April 11th, 1892 - The Augurey

Kieran had been quiet and feeling vaguely ill through the meeting, an odd early-afternoon get-together that was ostensibly planned for today because Jude Was Back but alternatively was planned for today because when the sun went down, Kieran would be flinging himself against the floorboards of Jude's attic.

He shaded in his notebook the whole time, dark to light, not looking. And at the end of things, he was feeling — uneasy. Unsure. And there were only a few hours left. (But if this wasn't Jude — what was he even going to do about it?)

"I'm not sure I'm convinced," Kieran said, angling his head towards the purple hair that Jude was presently sporting — this person sounded like Jude, he even essentially looked like Jude, and yet. Kieran wasn't sure. It was the first full moon night, and he wasn't convinced.

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Jude Wright Elias Grimstone

  

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set by MJ!

He hadn’t had much of a chance to speak to Kieran yet. Nor had Kieran participated in any of their discussion this afternoon... which was entirely understandable, considering the date. So, when Jude had spoken himself almost hoarse to the others (grateful to be back in his own voice, as well as the rest of it) and people began to disperse, he dropped into the chair nearest Kieran’s, grateful he had shown up at all.

On some other day, Kieran might have just been baiting him for fun. But today? When he wasn’t feeling entirely well and was therefore due later in the attic, any lingering doubt might leave him stranded, not trusting the person in Jude’s body not to tell. (Jude wasn’t even sure that everything about him was back to normal, or how to tell. What if there was something else awry with him, and purple hair was not the only side effect?)

So this was serious, but he couldn’t be the one to panic – and so his tone was gentler than it might have been. “When are you ever convinced by me?” he asked mildly, gaze drifting to the sketchbook and back again to read Kieran’s face. The problem was he didn’t know how to prove himself, not absolutely. “What am I doing wrong?”

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"Usually," Kieran replied mildly. This would all be much easier if he wasn't secretly convinced by many of Jude's arguments. But just because Jude was right didn't mean everything would work out the way he said it would — and that was where Kieran saw the root of their disagreements.

"Tell me something only Jude would know," he said. He wanted to draw something; he wanted to draw Jude, but it felt offensive to some instinct in him to draw Jude when he wasn't sure this was Jude. "Not the obvious."

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“Alright,” he said, confident he could do that.

It was a reasonable request. But there was a lot Jude knew that presumably all their other friends knew too, things that anyone could have found out just by asking around. There was the obvious, and a whole mass of things he wouldn’t dare say where people might overhear. There were things he knew and things he felt that Kieran clearly didn’t; and then, of course, whatever he did say had to be convincing.

He looked at Kieran’s left hand, charcoal-stained at the fingers, and furrowed his brow to compose his thoughts.

“We’ve known each other for a long time,” Jude pointed out with a small, wry smile – stalling, a little, for time, so he didn’t get this wrong. It had been ten years since they’d met – here, in this café. “How much do you want to hear?”

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"I'll tell you when to stop," Kieran said, mouth twisting wryly. He couldn't let himself be charmed by maybe-Jude; he had to take this seriously, no matter how funny the purple hair was.

Kieran tapped his fingers against the table. "What did you first think of me?"

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His smile tightened slightly, nervous. How honest should he be? He knew the answer; so he met Kieran’s eyes with a little defiance and a little chagrin, and, sighing, curled his hands around an empty glass on the table purely to have something to do with them. “I thought Finn had made a mistake in bringing you, because you were the most infuriating person I’d ever met,” he said, as lightly as he dared. (In fact, he had told Finn as much that first night; he had been genuinely surprised and a little galled when Kieran had been there again the next week, as if he had come for anything besides the opportunity to poke fun.)

“You sat over there, and were wearing your glasses –” he continued – the badly patched pair, of which Jude had since become irrevocably fond (– should he have mentioned the glasses? Exactly how well ought he remember these things?) – “and everyone drank twice as much that evening as they usually do.” As Jude recalled it, Kieran had been more enthusiastic about the bar than anything they were discussing and had, maddeningly, made excellent friends at once with everyone else there in spite of it.

But perhaps Jude had been too wound up by the end of that meeting to view things fairly, caught in a peculiar swell of frustration, exhaustion and exhilaration; a feeling one might have come by just as well by incessantly flinging oneself headlong into an untroubled brick wall.

(If brick walls had tousled brown hair and hopeless opinions and oddly captivating hands, anyway.)

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Kieran grinned. He remembered that night vividly; Jude had been immediately so intensely hopeful for the future that Kieran couldn't help but try to poke holes in his arguments. And still Jude was so convinced of his rightness, of the inherent moral goodness of people, and Kieran couldn't help but come back to the Augurey for the next meeting.

"That sounds about right," he said, visibly entertained. He really was starting to think that this was the real Jude, but he was enjoying it — having a little bit of extra power in this conversation with purple-haired probably-Jude. He tilted his head back and looked up at Jude, trying not to look too much like he was scheming.

"When did you stop hating me?"

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   Jude Wright

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set by MJ!

Kieran was grinning, thank Merlin, and Jude found himself more at ease with all this immediately.

He wasn’t sure what he’d have done if Kieran remained too suspicious to come to the flat tonight. But now, whether this was about convincing him or not, Jude was almost enjoying this questioning too – relieved to be in his own body again and happy to indulge him and thankful, even, to feel that familiar fluttering that lived in his chest around Kieran again.

And pleased for the excuse, perhaps, to be honest; but at the next question Jude shook his head. “I never hated you,” he countered – firm, if a little cryptic. The balance of feeling he had for Kieran had perhaps tipped further in one direction over time, but it had always been more complicated than that. He couldn’t actually think that his dislike had ever gone so deep?

Because however troublesome his presence was, at some point Jude had started missing Kieran when he wasn’t there. Being so attuned to his absences was one of the reasons Jude had figured out his secret in the first place – he’d missed him, and shown up at his door; and although he had been right in his guess, the way the confrontation had gone between them that day was something he would regret forever. But Kieran hadn’t asked him about his regrets.

“You’re a reporter,” Jude said instead, with some amusement, leaning forwards in challenge. “You can do better than that.”

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Kieran raised a skeptical eyebrow. But insisting I never hated you, even though all evidence pointed to the contrary, was incredibly on-brand for Jude. He let it slide.

"Alright, then," he said. He sighed. "Once I asked you for a favor, and I wouldn't tell you what it was," he said, "It was — we were barely friends." They had barely been friends at the time, although Kieran had still been convinced that Jude hated him at the time — he just didn't have other options.

"Why did you say yes?"

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Jude drew back slightly in thought – that was a better question. He remembered that day about as well as the first day they’d met. It had been raining faintly; he’d opened the door and found Kieran standing there; Kieran had asked for help and wouldn’t say why.*

Jude hadn’t found out why for some time.

“Because if someone needs help, they should – have help,” he began, and he believed that, could brush off the question just by saying I would have done it for anyone; but in truth he remembered, too, feeling frustrated by Kieran’s refusal to make sense of the request, and Jude wasn’t sure he would be swayed by the principle alone.

“Because you didn’t like me either,” he reasoned, trying again to explain himself. Yes, Jude had never hated him; but Kieran was right, they hadn’t been friends then either. Most days, they had barely been civil. Though he’d known well enough then that Kieran was far too proud to ask for help unless he was desperate, and maybe that had been enough to be worried about him. “So if you were asking me, it had to be important.”

Was that answer enough? Jude sighed, trying to decide if he was taking the easy way out by leaving it there. So –

“Or maybe I didn’t know why, back then,” he considered; better to be thorough. “Maybe I just – did it without thinking.” Jude looked at him, almost rueful; he was perhaps a little abashed to admit it. He hadn’t known then. But Kieran had asked for plenty of favours since, and maybe the first and second reasons he’d given both still rang true, but Jude knew that last reason much better now. Why Kieran could show up on his doorstep and ask for chains, or come drunk to the flat with a rabbit in a cage, or sit in his kitchen with a bloodied ankle, or ask to paint him, and Jude would say yes without thinking every time. Because, to be honest – he’d do anything.

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(*lol at finding this eight-year-old thread in seconds just by searching 'magically reinforced' on the old board)

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   Kieran Abernathy

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The trouble with that answer was that it was certainly truthful, and because of that, Kieran didn't know what to do with it. He spent a beat looking at Jude with a knot between his eyebrows, mouth flat. Jude didn't know why, and maybe it was general, or maybe it was specific. Somewhere along the lines, of course, he had started doing absurd things to help specifically Kieran — but Kieran didn't know why. And now he was even more sure that Jude couldn't articulate it either.

"We should probably go to yours," he said, when the beat passed. The full moon would come whether or not Jude made sense to him.

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set by MJ!

All his amusement seemed to fade. We should probably go to yours, Kieran said, when he finally said something – and if Jude’s heart thumped erratically and his hopes rose for a second, they fell again in the next. Kieran believed he was actually Jude, then, at least. That was all he meant. (Jude ought to be relieved by that: it was what they had been trying to achieve, here.)

“We should,” he agreed, forcing himself to get to his feet and gather his things and sound steady about it all, although he couldn’t erase the picture of Kieran’s sudden frown and furrowed brow. It could hardly still be disbelief... distaste, then? It had to be – Kieran had to know the reason why well enough too – Jude had surely made it plain in all the years since then. But whatever Kieran thought of him, the moon would be out soon: and so they would keep ignoring the awkward truth of Jude’s feelings for him, like always.

He reached out and grasped Kieran’s forearm to disapparate them both, but with that motion came a surge of desperation. “But I do know now,” Jude said; and, with a pained look: and I know you know why too. “And I – I’m sorry.” It couldn’t make things any simpler for Kieran, having to navigate that knowledge on top of everything else he had to deal with.

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Kieran frowned at Jude; Jude was sorry because of course he was sorry, but that didn't mean Kieran knew what to do with it. Kieran never knew what to do with Jude's emotions, be them hatred or apology or whatever affection kept him helping Kieran — if he knew how to handle these feelings, his life would be much easier. But he didn't.

"You don't have to be sorry," Kieran replied. "I'm sorry." For being a nuisance, or a werewolf, or or or.

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set by MJ!

Jude smiled thinly. “What for?” He said, to try and brush off the topic completely. He knew what Kieran was sorry for – for not feeling the same way. Evidently.

And they could go around in circles, dance around the issue forever; but it didn’t change anything. They were bound up together for every full moon regardless – Jude wouldn’t lapse on that commitment now – so, he thought, swallowing, it was probably best to get on with it.

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Kieran shrugged his shoulders at Jude. "I'll tell you later," he said. It didn't really matter — and they couldn't be late.

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set by MJ!