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Now I've always been puzzled by the yin and the yang.
It'll come out in the wash, but it always leaves a stain.
—Tom Waits, "2:19"
"Another round?"
The bottle of firewhisky is still half-full, and he grunts his assent for Shacklebolt to pour as Vance deals the cards for another game of three-man noddy. It's the small hours of an early September morning, and the three of them are winding down in the haunted heap of No. 12 Grimmauld Place after a half-official first shift stretched out into an unofficial second. The damp drawing room usually smells of wall-rot and dusty curtains, but tonight it's warm and mellow with a cloud of smoke and the waft of spirits.
"A man walks into a pub with a bugbear," Vance says. She takes a puff of her cigar, blowing smoke out through shapely lips. "He asks the barman, 'Do you serve Ministry men here?'"
"Heard it," Alastor announces, but Shacklebolt only looks up from his cards with that patient, attentive smile of his.
"The barman says, 'We certainly do. What'll it be?' And your man says. 'I'll have a firewhisky—'"
"'—and the bugbear'll have the Ministry man,'" Alastor provides.
Vance throws a knut at him, which he dodges. "Spoilsport."
Shacklebolt chuckles, although whether at him and Vance or at the old joke, who knows. The lad has a face for cards, smooth as a baby's backside; only man he’s ever known who can make coming look like a Sunday picnic.
Creak.
All three of them glance up when the stairs let out a complaint, and Alastor peers through the wall to see a stooped, stiff-gaited figure slowly descend to the first floor.
"Just Lupin," he mutters, his shoulders easing slightly, but he keeps an eye on the lad for a moment anyhow, watching him head down to where Black has been sulking and drinking all day. Vance, God bless her, goes to the door and silently opens it just a crack, peering out to confirm it for herself.
They resume the game at a leisurely pace, and it's almost like the old days, when it was him and the Prewetts, drinking and gambling until their eyes were sandpaper and their throats were sore from laughing too hard. Vance smiles at him across the table, looking better than anyone who's pulled a double has any right to. Shacklebolt, for his part, is showing a little wear, slumped low and inviting in his chair, and if Alastor didn't know from experience that he could spring into action at an instant's call, he'd kick him out of the game on principle instead of admiring the picture of put-your-feet-up contentment he's radiating.
Case in point: the sound of breaking glass rings out from the basement, and Shacklebolt has his wand in hand before either of them.
Alastor looks down, through his own jaw, through the floor, into the basement kitchen where Lupin and a gin-soaked Black are snapping at each other like a pair of unruly pups.
"Quarrel," he says.
From the basement rises the uncharacteristic sound of Remus Lupin shouting. "Padfoot!"
"Thirty-one," Vance announces. She spreads her cards and reaches for the pot.
Alastor catches her wrist and holds it until he's tallied up her cards himself.
"Tsk. Don't you trust me, Moody?"
"At cards? Not as far as I can throw you."
She smiles serenely and blows a puff of smoke in his face. Shacklebolt again chuckles that low, smooth chuckle of his, and Alastor thinks to himself that maybe he'll stay over tonight. The weather's rearing up outside, threatening rain or maybe some fluke bout of September snow. These are hard and strange times after all, but in here, the night is golden and smoky, and if he's clutching a useless hand at the moment...well, the next one just might be better.
I'll dare you to dine with the cross-legged knights. Dare me to jump and I will.
I'll fall from your grace, but I'll never let go of your hand.
—Tom Waits, "Never Let Go"
Kingsley takes a sip of his whisky and trades in his cards. The responsible part of him, the one with a voice that sounds like his mother's, reminds him that he should have headed home an hour ago. It's been a long day, and his back is going to hate him later for not finding a hot bath and a decent mattress while he has the chance.
Vance and Moody have the stamina to amble on forever, however, or so it seems, and he doesn't want to be the first to bow out. Besides, he's happy to provide and keep a little company. You learn to find your pleasure where you can when you're MLE, and you don't leave a comrade alone when there's a bottle on the table. Vance has been all but running the department with Scrimgeour off slaying dragons in the Minister's offices, and he can see the faint, tired lines around her eyes and the tension in her ramrod posture.
As for Moody...well, it's quietly common knowledge that Moody hasn't been home since what happened at Hogwarts. The little cottage up in Scotland was declared Compromised by the man himself, and Moody has apparently been sleeping on friends' sofas and in the department barracks, even if he hasn't officially worked there for well over a decade, and who knows where else he's been camping out in between.
"Ah!" The cry that rises up from the basement is muffled but urgent.
"Still fighting, I take it?" Vance asks.
That charm-blue eye rolls downwards, and maybe it's a late-night trick of the light and smoke, but Kingsley could swear he sees some touch of colour come upon the man's craggy cheeks.
Moody stares for a moment, then snorts. "Something else that starts with an F."
Vance raises an eyebrow. "Fucking?"
"Fornicating," Moody says, missish at the oddest times.
"Fornicating," Vance parrots mockingly. Her little smile is contagious.
"It's a perfectly fine word, Vance."
Kingsley tilts his head, listening to the faint scuffling downstairs, and tries to figure out if Moody is pulling their legs. It's a pleasant puzzle sometimes, figuring out when Moody is trying to be funny—or trying to flirt.
Vance is much more plain-spoken, leaning across the table with a cat-like stretch of her back, her lips quirking. "Define your terms. What's the difference between fornicating and fucking?"
Moody blows a smoke ring. "One of them has got a 'k' in it."
"The department Yule party, 1979."
"Fornicating."
Kingsley can't resist. "Glasgow."
Moody chews on his cigar a moment, giving him a dark look. Then the scar at the corner of his mouth hooks. "Fucking."
Vance laughs out loud, and her eyes crinkle in a way that Kingsley hasn't seen in too long. She pats him on the shoulder, her hand warm enough to feel through his robes. "We'll have to compare notes."
"We'll solve for x—or k," Kingsley agrees, and he smiles wide in satisfaction when she laughs again.
And she made her own whiskey and gave cigarettes to kids,
and she'd been struck by lightning seven or eight times,
and she hated the mention of rain.
—Tom Waits, "First Kiss"
The weather is changing. She can taste it in the air over the tang of the smoke and the drink, and she can feel the plummeting pressure echoing in her head and in her bones. The days are shortening, but this one still won't die, and she's humming and thrumming restlessly inside. She's probably not going to sleep tonight.
She toys with the coins in the middle of the table, sorting and stacking them into neat piles. Moody keeps one eye on her hand, a suspicious old dragon as always, and Shacklebolt tilts his chair back on two legs, apparently unconcerned by the unlikely prospect of her stealing pennies.
"Are they still at it?" she asks in idle curiosity, drawing another card.
Moody tries to look innocent, which fits him about as well as a ball gown. "Still at what?"
"The supposed fornication."
He smirks at her, seemingly satisfied at the capitulation, and then looks down at the floor. "Yep."
She cannot help but notice that he peers longer than he needs to, his glass eye moving subtly up and down, up and down. Verisimilitude, maybe, but Moody generally doesn't have the imagination for that much deception, so maybe that not-unhandsome pair really are buckling instead of brawling down there. It’s a nice image.
"Position?" she inquires.
That makes Moody blink, which is always a spectacle, as his eyes don't have the knack of doing it at the same time. "Beg your pardon?"
"I think," Shacklebolt says, with that lovely voice of his, "she means, 'in what position are Lupin and Black engaged?'"
She laughs in delight. "Just so, Shacklebolt, just so."
Alastor snorts, shaking his head.
"Well?" she presses.
"None of your business, you perverted harpy."
She looks at Shacklebolt. "I think he's making it up. Do you think he's making it up?"
Shacklebolt rolls his broad shoulders, a faint smile on his lips. "I think he might be making it up."
Moody knocks back the last of his firewhisky and thumps the glass back down on the table. His gaze flickers over her, then to Shacklebolt. She knows that grin. It's been a long while since she's seen it, but she knows it.
"Black—in a chair. Lupin—on his knees, sucking him off."
Shacklebolt goes still at that, and Moody's always ruddy face darkens. She pictures it: splayed knees and flushed cheeks, clutching hands and that long-lost civilian privilege of desperate, hopeless passion. For a long moment, none of them says a word. Then she shifts slightly in her chair with a speculative hum.
"You know, I've never seen two men together."
Moody scoffs. "You? Bollocks."
"My hand to God."
She hears a low, hot cry from down in the kitchen, and she licks her lips as Moody's gaze darts to Shacklebolt once again. Then she finishes her drink, and she stubs out her cigar. If she’s not going to sleep tonight, she might as well make it worth her while. Carpe fucking diem.
"Well?" she says, standing up. "Are you two coming?"
The sound of chairs scuffing hurriedly back from the table is answer enough, and the three of them slip quietly out of the drawing room and up the rickety stairs to whatever privacy is to be had for whatever is left of the night.