The Pretender

Clarification, Break needs a hobby other than bothering Liam.

Chapter 4

Both Aurors drew their cloaks in against the cold December wind. They had just left the Ministry by one of the side exits, and were heading toward the small apartment they shared. Most wizards would have Disapparated but Liam was exceedingly bad at it and Vincent walked to keep him company.

Usually he would have grumbled bitterly about the cold but today he was oddly quiet, something that made Liam dart several nervous glances at him as they walked.

Finally, Vincent asked, "Why is Xerxes Break suddenly hanging around you so much?" There was something about his tone that made this question not idle but something jealous, possessive.

Liam seemed not to notice the tone as his reply was casual. "He just seemed curious about how I was doing. After that fall, I mean."

"Ah, I suppose that is reasonable." Vincent said, but his voice didn't loose it's vaguely threatening undertone, as he asked, "About that, do you remember anything about what made you fall?"

With a sigh Liam shook his head. "Unfortunately no; it's all a blank. I don't even remember what I was doing in the stairwell in the first place. It must be because I hit my head."

"It must be." Vincent said mildly. He reached out and put a hand on the small of Liam's back, "Maybe it's for the best, eh?"

Trying, and failing, to restrain a flinch from even that minimal contact Liam said, "Perhaps."

"Wouldn't want you overburdened with painful thoughts, Liam, after all, I always want the best for you." Vincent shifted the hand on his back to around his waist and used it to pull him close. "You do know that, right? With my silly brother off chasing dreams you're all I have left right now. I wouldn't want you to…" his free hand dropped to the sheathed scissors at his hand, "Be dealing with nasty memories."

His eyes tracking down to the scissors and back up to Vincent's smile Liam went several shades paler and protested, "Really, I don't remember anything!"

Vincent's smile widened just a little and became, just for a few seconds, satisfied. "That's good." he said.

The next day Break was doing a perfectly decent job of ignoring the way all the photo-Tamara's were staring at him when Lunettes stormed up to his desk. Candy spilled from his hands to clatter across Break' desk as Liam demanded, "Are you responsible for this, Xerxes Break?"

Break, confused, looked between the brightly wrapped candies and Lunettes' expression of barely restrained fury. "Not a kind you like?"

At that Lunettes looked like he was about to rupture something, when his spoke his voice was clipped, angry, "What, exactly, do you mean by this," the stab of a finger indicated the sweets in question, "gesture?"

He blinked at Liam, honestly surprised in the face of the other man's anger. He almost replied, "I didn't really mean anything." but then the 'has a jealous partner' factoid floated back to the front of his memory. At that very moment he decided to give something a little try. "I was only thinking a young man with such broad shoulders shouldn't be so thin. At the risk of sounding like my mum, you need to get more meat on your bones." He gave said bones a speculative look. "You eaten yet?"

As expected Lunettes spluttered, completely thrown at that and went all red and flustered. "I- what?"

"Eaten." Break repeated, not at all guilty at the havoc he had no doubt just created in Lunettes' brain by the speculative look. "Tea. Have you had it yet?"

"… well, no, but-" Lunettes started to reply but Break was up out of his seat before Lunettes could finish the sentence.

"Then let's go out!" he said cheerily. "Take a tea hour with me." And he herded the still confused Lunettes back to his desk to collect his cloak and then out the door.

It was quite hilarious how easily he ended up with a very confused looking Lunettes sitting across the tiny table from him in his favorite café. And Tamara had always said he was so bad with people!

"My usual, Marrie!" he called to the café waitress, glad they had one because he didn't dare leave Lunettes alone at the table, the man would probably bolt back to the safety of his desk the moment he left him alone, "And enough tea for two!"

The waitress raised an eyebrow at his companion but didn't comment, instead sighing and taking her wand from her robe -this shop was owned by a witch who hired only from the magical community- to start conjuring cakes onto her tray.

"What do you prefer?" Break asked Lunettes. "Cake? Scones? Something else?"

"A… scone?" Lunettes offered as if he wasn't sure it was the right answer.

"Righty. Well, this place has lovely raspberry scones -you like raspberry?" When Lunettes nodded, appearing rather overwhelmed, Break called to the waitress, "Add a raspberry scone to that, would you, Marrie?"

"Of course." said the waitress, giving her wand an extra flick to conjure a new plate onto her tray. She made her way to their table and began unloading her tray onto their table. All but one plate went in front of Break. "Anything else you want before I go?" she asked Break.

"That's it." he told her and she retreated.

Lunettes was observing the mass of plates in front of Break, eyeing the slices of cake on each of them. "You… like cake?" he asked eventually.

Break chuckled. "That's putting it a bit mildly, I think." He picked up his fork and began in on the first cake. "This place has a wonderful chief."

"I didn't even know it was here." Lunettes said, breaking his scone in half and inspecting it, as if he thought there might be something inside. "I thought there weren't many wizard run shops in this area."

After chewing the massive bite of cake in his mouth industriously and swallowing Break said, "Oh, there's a bunch of them, what with the Ministry being so close." His answer was perhaps a little vague because he was watching Lunettes intently.

Instead of starting on his scone Lunettes reached up with on hand to finger his earring -Break only noticed now that his ears were pierced, the earrings were small rings, very easy to miss- and if Break hadn't been watching very closely he might have missed the barest glimmer of magic being activated.

Then Lunettes dropped his hand from the earring and picked up one of the halves of his scone. He bit into it and made a surprised noise. "This is good." he said after he'd swallowed.

"I told you so." Break said, without really thinking exactly how childish it sounded.

Had he just seen Lunettes check his food? It was true Aurors were paranoid but not usually to this existent this early in their career.

To cover up that embarrassment and to test what he'd just inferred he offered one of the plates to Lunettes. "Try some of this."

"I wouldn't want to-"

"I'm not in the habit of giving away cake often." he said, face completely solemn. "I'd take it."

Without further protest Liam took a forkful of cake. Break watched his other hand, which started toward his earring casually. Again there was the subtlest hint of magic and only when that happened did Lunettes eat the cake. If Break hadn't been watching with such a suspicious eye the entire thing could have looked just like a nervous gesture. It was very well played. His opinion of Lunettes rose several notches.

He poured tea and got Lunettes into conversation again, this time about the shops run by wizards in the streets around them which Lunettes knew surprisingly little about.

"I suppose I just don't get out much for anything but work." Lunettes admitted. "I didn't do an exploring when I moved here, I was too busy."

"But surely you've lived here for a while," Break said, "Not just as an Auror but when you were training."

"I've only lived here for… oh, only a little more than two years."

Break's fork paused halfway to his mouth. "But what about when you were in training?" he asked.

"I did all my Auror training in Ireland." Liam said. "And then there was a vacancy here so I transfered."

"That's rather… odd."

"Not really. I'm Irish."

At that Break blinked and then stared at him, he was just opening his mouth to reply when Lunettes rolled his eyes and said, "Ye be wonderin' why ya didn' noticed til now. Everyone told me no one takes someum who sounds like a bloody Leprec'aun seriously 'ere." his voice was thick with the accent that there had been no trace of before. "So I'sn put effort inta loosien' it afore I got transfered." He sighed, "It still sneaks through on the occasion."

"I've never heard it before." Break remarked. "I suppose I wasn't listening for it. All the same, I'm one for talking, I'm American."

Liam eyed him skeptically, "You sound very English."

"My mother was English." said Break lightly. "And I spent almost all my summers here before I finally moved to London to start training. I sort of thought the same thing as you; I didn't want to be the odd American out so I cultivated the accent."

"Did your family move from America when you did?" Liam asked, curiously.

"No." Break said but not harshly. "I moved on my own. But what about you? It must be hard living so hard from your family."

"Not really… they died." Liam said shortly. "A long time ago."

"I'm sorry." Break offered.

"It was a long time ago."

In the rather awkward silence that followed Break took a few bites of cake and then said, "By the way, how are you doing? Even with healing that fall must still hurt."

"Not as much as you'd think." Lunettes picked up his tea and used drinking it to buy time, which Break only caught because he was looking for that kind of thing. "Everything I cracked just aches."

"Do you have any idea idea how it happened?" Break asked, schooling his face into simple curiosity.

Lunettes frowned, but not at Break, more to himself. "I remember I went to the back stairwell to talk to Vincent, he smokes sometimes, you see, and then… we were talking about something or other, I don't remember what. He must have left eventually because if he'd been there when I fell…" his frown deepened, "Well, he'd have done something. So it must have been after he left that I slipped or something."

"Are you sure he left?" Break asked.

"… What do you mean?" Lunettes returned cautiously.

The conversation had gone so well up to this point and he was loth to ruin it but if he didn't push at this Break knew it was unlikely he would get anything from Lunettes. "I mean, what if Vincent was still there when you fell?"

"But surely he would've-"

Break cut him off with, "Not if he was the one who pushed you."

That made Lunettes go very still. "You honestly think that Vincent would do that? He's my partner, Xerxes Break."

"Not a very good one." Break commented, trying to keep the acid out of his voice.

"Not every team is close." Lunettes replied.

"I've heard that you and Vincent are close." Break snapped. "Very close."

There was the snap of real anger behind Lunettes' eyes and his fingers sunk into the tablecloth as he gripped the edge of the table. "Oh, you know about that do you." His tone was rigidly controlled evenness. "Then there's no point in this conversation because you obviously don't understand how impossible what you're suggesting is." He rose from the table but Break reached across it and grabbed the sleeve of his robe.

"Look at your hand!" he protested. "That cut on it," Lunettes frowned for a moment and then raised the other hand to look at the pale scar on the palm. "You didn't get that from a flight of stairs. Your partner is known for carrying scissors, he could have-"

Lunettes shook off Break's hand angrily, "I don't know what you think you're doing, coming to me with all of this but you're wrong. You're mistaking a simple accident as something - something impossible!" He glared at Break but his hands were clenching at his sides, real fury in the whiteness of his knuckles. "Find something better to do with you time than thinking up insane theories for perfectly reasonable things!"

"But that cut-"

Before he could even finish the protest Lunettes had turned and vanished on the spot with the sharp crack of Disapparation.

"That looks like it went well," Marrie said, approaching to take empty the plates from his table.

Break sighed. "It went even worse than I'd expected to."

He was very lucky that he didn't splinch himself by Disapparating as suddenly as that, Liam was not very good at it even at the best of times and when under stress or upset he got even worse at it. Despite the fact that he'd managed to make it to outside the Ministry without leaving anything behind still he arrived out of breath and rather disheveled.

After tugging his robes straight Liam retreated back into the Ministry; even if that dammed Xerxes Break followed him he wouldn't be able to Aparate to exactly where he was if he was inside the Ministry's layers of protective spells. He didn't go back to his desk either, both because he didn't want to be that easy to find -it was a good thing Vincent wasn't on shift with him today or he would have to do some explaining- and because there was something he wanted to do. Sharon would be just ending her shift in the infirmary and if he waited long enough by the door she would eventually emerge.

She did not much later and she only had to glance at his expression and the way he was standing to grab his wrist and drag him home. Not home home because that would have required going all the way back to Ireland, and he couldn't do that for several reasons, but home to the little apartment she lived in over an equally tiny grocery store. There she pushed him firmly into a kitchen chair and proceeded to make tea.

It was a symptom of growing up around the Rainsworth family women that he let her do all this, after a while one got rather used to any Rainsworth girl immediately putting herself in charge of any situation she found herself in; that was what had made her mother and grandmother such wonderfully good healers. Having grown up around the family Liam was long used to this treatment and found it oddly comforting.

By the time Sharon handed him a steaming cup of tea he was no longer as off balance and reeling as he had been when Break had dragged him off. Sharon took the chair across from him and settled her own teacup on the table. "What can I do?" she asked.

"I need to know exactly what Xerxes Break said and did when he talked with you." Liam said, glad she knew better than to ask the obvious, "What's wrong?"

She took her meditative sip of her tea before answering, "He was very curious about your fall, he seemed very sure Vincent pushed you. I mean, he even cut open his own palm with a pair of scissors and had me heal it to compare the wounds. Oh, and he asked if you'd been acting odd lately."

"What did you tell him?"

"That you hadn't." she replied, "But he looked suspicious all the same. Why do you ask, has something happened -I mean, something you can tell me about?"

"…nothing much. I might be jumping at shadows but… he dragged me out to tea and kept trying to get me into conversation. This isn't the first strange thing he's done around me either." Liam sighed. "I don't know what he getting at and I very much want to so it'll stop bothering me."

The giggle that Sharon gave wasn't quite caught by the hand she put over her mouth.

"What's so funny?"

"There's an explanation for all this that you haven't thought of, Liam." she said.

"What?"

"The man just lost his partner and I don't think he was that close with anyone else, maybe he's lonely. Maybe he wants a friend."

That made Liam blink for a moment, surprised. "A… friend?" He gave that a minute of thoughtful contemplation then said, "You know, I think I can use that."

Send in your skeletons

Sing as their bones go marching in...

(The Pretender)

TBC