everything's different, nothing's changed [zacharias]

only maybe slightly rearranged
july 24th, 2003
London

This is not how he imagined his twenties would be going.

Granted, a few years ago Anthony hadn’t imagined he would make it to his twenties, though he wouldn’t have admitted it at the time. Things were dark, then, coming out of the terror of wartime into the uneasy business of peace.

But if he had to imagine it back then, Anthony thought he might be happy, finally. Whatever happy could possibly look like for a neurotic son of a bitch like him. Working at a private practice, 9 to 5. Tutoring bar and bat mitzvah students on the side. Maybe a boyfriend to come home to. That part had always been fuzzy in his imaginings, blurry and out of focus.

Instead, he has this:

8pm, he finally tears himself from his desk. He’s too tired to apparate, so he lines up for the Floo. The line should be short at 8pm, but that's when night shift does maintenance on the Floo, so there’s only one fireplace open, maybe two if he’s lucky. He walks into the fire, comes out in a public toilet somewhere near home, and walks. He’s home by 8:30, when he finally realizes he hasn’t eaten since maybe 11 or 12. Walks in the door, bracing himself for the same sight as last night, hopes for something different.

Well, that wasn’t fair to Zach, was it? Tony paused in front of the door, hand hovering over the handle. It wasn’t his fault, necessarily, that things were taking as long as they were. Tony was just being unkind, which is what happens when he worked twelve-hour days every day and had trouble (unrelated) falling asleep. Zach was doing his best. He should cut him more slack.

He opened the door to Zach yelling at the wireless again about Quidditch, and the unkind thoughts roared back. Anthony shut the door, still in the hall, and leaned his head against the wood panelling for a second. Something had to give, he just wasn’t sure what.

Tony opened the door again and this time committed to actually entering his own house. “Hey, Zacharias,” he said, trying to keep the irritation out of his voice. “Do you mind turning that down?”

@Zacharias Smith

“Oh, fuck right off!”

Zacharias didn’t like to think of himself as someone who got so easily, aimlessly heated. No one on the other end of the radio could hear him, and no one at this end either—he’d whisper quips behind others’ backs, naturally, but usually when there was someone else to agree with him. These last several months, though, he’d taken to talking to himself. It couldn’t have been the isolation. He hadn’t picked this habit up when he’d had far fewer people to talk to. But he hadn’t involved himself in the successes and failures of unrelated Quidditch players then either.

Friendly match his arse. “Bunch of idiots,” Zach muttered as the announcer struggled to describe whatever fight was now ensuing. He couldn’t say he was surprised, though. A majority of professional Quidditch players were utterly insufferable.

The referee held his ground, and the foul he’d refused to acknowledge remained unacknowledged. Zacharias kicked the coffee table. This had always been the part he hated the most about Quidditch when he’d played it, how much of it came down to some random’s bias—as well as his own knack for picking sides the bias was against. He opened his mouth to curse again, easily and aimlessly, but shut it when he heard Tony in the doorway.

“Sorry,” mumbled Zach, and he rummaged for his wand in the cushions. “Lynch Senior is being a cock again.” Tony had sat through enough of his grievances to recognize he had a special grudge toward this particular referee. With a flick of his wand, Zacharias turned off the radio—not worth it anymore, he’d read about the loss next morning in the paper. “Work shit, then?”

Ah, fuck.

It only took a moment in his own apartment for a sense of guilt to set in. It wasn't like Zach was that loud, anyway. Yes he was, insisted a noisy little voice in the back of his head, the edges of the tone as ragged as Tony felt. Just because he had had a shit day (it wasn't even that shit, all things considered, he was just drained) he didn't have to take it out on Zach.

"S'right," Tony said, to the apology. He managed to crack a half-smile at Lynch Senior. "May he eat shit," he said, his typical curse for Zach's Quidditch foes. Dropped his bag on the kitchen table with a thump. He scrubbed at his cheek with the knuckles of one hand - fuck, he had to shave - staring blankly into the kitchen, at the fridge. Hand on the handle. Pull the fridge open. Stare blankly at the contents. He was just hypoglycemic, he would feel better after some food. With extraordinary effort, he pulled out a hardboiled egg and a piece of babka. Good enough.

"Hm?" Tony said, not quite processing Zach's question at first. Then - "Yeah, suppose so. This motherfucker," a sudden roar of energy pulses through him, and he nearly drops his egg, "is going to get away with attempted murder and MLE is giving me nothing." Confidentiality could eat his ass. Tony flopped down on the couch, despondent, and bit off the top of the egg. "How's your day, then?"

He stuffed his wand back in his pocket after turning off the radio. “Just keeping up,” he mumbled in explanation, for no good reason. It wasn’t that he disliked Anthony, but living with someone had always been taxing for Zacharias. Before now he'd expected Hogwarts to be the low point on this front. There’d been several more boys in the closest thing he’d had to a private space, after all. But at least he’d had bed curtains then, and no need for the awkward small talk that came with existing side by side. Usually he was more sensitive to the timing of Tony’s likely returns so he could get ready to be appropriately unobtrusive. Getting caught doing anything made him feel an irrepressible urge to justify himself.

Tony, being a reasonable person, obviously didn’t care, but he acknowledged Zach’s interest anyway. Kind of him, as he’d clearly been through some shit in the courts. This was often good drama to hear about secondhand. “Who’d he attempt to murder?” asked Zacharias. Sometimes he could get it out of him. The least he could do was be interested.

After a day’s work, Anthony had chosen an unseasoned egg for dinner. Zach looked over at him as he chewed on it. Had he always lived like this? It always comforted Zach, selfishly, to see his peers being just as pathetic as he was. Tony in particular—it made a satisfying ending to the years his parents had spent comparing them.

“It was fine," he said of his day, which was about as much as he could say. He hadn't gotten to the point of discussing his Healer appointments. Instead, her returned to being interested in Tony. "Dunno how you deal with it,” he said. He was thankful Tony did, of course, as it provided him the means to do nothing on a couch that wasn’t his mother’s, but Merlin. How fucking draining the law must be.

Tony wished he had another room.

Or even enough floor space for one of those enchanted tents, the ones that were bigger on the side. Zach could have an apartment within an apartment, that way. But it hadn't occurred to him when he offered the couch/pull-out bed to Zach to invest in such a thing, and by G-d they were expensive. Perhaps a shoji screen. At least create some sort of foyer, entranceway, reception area. Something. For his own comfort as much as Zach's.

It was nice having someone around, not coming home to an empty apartment every night. But Tony felt like he could hear his own anxieties about sharing space, taking up space, reflected back at him in Zach's mumbled, unneeded reasons for having the radio on. He wondered when, between Hogwarts and now, they had both forgotten how to occupy shared space with other men.

Well. They hadn't been men, then. They were children.

At least Zach made decent eggs. Tony had never gotten the trick of it, the film always stuck to the whites or the edges of the yolks went green. Hogwarts really should have taught them how to cook.

He chewed the top of it, trying to remember to swallow before answering. "Uh, a bunch of people, but it's a Drescher pressing charges." He didn't wait for Zach to stare at him blankly before adding context. "Ambassador from the Argentinian ministry's mistress. Jilted boyfriend tried to kill them both with an enchanted crowbar. Claiming he was under some sort of potion with a side effect, which --" Anthony's eyes went wider, about to burst from his face as his voice was raised, "-- is insane it doesn't mesh with the evidence at all and MLE can't find the purported bottle and it's all nonsense but the opposition is finding every G-d forsaken loophole." At least Lucille Drescher was trying -- the Ambassador had given up. Something about his wife. Men!

Zach said his day was fine, and Tony wished he had the nerve to say no, but what did you get up to, how was the Healer, but he didn't. Tony Goldstein wasn't a coward, he just had a terrible terrible time with stupid anxieties. He popped the rest of the egg into his mouth, put the piece of pastry into that hand for when he finished chewing. "I barely do," he muttered around a mouthful of egg. He swallowed. "How anyone does this for nearly a century, I don't know. My brain will fall out by the time I'm forty."

“You should quit,” said Zacharias, as if that was good advice. He knew too well the impossibility of just leaving one’s job, and he didn’t have any money to provide Tony a couch to sleep on in the meantime. But he wanted it out there, that mediating the insane disputes of the mistress-having class until your brain dribbled out your ears was a terrible way to spend your life. In Zach’s experience, things got a lot easier when you got a chance to talk about how awful they were.

That was the good part about living with someone, he supposed. When he’d lived alone he’d valued his privacy above everything, but there’d been days that went by without opening his mouth. Now he was feeling forced to interact, and that was also a pain, but he hadn’t realized how much he’d been needing someone to complain with.

Maybe after some more time he’d open up enough to really make it worthwhile. But he sort of hoped he’d be able to move out by then. 

He yawned. “Do you want me to make real food or something?” he asked, watching Tony chew on his cold cake. Cooking was another thing he was feeling forced to do these days, if he wasn’t paying rent. Some Hufflepuff bullshit.

"Hah," said Tony, after a half-second of panic that Zach was somehow serious. He wasn't, thank G-d. "Maybe I should. Let them sort out their own affairs. See how long they last at it."

He enjoyed sharing these pieces of work with Zach, Tony had realized in the last few weeks. There was still the anxiety of sharing space, of having to justify every movement, but there was joy too, in venting out the stupidity of his work. Zach didn't resent him for just being a lawyer as well, which was refreshing, as was his bluntness after a workday surrounded by... well, other men like Tony, who talked and talked and talked. It wasn't at all like their childhood friendship, but this was nice.

"I don't want you should do anything in particular," Tony hedged, staring at his babka as he did. It was certainly good babka, and left to his own devices he might call that supper -- but he could feel the disappointment radiating off his mother, heat of her judgemental gaze traveling from Finchley to his living room. You think we leave Poland for you to starve yourself? he could imagine her saying, poking at his belly with the tip of her new wand. There was a rumbling from his stomach in time with the vision. Well, Zach was rather good at cooking. Better than Tony, certainly. "But if you feel like making something, nu, I could eat." A roundabout way of say yes, please, but Tony Goldstein never said anything with one word when he could use ten instead.

Speaking of words -- "The betting banquet is tomorrow night." He was sure he had mentioned it. "I'm not sure, but I think Michael may have worked out that I've had assistance this year." He rubbed the back of his neck with his right hand, trying to work out how much embarrassment at this fraud was appropriate.

“It’s what I’d do,” said Zach. They both knew that. This not-my-problemism was exactly what made him fundamentally different from Tony and the DA’s ilk, and as a result deeply unhappy, but for whatever selfish reason Zach felt his friend should indulge in some of it. Weren’t they entitled to not give a shit about the attempted murders of people they didn’t know?

The law really did suit Tony as a career, Zach considered. He and Tony shared a passion for the details of drama, but only Tony was willing to step in and try to affect the outcome. If only there was a similar calling for his type: the silent witness; the voyeur.

He got a while to get there but Tony, nu, could eat. Zach nodded and wandered across to the kitchen. What was easy? He investigated the jar of spaghetti, and when satisfied there was enough for two, filled a pot with water and set it on the stove to boil. No sauce pre-made, but tomatoes pre-crushed at least. All that really mattered aside from that was garlic. Zacharias summoned three cloves and set them mincing while he heated up another pan.

He’d have eaten the pasta with butter if he’d been alone. Ideally he’d want to make an effort rather than fear the embarrassment of not making one, but until then—companionship really was getting results.

Tony mentioned his quidditch club dinner. Zach snorted. It would be obvious to anyone who knew Tony that he was either consulting outside sources or drinking enough Felix Felicis to turn him mad. “Is it really that big a deal?” he asked. “The rest of them can read Quidditch Quarterly, can’t they, or listen to Under the Hoops? Not your fault nobody else gets their opinions from me.”

It's what I'd do, said Zach. The words sat heavy in Tony's stomach for a moment, weighing briefly on a years-old resentment never quite resolved. Not a resentment, Tony corrected his internal monologue. Just a difference of perspective. A difference that drove them in opposite directions long ago, sure, but now seemed to be dragging the both of them to an early grave.

"Not my fault you have the best opinions in the whole racket," Tony responded, licking crumbs off his fingers and settling slightly deeper into the couch cushions. "Not your fault I was rubbish at this last year, either." It wasn't the success that was suspicious, really -- it was the appearance of him succeeding, as he famously was only in the club out of solidarity with Michael and a foolish hope in the magic of underdog odds.

In the kitchen, the steady sound of chopping and the beginnings of steam hissing filled the air. "D'you want to come? It's invite only but, it's just the Leaky, so I reckon you can just show up."

It smelt good already. "Thanks, mate," he said, belatedly -- or perhaps prematurely, since supper was in no way finished yet.

Tony gave him an unabashed, unironic, superlative compliment. Casually, around his crumby fingers in his mouth.  Zacharias’s old bitterness lifted just enough to get emotional about it. When was the last time anyone other than his mum called him the best at anything? In recovery it was all about the bare minimum, being worthy and valid and good enough. Before recovery it hadn’t been anything. “Nice of someone to recognize it,” he said, as if hearing that meant little, but Tony wasn’t dumb enough not to hear the big stupid lump in his throat. Zach kept his back to him as he poked at the pasta.

“Yeah, you’re right,” he said, with a chuckle. “Sometimes I think I could’ve taught you, but Ravenclaw was good, our years. You couldn’t have picked up nothing unless you really didn’t want to.” They hadn’t been as good as Gryffindor, but fuck, loads better than Hufflepuff. Tony’d even spent all that time with the bloke behind all this. (Against his will, Zacharias respected Michael Corner.)

He squashed the most intact tomato in the pan. “You know, like how I still don’t know how a trial works even though you tell me every day.”

Tony invited him to the dinner, or—sort of. “You want me to go to a pub?” Drinking had nothing to do with the heroin, but really, it did. At least supervision took the edge off.

He’d never been to the Leaky Cauldron for dinner in his life, so just showing up out of coincidence was a stupid play, but Zach couldn’t deny he was curious to see the competition. “Maybe I can wander through on my way to Diagon Alley to do the shopping,” he said, with a small chuckle. “Just so you can point me out this Edwards joker face to face.” 

[out]