Work Text:
They were never sure just what it was that had caused the fireworks. Perhaps it had been the way Harry's eyes had begun to follow Bob's hands, his long, elegant fingers, when Bob was writing and Harry was taking notes. Perhaps it had been the too-fond glances at Harry's receding form when he left any room Bob was in.
Perhaps – oh just perhaps, though one hoped not – it had been the quiet, whispered conversations in the library in the evenings, when Harry was working on homework after dinner. Justin Morningway had walked in on Harry's homework sessions more than once. How fervently one hoped that he had not caught that Bob's low voice in Harry's ear had not always merely been corrections to his mathematical equations, or that Harry's response was to blush and to look up at Bob with wide eyes and a smile reserved for no other time.
Whatever it was that had tipped their hand to him, Justin Morningway was having none of it. Hrothbert of Bainbridge was his nephew's tutor, not an aspiring suitor. He was a ghost, after all. And even with his inexcusable father, Harry Dresden was the sole Morningway heir, and one who needed to be married off properly into some other wizarding household. Even if he happened to prefer men, he had to marry – otherwise, the Morningway line would die out. And that would ruin all of Justin's manifold and mysterious plans for the wizardly equivalent of an empire controlled by Morningways for as long as possible.
Justin laid out his wrath with words that singed the air as he spoke. Bob stared back blandly, unimpressed. He might be bound to the Morningways, and that meant being bound to Justin for now, but even Justin Morningway and his ego could not maintain immortality. All humans died at some point, even wizards, and if Bob's dreams had their way, Justin would depart his current incarnation sooner rather than later.
Finally, provoked beyond all restraining, he murmured a reply to the heated ramblings of the live wizard. "Really, Justin. One would think you'd forgotten I'm no longer corporeal. Assuming everything you say is true, exactly what do you imagine would happen between Harry and myself? I no longer have the power to manipulate other dimensions to my will – you seem to be wildly concerned about evident impossibility."
Justin rose, red-faced, all but hyperventilating. "Damn it, Hrothbert. You have the nerve to even consider an attachment to my nephew… you're supposed to be tutoring him, not wooing him… and you're bound to me. My family had you bound to me while you were still teaching me… I did everything in my power, worked like a dog to get your attention, your approval…"
"And I failed to respond adequately?" Bob raised an eyebrow. "Affections, Justin, are hardly arranged to suit. Either they are present or they are not – and the only way around that is to break the laws of magic to conjure them in someone else. Of course the fear of that's never held either of us back in our times, has it? But I do note you never did try to work that on me – or if you did then, it failed miserably."
He walked to the other corner of the room. "I am your servant, Justin, and I have served you faithfully whether you've deserved it or not. That's never given you the right to decide that I was supposed to have been your lover. And frankly, rabid jealousy of your own nephew is extremely unflattering."
Justin spat. "Damn you, Hrothbert."
"Don't waste your time on it, Justin. I'm quite damned already." Bob shrugged at the thought of his past. "I can't lay a hand on the boy if I want to. I'd suggest you put your energy into your efforts at world domination – unlike this discussion, they are likely to be productive." With that, he dissolved himself from the scene, and proceeded back to his skull.
He found himself summoned later, late that night, by a barefoot teen in a loose t-shirt and sweatpants. Harry was in the library, in the dark, hair rumpled from lying in bed. "Bob? What happened with Uncle Justin?"
Bob materialized to face his charge. "My dear boy, you need to get back to bed. As for what happened? Not a thing – not with your uncle. Now, go back to sleep."
"I love you, Bob."
"And I, you. I shall see you in the morning." Bob surveyed the dark room around him as Harry left. There was a difference between blackness and darkness, it seemed, although sometimes they co-existed. Between the two, darkness might be far the worse, for one who was trapped in it was always seeking what seemed an impossible way out of the mists. Bob had passed through his own dark night centuries before; Justin was wandering in a darkness that might last far longer.
One didn't assign love; it happened, or it didn't, and understanding that was a key that opened a door through the passage of that dark night. Justin would never quite realize that there was no longer any darkness inside a certain skull in his library. With nothing remaining to do until morning, Bob retreated peacefully back into its glow.