Again, the wind seems to get knocked out of Barty. It’s easy to jostle him, isn’t it? The emotional slap of Sturgis’ tone and dismissal of Barty entirely after what had been a welcoming start with that smile — well, it’s confusing. Makes Barty feel bad. If he can’t have a null effect on his surroundings, he certainly won’t allow it to be a negative one if he can help it. So, as the shock passes and he picks apart his mistake, Barty jumps to his feet to skitter after his newest fixation into the kitchen.
“I’m not —” There’s a pause here, a bit awkward, and it’s his turn to linger in the doorway now. As his next words come to him, he thinks: well, maybe Sturgis doesn’t want him to follow. “I was not ———— doing much of anything. I, uhh. Seem to scare off all my company. Pretty bad when the house elves even get upset with you.”
Pretty bad when you make decade-long mistakes and absolutely deserve every look of derision directed your way.
Arm pressed against the door frame, he leans onto it heavily. It’s a habit he developed when he was posing as Alastor — resting because of the wooden leg and all the aches and pains that came from having Moody’s body. Awfully tiring to have chronic pain and a prosthesis all of a sudden. And now he just does it after training himself to for the better part of a year. And maybe he would force it out of himself, but he finds it suits his predicament. He’s too tall. Too imposing. If he leans, it cuts his size down, and people feel less threatened when they don’t have to crane their head up at his 183 centimeter full height.
“— But I suppose I should know better. It’s a bit antagonistic to wave muggle items at Kreacher.” Barty’s eyes flit around the kitchen, hoping to find some means to keep the conversation going. Maybe he is a bit desperate. Sure, Kreacher and Winky are lovely in their own special ways, but the company of house elves doesn’t quite feel the same as with people. He hates the power dynamics. Superior status really isn’t something he wants, as radical as that is for everyone to find out about him. Maybe he could offer to make tea? Coffee? A snack? But it’s not really his kitchen to commandeer. It might upset Mrs. Weasley to see him getting comfortable.
Anxious, fingers tap on the wood of the door frame. Does he… Keep talking? He does that rambling thing. No one seems to like it (he thinks) (it’s not nearly as true as when he first started showing his face here) (Tonks in particular thinks it’s hilarious to get him going and spill his nervous energy everywhere). “He hasn’t changed since I was a boy. I brought this thing called a yo-yo when I visited once — I was Regulus’ best friend, Sirius’ brother — the two of them just about went mental.”
Of all the ways he’d thought this might play out, Barty following him into the kitchen hadn’t been an option he’d considered; not really. Why would he? Yet Sturgis had just settled down in his usual seat in the corner closest to the fireplace, when he heard the other man speak and looked up from an old copy of The Daily Prophet. Someone had brought it in as a joke, but he’d slowly been working his way through the puzzle section, one crossword at a time, over the past few days.
It was discarded the moment the words ‘I seem to scare off all my company’ left Crouch’s lips, a flicker of amused recognition crossing his face. He also couldn’t help but notice the way the other man moved, leaning against the door in a way very reminiscent of Moody—although perhaps that was to be expected. He had spent nearly an entire year impersonating the Auror, after all. Nasty stuff.
“I’m not upset with you,” he said with a shrug, an unreadable expression on his face—not because he was being difficult or mysterious, but rather had no idea how he felt about their conversation and the weird turns it was likely to take. “Just tired of people talking to me out of guilt, or pity, or because they couldn’t come up with an excuse to leave quickly enough. So I guess we have something in common.”
Just like being put under the Imperius curse, or doing stints in Azkaban—except of course Sturgis’ experience of both had nothing on what the other man had gone through. Yet here he was, an absolute and utter disaster of a human being, spilling his guts while Barty was trying to make polite conversation.
“I’m sorry. I used to be decent at small talk, but it’s all but impossible nowadays. Feels pointless, just making noise without saying anything,” he murmured, staring off into the middle distance with a vacant expression. If other people had a tendency to fill awkward silences, he revelled in them—well, as much as he revelled in anything these days. If nothing else, it was a damn sight better than trying to have actual conversations with other people and pay attention to what they were saying; almost inevitably, he’d lose the thread and then just feel awful for the rest of the interaction.
How did that saying go? If you can’t say something nice...
