“I won’t have the Spirit Division rummaging around in my business,” Shiv replied with a dismissive wrinkle of his nose, already halfway down the hallway and not deigning to look back to see if he was being followed. Evan, he had long ago discovered, would follow or he wouldn’t, but Shiv certainly wasn’t about to drag him along like a misbehaving toddler. “No, I have a plan.”
What this plan was or if he cared to elaborate on it were matters that Shiv seemed disinclined to mention, his interest already preoccupied by the warm flicker of fire beneath the pot and the steam that began to rise as he waved a bare hand absently over the pot of chai. “What’s wrong with tea?” was the largely unbothered reply — usually if one asked enough questions of Evan he eventually tired himself out of complaining. “You know I don’t live here. I don’t keep the cupboards full.”
A partial lie. He never intended to live on the premises, some days it simply happened.
With a yawn and another satisfyingly crunchy cracking of his spine, with all the percussion of those tap-dancing skeletons he’d taken such a fancy to amidst the market-sellers lining the streets of Diagon Alley, he turned his head to stare back through the kitchen door to where Evan remained perched. The skeletons had been charming, in their own way. Delightfully whimsical. He wished that Evan was half so charming.
Behind him, the chai began to simmer, star anise and cinnamon warming the air around him.
“Hello Evan,” he replied slowly, without any particular enthusiasm, scrubbing dark hair back off of his forehead and getting tangled up in the magnifying goggles he’d quite forgotten he’d pushed up there. “I wasn’t aware we were so hung up on pleasantries.”
Their usual bickering was anything but pleasant on most occasions, but apparently today was going to be an exercise in pedantry. Evan’s news could wait. “How are you? And the family? And the extended family? And your neighbours? And the portraits - how are they?”
A smile, the one he knew annoyed Evan because it wasn’t an actual smile so much as a threat of one tucked it’s way into the corner of his lips and he reached out to tap his wand against the heavily simmering pot of chai before it could come to a boil and spoil the milk and asked, in the same thoroughly unphased tone, “Chai?”
“Mmhmm. But you already have, haven’t you? When you think about it. Ex-Spirit Division. Right here. A certified ghoul expert and even I can’t rid you of that monster.” A failure. Well, no. It wasn’t. It couldn’t be because– “If you’re not ready to let him go, you only have to say so. No need to lie. It must get so lonely being you, Shiv. It’s okay if you’re simply needing a friend to keep you company.” And that was something Evan would never understand. Needing a person underfoot and in the way, involved in your business leaving nothing for you, yourself, alone.
“It’s always tea. You’ve doused me in chai. You’ve ruined the taste. Chai this. Chai that. Would it kill you to branch out? Offer me an assam or a darjeeling. It’s the least you could do after ruining my favorite tea spot.” Evan huffed, blowing out a puff of air and pushing the dust mite that had been set on a mission to land on his nose far, far away from his pristine features. “I used to be Darling’s favorite. She would tell me so every time I went in.” His mood, already a toss-up, was heading towards sour at the reminder of the loss of Puddifoot’s. What a woman. Irritable and chatty. Judging with the power to back up her delightful emotion filled tirades and mandates. She was the picture of his own mémère and he could only loiter outside her shop for so long before it became pathetic.
“You don’t?” It was a genuine question, masked with layers of insulting self-serving sarcasm. Shiv had a home? Other than this? What was it? A one room box sparkling clean and bare of all decor since he had shoved it all in here. Now he had to see the place Shiv slept. For all the crackling his bones gave off, Evan had wrongfully assumed the other man folded his long limbs up and tucked himself up in a cabinet or trunk.
“Hello, Shiv!” The greeting may have been forced on one side but Evan leaned in. He put his frustration and annoyance, the lack of appreciation that ate away at him into his own greeting as he kicked his shoes onto the tabletop and toed the books and parchment onto the ground. “The fairest blossoms of pleasantry thrive best where the sun is not strong enough to scorch, nor the soil rank enough to corrupt.” His lips pursed as his eyes slid over to Shiv. “Would you say your soil is rank?”
“Me? I suppose I could be better. I received a terrible wake up yesterday morning and now I have to deal with you. Maman is lovely. Still feuding with Señor Domínguez. Félix is...a child. Alive. Learning or whatever they do. Mon Père closed some deal with H. Syriacus Botanicals. All very grand and very important and business business business, Evan. When will you get a head for business? Enough with your limited liability corporations! Extended family is all well, I assume. I haven’t heard otherwise. The neighbors are irrelevant. The portraits! The portraits, Shiv!”
He shot up, sitting quicker than should have been feasible for a man who didn’t do much but duel and leisure. A pressure point had been found, the switch flipped. Evan’s signs of where not to prod had always been clear, neon bright and calling for all who dared to disturb them. Shiv just enjoyed doing so more than most. “The portraits. Are not. Going. The portraits are taking their sweet arsed time coming to fruition. All I have managed to garner from the portraits is Mary Macdonald has a fear of sunshine, an aversion to the heat. What am I to do with that? What do I care what Macdonald thinks of the summer season, Shiva Sonal Parekh?”
He had hopped off the wooden slab serving as couch, stalked his way to the kitchen– the memory of Shiv’s voice serving as his compass until he came upon the figure, wearing a smile he would love to smack off his face and tending to a pot of tea Evan was turning his nose up at. “Paul doodles, Shiv. He doodles and colors all inside the lines.” Tea distaste, overindulgence turning to dislike, notwithstanding, he stuck his finger into the near boiling pot. The temperature not seeming to bother him as he snuck a drop to test. “You need more star anise. It’s all cinnamon.”
