The "D-Did you see what they did to me...?" with Graves tho.

@thegaypumpingthroughyourveins - I knooooooow! The first and foremost thought I had the second I read that was him talking with Queenie.

@natecchi - I blame you. >:) Muawahahaha

It’s a bad day. He knew there would be bad days. He prided himself on having mostly numb days, his mental walls so tall and so thick and so impenetrable even he forgot, some days. The bad days were few and far between. The nights - that was another matter altogether. But he had a dream-catcher for the nights, slowly eating away his nightmares one dream at a time. 

It was the bad days there was no escaping from. There were no dream-catchers for the waking hours.

He’s sitting in his office during one such bad day, hands trembling where he pressed them fiercely into his eyes - willing the thoughts, the memories away.

It had been a stupid thing that had triggered him. So ordinary, so mundane. Nothing grand or flashy. Nothing he could have anticipated or avoided. No, it had been something simple. It had been the smell of his shoe shine.

He had had them sent out for a shining rather than go in person, far too busy to sit in one of the subway’s grand chairs while a stranger shined his shoe. He knew a man, the same man who he bought them from, who’d gladly shine them - so he had sent a messenger to take them there.

The messenger returned, shoes wrapped in a tidy brown package. Innocent and innocuous. Graves paid for his trouble and dismissed the man before taking the parcel to his desk to see the result first hand and ensure the product was as it should be. 

It was the smell of that pearly black oil, heavy and fresh the second he opened the lid, that sent him spiraling back into the dark edges of his mind - the place beyond his carefully constructed walls.

He fell from the chains that held him aloft, and when he hit the floor, he heard his shoulder crunch - but he didn’t have the energy to make a noise. He pressed his face against the floor, eager to capture as much of its cool bliss as he could despite the filth that was no doubt on it. He was fever hot and burning cold and he thought that any moment now, he might shiver apart at the seams. 

His back was a roiling, tattered mess of welts - hot and throbbing. He could feel his anus gaping so lewdly, he’d be blushing if his fever had not already left him red in the cheeks. There was a hot, thick liquid oozing down his thighs that left him with the distinct taste of bile in his mouth, and he had to take a deep breath to keep from vomiting. Deeper still, to forget that Grindelwald had managed to get him off somehow, despite the lashing. Despite the rape. Did he like this? Did he somehow secretly like cruelty? Perhaps he deserved this… was made for this…

He trembled, exhausted on the ground. 

It wasn’t until he heard a pair of familiar shoes approach him and a chuckle, dark and menacing, that he finally opened his eyes. He was met with the blurry sight of two familiar black dress shoes - the pungent scent of their fresh shine thick and burning in his nose, their surfaces glimmering like new. Perfect in every way except for the streak of white that marred the right foot’s shiny surface. Graves blinked at it, uncomprehending. 

“It seems you made a mess of my shoes, pet,” Grindelwald crooned, crouching to better caress Graves’ sweaty face with two knuckles as he smiled. “Do be a dear and clean them, won’t you? No sense in wasting a good shine.”

He startled from the memory at the sudden sound of china falling to the ground. He opened his eyes, wide and filled with dread, and prayed that it was a figment of his imagination. That it wouldn’t be Grindelwald at his doorway, one hand still out from obviously pushing some knickknack to its doom himself before blaming Graves - an excuse just to punish him for no reason. He trembled despite himself, face nearly hidden by the shaking cradle of his hands before his eyes widened even further.

It wasn’t Grindelwald.

It was Queenie Goldstein, slender and doe-like in the frame of his doorway, like a deer caught in headlights. In her large eyes, he could see the beginning of tears swelling. His breath seized in his chest and he couldn’t breathe.

No. No, no, no, no.

“Queenie,” He croaked, his voice dry and harsh and pleading even to his own ears. They both flinched. He stood from desk and approached her quickly, as though if he got to her soon enough, it’d make the inevitable not so. His hands felt overly large where they grasped her shouldered, the split coffee and broken glass spreading in the space between their shoes. “What did you hear? What did you see?”

She didn’t answer, skin chalk white as she just stared at him with her overly large eyes. He wanted to shake her. He wanted to shake the memory right out of her - and she heard it, too, because she wilted in his grasp and instantly, he pulled away as though burned. Disgusted with himself.

“Mr. Graves,” she whimpered, one hand outstretched to him - pleading. 

“D-did you,” he stopped himself at his stammer and cleared his throat, eyes closed as he continued - calmly composed. And somehow, that made it worse. “Did you see it?”

“Please,” she whispered and took a step forward, hand outstretched as though to grab his own, but he merely took a step backward in response - just out of reach. Always just out of reach.

“Did you see what he did to me?”

And when he finally opened his eyes, it was to the sight of Queenie - arms crossed around herself. Her lower lip was trembling. Guilt was a hot, tight coil that pained his guts.

“Yes,” she said, “But Mr. Graves, I–”

“You don’t have to say anything, Ms. Goldstein,” he said, throat tight as he turned from her. ’I know what you must think of me’ went unsaid. But he forgot that what went unsaid was still clearly said when in the presence of Queenie Goldstein.

She grabbed him gently by the elbow, and when he flinched, she did not force him. Instead, she pressed her forehead to the broad span of his back and breathed against him.

“What I saw,” she started, voice soft and thready. He waited for the inevitable, now that his secret was out. He had done so well with keeping his rape a secret. But stealing the integrity of his image as a respected leader had not been enough for Grindelwald. He had had to steal his image as a man as well. Something hot burned against the edges of his eyes as he awaited Queenie’s condemnation. ‘What I saw was disgusting. Pathetic. You let him do those filthy things to you and you liked it. Even cleaned him with your tongue. We should have let him keep you. We should have left you there to rot. We–’ his thoughts derailed when her tight grasp on his elbow tightened and she said, suddenly confident, “was a brave man, a man I can now proudly call a friend, survive the twisted machinations of a monster. What I saw was a good man go through hell and walk out the other side. And I’m so, so happy that you’re back.”

Something hot spilled from his shocked gaze - burning as it slipped down his cheek. It was all he could do to keep upright and keep breathing. But he managed to wind one hand up to grasp the thin hand Queenie had on his elbow and squeeze, grateful, and unable to show it in any other way. But Queenie understood. She stayed with him that way for a long moment, and together, they just breathed until the vice on his lungs got a little more bearable. No, there were dream-catchers for the bad days… but there were good friends.

And on his desk, the shoes still sat in their brown little package, innocent and innocuous.