Snakebite

Shylock had never taken anyone out on a date before.  Actually, scratch that.  He’d never taken a serious prospect out before.  He’d taken out plenty of girls when he was at Hogwarts, most of whom he was well aware were only dating him because they wanted to irritate their perfectly pureblood parents.  There was something formulaic about that.  Being with Selwyn was anything but formulaic.

He skimmed the wine list.  If he were with a girl, he’d just assume he knew better than she did and order a bottle between them.  Especially as they were at a muggle restaurant, having decided before they left that any suitably private tables in Diagon Alley would have been booked up days ago.  Purebloods usually just assumed anything elf-made was superior, but then again, pureblood girls usually didn’t want a private table.  They wanted mummy and daddy to know they were having a fling with that Awful Ashcroft Boy (as opposed to the responsible one or the sweet one, Shylock supposed).

But back to the task at hand.  Should he order for them both? Being part French almost guaranteed that Selwyn knew a good wine when he tasted it. Shylock found himself wanting to order for them both just to impress the other man.  Perhaps it would be more flattering if he asked his opinion instead.

He tilted the list so Selwyn could see it.

“Any preference?” he asked.

Selwyn was wishing he’d sat on the other side of the table.  They’d chosen a cute looking café filled with tiny tables, surrounded by booths and with black and white prints adorning the walls.

When he’d slid in next to Shylock it was because he’d thought he wouldn’t be able to stand having even the width of the table between them.  Apparently this had met Shylock’s approval, for he’d glanced up with a grin of pure delight.

Now, though, Selwyn was feeling uncomfortable.  Shylock was right there.  Was it his imagination, or was there really an overwhelming tension between them as the other man perused the wine list?  He would only have to move his hand an inch to be touching him.  Should he be touching him?  

If they really were together, Selwyn would have no trouble resting his hand on Shylock’s knee.  But they weren’t.  Or weren’t yet, and Shylock was showing no sign of initiating the conversation he’d alluded to in the flat.  Although, Selwyn supposed that made sense.  Get served first and dive into more serious business while the waitstaff weren’t hovering around to overhear.

He was startled out of his own problems by Shylock’s question and Selwyn berated himself for being so foolish.  Obviously, Shylock didn’t see anything wrong with his proximity or his level of affection.  He wasn’t the kind of person to say silent if he had.

“Oh, I shouldn’t really drink,” he replied.  “Unless you want to get zapped?”

“Interesting,” Shylock smiled.

It really was interesting.  Shylock filed the information away to quiz Selwyn over later.  Meanwhile, he couldn’t help being pleased at the way Selwyn had adopted the nickname for his veela powers.

“Then I won’t, either,” he decided, setting the wine list back in its place.

He turned his attention to his menu, stomach already twisting at the thought of the decision in front of him.  Obviously, Selwyn already knew about his problem.  You only had to look at him to know that.  But he didn’t want Selwyn to think it was still a big deal, and anyway, for the most part it wasn’t.  He did eat.  He even ate properly, regularly.  

If only they’d chosen a restaurant Shylock was familiar with.  This place looked pretty hipster; he shuddered to think what the portion sizes were like.  Maybe he could just order an entrée as a main.  He could pass it off as a dancer thing.

“I think I’ll just go for chips,” he said after a moment, “and a coke.”

There, the unhealthy balanced out the size, right?

Selwyn glanced at his companion.  

At the moment, Shylock’s frame was well concealed beneath more than one loose knit. Ironically (or perhaps calculatedly), although Shylock’s eccentric fashion sense would be a lot less noticeable in the muggle world, he apparently chose not to wear it there. But regardless of how he was swamped in clothing now, the image of Shylock leaning against the doorframe in nothing but boxers was seared into Selwyn’s brain.

He was tempted to chide Shylock for ordering such an inadequate meal, but he had no idea what that would do.  Start an argument?  Embarrass him?  Make him worse?  They’d spent the entire afternoon handling one another with kid gloves, why stop now?

“Sounds good,” he nodded, turning his attention to his own menu.

Well, if Shylock was only having chips, that surely meant Selwyn didn’t need to have a real meal either, right?

“I might try these pancakes,” he said.  “I bet I can get them without the strawberries.”

Shylock immediately relaxed as Selwyn simply nodded agreement with his choice of meal.  Until the strain left his shoulders and neck, he hadn’t realised how tense he’d been.

“No, get them. I’ll eat them,” he found himself replying before he had a chance to think twice.

He wasn’t given time to dwell on it before their waitress came by to take their orders.  As he’d suggested, Selwyn didn’t bother to order the pancakes without strawberries.

“Who even dislikes strawberries anyway?” he asked when she was gone.  “Is this some kind of plot?  You know, I can’t physically eat much in one sitting.”

Selwyn laughed.

“If I was plotting to make you eat it, I’d have suggested not getting them with chocolate topping,” he said.  “I just don’t like strawberries.  They taste too sweet.”

“Besides, you don’t seem to mind being tricked into eating them,” he suggested.

He twisted to see if there was anyone in the booth behind them.  There was not, thank goodness. Then he tried to block off any nosy parkers by dropping his chin into the hand closest to the edge of their booth so his body created a kind of barricade.

“So, tell me a story, Shylock,” he requested.

He knew he couldn’t avoid it forever, but ordering the food had brought a bit of normalcy back to the day, even the part of it that had touched on his eating habits.  Well, there went that.

“If everyone in the Order’s as obvious as you, I can see why we have so much trouble with Death Eaters,” he remarked quietly.  “I checked there was nobody nearby before we sat down.”

How was he going to do this?

“There’s a story,” he confirmed, “but I don’t know how much I can tell you.  I mean literally. There are probably spells.”

Selwyn choked back a gasp. It wasn’t so much the idea of a spell preventing family secrets from being spilled; those weren’t so uncommon. It was more that although Shylock didn’t know for sure whether it existed or not, he obviously thought it was likely.

That was somehow disturbing. If he’d had more time to think about it, Selwyn might eventually have come to the conclusion that it felt coercive.

“You’ve never tried to tell anyone else?”

It was halfway between a question and a statement. Shylock seemed to think at least part of the spell would prevent him being able to explain himself. So obviously he never had.

With that knowledge, being taken into his confidence sent a thrill of euphoria through Selwyn, though the gravity of the situation meant he was almost sure it shouldn’t have. It didn’t escape his notice that Shylock was making himself vulnerable in a way he obviously never had with anyone else.

“Well, I have a bit of a story of my own, so I guess we can do a swap, yeah?" he suggested.

Shylock shook his head.

“There’s never been a reason to,” he said. “I’ve never…”

Felt like this. Trusted anyone. Fallen in love.

“We can, yeah,” he agreed with Selwyn’s other question.

“I don’t know where the best place to start is,” he said. “I guess the most pertinent thing is that our parents weren’t really around much when we were growing up.”

“I don’t know that they thought of us as their children,” he added slowly, sure that the spell, which he was sure would have been cast, would kick in on that sentence.

When it became clear that he could still speak, Shylock let out a breath and went on.

“We were brought up by babysitters,” he said. “Mostly… students.”

Selwyn could practically see the gaping gap in Shylock’s narrative. The part he was leaving out because he knew mentioning it would leave him voiceless.

“That’s not really so weird, Shylock. In the wizarding world, I mean,” he said, confused as to why Shylock thought it was such a big deal. “Go back a couple of hundred years and it’s not even that out of the ordinary in the muggle world.”

“I’m not trying to say it’s not terrible; it is terrible. You shouldn’t have been neglected and it’s clearly been traumatic for you. But I don’t understand why your parents would bother with a silencing hex over that. Most wizards and witches wouldn’t care. Hell, a lot of purebloods still do it. Round out the family and hand them along to the nannies to raise.”

“So what am I not getting?”