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They had covered the room in papers, opened books and maps. Nurmengard’s library would have been a better place to do it, but they had left Vinda and Queenie there with one of the most terrible excuses Gellert had been able to make up. Even Albus had given him a puzzled look. Vinda, on the other hand, would have killed him if she could. But Queenie had been oblivious to all of it, oblivious to the scene before her, distracted by something she was reading, and that was what mattered.
“The art of subtlety,” Albus had said out loud once they had been behind closed doors, inside his bedroom.
“I didn’t mean to be subtle. I can be subtle, I’m choosing not to.”
Albus sighed. “She’ll kill you one of these days.”
He smiled as he laid down on the bed, he didn’t mind Albus taking the desk, he didn’t need to write. “She won’t.”
“Have you spoken with her about it?”
He rolled his eyes. “Vinda opening up? I’d be worried.” He thumbed the pages, finding the page he had been reading before. “But yes, in a way.”
Gellert knew turning to history was always the best solution when it came to prophecy, they'd turn upside down his library if it was necessary, but they'd crack the code. It was a shame not to have access to Hogwarts anymore. Albus had snickered the morning after the warning just to pick up a few things that he didn't want to end up in the hands of the Ministry, a few articles he had started to write, two travel diaries, his first-year students’ transfiguration exams he had promised to give back after the winter break that would be handed by Minerva McGonagall, the new intern. She had lived the transition of seeing Albus as a student to knowing him as a teacher, and according to him, she was trustworthy. Aberforth had kept Fawkes, the excuse was that he took care of the bird, the truth was the bird would protect him if anything happened.
Who was Gellert to disagree with anything Albus wanted to do about that part of his life, it would be a miracle if he ever managed to have any shade of it back. He wouldn't admit it but the time Albus was outside he spent on the verge of a breakdown, with Vinda making fun of him in a monologue because he wouldn't answer. It all was true. Yes, nobody could harm Albus, it was nonsensical to think anyone could match him in a duel. And still. He always hoped for the worst.
They hadn't spoken about it. A lot to process, Gellert imagined. It was too recent. He'd worry only when the days passed and there was still silence, not now. Not when he had to crack destiny up before it ruined them.
After a few hours, Albus got up from the desk and kneeled at the end of the bed. “You should eat something, it’s getting late.”
“Not hungry.”
“I know.”
They were never hungry. The weight of what was about to come was taking a toll on their appetite, twisting their stomachs in knots. It was almost a chore now, Gellert was glad to have Albus around, not because it made it easier, but because the desire to make sure the other ate was what kept them forcing something down their throats into their stomachs during meal times. He knew it was for the best, he remembered the dull dream-like sensation weakness had granted him during the last war when he hadn't been able to swallow more than his own saliva.
Albus offered him an apple he had taken from the basket but he didn’t take it.
“No oranges?”
Albus shook his head but sat next to him, a gleam in his eyes. Gellert watched him attentively transfigure the fruit, the dark red turning into an aggressive orange, the shape disappearing into a curve. That was something new too, Albus using the Elderwand.
Gellert liked it, he couldn’t explain it, but power suited his lover too well. The first time had been almost an accident, he had picked up the wrong wand and had only realised it before doing the simplest of spells. Then he had apologised with a strange look on his face and it had made Gellert laugh because he himself was able to use Albus’ since they had met. It wasn’t a surprise at all that the Elderwand obeyed him. It was a wand at the end of the day, yes, the most powerful wand, but it knew its owner, and it knew said owners’ connections. Albus didn’t seem to think too much about it anymore.
He offered him the fruit again and he smelled it, orange, unmistakably.
“It will still taste the same.”
Gellert sat, his back to the headboard, and observed his dexterous fingers peel the fruit, taking off the peel from the flesh without crushing it. He opened it with his thumb, separating the slices.
“It’s obnoxiously similar to the real thing, Liebling, and still.”
Albus put a slice to his own lips, and the next one, to his. Gellert accepted it. He made his best attempt to hide the surprise: it was an orange. It truly was. But how?
“It’s the wand, right?” He asked it was the obvious assumption.
Albus rolled his eyes and ate another slice before answering. “Yes, sure, praise the wand and not the hand behind it.”
Gellert regarded him, he offered him another slice and he leaned closer to eat it, he brushed his lips to his fingers this time. “So not the wand.”
Albus shook his head slowly, taking another section of the orange and putting it to his mouth.
He wouldn’t praise him, not when he was thinking of all the possible ways, squeezing and wracking his brains to find the magical theory gap for him to have been able to slip out of the established.
He leaned back slightly, eyes on the page without reading it. As Albus kept feeding him the orange slices, he made sure to never just pick them up with his mouth, always finding a way to brush his fingers, to graze them with his teeth, to touch them with his lips. Subtlety, he knew how to be subtle. And he received its fruits, never said better, in the way Albus’ hand lingered on his mouth for a second longer than they needed to. The intensity of Albus' gaze on him as he licked his lips ended up making him discard the question for later, he could live without knowing how he had transfigured it.
Albus had stopped eating his share of slices, giving them all to him. He waited for the last one to bite down on it and make the juice drip down his lips to his chin. And only then, he raised his eyes to meet his, locking eyes.
Albus dragged his thumb up so that the drop wouldn’t stain his shirt, and let it rest on his lips. Gellert decided at that moment he’d make him crumble completely. The heat of his gaze on him, the clear desire in the deep abysses of his eyes, he could peer into it, he could glimpse the restraint failing him, defeating his self-control. He let his lips fall ajar. Albus swallowed hard.
That was it. He closed his mouth around it and licked, sealing his lips again when he released it. “Thanks,” he said and lowered his eyes again into the book.
Albus lifted his chin a moment later to make their gazes connect again.
“What?” he had managed innocence into his tone. “Albus?”
Albus leaned closer. “You are doing it on purpose.” His hand touched his cheek, his fingers put a lock of blond hair behind his ear.
“Doing what.”
“You are doing it on purpose,” he repeated, and his eyes went from his lips to his face, scrutinising. “You are.” An accusation. Then, a pause. “Are you?”
He couldn’t help it then, the shade of a smile grazed his lips, betraying him. Albus mirrored the smile, his other hand already travelling up his flank under his shirt.
“Devil.” Albus brushed his nose against his, he dragged his lips against his cheek.
“I've changed my mind, I’m hungry now,” he mumbled.
Albus kissed him, finally. First, lips meeting lips, then, an open-mouthed wet kiss. He didn’t know how or when but one of his hands had already closed around his neck, the other one struggled with his belt. He let Albus pull him closer and threw the book out of the bed, not bothering to mark the page he was reading from. He wanted him closer, closer than what skin could grant them, he pulled at his clothes to draw him on top, to make him cover him with his body. Albus made them roll, not to fall down the edge of the bed.
This, this wasn’t new, them having sex, but it felt new somehow, there was a different quality to it, a nuance to the way they moved against the other, a tender touch of electricity in the skin to skin contact, a tint of darkness in this new found intimacy that brought him back again and again to 1899. Albus was his again. Completely, fully, utterly his. And it had stopped being bittersweet, the nasty afterthought of having been used, the ideas that sent him spiralling for days when he realised he may have been careless, forgetting to keep his occlumency walls up, pushing things he didn’t want him to know, to feel, inside his head. All had evaporated.
He belonged to him in the same way he belonged with him, there was a magical quality to it as if they were in the right place, it couldn’t feel that right if they weren’t. Peace, it was peace as it had never been before, not a truce, not a cease-fire, but peace.
This time it had been sweet.
When he finished, Albus laid on top of him, his face on the crook of his neck, his breath heavy. Gellert passed a hand through his long hair, twisting the lock on his fingers, as he too tried to slow his heart.
“You can braid it if you like.”
“Did I think that?”
Albus nodded. “Afterthought. It passed quickly.” He kissed his clavicle, his pulse point, behind his ear.
Gellert turned his head to kiss him back. “You read it before I could even register it.”
They didn’t bother to wear back their clothes. Albus sat on one of the pillows on the floor while he stayed on the bed, he parted his hair with one of his nails. He really wondered how it stayed perfectly untangled, but then, his own hair was curly, it was way more difficult to take care of. He caught Albus’ eyes in the mirror, he smiled.
“Don’t you dare cut it for this war.”
“Still in my head, are we?”
His smile grew wider.
Gods. He loved him so much, he didn’t know how he had lived without him, how he had thought himself satisfied with what they granted each other every few months. A partner for the sleepless nights, a lover that kept him warm, an equal that kept him always on his toes in the best way possible, someone that could only better him. Unlike Albus, he had worn his hair very short during the first war, the main goal had been to have it out of his eyes. But now, with the second one coming he was reconsidering the practical choice just for the pleasure of having someone else run his fingers through it. He could always braid it, if Durmstrang had taught him something, it was to braid for battle.
“Gellert.”
He was listening, his fingers worked through his hair, twisting and turning the strands to make the pattern come to life.
“What was your first impression of me?”
He raised his eyebrows, surprised by the question. “I was biased by my sight, you know. But,” he gathered his thoughts for an instant, the memory was clear despite the passing of the years, “I thought that that was it. I have found you. I could have died then and there and I wouldn’t have minded.” He shrugged, Albus knew the prophecy well enough for him not to even mention it. “But you walked up to me and tried to make conversation. And then I realised you wouldn’t kill me then, that I was meant to live, and that it wouldn’t be without you.”
Albus snorted despite seeming satisfied with his answer, eyes low. “Must you always outdo me on these things?”
The braid had started to take form so he could start to mechanise the movement of his fingers.
“What did you think of me?”
“That you were beautiful. That you were either mad or genius. In the quest of the Deadly Hallows, you only find either of the two.”
He smiled. “You weren’t too far off.”
“Oh, I was, I was wrong by far.” They locked eyes in the mirror. The softness of Albus' gaze made his heart jump. “My love, you are the incarnation of all lovely things, before you I had known only the night.”
Gellert focused again on his fingers, braiding. He understood. Before him, there had only been darkness, before him he had never seen the light. He had been blind, the irony of it all, the seer that in truth had never seen, never so clearly, never so distinctly. Until him.
“I remember thinking I had to make sure you’d never leave me. And I had known you for less than a few hours, I’d never felt anything remotely similar for someone. It scared me, this wave of possessiveness.”
“I’m glad you were as fascinated by me as I was by you.” Possessiveness. If only he knew. “You kept me up all night reading your articles, my aunt kept them all.” He shook his head. “She couldn’t believe I was actually interested in the boy she was going to introduce me to the next day.”
“Don’t take the credit from her! She was right. We do get on well.”
“You call this getting on well?” He looked at their naked reflections in the mirror, finding him already looking back sent them both in a fit of laughter.
After a while in silence, the question came to him.
“Is that why you proposed to make the blood pact? So that I’d never leave you.”
Albus hummed. “No. That was because I wanted to impress you.” A pause. “There was no magic I could do that you wouldn’t match. I thought you'd be fascinated by the ancient so I chose blood magic.” He sighed then. “There was, of course, a more simple reason, I wanted to marry you and it would be the only way we'd be able to do it.”
Gellert remembered Oscar Wilde’s trials; they made noise even in Durmstrang. The muggle hate for people like them had already taken its toll in the wizarding world. Indecency, immorality, depravity, he didn’t know what else they wanted to imprison him for. He saw kids go from not being able to stop their hands from touching each other to starting a brawl after an accidental hand brush in the corridors. A few years later he’d see The Picture of Dorian Gray on Albus’ nightstand and feel relief.
“I was already impressed, Al, by everything you did, by everything you'd done.” Albus had been a mirror he saw himself in, a bit more cocksure due to academic success and slightly older, but so similar it had scared and comforted him at the same time. “You had made all the right decisions I had been too angry to consider. You already had a reputation, a name among the greatest, even Nicholas Flamel knew of your investigations…” He trailed off. “I could barely understand my sight, couldn’t even dream of controlling it, and if you had second thoughts, you were too good at hiding them.”
Albus lifted his head and pulled him closer by the pendant around his neck. “I never had a second thought. Never.” He kissed him softly. “ I was too full of myself. You showed me something I didn’t comprehend, something I would never be able to.”
Gellert kissed him again before straightening his back and returning his attention to the braid. “I’m not sure I will either.”
Albus caressed his calf, he could feel his eyes on him in the mirror like a physical touch. “I always saw it the other way around. You were the one making all the right decisions, you knew when to leave a place where there was nothing else for you. Unlike you, I was determined to stay even if it was rotten work.”
“It wasn't rotten work.”
“It was.”
“It was your family, it wasn’t rotten work.”
“They didn't need me and I forced myself to be necessary because it was what my father would have done.”
He had finished braiding it, the result very much satisfactory, a victory braid, that of a warrior who had already won the battle. He wished it was a premonition, he wished he could braid his hair again when it all finished in the same style.
“I don't think that's true.” He lowered his body to embrace him, his lips on his cheek for an instant before he pressed their faces together, cheek against cheek. Their eyes met in the mirror. “I think you like to tell yourself that because it detaches you from them. No, don’t interrupt me. But you really loved them. And they really loved you. And that was the reason why my presence was so unwelcome. Your siblings and you stopped negotiating a middle ground and you suddenly became an authority figure, something you had never been for them.”
Albus was dragging him to the floor as he tried to continue speaking, he tangled his hand on his blond crown, like a halo in the evening light, and brought their mouths together. The floor was cold but their bodies were pressed together tightly, it could have been a wrestle if their hands weren't so loving.
“Ariana liked you,” Albus said, caressing his cheeks with his thumbs. “She told me once if you weren’t for me then you must be for her.”
It made him laugh loudly, he buried his face on the curve of Albus’ neck. “And you never told me? Were you scared I chose to divide my attention?”
“Knowing you, you’d have tormented me forever.”
“I will now.”
“See?”
It was quiet, it was calm.
“I liked her too.” He smiled softly. “She made me swear to keep the secret, I guess it doesn’t matter anymore.”
Albus’ hand caressed his back, inviting him to continue speaking. It was nice, to hold and to be held, with no barrier more than skin between them. The room was growing dimmer with the end of the day.
“You were better than Aberforth at reading stories because you did different voices for every character and he didn’t.”
Albus kissed him, a guffaw escaping his lips, and he had to break the kiss almost instantly because he couldn’t stop smiling. Gellert mirrored him, infected by the laughter. Gods, when had they been so happy, he couldn’t remember.
“And I have to live with this without telling him? My love, you’ve condemned me to silence!”
He kissed him, and again, and again, and again, softly, the smile still lingered. They stayed in silence for a bit, breathing each other’s scent, only focused on feeling the other’s fingers drawing on their skin.
As his smile died, Albus raised his chin and locked eyes. When he kissed him again, it was full of intention.
He pulled back, biting his lips, and looked for Albus’ eyes, in case he had misunderstood him. But Albus kissed him again, gracing his lips with his tongue and asking him to open his mouth, to deepen the kiss. He complied, they were already flushed together, and their skin felt like fire again. It made Gellert think before he couldn’t think anymore, of the touch of dying ashes, just before bringing them back to life, of the burnt it left on the naked hands, invisible and still so real.
“I really do wonder if this always happens. All the time. In every life. Us, and all the destruction that comes with it.” Albus said against his hair once they had finished.
They were back on the bed and his breathing had been so quiet Gellert had thought he had fallen asleep. He propped on one elbow to look at him.
“I’m sure it does.”
“Are you?”
Gellert nodded. “I want to believe there must be one where the chaos is lesser, where life is quieter. But maybe that's part of it all.” After a pause, he touched his cheek and brushed a lock of hair out of his face. The braid was already half undone, they hadn't been careful at all. “I think a lot about the time we spent on the coast.”
The first war. Their first war. And the hell that came with it. The sleepless nights ridden by guilt for not being on the battlefield, for enjoying Albus’ presence at the other side of the bed, awake too, knowing they’d fight if he spoke. They had changed each other’s bandages every day, they wouldn’t have been able to clean the wounds without the other there. The silence after the names of the dead had been reported on the radio. Surnames first and names after. Albus had taught a lot of them, some he had even known from his days at school. Gellert would lay a tentative hand on his shoulder that’d only make him angrier. He’d storm out of the room, out of the cottage and he'd sit on the overgrown grass of the cliff, bearing the elements. He never went too far, Gellert could always see him from the kitchen window. When Albus returned, he found him sitting by the feet of the bed, his eyes covered in white cobwebs, blind. He'd never go to sleep without him, it was an unwritten rule, to go to bed together. Albus would touch his cheek with the back of his hand softly to bring him back to the present, and they would lay in silence in the dark, awake until the colours brightened the horizon. They had been miserable, they could have made more of it. If only they'd have been able to speak. But that was their war horse, feelings were difficult to handle, to understand, putting them into words had been too revealing, to lay bare for the enemy to pick the wound. Not anymore.
“You’d hate domesticity.”
“Not with you.” He covered Albus’ mouth with his. “Don’t laugh, it's not funny.”
Albus shook his head, his hands pulling him closer, he put his forehead to his. “You can’t stay in the same place for more than a week. You’d dread the cottage, you’d complain about the weather and you’d try to convince me to–”
He interrupted him with a kiss. “Try me.” Another one. “When this all ends, take me back.” And another. “I will stay with you forever.”
Albus brushed their noses. “That’s an awful lot of time, my love. What will you do when you regret your words?.”
He smiled, shaking his head. “I won’t.” And after a bit. “I love you.”
“And I you.”
It felt like the calm before the storm, and he knew Albus felt it too, inside his very bones. But it was peaceful, temporary and tense, but peaceful. They stayed in bed until midnight and walked back to the library once they had made a bit of progress with their investigations, just to check if Vinda and Queenie had got further than them. They were waiting for the news, something that confirmed that Albus was officially kicked out of Hogwarts, something that made him a public enemy as well, that was the only reason they were back in Nurmengard.
Nicholas and Perenelle had been the first to send a reassuring letter, showing their full support. No news from his old schoolmates yet, which was also reassuring. He had seen Karkarov in Bulgaria, walking through the woods, and Cass Trelahar and Nostradamus, inside some familiar catacombs he couldn't place yet. Nothing from Dee, but that was a weird one, he preferred not to know where Denya would get herself into for the information. His aunt had sent a terribly empty letter where she told him about her day but didn't complain about anything. She was back to her war correspondence style, he knew the clues to understand something was wrong from her recollections.
When Queenie excused herself and went to bed, calling them a flock of night owls, Vinda challenged Albus to a chess game. Gellert set out to be as annoying as he could for both of them, he didn't know anyone so competitive as Vinda nor anyone as skilled as Albus. The next hours would be fun.
“So-o-o, has she told her husband she sleeps in your room yet or that isn't relevant enough to be written down?”
“We are not sleeping together.”
“Only in the same room, on the same bed. After she's clearly stated that she missed you. Right ”
“Grindelwald.”
“I mean, it is your turn to make a move on her if you haven't already. What's holding you back.”
“She’s been having nightmares, and I’m usually awake to hear them, it is convenient for her not to cross the entire castle just to speak with me.” She sighed, exasperated. “I'm not making any moves. Her husband writes every day, she is in love with him.”
“And does she answer? Because I know someone who received a letter every day of the summer from someone else and didn't open a single one.”
Albus smirked, shaking his head slightly.
She lost a tower and two pawns after that, one after the other. He smiled to himself when Albus lost too many seconds, distracted by him moving around the room, picking up books from the higher shelves, drumming with his fingers on his shoulder, playing with the ends of his hair. His solution to him was more radical, no staring daggers, no warnings. After a while, Albus reached for him and pulled him down for him to sit on the arm of his armchair.
“Stop it or I will.”
He couldn't help his gaze going from his eyes, to his mouth, and back to his eyes. “Okay.” But he slid down to sit half on top of him, his legs curled up and his head against his shoulder. He'd accept the condition with a slight modification.
The game continued and, after a while, he closed his eyes, his breathing mirroring Albus' calm one, his heartbeat on his ear. He may have fallen asleep for a bit, he remembered vaguely the touch of Albus’ lips on his forehead. When he woke up, he was glad he didn't open his eyes right away, he would have missed a precious interaction if he had.
“Not bad, Dumbledore.”
“Not used to draws, are you? Me neither.”
“No.” And after a very long pause. “I've never seen him like this before.”
“Asleep?”
He picked up on the irony in Albus' tone. Gellert couldn't see her but she had rolled her eyes, he was certain, she hadn't.
“In love.” Gellert could hear her picking up the pieces and putting them back to their place in the set. “I've only known him heartbroken.”
“Is that the reason why you don't trust me yet.”
She put the last one in and the sound of glass against china felt raucous in the stillness of the night. “I've seen the good you bring to him, but I've also been through all the bad. I think it's better if I never trust you, less complicated.”
She closed the wooden box.
“Maybe it is.” Albus took a deep breath. “Let's play chess some other time, though, you are a decent opponent.”
“Don’t you play together?”
“With someone who'd always guess my next move?" He sighed. "Draughts we can manage sometimes, but chess is impossible.”
“Because of the sight, you mean.”
Albus nodded.
“Draughts are boring. And he's terrible at cards, not even the Gods can miracle that.”
It made Albus laugh, it reverberated against his ribcage. “I prefer it my way.”
“The alternative is a scary thought.” Her tone was certain as if she was just making sure what she knew was true.
“It is.”
It was. That he knew him so well he could guess his moves, that he knew him so well there was no legilimency needed for him to be able to read him, that he knew him so well he'd know his every move on the board. And if he was able to do that, what wasn't he able to guess, where was the limit of him knowing him. Gellert lived with the thought way more comfortably than Albus, he was aware of it.
She stood up and picked up the box from the table. “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.”
When the echo of her heels got lost in the corridors, Albus kissed his hair, pulling him closer.
“Enjoy listening to other people's conversations?” He asked softly against his ear.
Gellert smiled, kissing back when he brushed their lips together.