It might not be that bad

"Thank you."

Shylock wrapped the elastic around the tail of her hair and patted it down against her back, surveying his work.

He laughed at her question.  

"No, not really," he replied. "I've done stranger things. But I've got more experience than Selwyn and than you, I suspect."

He hummed affirmation at her words.  Adrienne was like Selwyn, Shylock thought.  They both worried too much, anticipated the worst, and tried to prevent it from happening probably to their own detriment.  It was no wonder they were taking so long to get together.

"Things will change," he told her, "and things will be weird.  It's like, the two guarantees of relationships, even mundane ones.  But if you don't take the risk, you'll miss out on anything good you could have had along with it."

"Look, I know what Selwyn's like.  He's scared of his veela side and it makes him really intense. Just because he's like that doesn't mean you have to be as well."

He flinched when she asked her next question, though Shylock wasn't sure whether it was intended for him or just a general musing.  He was less surprised by Adrienne's curiosity than that Selwyn hadn't already told her.

"I can't speak for Selwyn," he said haltingly, "but in most polyamorous relationships that wouldn't be a problem.  That isn't to say he won't be jealous if it happens, but jealousy isn't always a bad thing."

"What exactly has Selwyn told you?" he asked, beginning to feel like he'd been enlisted as Adrienne's tutor.  He had no idea what would have happened if Prichard hadn't paired them together, or if he'd decided not to bring up the topic.

"That is a fairly basic part of the whole thing. I'd have thought it would've been part of whatever you've already talked about."

Quite suddenly, Adrienne realized why Shylock was the advice columnist. While she did feel a bit silly for worrying so much, it didn't feel like he was trying to make her think that way. In fact - and she hoped she wasn't wrong in assuming it - he actually seemed like he maybe cared.

As strange as that idea was, she wasn't really opposed to it, and that in itself surprised her.

He did seem a little taken aback by her questions, but she couldn't exactly blame him. "I- Well. To be entirely honest, I'm not sure that I really took in everything he told me, last time we talked about it. Which, I guess, was the first time we did, too. But, really, I think I'm just due for some research. I never asked him that, because I couldn't fathom what the whole scenario would be like, yet. I wasn't picturing it."

She shrugged, one corner of her mouth lifting in an apologetic half-smile. "You're right, though. I have no idea what I'm doing. But I'm starting to think it isn't going to get less confusing until it's already happening. I always want to be overly prepared, but I'm not sure I can be in this case."

"It's happening now, pet," Shylock said.

Finding a free space to put his hands gave him an excuse to look away, although Adrienne's desk was neat enough that he didn't have to look hard.  Shylock shifted his weight to lean away from her.

"It started the moment you didn't tell him to..." he paused and gave her an amused smile. "Get lost? Dream on?  Or would it have been more high-brow?  Go copulate with yourself."

"In any case, I think it won't get any easier until you and Selwyn start to trust one-another."

Suddenly the wallpaper beyond Adrienne's head was incredibly interesting.  It was the normal puce found in most office buildings, but there were flecks of some other colour in there, some colour that Shylock couldn't quite make out at this distance.  Fascinating.

"Did you know he was originally going to blackmail me?"

She couldn't argue with his response, though his sudden change in behavior left her a bit baffled. She lifted an eyebrow at his suggestions, but smirked slightly at the last one. Perhaps he wasn't entirely off with that one.

"That's fair," she decided aloud, sighing. Just as she began to speak again, aiming for something about how she would need to talk to him when she went back to the flat, he asked her a question that stopped her in her tracks.

"He what?" She asked, despite having heard him perfectly. "How-... That is, he tried to blackmail you into doing what?"

Shylock's stomach dropped.  He hadn't thought this would be easy, but hadn't expected the sudden attack of nerves, either.

He desperately wanted to inch further away from her now, but forced himself to sit still.

"I don't know," he backtracked.  "Maybe not blackmail.  More like persuasion.  He just wanted something that could verify..."

Shylock's eyes slipped closed and when he continued his voice was much softer.

"Could verify that Kaiden prefers the company of men."

His voice lilted up at the end of the sentence, as though he were asking a question, and Shylock hated the way it sounded. As though he was asking permission or forgiveness. He'd not have blamed Adrienne in the slightest if she slapped him right now, although she doubted she would. That would almost come too close to validating the way he felt.

Adrienne wasn't exactly sure what to take away from that. He sounded incredibly guilty, which she supposed he ought to be. But she had to mull it over in her mind for a second as she stared at him, wide-eyed. All that came to mind, though - over and over - was how thoroughly strange it was. In fact, after a beat or two, she cringed and looked away.

"I'm not sure who I'm supposed to angry with. Your tone suggests that it should be you, but I'm conflicted."

Not only was it strange that she was apparently talking to the man who had claimed her ex's attention, but now that man was also with Selwyn. And all of the above had apparently been Selwyn's idea? She couldn't necessarily blame him for the first bit, she didn't think. But they had made an agreement that they wouldn't keep things from each other. And it was definitely weird to think that the man sitting next to her had pulled - at least in part - the attention of everyone she had technically sort of been with.

Clearly, Adrienne had no idea how to label or classify her relationships with either of them. But it didn't really feel great.

She deflated slightly when she exhaled, unable to look at him. "Well, at least we knew for sure."

Part of her meant it, fortunately. That made it much easier to say. But it was also partly her deciding not to make a huge deal out of this. It was just as he'd said; she had to put faith in Selwyn at some point, or they were doomed. So she could at least let herself accept whatever he had done to try and help her.

"Not really," Shylock replied, just as frankly.  "I expected you to be angry with me, that doesn't mean I think you should be."

"I wasn't the one having an affair, and if it hadn't been with me, Kaiden would have found someone else.  So."

Being able to justify it didn't make him feel much better, though he could barely understand why he was feeling guilty in the first place.  It wasn't as though Shylock had turned Kaiden gay, and from his understanding, neither of them had wanted to be in that marriage in the first place.

"I just thought you ought to know because you should be able to trust me as well. And you'd have found out eventually anyway. Those kind of things have a way of coming out."

"I know," she returned, doing her best not to feel prickly after he pointed it out. She knew that just as well as anybody. And, bizarrely, Kaiden had kept her from having to marry a complete stranger, so despite the fact that he wasn't actually interested in her in that way, she almost wondered if it could have been worse?

Pushing the thought away before it could form properly, she decided to ignore many of the thoughts that hit her just then. There were many things she didn't want to know. But Shylock was right about her needing to know that part.

"In the wash," she agreed, mostly because she couldn't think of anything else to say at first. Lifting a shoulder she looked back towards him. "You're right. I'll talk to him."

Shylock had to backtrack through their conversation to understand what Adrienne meant.  He knew there'd been something about open communication in there, but he didn't think he'd specifically said she should talk to Selwyn, or had he?

He began to recognise the distress that signalled how overwhelmed he was feeling.  It wasn't something he was used to.  Not here, anyway.  This was reserved for St Mungos and the halls of Hogwarts and coming down off a high.

It was reserved for home. For talking through a glass door after Destrey had locked herself in the lab. For teaching Lusk spells way above her year level. For holding his tongue to the roof of his mouth so Cass could figure out how "th" was different from "s".

Sometimes it was reserved for Selwyn, because drugs and anxiety and anorexia were a bad substitute for whatever glue normal people used to hold themselves together.

"Right," he agreed.

Leant back, hopped off the desk, ran idle nails down the inside of one arm.

"What were you saying about the school?"

He turned the subject back to work, and for a moment she entirely blanked on what was happening. When she blinked and looked back at her desk, she saw the notes that she had taken earlier that day about the happenings at Ilvermorny.

"Well," she said, hopping off of the desk and going around to sit in her chair again and sift through her papers, "a group of students have gone off to Ilvermorny on exchange and Prichard wants us to cover it. List of students, maybe chatting to parents or writing to the staff there to get their take on it."

Adrienne shook her head. "He's good at picking stories but isn't nearly specific enough about what he wants. Anything sound interesting to you? Or d'you want to suggest something else? We've got to cover it in rounds until they come back, so we'll need a couple plans."