Who: Albus Dumbledore and Gellert Grindelwald When: Sunday, nine in the morning Where: The clothing store What: Albus comes in to get measured for a new set of clothes. Rating: PG Status: Complete
It had been bound to happen sooner or later--it had only been a matter of time, Gellert thought. Whatever was keeping Albus away from Gellert would not be enough to overwhelm what drew Albus toward him...or the discomfort of 'modern' clothing. He had lasted a bit longer than Gellert had expected, perhaps, but he had eventually succumbed. As he always would. This time they would be alone, truly alone, not with the false sense of confidentiality that came from hushed conversations on street corners. In that solitude, with Albus trapped by the length of time it would require to effectively take his measurements, Gellert was certain that he could extract all he needed to know about his future--his future, and those few months of which Albus seemed so terribly reluctant to speak.
Gellert sat in his favourite chair in the back room of the clothing store, the chair that was really more of a low, swivelly stool that he could pump up to different heights with a small metal pedal. He let himself slowly spin, pushing off the leg of the table for velocity, his attention mostly fixated on the cloth that was draped in his lap and the tiny stitches he made on the neckline of a shirt. There was a machine that ran on clockwork when you pushed down on a little wooden lever, which helped speed things up for the long jobs like the seams of trousers, but sometimes...sometimes Gellert enjoyed the attention to detail provided by a simple needle and thread. He liked watching the glint of silver dip into the fabric, dragging the thread all the way through, twisting his fingers to make knots, clipping the excess with his teeth.
Still. He wished he had his magic. He wished he could abandon the use of his hands entirely and just charm the machine and fabric to work together while he sat aside and read the book he'd finally settled on in the library after being unable to find anything in which he was truly interested. But never mind. Soon enough, he was rather certain he would have plenty of thoughts to turn over, to occupy his mind. Enough to last him hours, if not days.
He liked his little back room--when he wasn't so horribly bored, at least. There were skeins upon skeins of fabric in every colour and material imaginable, rolled up, sprawled out across tables, hanging from the ceiling and catching the few dusty rays of sunlight that filtered in through the window. Mannequin models stood faceless and still on their props, wearing tape necklaces or acting as makeshift pincushions when not in use. Gellert was slightly tempted to give them names. He spun around on his stool again, a bit faster now, and felt a sharp sting as his needle slipped and jabbed the palm of his hand. He swore under his breath and brought his hand to his mouth, sucking off the blood before it could stain his fabric.
It was practical. It was research. And Albus was not above admitting it was also curiosity. Curiosity with regard to Gellert was practical. Generally speaking, humans were easy to understand. Predictable. Manageable. But Gellert? Gellert was reliably unpredictable. Trying to discern Gellert's desires when they had been... 'close' had been challenging enough, let alone when Albus had very little idea where he stood with him. If at all. Attempting to sort out what motivated Gellert at the moment, daunting though it might have seemed, was a worthwhile endeavour.
So when the time came, the time being at exactly five minutes until nine, Albus let himself into Gellert's shop. The back of his mind was still turning over its considerations of exactly how good a plan this was. He'd been to tailors before, of course, but there was no obscuring the fact that Gellert was, in fact, not a tailor. Gellert was still Gellert, and even if he didn't know what was to come, Albus could now barely let himself consider Gellert without the hot lash of an anger and a hurt he thought he'd buried-- he knew he'd buried. Meticulously.
He shouldn't have opened that trunk. It might have been a fallacy to assume that sequence implied causation, but too many hours spend considering the options had led him to this particular conclusion. As much as he was able to draw up a civil, sociable veneer, it felt fragile atop too much hurt and guilt and resentment. And despair.
However, it never did do to cancel an appointment without a proper excuse. And he was certain he would feel better, more himself, more properly concealed when he had a few layers of fabric to cloak himself with, rather than the paltry trappings he had. His long fingers extended to ring the bell atop the counter, though even as the sound echoed in the room, his gaze was tilting back toward the door as he wondered if he was learning from his mistakes, or simply reviving them.
Gellert glanced up from his work the moment the bell sounded through the shop, his senses abruptly thrown into high alert. Quickly, he bundled up the shirt he had been working on and tossed it onto the nearest table, atop a long expanse of raw scarlet silk. "Come," he said, sucking another droplet of blood from his hand and sliding off the chair. He'd left his clipboard by one of the mannequins--he wasn't entirely sure which, now; there were quite a few of them, after all--but there it was, by the particularly large male one, propped up against its stand. Gellert tore off the top sheet, which still bore the list of measurements from his last customer, and folded it up to tuck into its proper place in the makeshift filing system he'd devised, measurements and orders pigeon-holed and ranked by time and day received.
There were no quills, simply these odd, slender contraptions that seemed to hold a finite amount of ink--which, while they never needed to be re-dipped, seem to run dry far more quickly than any inkwell. Gellert picked a fresh one out of the jar on his main worktable and marked out 'Albus Dumbledore' at the head of his new parchment before pausing. The name looked familiar, once he saw it written out like this, in plain black-and-white text, but he could not quite identify where he'd seen it before. When Albus had introduced himself, there had been no flash of recognition. If anything, Gellert had simply been satisfied to have a name to attach to the stranger's face. But written down.... Gellert felt as if he was grasping at straws, at thoughts and vague memories that slipped through his fingers the moment he tried to clutch at them. No matter. If it was important, surely, he would remember.
Gellert returned to his stool, hooking his feet around the legs and swiveling just a bit from side to side, finding it difficult to control the impulse and deciding it was not worth the effort to try.
Only a moment of hesitation preceded the steps that carried Albus into the back room, following the sound of Gellert's voice. At first, his eyes were drawn to the walls, expecting to find them covered with the sharp angles of Gellert's equations, littered with symbol of the Hallows. It seemed strange, almost, that they were, instead lined and draped with fabric. It might have been disappointing, perhaps, had it not been for the array of colour splashed about. The corners of his mouth lifted just a little. How much of the selection had been left to Gellert was unclear, but Albus knew well enough that many of them would have been chosen by Gellert, had he the option.
Turning his gaze back to Gellert, the wave of emotion surged through him again, a wash of frost he tried to conceal behind the detachment that was so easily affected with others. Precisely how effective it was, he could scarcely say. In the years that stretched between them, Albus had learned to find an even keel again. Some feelings, for him, simply weren't... wise. Normally, he could think his way free of them, reduce them down to chemicals and electricity, find distance and solace in logic. Better than he could anyone else, Albus was able to manipulate himself.
But Gellert was nothing if not an exceptional force.
"Thank you for taking the time," he said by way of greeting. "I trust you're well." And he tried to hold at bay the slew of thoughts that followed, the way he wanted to sharply suggest, 'In Germany. With that woman. And the men you take in on the side.' It was simply attention to detail, he both indulged in and loathed telling himself with regard to how carefully he had Gellert watched. But that Gellert wasn't this Gellert, and Albus managed to keep his mouth closed.
"It's my job," Gellert said, a bit airily. He gestured for Albus to step closer and stopped swiveling in his stool, tapping his pen on the edge of his clipboard. The contrast was even more striking now, between the distant and polite affect Albus used to address him and the way he'd confronted him the previous week on the street, his crisp politeness only just obscuring his anger, standing too close, speaking too fast. Albus seemed now as if he was holding himself up by marionette strings, forcing himself through the motions of an act that was foreign and unfamiliar to his form and his voice. But that ice was still there, tendrils of frost creeping out even as Albus tried to keep them locked behind decorum and propriety.
Gellert was determined to release that anger entirely.
"What is it that you wish me to make for you?" Gellert asked as he stood, crossing to grab the measuring tape from over a mannequin's shoulder and looping it around his own neck. He set the clipboard and pen down on the table, once again wishing he had the ability to simply charm either the tape to measure Albus itself, or the pen to write down his results as the parchment hovered in midair nearby. Perhaps the latter. Normative though a visit to a tailor might be, Gellert could abuse physical contact to his own ends, no matter how innocent the touch. Albus looked as if his control might shatter at the slightest pressure...so Gellert would weight him with a tonne.
For Albus, it would always be impossible to perceive Gellert without some awareness of magic, even if, at the moment, the experience of it was purely intellectual. Simply because it was missing from his awareness now did not mean it had ceased to exist-- though Albus couldn't help the irrational fear in the back of his mind inspired by entertaining the mere possibility. The more he thought on it, the more Albus felt he had to consider whether or not his inability to access his own magic much impacted his ability to manage and mitigate his own state of mental affairs. Albus's thoughts had a rhythm, fast and sprawling, billowing and turning and knitting back in on themselves; but now, everything took on a chaotic lilt, and he couldn't tell if it was this place, or this condition, or that infernal piece of luggage.
"I suspect you'll find I'm easy to please," Albus said, the words true in this situation, if not in general. By and large, Albus could be rather picky about his clothes. But Gellert's innate tastes, Albus was more than familiar with. "A proper set of trousers, I should think. A shirt with a little more nuance than this," he added, still a bit inclined to compare the mundane nature of the clothes he'd been provided with to those issued to the incarcerated. "And a waistcoat would likely suffice for the requisites of propriety in such a climate."
His mouth could operate with relative efficacy, as if somewhat oblivious to the fact this was not a routine trip to a tailor's establishment. It was a farce he intended to cling to as long as possible, and thus an increasing amount of attention was set to trying to create a barrier between the forefront of his mind and the greedy clawing of years of unsaid things.
"Just one set of each?" Gellert asked. "Or several days' worth?" He found he could not help but agree with Albus on the matter of what counted as propriety in this place. It was hellishly hot, and Gellert could scarcely conceive of wearing more than a waistcoat atop the bare essentials. He'd worn an ascot tie for one day and one day only, before deciding that even that small swath of cloth was far too restrictive in this heat. Even now.... It was cool in the back room of Gellert's shop at the moment, but it had a tendency to grow warmer as the day progressed and as Gellert worked. He paused for a moment to unbutton the cuffs of his sleeves, rolling them up to just beneath his elbows and securing them there.
"How tall are you?" Gellert asked, pulling the measuring tape from around his neck and stepping around Albus to stand at his back, holding it up to his shoulders to gauge their width, mentally marking the number down in his mind to transfer to the clipboard later. Some part of him did not want Albus to answer that question, already certain it would do little good beyond making him hopelessly envious. The thin fabric of Albus's modern-style shirt clung to the ridges of his shoulder blades, adding grace to the lines of his back, drawing attention both to his height and his slender build. Gellert made a note to try to draw attention to this, when he made Albus's shirt and waistcoat, as much as was within his ability.
Albus's eyes snagged on the quick, careful work of Gellert's fingers, his too-capable hands. He found he couldn't hate Gellert's hands. For all the harm they'd caused, for all their capacity for destruction, it couldn't undo the things Gellert's hand could create, couldn't blot out the way magical mastery and mathematical genius could spill out of his fingertips and onto the nearest readily available surface. And as his thoughts faltered, reminding him of what else Gellert could conjure with the deft glide of his fingertips, when he could feel the precursors of heat threatening to stain his cheeks, he remembered to pull his gaze away.
On the coattails of daring to miss Gellert, guilt-driven anger sank deeper into cobbled structure of his self-control. It was exhausting, as it never had been before, attempting to contain himself. With nothing else of proper note to fix his eyes upon, Albus's attention fell to the walls. The unsatisfying, blank walls. A decorative facet that never seemed to stop reminding Albus of an oppressive sort of absence.
Resolving to consider, when next he was alone, the possibility that he might be losing his mind, Albus blinked, taking a moment to recall what Gellert had asked. "190.5 centimetres," he answered, the words stiffly automatic. Something in him yanked insistently at a sense of warning, that it was dangerous when he couldn't see where Gellert was. The notion was ridiculous, of course, with regard to his own person, especially now, so he forced it from his mind. Oh, yes, there had been more. "A varied assortment would be ideal, though for the sake of expedience I would most prefer to acquire one full set at the first, with the rest to follow at your convenience." It seemed impossible, how steady the words sounded when he felt so close to dizzy. "I was unaware you possessed such a talent in the trade."
The surge of irritation when Albus spoke his height was brief, but thankfully short-lived. Gellert himself was a hair shorter than 173 cm, which felt even more diminutive than it typically did when contrasted with Albus. But that envy could be controlled when he allowed himself to consider how Albus's gaze had lingered on his hands and exposed forearms just a hair too long, the almost guilty way he'd jerked his eyes away. Too soon, perhaps, to go making assumptions about what may or may not have happened during those few months of their acquaintance...and it may have been something else entirely...but it was enough to make Gellert want to explore further. Everyone had their undisclosed, repressed desires. Could Albus's be so simple?
Gellert laughed softly. "I don't," he said, measuring the circumference of the base of Albus's throat, slipping two fingers beneath the tape to ensure comfort before memorising the measurement and pulling the tape free. "But if it does not turn out as well as hoped, I will hardly charge full price." With luck, the more he practised, the better his work would become. But some things did not work quite to that pattern. Gellert guided the measuring tape under Albus's arms and crossed around to his front once more, grateful that Albus at least did not have to be prompted to breathe in or on the proper level at which to hold his arms.
"Just how many of my talents were you exposed to during our fellowship?" Gellert asked. It was a perfectly innocent question, of course--at least, if Albus chose to see it that way. Gellert glanced up, wanting to catch even the smallest flicker in Albus's expression that might betray some deeper emotion or drive.
That little laugh wound itself up Albus's spine far worse than any of the rest. Or perhaps it was the fact that Gellert was touching him. In his vanity and his arrogance, Albus had very nearly convinced himself that he would be able to divorce himself from the tactile element involved. Never mind, of course, that his every venture to a tailor before had involved charmed methods of measurement. But that laugh, the way it rang with so much innocence-- how terribly young Gellert seemed. And it made everything worse, in both directions. One part of his mind wanted to argue some sort of diminished capacity or culpability, and the other howled against such baseless concessions. The latter made everything worse, that Gellert could be capable of so much, so young. And he was. He was, for all his youth and unmarred beauty.
It burned at him, how untouched Gellert was by the things that scarred Albus's soul, as Gellert touched at him. Albus wasn't a violent man. He didn't shy from it, when it was necessary, but used it for a purpose, not to satisfy his own anger. But he ached for it, then. To.. make Gellert feel a fraction of what he'd heaped upon Albus's shoulders. To do something, anything, to crack at that facade, the mask that was, he had to believe, also genuine, simply another facet to Gellert's nature, not an artificial construct.
The question drew a reflexive dart of Albus's eyes. He fancied that he knew better than to take so pliable a question as absent adaptive intent. "At times I cannot help but feel I'd only scratched the surface." And then he turned, properly inspecting Gellert's form and face, the back of his mind trying to discern whether or not he could hold himself accountable for not seeing the truly limitless potential in him until it was too late. Meeting Gellert's eyes once more, his tone was a bit sharper as he said, "The scope of your intelligence is no secret to me." He didn't want to play little games with Gellert. It quite suddenly felt altogether too taxing to maintain the farce of this, to pretend that they were less than what they were, to hide so prettily behind the gossamer flow of polite conversation. "If you have some particular curiosity, you may inquire directly." Whether or not he would elect to answer, however, was another matter altogether.
Gellert lifted a single blond eyebrow at that, his lips tugged downward. That was as good a confession as any, as far as he was concerned--Albus's immediately cold retaliation, and the assumption that Gellert was playing at some sort of game. Curious. So in all likelihood, they had slept together. Probably more than once. But in what context? Albus clearly anticipated that there were sides to Gellert that were not so clearly shown, but was this because Gellert had been open with him or because Albus had been hurt? Had Gellert been a cold and demanding lover, or an innocent and charismatic idol who abruptly showed his true colours?
"Very well," he said, though he hardly intended to ask the question that now seemed to have such an obvious answer. But now he knew of at least one crack in what had seemed to be flawless armour, and he knew how cracks could widen when the proper forces were applied. He pulled the tape free from around Albus's chest and measured the distance from the base of Albus's neck to his waist. "When did we meet, precisely? And you said our acquaintance lasted but a few months...why?" Fair questions, he thought, and if they did anything to draw out that frosty anger he knew lurked just beneath Albus's exterior, so much for the better.
Gellert paused for a moment, looping the tape around his neck and picking up the clipboard from the table to mark down all of the measurements he had memorised thus far. He needed Albus unsteady, reeling, all too eager to spill every detail that he knew about his past--Gellert's future.
Unwilling to yield to either of the impulses that bolted through him, to either step away or to advance in an attempt to see Gellert put just a little off balance, Albus held wholly still. He knew, truly, that there was no reason to suspect that Gellert's hand would delve lower. At this age, Albus was quite sure Gellert had yet to truly entertain the broader nature of his own desire. Would his Gellert? The one from 1904? Would he presume-- would he bother? Would he--
"You left." The accusation sliced out of him, leaving him bewildered with its severity. It was true, but he hadn't meant to say it, not like that. Not so notably infused with significance. And he couldn't even properly blame Gellert's presence for it. Jaw tightening, he feared what would come out of his mouth, and quickly closed it again. A moment later, he said in a significantly more controlled voice, he said. "You returned to the continent."
The harshness of Albus's words almost sent Gellert taking a step back. They were the blunt, edged syllables that too frequently preceded an attack--Gellert recognised it too easily from his own experience, from the way he knew his own voice could grow so hard the moment before he decided someone deserved to feel a little (a lot) of pain. No matter how short-lived their relationship had been, therefore, it had been something that Albus had taken close to his heart. He had to have, to justify as severe a reaction as this.
Gellert finally approached Albus once more, though he intentionally stood perhaps a little too close as he slipped the tape around Albus's waist and took his measurement. "You seem upset," he said, taking care to keep his voice relatively neutral. What is going on inside that head of yours, Albus Dumbledore? Gellert wanted to peel back the layers of skin and skull on his forehead and take a look for himself. And what made you worth my attention?
Gellert's hands dropping a bit lower, settling the measuring tape around the fullest part of Albus's hips, though his gaze flickered up to look him in the eye rather than taking note of the measurement. "I cannot apologise for what I am not aware that I have done," he said, leaning in a microscopic amount, but enough to bring their faces just a fraction closer together. "What happened?"
Albus could scarcely understand what was wrong with him. He was supposed to be good at this. He was. Or, he had been. But for a few short months over one summer, parts of his heart and mind had been left in peace-- lonely and numb, but steady. Functional. This? This felt like madness. He pulled in too deep a breath as Gellert grew closer, as his thoughts tried to tear through the crushing weight in his chest and the sense of something tightening around his neck.
"You cannot apologise for what you have not yet done," Albus argued. Because how could it mean anything, how could an apology from this boy satisfy what he wanted from the man in Germany? With a tone of challenge that he couldn't avoid, he unwittingly pressed in a little further. "Or does the singularity of your existence defy even the constraints of linear time? Shall I bend you to suit myself? Hold you for offenses you have yet to commit? I am not some jilted lover, Gellert. What we were--"
Never before had Albus felt himself succumbing to the desire to vent himself on someone else. But if anyone could endure it, surely Gellert could. Part of him feared that the real reason he was yielding to this was because he knew Gellert could take it, that his mind could endure, could adjust and absorb. He had to hope otherwise. If he were willing to say and do to Gellert all that he wished, governed only by limits of Gellert's capacity, perhaps it was for the best that he could not access his magic.
I am not some jilted lover. Oh, but you are, Gellert wanted to say. Such things always seem much more complicated than they are in actuality. You went and fell in love with someone who could not love you back. Whatever grave you're lying in, Albus Dumbledore, is but the one you dug yourself. Gellert glanced down, taking note of the hip measurement and then lifting Albus's arm to measure armhole circumference and arm width.
He could play along, though, could he not? Pretend to be genuinely concerned for Albus's poor, shattered heart. Let Albus continue to think that he had been somehow different than, superior to, all the others. That was what Albus wanted, surely, after all. The reassurance that he had ever meant something to Gellert. But Albus seemed to have broken off, perhaps overwhelmed by the extremity of whatever emotion was currently tumbling through that auburn head of his. "What were we?" Gellert prodded gently. "If you will not let me apologise, at the very least allow me to understand."
It seemed both surprising and not that Gellert didn't balk at the mere suggestion. To Gellert, at this point, he supposed it could all seem a bit academic. Or, perhaps, Gellert had simply adopted the perspective best inclined to preserve his sanity in the face of such temporal dislocation and convolution: the view that anything was possible. Clinging too tightly to the world one knew was a dangerous trap. Albus found himself wishing he'd pressed Gellert more, lured out every facet of the evolution of his regard. He'd just thought they'd have had more time. Months, years, and the far sprawl of their longs lives.
The silence, filled only with the soft sounds of shifting weight and measuring tape, was broken with a question Albus didn't fully know how to answer. There was no word, no comprehensive word for what they had been to each other. Kindred, perhaps, though it still felt short.
"It is not simply what we've been," he said, his voice soft but unshakably certain. Although it was unexpected, he did not startle when he found his hand on Gellert's chest- closer to his shoulder than his sternum. "But what we could have been." Should have been. And it was too tempting, then, the desire to see Gellert thrown by something, taken by surprise by anything and made to feel just the least bit exposed. "I know what it is you seek," he said, his voice lower still, as he traced the familiar, simple shapes of a circle, a triangle, and a line. "What you desire above all other possessions."
And perhaps that would be enough, he supposed, to get Gellert to truly see him, to really look at him.
Gellert felt something within him crack at that, something electric pouring into his veins and humming in his ears. Because he knew exactly what Albus meant. Only no one knew--no one, he had not--had never--told anyone.... He had always thought it better that way, to keep the Hallows quest to himself, hidden from prying eyes or from the ambitions of those who would wish to attempt to collect the three for themselves. Of course, most thought the legend just that--a legend. A lovely little fiction with a lovely little moral tacked on at the end to tell their children in their beds. But Gellert knew better. And he was not the only one. For some of the Hallows...the Wand, in particular...the quest too easily came to blood. Gellert's intended rise to power, and the Hallows' role in it, had always been a private scheme constructed in his own head. He could trust no one else with the knowledge, after all--everyone else was inferior in all manners. In wit, in ambition, in power, in will.
But that symbol that Albus drew on his chest was one that Gellert knew too well. It was the same symbol that he had carved so ferociously into the wall of Durmstrang's entrance hall just a few days before being brought here, searing his name into the black stone for as long as the walls would stand. The sign of the Hallows. His gaze had leaped down from Albus's face to Albus's hand, lips parting as a hushed breath escaped them. And then anger was lashing through him, the reflex sudden and overpowering, the urge to defend his passion from foreign and prying eyes.
Gellert jerked his head up once more, frowning, though he did not swat Albus's hand away. "How do you know about that?" It was more accusation than question. "Who told you?" Because it could not have been Gellert. Surely not. He would not have gambled the Hallows on some casual fuck, no matter how pretty he might be.
Not so ready, then, to yield to the possibility of so much unknown. In spite of himself, a wash of disappointments passed over Albus's features, however briefly. It was silly, of course, to so desire that Gellert might somehow simply know, simply see in him the quality he'd seen summers ago, that had first prompted him to share his most guarded thoughts. Even beneath that shallow discontent, a quieter satisfaction stemmed from a confirmation that this particular secret had been carefully policed, for Gellert to be unable to conceive of disclosing it.
With Gellert just a little off balance, Albus's feet felt more steady, allowing a little curiosity to slip in whilst making a point. "Do you have them in your possession already, back at Durmstrang-- the letters? The maps? Or did you wait until after your expulsion was formalised before securing them?" Surely Gellert trusted himself enough to suppose that Albus could have no awareness of the documents that led Gellert to Godric's Hollow without Gellert's having told him, shown him, even. Only after he stopped speaking did he realise his fingertip still idly traced the slow pattern of the symbol, finding it was far easier to remain still, for his thoughts to still a little, when his hand was occupied with even an insignificant errand.
There were letters and maps--some, but not enough, not nearly enough, and Gellert had planned to delve deep into his research directly upon returning to his parents' house--which Albus seemed to already know. He'd...he must have seen them, whatever it was that Gellert had found. Would find. Gellert kept his documents locked in a trunk under so many enchantments that it would have taken Merlin himself a month to unlock them without knowing the key, so Gellert must have shown them to Albus himself.
And suddenly he knew. How it must have been, between himself and Albus. Or at least, he thought he was beginning to get an idea of it. He almost dared not hope for as much--that he might have finally found the person he never bothered to imagine might exist. An equal. In some way. In many ways. Possibly in every? Gellert realised only belatedly that he was trembling and he took a quick step away, unwilling to allow himself to be standing so close to Albus when the tables had so abruptly turned. If Albus had meant to catch him off-guard, well, then, he had certainly succeeded. Gellert's head was reeling, his thoughts too fast and blurred to catch hold of.
"What was it like?" Gellert found himself asking, though his voice sounded distant and unfamiliar to his own ears, as if spoken through another's lips. He wanted to hear it described in Albus's own words, whatever it was that they had been. Friends, lovers, co-conspirators. What label did Albus put on it? What label had Gellert? "You and me. ...That. Were you...did you...?" He was not sure entirely what it was he was trying to ask. Did Albus know everything of Gellert's plans? Did he intend to seek their fruition at Gellert's side--and with Gellert's blessing?
What Albus thought was understanding in Gellert's eyes was confirmed as he so quickly pulled away. Which was gratifying. But too familiar to enjoy. Entirely, at least. But he too much wanted this-- this, to have Gellert confused and in the dark and grasping at half-formed questions for even vaguer answers.
Didn't he?
He wanted to hurt Gellert, but found no certainty in the mechanics. He wanted Gellert to feel alone. It was foreign, this desire for retribution, but how could it not hold sway over him? Any other, he could excuse. Could rationalise away, could make excuses and justifications for, but there were none for Gellert. Of no one else, perhaps in this world or any other, could Albus truly, resentfully, feel that Gellert should have known better.
His posture straightened a bit, drawing himself, pulling himself together and letting his anger frost over him, sealing him whole. Voice leaden, he said, "We were together. In every sense of the word. Everything I was and had was yours." The words were far truer that he could have imagined when first he'd said them to Gellert. And Gellert had taken so much, and broken so much of it. "I would have given you the world," and for him, for them, it wasn't some vapid promise, some love-sick declaration. Never once did his gaze stray from Gellert. "And you left."
Gellert stepped forward again, slowly, closing the distance that he had been so abruptly eager to put between them. He did not know why he had left, the circumstances or his own personal reasoning, but for the moment he would trust that his decision had gone without regret. Regretlessly, perhaps, but perhaps not eagerly, either. Who was this man, to whom he had spilled so many secrets, drawn into so many plots? What made him so worthy?
Gellert's hand reached out to rest lightly on Albus's own, curling their fifth fingers together, the gesture somehow feeling more natural than part of an affected apology. "I'm sorry," he said, voice scarcely more than a whisper. "I cannot claim to have lived it, as you have, but clearly you were someone very important to me." Extremely important. To think about it for too long still held the faint sting of disbelief. Gellert knew himself better than to think he would ever have been able to return Albus's affections to the same degree, but this man must have mattered to him, even still. "You were supposed to be in Germany with me, weren't you?" he asked. "Standing there, at my side."
For all appearances, Albus might not have been listening. His gaze was fixed entirely on the Gellert's hand atop his own. This contact, innocent-- no, tame, though it was, meant treacherously more than anything contained in the last five, nearly five, years. More than the unbearable few brushes against his bare hand or cheek from those who had momentarily mistaken Albus's polite disinterest as coy invitation. More than Bathilda's hand upon his at Ariana's funeral. More than Elphias's concerned hand on his shoulder. More than the shake of the Headmaster Dippet's hand upon welcoming him back to Hogwarts. More than, more than-- Albus was sick with them, the gestures so effortlessly dwarfed by this.
Important. How could he believe it, after Gellert had thrown everything, including him, to the side, forgotten. Albus wanted to believe it wholeheartedly. He pined to be able to hate Gellert. But, could Gellert truly have acted so rashly? So recklessly, without plan, design, purpose, or reason? Of Gellert, so very much like himself, it was still difficult to imagine.
He pulled his hand from Gellert's grasp, using it to needlessly rake back long strands of his hair. Their plans weren't quite final. Some matters still had to be sorted out, what to do with Ariana not least among them. But Gellert was not wrong. It was supposed to be him. Not that girl. How much she knew of Gellert's true proclivities remained unclear, but that much, he opted to gloss right over.
"There's someone else by your side these days," Albus said, his rather low opinion of his alternative shining through all too clearly, wishing the sound of it wasn't so bitter, and hoping it didn't convey the sort of jealousy that lay long simmering in his chest. "Bela. A girl you no doubt remember from school."
Gellert laughed--he couldn't help it, after all. Bela? Oh, but surely Albus knew better than that. He said they had been lovers after all--and apparently rather close on a number of levels, though the true depth of that had yet to be determined. Even so, envy twinged at Albus's words no matter how hard he may have tried to disguise it. By now, Gellert's ears were rather uniquely attuned to that sort of thing.
"Bela?" he repeated, his incredulity hanging on his every word. "Please, Albus, do not insult me. She may be pretty, and she may be quite wealthy, but you know I have never had any feelings for her. Now or in the future. I could not." He shook his head, unwinding the measuring tape and sinking to his knees at Albus's feet, measuring the outseam of Albus's future trousers from hip, down. It was a bit of a reach, all things considered. Albus had treacherously long legs. It was all too easy for Gellert to be reminded of the physical attributes that must have drawn him to Albus as a sexual partner in the first place.
"I can promise you that Bela does not know about the Hallows," he said, pausing to check the circumference of Albus's calf, his knee, the widest part of his thigh. "No one does. Or, no one did." He glanced up at Albus after memorising the appropriate numbers, offering him a small smile. "There is no use being jealous of her. She will never last."
Gellert's laugh drew sharp eyes from Albus. His amusement, his blithe certainty, they echoed so clearly of the Gellert Albus had loved so easily. Perhaps for the first moment, Albus's mind permitted him to entertain the full scope of the possibility - of the young man, innocent of the offenses that tethered Albus's heart, but too young, much too young - before him. His smile and the way he looked sprawled out in the too-high grass just next to the pond and curious curl to his lips as he slipped slices of peach past Albus's lips. But the lower Gellert dropped toward the floor, the higher rose the flush in Albus's cheeks-- because those memories came far too easily, as well. His eyes immediately snapped up to the wall. The abrasively blank wall.
He did, of course, glance down when he could feel Gellert looking up at him. He immediately regretted it. These little comforts, offered so easily, with the same air of collusion, were so at odds with the life to which Albus had become re-accustomed. "This is the first time in nearly five years I have seen you in person. Almost five years, and not a word. I think I have leave to be jealous of whomever I wish." The words, however, were not so barbed as he'd crafted them inside his head.
Gellert's gaze dropped again at that, and he knew it might have looked like shame to Albus's eyes, the way he let his head fall forward just slightly as he drew the tape up to measure Albus's inseam. "Five years," he repeated. Five years ago, Gellert had been entering Durmstrang as a first-year student. Still too raw, too edged and out of control of himself and his urges. When Gellert looked back, at the boy he'd been, there had been changes. Not in his nature perhaps, not inherent developments, but he knew that to his parents, at least, he must now be unrecognisable.
Five years could change a man irrevocably.
"I understand why you would be jealous," he said at last, rising up just enough to be able to place the measuring tape at Albus's front waist and loop it down between his legs, drawing up again at the back, marking the appropriate spot on the tape with his thumbnail to check the result. "I never said that I did not. Only that you shouldn't be." Gellert could never be with a woman, not seriously. Albus had to know that. He seemed to know everything else about Gellert. Gellert met Albus's gaze again. "Also, do you dress to the left or to the right?"
Five years. They made sense, the words themselves. But Albus's exaggerated awareness made them seem flimsy and insubstantial. Everything felt raw. Like too-new skin exposed to too-harsh sunlight.
If Albus had been still before, as Gellert progressed, he was downright statuesque. He'd never before truly appreciated how completely unseemly the whole practice of such measurement exercises were. Any satisfaction he'd taken in Gellert's perfectly reasonable response a moment before was lost entirely to the necessary closeness of these things. With anyone else, any other amateur tailor, it would have been... It wouldn't have been like this, lined with too much potential meaning and possibility and innocence so utterly divorced from the past that it was little more than the truth, walking hand-in-hand with a lie.
"The left." The words were flat. And so mundane. And it cracked just a little of the weight in Albus's mind. Teetering on the edge of something that felt like a wash of relief, Albus found himself unsure how to proceed. This Gellert, who was for some elusive reason still on his knees of all things, owed him nothing. And Albus was nothing to him, not yet. After a deep breath and a less stilted attempt to relocate his own gaze, Albus asked, "Is there much left?"
Gellert nodded and rose to his feet, draping the measuring tape around his own neck to pick up the clipboard and pen, scribbling down the second half of the measurements he'd memorised, with the letter 'L' circled next to the measurements for the trousers. "Nearly done," he said. The weight of Albus's restrained emotion was heavy in the air, his discomfort evident in the tight edge to his voice, the clipped consonants of his words. He knew it skirted the line of professionalism, but he had lingered perhaps a bit too long when taking the more intimate of Albus's measurements, far too keen to see just how far he could push Albus under the guise of doing his assigned job. Whatever Gellert might have thought of their relationship at the time, what they had together had been, for Albus, quite obviously something life-altering. And then Gellert had left, for whatever reason, and never looked back. Perhaps it had all been a charade, even the confession of the Hallows, and after Gellert got what he needed out of Albus....
His gaze sharpened suddenly, and he forced himself to keep it carefully focused on the clipboard even as his pen hesitated over the circumference of Albus's knee. The Hallows. There could be reasons he had told Albus of them beyond some personal merit of Albus's own. Just how much did Albus know about the Three? Had he some connection to them? Had it been through Albus Dumbledore, perhaps, that Gellert had gained the tools he needed to achieve unlimited power?
But not too quickly. Not just yet. Every inch of him was aching to throw the clipboard down and push Albus up against a wall, demand to know every detail, order him to confess what he knew of the Hallows. Somehow Gellert doubted that would get him any closer to achieving his goal. Best to wait, until the appropriate moment presented itself, and the question could be posed in the prettiest packaging. Clearly Gellert had made Albus fall in love with him once--he could do it again....
Gellert drew a quick, bold line at the bottom of his list of numbers, splitting the page into two. "Now all I need to know are any specifications you might have," he said, daring to look up again only once he was positive that his expression was back under his own domain. "Materials, style, colour, that sort of thing."
Albus watched, carefully, as things unknown and untold played beneath the calm surface of Gellert's countenance. The great constants with any scandal were the questions of who knew what, and when. Exceptional, as ever, with Gellert the questions pivoted slightly, to whether or not Gellert had been aware of what he was doing all along, as he'd played little games with Albus's emotions, whether it really had been nothing more than Gellert amusing himself as they passed the time. With the benefit of retrospection, and years of rehashing nearly every moment of those few months, Albus believed he could see a little too much calculation in Gellert's every glance and gesture. But now, Albus scarcely knew what he was looking at, what was real and what wasn't, and how much of it was what he wanted to see. If only he could compel the tangled knot of what-he-wanted-to-see into concrete form in his mind.
It was baffling, how his thoughts could feel both frantic and sluggish all at the same time. Nevertheless, he took solace in the wholly unremarkable turn in the conversation.
"Excluding shades apt to clash red," and it could be a bit tedious, at times, to find himself so mindful of the shade of his hair, "should you make selections with regard to your own innate preferences, I'm certain to be quite pleased." That might be a touch more sedate, however, than Albus's tendencies, so he added a moment later, "I have an exceptional fondness for purple." Glancing over Gellert once more, and if he took longer than necessary, he was sure it was simply a matter of being thorough. And a small but insistent part of him, the relentless curiosity that was so easily whetted by Gellert's boundless potential in an area compelled him to say, "Feel free to experiment." Upon considering that perhaps a post-modern silhouette might fall beyond the realm of his interest, he added, "Though with regard to style, the turn of the nineteenth century remains something of a pinnacle in my mind."
Gellert made note of the fact at the bottom of his page and then set both pen and clipboard aside. "I am sure that we can find something to suit your tastes," he said. It was clear to him that their meeting was drawing rather quickly to its close--and he was loathe to let Albus go without some certainty of the next time that he would have him within his grasp, to pick a little more closely at the details of Albus's past--his future--of the two of them, together. And Albus's present, of Gellert.
"I should have the first set of clothing ready for fitting in a week, perhaps a week and a half," he said. "I will contact you through the journals to set up another appointment at that time." And then, partially on impulse and partially because Gellert knew from experience (though perhaps experience with other boys, other men) that unnecessary contact always achieved results that indicated at least an idea of the next direction one should take, whether the reaction was positive or negative, he stepped forward again, reaching out to rest a hand on Albus's forearm, tilting his head up to catch his eye.
For a moment, he considered speaking--but any words that he might say would not be nearly so effective as the silence in which he dropped his hand, walking past Albus to open the door into the front room of his shop and hold it open for him, unspeaking, unblinking.
Sharing his true thoughts and feeling was never something that had made Albus feel better. Any statement, without proper context, could be misconstrued, misinterpreted, attributed too much significance, or not enough. Disclosure could reveal too much, could entrust to an external force too many cards to play. It made Albus feel a little worse, that he felt a little better. One potential explanation was that, for all his reasons not to, he might still trust Gellert's judgement. He might still take comfort in the fact that their minds could function so similarly, that Albus could trust Gellert to come to the same conclusions as he.
A very quiet, tentative voice in the back of his mind dared to suggest that the whole could not be evaluated by its extremities. And Albus couldn't tell if any part of him felt either better or worse, because although the tightness in his chest and the buzzing in his mind seemed to have diminished, his heart still leapt into his throat at the press of Gellert's purposeful touch. Prospects of slapping Gellert's hand away blossomed in his mind with two equal and opposite desires: to reclaim a bit of sensible distance and formal proximity, and to banish the barrier of Gellert's arm that would have encumbered any attempt to drag Gellert's body close and tight against his own.
This was precisely why he avoided the continent whenever possible. He didn't trust himself with Gellert. Any Gellert, it seemed.
And even after Gellert had moved on, moved away, Albus stood, the phantom press of Gellert's hand lingering far longer than it had any right. He looked up, looked back to Gellert, and could barely conceive of constructing a reply. Too many things perched on the tip of his tongue. He could tell Gellert, tell him everything, find a way to make him understand what had happened, maybe find a way to stop it from ever happening--
Impulsive. Too rash. Too unadvised, too-- And Albus was immediately flexing his hand, spreading his fingers wide before forcing them to relax, attempting to banish the feeling on his forearm.
"That's fine," he said, his voice too rough, but his mind beyond caring. Through some miracle, even as his long strides carried him from the shop, he managed to say, "Thank you for your time," before breaking into the clear light of day that was not the least bit helpful in illuminating anything of significance.