Gellert may have had a point. A stranger, he wasn’t, but the more time he spent with this Gellert, who found him interesting - curious, perhaps - the more he found himself able to believe that in Godric’s Hollow, Gellert had felt something real for him. It was something that, even amid the rest, Albus was certain he could discern. Something beyond desire, beyond the desire for possession. He hardly knew if it made things better or worse, or if it was supposed to make any difference at all. All he truly knew was that he felt like he was sinking.
And some small part of him, a slight, wispy, inky voice in the back of his head, told him that maybe it would be best if it never happened at all. If he could just find a way to deflect Gellert’s interest. If he could stop them from ever becoming what they were, if he could keep Gellert out of his home, far from his brother. But such thoughts had a way of bleeding into something worse: considerations that maybe, if Gellert could be returned to his own time, there was one more life to be saved. He knew his own mind, and he knew Gellert’s ability to explain-- surely his seventeen year old mind would be able to understand, if Gellert dawned on his life a little sooner than intended. If a brilliant German boy found him in Hogsmeade, and told him how to save his mother’s life-- Gellert could find a way to make him understand. He could stop all of it, before any of it ever happened.
And then what wouldn’t he do for Gellert? Where could Gellert possibly lead that he wouldn’t follow? The idea ought to terrify him.
His eyes lingered, stuck on Gellert’s hand at his arm. “It’s easy for me, to confuse you with him,” he said softly. “And that’s hardly fair, to either of us. The fault is my own.” He stepped away from Gellert, reaching over to pick up the last of the letters. “I’m afraid I’ve no idea what to do in such situations.” His unfamiliarity, of course, was intended more to reference coming into contact with former lovers, let alone estranged lovers. His inexperience with finding himself a magic-less captive on an island of temporal distortion, he supposed was excusable.
Gellert nodded, forcing himself not to rise when Albus moved away and go after him. It was more difficult than it ought to have been. Instead he drew his knees up to his chest and locked his fingers together against his shins, tilting his head to watch Albus’s hands as they gathered up the letters scattered across the bed.
“I do seem to have come to...to appreciate your company a great deal,” Gellert said. That was certainly one way of putting it. He was sure he’d given Albus an entirely different idea of his feelings during their acquaintance, or at least of their depth, but perhaps Albus’s perception had not been entirely inaccurate. Gellert found himself wondering for a few seconds at what it might have been like, had he taken this man back to the Continent with him and they had risen to power side by side. (Well, certain obstacles would have to be accounted for, of course, such as Albus’s English nationality, but with the expedition of citizenship and--.) It seemed more plausible than he might initially have thought, upon first meeting Albus. He supposed that spoke in Albus’s favour, that he could imagine it at all.
And it did not seem, from his own letters, that he’d had any intention of letting Albus be subordinate to him in any way. He’d thought of him as an equal, not just in intelligence and power but in ambition and principle as well. “Tell me,” he said, “did you ever read that Goethe criticism that I recommended to you?” It had been in one of the final letters, in which Gellert insisted that Albus read some analysis of Faust that Gellert had recently finished and apparently found infinitely intriguing.