Oh, great, Antonin thought to himself as he saw this dishevelled homeless person clumped in front of his door. He tried not to harbour too much ill-will towards homeless people because he was homeless once, and he knew it was not the easiest life, being exposed to attack by violent blockheads with nothing better to do, but sometimes they weren't the easiest people to deal with.
He knew the area was rife with alcoholics hooked to cheap methylated spirits, who could sometimes be dangerous when they grew paranoid but on most days were sad, depressed souls, numb and oblivious to all.
As he neared, wondering if it would be wise to use magic to painlessly remove the person, he caught sight of a crop of unruly ginger hair and he felt as if his heart plummeted into his stomach.
"Fabian?" he asked, voice nearly a bark.
Fabian looked up at him like he was the saviour of humankind. Antonin was immediately repulsed and thought Fabian weak and spineless.
"What are you doing here?" he demanded to know. He couldn't have Ministry personnel stalking him at his front door, that could only have disastrous consequences for all involved, moreso on the Ministry side, but anyway.
"I'm in pain," Fabian wailed.
"Are you drunk?" Antonin demanded. It was at this point he really regretted not killing Fabian on the first night. He looked around. The street was deserted. Well, it was probably not too late to correct this oversight.
"Yes I'm drunk," Fabian admitted mournfully. "I hate myself. Why do I exist?"
"Honestly, I have no idea."
Fabian looked up at him again, eyes shining. They were large, and seemed ever widening, like they were about to consume the entire world with a deluge of tears.
"Get up, will you?" Antonin said. "You're such a disgrace sitting on the floor like that."
Fabian feebly stretched out his hands, asking to be lifted. With a heavy sigh, Antonin reached out and helped him up.
"Have you eaten? You need some food," he said.
"Gosh, you're so bossy," Fabian said, in what can only be termed as a tone of admiration.
"I'm not bossy," Antonin said, bossily. He shoved and prodded Fabian like cattle until they reached a twenty-four hour sandwich shop.
"What would you like?" he demanded to know, simultaneously taking the menu away from Fabian.
"Beans, on toast," Fabian said.
"Beans encourage flatulence," Antonin said.
Fabian had the cheek to protest and whine. Antonin got up to place his order.
After a while, they were served a singular plate of beans on toast, with some spam on the side.
"The spam is mine, are you okay with eating the rest?" Antonin said in a manner that sounded much more like a statement.
Fabian pouted childishly. "It was probably fried in the same oil. Did you check if they were using animal fat?"
Antonin looked at Fabian, who was swooning side to side before coming to a rest on his elbow on the table. Wordlessly, he got up and ordered another plate, this time without any frying or even butter, but just a can of beans emptied on toast.
He put the plate in front of Fabian, who looked at him like he was about to launch into a lengthy expression of gratitude.
"It's OK," he said, cutting Fabian short before he could even speak. "It was my mistake."
That done, he dug in hungrily into his plate of beans, toast and spam. Flatulence be damned, he was raging with hunger and would eat everything in sight.
"I have a boyfriend," Fabian announced.
"So?" Antonin said, realising that he had shovelled the food too quickly into his mouth and they were now wedged uncomfortably in his gullet. "Do you want a drink?" he asked Fabian.
Fabian nodded, and Antonin got up to purchase two bottles of carbonated soft drinks. "Is Coca-Cola OK?" he said, again sounding more like a statement than a question.
"Well, it perhaps is evident that I'm cheating on my boyfriend," Fabian began.
"Does he mind?"
"He probably will."
"But you've never asked him?"
"No, but I don't think he'll like it."
"How will you know until you ask?"
"That will end our relationship!"
"Wouldn't that make things simpler?"
"No!"
"Why not?"
Fabian sighed. "Have you ever been in love with anyone?"
Tony paused from the eating to look at him, but offered no reply.
"I just feel like he does so much for me, he loves me so much, so I owe it to him to be faithful, you know? I want to be what he wants me to be so I know he will truly love me, but sometimes I just think it's too hard, and I want to give up."
"Isn't it true what they say that the person who truly loves you will love you just as you are?"
"It's not so easy. Not everyone is so easy to love, as you are," Fabian said, with soupy eyes. "Some of us are ugly and full of flaws. The only way we have a chance at being loved is by becoming what someone wants us to be."
"Why am I easy to love?" Antonin asked, for he did not like to seem so unchallenging a person.
Fabian sighed wistfully. "You're so ridiculously, absurdly good-looking. Of course everyone loves you. Anyone who sets eyes on you almost instantly wants to make you happy."
Antonin frowned. In his experience, nothing of that sort had ever happened to him, not in the way Fabian thought, at the very least.
"You have a misguided view of the world," he told Fabian.
Fabian pursed his lips. "Why are you so perfect?" he sighed thoughtlessly.
Antonin frowned. He did not know if he was expected to reply, but he strongly felt he had something he needed to contribute.
"If I seem perfect it is purely the result of many years of hard work," he said, albeit slightly self-congratulatory at the many things he had forced himself to accomplish in his life, several failures notwithstanding.
Fabian looked at him, stunned. "What is this hard work?" he marvelled.
"Hard work," Antonin said evasively, for he could not go into detail without betraying facts he wished to hide.
Fabian frowned, and stared sadly into his bottle of Coca-Cola.
"You have been exceedingly superficial," Antonin began to admonish Fabian. "Looks are not everything. I could hardly care less about looks, for example. I think all people should be judged by accomplishment."
Fabian sighed. "Not everyone of us is so lucky in that regard, success eludes some of us still. Like me, for example. I know that when I head into work tomorrow I shall be lectured upon for failure."
"What did you fail at?" Antonin asked, suddenly very interested, though the fact that Fabian failed at something surprised him not. He often regretted his choice to let Fabian live, but it was for moments like these that he thought he could be useful.
Fabian sighed again, shaking his head. "I was careless at work and I was hit by a bus."
Antonin felt his blood run cold, freezing into numerous little icicles that pricked against his skin. "You were hit by a bus? When did this happen?"
"Several days ago. I appreciate your concern but it really doesn't matter. The whole thing was just really stupid."
No, not stupid! Antonin thought. He was besieged by extreme confusion at this matter. There were several points to be considered. One, was that he thought Fabian was a low-level Ministry worker, being so feeble and invertebrate. Two, was that there was some suspicion, amongst their ranks, that Fabian's twin brother was part of the secret Auror service, a division of highly trained spies to combat high-level threats to security. Three, several days ago he was engaged in a minor tussle with one of these shadowy Aurors, who was not merely skilled in combat, but showed signs of favouring the elemental style of duelling, which was not only extremely challenging but rather archaic and could be argued to be less immediate than contemporary duelling styles and rarely practiced except by particular eggheads interested in this sort of time-consuming stuff, and number four, he threw this Auror under a literal bus. It was worth considering that they had not heard of any deaths in the Ministry through the rumour mill so he assumed this Auror was still amongst the living, but now it seemed like there was a good case he wasn't just sleeping with the enemy as a term of expression but had slept with someone whose job scope put him exactly at the opposing end of where he stood.
It then followed that he should, for the sake of sanity, stop this sleeping around business at once and find some way of really putting this target to work, whether by bringing him to the Dark Lord and getting him to sing all the secrets he must surely hold within him or by finishing him off for real as a statement to how easily they could crush the opposition but this was not a very opportune moment and Antonin was really overcome by a mess of confusion now because—because—
Sitting across him Fabian sucked the last dregs of his Coke noisily up the straw, his lips pursed around the small tube, eyes open wide and looking up at him. He looked so gormless, and harmless, and spineless, and witless, and there was just really no telling that under it all he was a lethal and trained weapon of the Ministry out to hinder their cause in the most infuriating ways possible, and yet it could not be denied they had ability worthy of respect, but when this talent came wrapped in such an unbecoming exterior...
Antonin felt a wave of repulsion course through his body. He found it hard to accept this simpering, feeble boy as approaching his equal in magical ability. There was just no way one of the very, very few practitioners of elemental duelling on this earth was this freckled red headed boy with a shapeless bottom. He had heard, on occasion, the Dark Lord mentioning that Hogwarts harboured a duelling master by the name of Filius Flitwick, but had not made the imaginative leap needed to conceive of a duelling master of his status enlisting students of such an inappropriate disposition...
"How does being hit by a bus entail job failure for you?" Antonin sought to ask.
Fabian looked up from his empty glass bottle. It was at this moment that Antonin began to see that his mind did not just concoct harmless lies to mask his magical status. All the time, while speaking to him, his mind was whirring away to hide the devious nature of his secretive job in the mundane.
Fabian pulled a face. "I was needed for something important but the accident caused the entire department to be behind on some urgent work."
"Oh," Antonin said, putting on a mask of sympathy. In truth he was now beginning to be really excited at the recent turn of events. He realised that he could probably carry on seeming like a harmless muggle and extricate a lot of crucial information from Fabian along the way.
Fabian sighed again. He was now fiddling with the empty straw, biting and chewing on it absent-mindedly. There was something quite compelling about the way he played with the straw between his lips and the way he looked up at him, chin coyly tilted downwards, with those eyes so big and brown.
"So yes, I'm cheating on my boyfriend and I'm going to get a dressing down at work tomorrow. Wouldn't you say I'm a mess?"
"I can't say. I'm not your boyfriend, neither am I your colleague. You have done nothing wrong to me."
At those words Fabian broke into a smile. "You're so sweet," he simpered. "You like acting all gruff and tough but in actual fact you're a real sweetheart. Taking care of me, buying me food and drinks."
Antonin didn't know what to say in reply, so he kept silent. Under the table, he felt Fabian reach out with a wandering foot to nudge him up and down the calves. At this point, he realised that beyond the initial confusion and repulsion, above all he had been extremely turned on by this turn of events.