outside of the paper," he explained. "My own... er. Fiction."
"No such thing as reading too much." Idly, Viktor wondered what Kevin looked like when he read, if his face was expressive or if he remained still when he was turning pages. But the next comment intrigued him more.
"I did not know that you write this," he hesitated, not sure whether he should question. What he wanted to ask was if he could see it but he decided it was safest not to. He'd known other writers--was, in fact, easily infatuated with them--and it could be dangerous to ask them about their work. Not half because he often found that it was awful.
Somehow, he didn't believe that would be the case with Kevin. Whatever he thought about gossip rags--and he didn't think much of them --he saw a glimmer of promise in the other man's quick wit. He wanted to see more.
"Do you like fiction best?" Viktor settled. It was the safest question, he thought, to ask.
Kevin was relieved that Viktor didn't ask the predictable questions - what was he working on now? What ideas did he have? Because he could never pin that down with an exact, precise reply. And he could never express it without sounding messy, indecisive - or worse, unimaginative. Derivative.
He nodded. "I like fiction best," he repeated with a fond little smile, shifting more onto his side so he could see Viktor's face more clearly.
"Muggles write great fiction," he admitted. "Historic, political, science fiction, and fantasy... essentially imagining worlds that were or could be. It's kind of hilarious how much they've gotten right about some aspects of magic and myth. Whether it was through experience or imagination - who knows."
"I do not know much about muggle writing. Maybe it is better because they do not have our abilities. Is easy to get lazy with magic," Viktor said. Propping himself on his arms, he leaned back on them. "Most of wizard fiction I have read, it is about real problems. They do not make up other worlds."
He contemplated. "Muggles, they have these 'aliens,' yes? Do you believe in this? Life from out past the moon?" It was a concept that fascinated Viktor. When he was a child, before he had had much experience with muggles or muggleborn people, he had liked to imagine himself living on a star somewhere in the cold and distant darkness. It would have been warmer than the life he had lived with his parents.
Kevin smothered a grin at Viktor's bluntness. Somewhere in his grave, JRR Tolkien was rolling.
"I don't know," Kevin admitted. "I mean, they say the universe is pretty much infinite - according to muggle science, anyway." And who knew who was right. There was so much that everyone didn't know - muggle or wizard. "So it makes sense that there's something else out there. I think it would be kind of sad to be all alone in a huge universe."
"It is." Viktor's voice betrayed his memories as he glanced down, quietly amending it to, "It would, yes."
Kevin frowned as he looked down at the back of Viktor's bent head. He had the sudden urge to slip down behind him and wrap his shoulders in a hug that way, but he wasn't sure how welcome it would be.
He did move, though - slipping down off of the couch to settle down on the floor beside Viktor, pulling all of his blankets with him and draping them over both of their laps.
He wanted to tell Viktor that it didn't have to be lonely.
Viktor looked up, startled, as the other man sat down next to him.
Part of him wanted to lean into Kevin, to see if their bodies would be warm together. It had been a long month and the days were still unfolding. He felt every day as if he was losing more of the people he cared for, not all at once but piece by piece. First, the Ministry had come and taken Gabrielle and Hermione. And now, he worried, it could threaten Kevin too, not only because the journalist had exposed the Dementors, but because he had concerns about the government's ability to regulate the creatures themselves. Lestrange was making a career out of fixing the problems that others had made.
He didn't know what to do as he thought of all of these things and as he kept looking at the other man's face. If he reached out, how long before the hand that he touched would disappear?
And he remembered then the article in the Weekly and his hand balled up. He dug his nails into his palms and looked away so that he would not be tempted.
"Floor is hard," he said. "You take sofa. I do not mind."
That stubborn glance away and dismissive remark frustrated Kevin, and the tightness in his chest returned to weigh down his shoulders.
But he wasn't going to let it push him away just yet.
"I don't mind the floor," he said - and if Viktor thought he was the only stubborn one here, then he was about to meet his match. "Besides, its cold up there and more warm down here." He shuffled in a little closer, until their shoulders were touching, and he held his breath.
The skin on the back of Viktor's neck prickled as he felt the slight bump of Kevin's shoulder on his. He stilled, not certain of what to do.
He swallowed, feeling a rush of heat that extended from shoulder to cheek, and knew that he looked obviously flushed. He had practised stoicism over the years, used to constant pressure on the field and off it. But it was late and he was tired and a hundred conflicting emotions were warring inside his head and in his blood.
If Kevin had been a woman, Viktor would have thought, perhaps, that this was an attempt at a seduction. But that didn't quite seem to fit to him, although he couldn't say why. Perhaps it was knowing that Kevin was seeing other men--men who still had the health and the vitality that Viktor secretly felt he had lost. Rough around the edges. It was a kinder way of saying washed out.
He stumbled up to his feet because he didn't actually want to know how Kevin felt.
"Up to you," he said, recovering himself. "But I will stoke fire and add wood so that we do not get colder. You sleep. I will watch house so that Dementors will not catch your dreams." He turned his back and walked over to the fireplace again, exhaustion making his movements slow.
Kevin felt his stomach drop when Viktor got up, and embarrassment flared his cheeks red. He watched his retreating back, and curled his knees up to his chest, wrapping his arms around them.
"Will you teach me how to cast a Patronis?" he asked him after what felt like an age, his voice faint like he was recovering from a punch to the abdomen. "Not tonight," he added hastily, rubbing his eyes. "But one day?"
He looked back at the couch, and crawled back onto it, laying on his side and burrowing his face into the blankets for a moment to hide his blush.
"I show you anything you want," Viktor said. "One day. But yes, not now. We are not ready for this. It is late."
The flames sparked a little, responding to the turmoil of feelings in Viktor's chest. It felt heavy, rather than light. He turned back, his hand bracing his tired body with the wall.
"Kevin?" He spoke Kevin's name with a thick accent but hesitantly, as if he was stepping out on an icy street and afraid to go further.
Kevin lifted his face from the blankets, still looking flushed and slightly rumpled.
"Yes?" he asked, his voice small.
"This will not be the last time, yes?" The question hovered as Viktor leaned into the wall, just tired enough to admit that he was afraid of losing this friendship. Whatever kind it was.
Kevin swallowed a little, and shook his head. "There won't be a last time," he said, bravely, but not leaving room for doubt or argument.
"Good," Viktor said, his expression relaxing into a tired smile. He scratched the nape of his neck, his leg braces clanking as he walked over to a chair. Dragging it next to the couch, he sat down, resting his cheek on the back of the chair so that he could look at Kevin.
Kevin's eyes were heavy, but it didn't stop them from meeting Viktor's gaze and holding it when he settled down more against the pillows. He stayed like that for at least a minute, before the heaviness became too much and he was soon consumed by sleep.
Viktor watched as Kevin's eyes drooped. He waited until they closed completely, then murmured, "I hope that is so."
He picked up his book, opened it, but the words all blurred into one. He had much to think about.