After hours, 18th January, 1894 — Ministry of Magic Offices

The Ministry building rarely ever shut completely – certain departments were on-call at all hours, after all – but as per usual, the translators’ offices in International Magical Co-operation on the fifth floor had cleared out hours ago, and people would not start filtering in for the morning’s drudgery again for a few hours yet.

Nick, however, was a week behind on his work – perhaps because he’d had an overdue translation of some German stories to finish for his freelance pay, and his German was rather rusty (he had not mentioned this to the publisher, obviously) – and he was currently paying for that.

Miserably. He was deep into Portuguese tonight (this morning?), and still had thirty pages left to go of this assignment to have done today, and his eyes, blinking behind his spectacles, were killing him. Nevertheless, once he had shot up a little cocaine on a toilet break, Nick’s brain was better awake again. Excessively active, maybe: for he had heard a startling noise come from – somewhere. What was it? Was it on from the floor above or the floor below – or coming from this level? Sometimes the Ministry, buried in the ground and built as it was, felt like a grand old mausoleum or an echo chamber. Still, Nick was alert and fidgety now, and if something was going on here in the early hours of the morning (say if someone was doing something devious, or the place was burning down), he was probably better off knowing about it, wasn’t he?

Maybe he wouldn’t be, but Nick had already edged up from his desk and padded along the deserted hallways of his floor, looking for any suspicious signs of light or movement. He had made it out to the entrance of the offices, where the lift stood, and listened again to decide where the strange sound was coming from.

Just then, the lift clanged open on this level right in front of him, and Nick yelped aloud.

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Dean had always been a bit of a night owl. That had never extended to work, but son of a bitch, he'd forgotten the book he was using to work in his Arabic. This wouldn't even be a problem if he hadn't already spent half the night for other activities and now figured pulling an all-nighter was better than trying to sleep for only a few hours. Plus it was the end of the week, he could get through easily.

He planned to just slip in and slip out with his book in hand. It wasn't as if the ministry officially closed. Too many departments were open all night for it to be categorically empty, but his section of the building was pretty sparse. So the last thing he expected as the lift opened was to be greeted by a yelping Nick Blott on the other side of the doors.

"You know you're not supposed to live here, right Blott?" Dean managed to contain his own surprise, as he clearly hadn't been expecting anybody to be in the office either.

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The following 1 user Likes Dean Hudson's post:1 user Likes Dean Hudson's post
   Cassius Lestrange

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Nick clamped his teeth down on his tongue when everything caught up to him. The noise of the clanking lift. The late-or-early hour. The cocaine sending his heart a-flutter. But there was nothing to fear except his colleague peering at him, and maybe already prodding fun.

He took off his glasses, which made things clearer. He should have folded them away into a pocket before he’d padded away from his desk, probably – no wonder he had been jumping at shadows. And here, Hudson’s face came newly into view from his former fuzziness to keen blue eyes and a general look that was – a touch more tousled than usual. (He wore it well.)

Nick blinked, and then laughed unguardedly. “I just had to finish... what time is it?” he asked vaguely, blearily: he could think of nothing clever to say about not living here with Hudson startling him here like this. Besides, wasn’t he here now too? What was he doing?

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Dean took in Blott's appearance with a bemused smirk. "Well past midnight." He wasn't exactly sure, but he'd concluded his evening's previous engagements right about midnight and let himself out shortly after, so between that and getting to the ministry to get his book, Dean was estimating.

Regardless, their work day had ended a long, long time ago. Dean was pretty good about leaving on time, and leaving work at work, but clearly Blott hadn't quite mastered the skill. He stayed when it was required of course, when they were working on something big, but not as the routine. "You look like you woke up in the wrong decade, what have you been working on?" Dean laughed quietly as he exited the lift and made his way further into the office. There was something a little wild about Blott's expression that Dean thought he would like to see more often.

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Hudson was smirking at him. Nick tried (and did not succeed) to flatten his hair with his hand. Past midnight, apparently. That explained the empty office, Nick supposed, as he followed his colleague back through to their floor. “Oh, the Portuguese report,” he answered, the expression he pulled a better explanation of how excruciatingly dull it had proved – and how far behind he was.

“I should be finished soon,” he said, optimistic. Or delusional. “Maybe I’ll even get a quick kip in under the desk before Crouch gets in.” He joked. Who needed to go home at all? Merlin, that was pathetic – or would be, if Hudson wasn’t also here in the early hours of the morning. That was unusual. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

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Dean could only nod along; he and Blott only overlapped in a few languages, Portuguese was not one of them, so he couldn't even offer to help. Maybe once he got a better grip on Spanish, but he wasn't there yet. Blott's expression didn't encourage him either; those sorts of briefs could be exceedingly tedious.

"I was out, forgot my Arabic book, didn't plan on sleeping so I thought I'd just keep working on it." Dean shrugged casually. He would have to find himself someone to practice with sooner rather than later. Dean could pick up languages best when he had someone to converse with and correct his pronunciation and fluency.

The plan had been to go home and keep reading, but now he was curious to see what Blott was going to do with himself.

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Something was missing from that story, Nick fancied – Hudson had just been making remarks about not living here, and yet he was nipping back in at midnight to study languages? Nick raised a disbelieving eyebrow at him, and as they rounded back into the office he veered at the last moment towards Hudson’s desk instead of his.

He picked up the Arabic book from it and leant there with it for a moment, flipping through it lazily, though eyeing the other man more than the pages. “This one, you mean?” This was a nice distraction from the deathwish of that Portuguese report; Nick had never been more grateful for an excuse to procrastinate, and had taken this up for his cause with a teasing grin. “How often do you work through the night? What, for fun?” Here or at home; it was surely equally sad, especially if he didn’t have a deadline to meet. (He had always expected Hudson to lead a more exciting life than him, somehow.)

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"Oh I wasn't working," Dean laughed as Blott leaned quite casually on his desk. What that desk could be used for ran through his mind, but he was pretty sure Blott wouldn't be interested in that and Dean was quite satiated for the evening. The office was not the place to attempt anything either. Too many ways to get caught. Still, it was fun to picture. "Never working, was out," he left that purposefully vague. Out could mean a lot of things, but he supposed that on the evening before work, probably not as it could on a weekend, or during the season.

"If I'm going to get less than a few hours sleep, I just stay up. Figured the Arabic would keep me awake." Maybe. Maybe he would doze off for a little while. Nothing was truly off the table, but he knew he would need copious amounts of coffee come the beginning of the work day.

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Not working; and not doing anything as dull as sleeping, either. Then practically anything he had been up to was worthy of envy to Nick, but although he cast Hudson an interested side-eye, he didn’t push it. (Arabic, cocaine. Different methods, apparently same effect.)

He did push his luck at using this interruption for some timely procrastination – and if he lost his job in the morning at least he might save his soul. “How’s it coming along?” he inquired loosely, raising his eyebrows. “The Arabic. Say something?” Nick wouldn’t necessarily understand it, but he knew the odd word here and there, and besides, in their job, it was easy to see the progress in someone else’s confidence and fluency, to get the gist. And he was holding the Arabic book hostage, so he could always check the vocabulary if Hudson was patient with him.

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Dean snorted at the request to say something in Arabic. He generally wasn't the slightest bit shy about sharing his gift with languages, but between his coworkers, he tended not to show off too much. Clearly he wasn't the only gifted linguist in the department. "I'm almost there, I need some conversational practice." That was where it really got good, hearing the inflection and pronunciation from a native speaker was how Dean learned best. In his opinion if you were going to learn a language, you should learn it to the point where people question as to whether or not it was your first language or not.

"Alright," he chuckled and proceeded to introduce himself and say something incredibly flirtatious and forward, knowing Blott would have no idea as to what it was that he said. "Still working on some of the trickier blends, but like I said, I need more work on the fluency of it." It was an interesting language, he especially enjoyed the written aspect, as the spoken word did not flow for him as well as some of his other accomplishments, but he would get there eventually. One trip to a country where it was necessary and he'd come back much better. "Coffee?" There had to be some somewhere in the staff room.

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The problem with not understanding a language was that it left one at the mercy of everything else. Nick had nothing to focus on but the lilt and intonation of his voice, the shapes his mouth made, his body language. The first part sounded as if it might have contained Hudson’s own name, but after that he only had his imagination to blame – that, or the fact that Hudson had a smile that always made it look like he was thinking dirty thoughts.

Or, you know, Nick was drunk on paperwork, coasting on cocaine and short on sleep. “I don’t know, you sounded pretty smooth to me,” he said thoughtlessly, and although he knew he probably shouldn’t – it would make him twitchy, he would be wired for hours – he nodded at coffee. Nick smiled slowly, half delirious. Coffee, from the Dutch by way of the Turkish kahve, which was from the – Arabic. “Mm, why not.”

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   Dean Hudson

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Dean had to chuckle. If Blott ever found out what he said, he would probably never speak to him again. Fortunately he didn't think his colleage was going to learn Arabic any time soon, nor would he remember what it was that Dean had said exactly. Taking a step forward, Dean extended a hand for his book back, but still was just questionably close for comfort.

"Excellent, we have to sneak down a level to where the good stuff is." Dean was pretty sure that they had the best coffee here in International Cooperation, but it wasn't up here for the lowly translators; the ambassadors got the good stuff and since none of them were here, it was just going to waste. It was just a little back staircase down, nothing crazy.

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