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Chapter Text

Bathtubs, in my opinion, are a pretty great invention: You can use them to take a nice relaxing hot bath, as an emergency sleeping place, or even to fool around in with another person of your preferred gender and sexuality. But sometimes I still prefer showers over bathtubs, like when I've just finished an exhausting magic boxing lesson and want to wash the sweat off my skin without waiting twenty minutes for one of the Folly's massive, claw-footed tubs to fill with water. So I'd been happy to discover that the Folly did have two shower stalls, down in the basement in a room next to the gym, and if you tell Molly that you want to use them a day in advance those showers even give you hot water for about ten minutes.

Well, unless there's a sudden power outage.

I'm not saying I shrieked, but I did make some sort of high pitched, alarmed noise that sent Nightingale running into the showers, werelight floating slightly in front of him to illuminate the way and both hands raised in ready-to-shoot-fireballs-at-potential-attackers mode. "Peter, are you alright?" he called, worry clear in his voice.

"Yes sir," I confirmed. "I was just caught off guard by the water suddenly turning cold."

"I see," he said, politely averting his eyes, and like a shock of being doused with cold water again, it hit me that I'd reflexively jumped away from the shower and was now giving my boss an unexpected eyeful. Damn the Folly architects for designing shower stalls with partitions between them but no curtains or doors on the front side.

With as much dignity as I could muster I walked the few steps over to the bench where I'd left my stuff and grabbed my towel to wrap it around my hips. "I'm decent, boss," I then told Nightingale's back. "Well, more decent than before at least."

He turned back around and looked me over as if checking me for injuries (not that either of us could see much with the electric lights down and just a small werelight illuminating the room). Apparently finding nothing of concern, Nightingale gave an approving nod and started walking to the door. "I'll leave you to get dressed."

A few minutes later I extinguished my own werelight (wouldn't want to put my right shoe on my left foot by trying to get dressed in complete darkness), stepped outside, and told Nightingale the shower was his. He simply nodded his thanks and walked past me into the washroom; apparently we were treating this as a Let's never speak of it again moment. Which was perfectly fine by me - I'd already lived through some moments like that with various other people in my life, so I knew how it worked. (Including an extremely embarassing one featuring my mum walking in on teenage me experimenting with his 'little Peter' and the things it could do besides peeing. Compared to that my boss accidentally seeing me naked was a walk in the park.)

At lunch the power was back on, thankfully, and it turned out I'd been a bit wrong about the 'never mention it again' thing. When he'd finished eating Nightingale carefully set down his cutlery, took a fortifying drink of water, and announced he wanted to apologise to me.

"What for?" I asked.

"Barging in on you in the shower like I did," he said.

"It's okay, sir," I told him. "I mean, for all you knew I really was in danger there."

He smiled at that, which my speech centre somehow took as a cue to blurt out, "You know, you were surprisingly cool with a naked guy standing in front of you. For someone who grew up in the prudish Victorian era. Sir."

"Edwardian era mostly, Queen Victoria died when I was a baby, but you do have a point about the prudishness," he agreed. "However, I also spent seven years of my life in an all boys boarding school with communal dormitories and showers, and later I was a soldier in the army. In both environments one rather quickly becomes 'cool' with seeing other men in the nude."

"...did you just do air quotes with your fingers?" (Yeah, I'm easily distracted. But it's not every day you see your posh, Savile Row-suited, backwards-aging governor do air quotes.)

"Indeed. Abigail taught me how to do that; she insisted on teaching me a few things about modern popular culture in exchange for me teaching her Latin." He smiled a little. "I'm rather enjoying it. Not just teaching you and young Abigail, but also me learning new things from the two of you."

I returned the smile. "Right back at you, boss. I'm enjoying that too."

Chapter Text

A few weeks later I'd almost forgotten about the 'my boss saw me naked' capital-I-Incident, but the memory came back with a vengeance one Friday afternoon. We were once again down in the gym, Nightingale trying to impello me across the room and me trying to protect myself with shield spells, when Molly walked into the room with our landline phone and held it out to Nightingale.

"Thank you," he said, pulling off his boxing gloves and taking the call. "Hello? ...yes, that was my niece who's visiting over the weekend, she's a bit shy to talk on the telephone..."

Molly glared, offended. I almost started laughing, but didn't want to get glared at, too, so I bit my lower lip and managed to keep it in.

"A few hours... I see... thank you for the information. Have a nice day, too." Nightingale hung up and turned to look at me and Molly. "They're having to shut off the water in Russell Square for a few hours in order to fix a leaky pipe," he explained.

"Oh great," I grumbled, wondering if I'd recently pissed off any of the Rivers enough to make them resort to that kind of petty revenge.

"Well, the Thames Water employee said we still have about half an hour before the water is shut off, so Molly, if you could start filling up some buckets? Peter and I will help you after we've showered."

Molly nodded and swept out of the room while Nightingale turned his attention to me. "Would you like to shower first?"

"No, go ahead," I said. "But please leave some hot water for me."

He gave a disturbingly mischievous grin at that before disappearing around the corner to the showers. While he was busy in there I cleaned up some jumping ropes and a plastic water bottle that had been flung across the gym during my lesson - side effects of Impellos that had bounced off my magical shield and gone in another direction.

That done, I made my way to the washroom and was about to knock when I heard what sounded like a small groan over the running water. "Sir?" I called out, one hand on the door ready to push it open.

The water shut off, there were some quick footsteps, and then Nightingale cracked open the door, carefully keeping himself hidden behind it from the neck down. "Hello Peter," he said, looking perfectly okay and unhurt, at least at first glance. His face was a little red, but that could easily be from the combination of the earlier physical activity and the warm shower he'd been taking just now. "Is something the matter?"

"Er, no, it's fine," I said quickly. "So this is what the French call a déja vu moment, huh? Only with the roles flipped compared to a few weeks ago..."

"Well, I can assure you it's not necessary for you to come in here and defend me," he said drily, which was sort of hard to pull off while being soaking wet, but he did.

"Right," I said, and then we stood around making awkward eye contact for a few seconds before Nightingale shut the door in my face. Rude.

Chapter Text

The next morning found Nightingale and me at a horseriding school (of all places) near Hyde Park. "This is the second morning in a row Caramella was found in her stall sweating all over, breathing hard and with some scratches on her legs," one of the employees, a short white woman in her forties named Rose, told us. "We've had the vet over, but he couldn't find anything and just told us to let her cool down, make sure she has plenty of water to drink, and call him again if she develops any new health problems."

"Do your stables have video surveillance?" I asked.

"Yes, a camera above the main door, but it suddenly stopped working about a week ago."

So this was shaping up to be a Falcon case after all - when electronical equipment suddenly stops working for no apparent reason, someone doing magic near it is a likely cause.

We decided to camp out in the stable that night and see if we could catch anyone illegally doing magic, to the horses or otherwise. Rose helped us carry some straw bales into the empty stall next to Caramella's, which we then covered with a few blankets brought over from the Folly. "There you are," said Rose when we were done. "My young riding students would be so jealous if they could see you now, getting to sleep right in the stable with their beloved horses... anyway, if you need anything call my mobile number; otherwise I'll see you in the morning."

We thanked her and said goodnight, then drew straws (yes, actual straw straws - we were currently surrounded by the stuff, after all) for who would take first watch. I won, so I sat on my makeshift bed and watched Nightingale get friendly with Caramella the horse through the metal bars separating the two stalls. "Didn't peg you for a horse girl, boss," I remarked, which earned me a raised eyebrow. "Well, you know what I mean."

He gave the horse's mane one last ruffle, then pulled his hand back and sat on his own bed, facing me. "I've always enjoyed spending time with horses," he said. "They're fascinating animals; not to mention really useful for travelling long distances much faster than a person on foot, and even through types of terrain where cars can't go."

"That's true," I said. "I still prefer cars though - they won't kick or bite or buck me off the drivers' seat."

Nightingale smiled and got comfortable on his straw bed. "You have first watch, Peter; wake me up at midnight for my turn."

Nothing exciting happened during my watch, so I stuck to the plan of waking Nightingale at midnight and then crawled between my blankets to sleep.

Thanks to the unfamiliar noises and smells it took me a while to fall asleep, but eventually I did. The last thing I saw was Nightingale sitting on a straw bale, tie and suit jacket off and cane held loosely in his right hand. The brooding look suited him, but seeing it always made me worry a little about where his mind was going; God knows it has more than enough terrifying places to go, Ettersberg being just the most obvious one. Therefore it had come as a relief to get to know Nightingale better and realise he also had a lighter side, a sense of humour and even a mischievous streak to him - as evidenced by the 'magic raincloud that chases one's apprentice round the Folly's atrium' spell. (I really, really want to learn that one someday. Not to use it on Nightingale, obviously; he's my boss after all.)

The sun was just coming up when Nightingale shook me awake, gesturing for me to stay quiet and listen. There were footsteps from a person in heeled shoes (riding boots?) that stopped in front of Caramella's stall, followed by some rustling of clothes. "Hello there," said a quiet, young-sounding voice over Caramella crunching on something, probably a carrot. "Ready to go again?"

"Unless you happen to be the owner, I'm afraid that horse isn't going anywhere," Nightingale declared, stepping out of the stall.

The resulting foot chase through the stable, across the yard outside and into a big heap of manure ended with the three of us covered in bits of straw and horse poo but also with a successful arrest. Or so we thought until Clover (as our suspect gave their name) started becoming more and more translucent. "Oh no you don't!" I told them, quickly making a werelight to call them back.

Clover became more solid again, starting with their face, like a pissed off version of the Cheshire Cat. Relucantly they told us that their family of horse goblins ("That's the rough translation to human tongue, anyway") had been killed when this riding yard was built and their underground home had collapsed in on itself from the heavy construction machines driving over it. In revenge the family had haunted the yard as ghosts ever since, and unfortunately the closeness to the horses gave them some additional un-ghostly powers. Namely the ability to touch physical things, which they mostly used for harmless stuff like tipping over water buckets, but sometimes for sneaking into the stable at night and taking one of the school horses for a wild ride.

"Well, you can't do that anymore, it's really not good for the horses," Nightingale said sternly. "Is there a way the humans here could make your family stop haunting them?"

Preferably one that doesn't involve blood sacrifices or something, I thought, but didn't say.

Clover thought for a moment, then explained that burying an old horseshoe in the ground near their old home would help the family move on and thus stop the haunting. Then they proceeded to fade away for good and left it to Nightingale and me to explain things to Rose and her colleagues.

To my surprise, they came up with the ghost explanation themselves and didn't bat an eye at the part where you had to bury an old horseshoe to get rid of said ghosts. "Riders are a superstitious bunch, Constable," Rose explained with a grin. "Most of us believe in ghosts, good luck charms and things like that. Now-" She looked us both up and down. "I'd offer you the shower in the staff bathroom, but unfortunately it's broken at the moment and the plumber isn't coming until next Tuesday."

"Though we could give you some big bin bags to put on your car seats so you don't dirty them," one of Rose's colleagues, the only man in their group, suggested. 

"Thank you, we'd appreciate that," said Nightingale, who even after a night of sleeping in his day clothes, in a horse stable, and recently having jumped into a heap of horse manure managed to look unfairly well put together.

On the way back to the Folly we kept all the Jaguar's windows open, which didn't make the smell disappear entirely but reduced it to a bearable level. Molly still glared at us when we arrived, making it very clear that there'd be no breakfast until we were clean. To drive that point home even more she marched us through the back entrance, down to the showers in the basement, and gestured for us to put our clothes in the two large bin bags she'd brought down from the car.

"Alright then," I said, trying for cool and unaffected and missing by several miles. "Let's both turn around and keep at least our pants on until Molly comes back with towels and clean clothes?"

Without waiting for a reply I turned my back to Nightingale and pulled my sweatshirt over my head, then reached over to place it in one of the bin bags.

"Fine by me," said Nightingale a little belatedly before he (I assumed from the quiet rustling noises) started stripping off as well. "You do confuse me though. I was under the impression that people were less shy about showing naked skin nowadays, what with grown men wearing t-shirts and short trousers in public, and even more revealing summer clothing on women."

"That's... not really the same thing, boss," I said. "There's a big difference between summer clothes and entirely naked. It depends on the context, too."

I was saved from having to explain this further by Molly walking in and depositing two stacks of neatly folded clothes, each with a towel on top, on the bench between Nightingale and me. Then she gave another pointed glare towards the showers, and left.

Both Nightingale and I had turned around when we'd heard the door open, so we now stood facing each other, me with my jeans unbuttoned but not yet taken off, and Nightingale in just his pants and one dark grey sock. The pants were modern style y-fronts, thankfully, not some sort of 1900s knee-length contraption with a button fly - superior officer and my wizarding teacher or not, I don't think I could've kept a straight face at seeing Nightingale in something like that.

He cleared his throat, then bent down to take off his other sock while I scrambled out of my jeans and mentally gave my past self a pat on the shoulder for putting on more professional looking, black and white checquered boxers instead of my Star Trek or TARDIS ones. Jeans dropped into the bin bag along with the rest of my dirty clothes, I grabbed one of the towels, wrapped it around my hips to take off my boxers underneath, and walked over to the shower stalls. From the corner of my eye I saw Nightingale do the same with his towel and underwear before he took the stall next to me and turned on the water.

With a floor to ceiling partition between us and finally getting to wash off the smell of horse poo, I was able to relax and think a bit. The communal showers in Hendon had never bothered me, so why was it different now? Well, for one there were just the two of us instead of a whole group of constables-in-training, making the whole thing feel more... intimate, almost. For another, Nightingale's my governor - I dare anyone to share a dressing room with their boss and not feel awkward about it. Especially if said boss hides a pretty nicely toned body beneath his expensive suits. Sure, he's a copper and as such has to keep fit (even if at DCI level you rarely ever chase after suspects yourself anymore, that's what lowly constables are for), but he clearly worked out even when there wasn't a fitness test coming up.

At this point of my musings the water turned cold - I was quite proud of myself for not shrieking this time. What I did do, however, was nearly choke on my spit when Nightingale strolled out of his shower stall and over to the bench where our clothes sat... with the towel around his hips looking like it was about to drop any second. I felt a strange mix of relief and, okay fine, a little bit of disappointment when the towel remained in position until Nightingale unwrapped it after putting his pants back on.

"Peter?" he asked, looking at me over his shoulder with a little sparkle in his grey eyes; clearly enjoying this new situation. I was half tempted to tease him back by actually dropping my towel (I mean, he'd already seen me naked) but decided against it. There's accidentally walking in on someone, there's friendly ribbing, and then there's stuff that can go spectacularly wrong if you're not absolutely sure the other person is on the same page as you. Which I wasn't; hell, I wasn't even sure which page I was on myself where Nightingale was concerned.

So I, too, kept my towel wrapped around me until I'd put on my boxers underneath and we proceeded to get dressed in silence, both eager to finally get breakfast (and, at least in my case, coffee). The post-horse poo shower incident became another We're never talking about this again thing... at least for the moment.

Chapter Text

It was a couple days after the horse poo incident and we were once again down in the Folly's gym, dressed in exercise outfits or in my guv's case, what passed for that in Nightingale-land: a fitted white t-shirt and a pair of army-green slacks, both ironed to within an inch of their metaphorical lives by Molly. Standing next to him in my sweats and Star Wars t-shirt I felt a little underdressed, but that's a feeling I've become used to since I started working with Nightingale.

"Your magic boxing skills are coming along quite well," he remarked as he put on his boxing gloves.

"Thanks sir!" I said, unable to keep from smiling at the praise. Nightingale returned the smile before continuing: "So today, I'm not just going to use Impello but also surprise you with a few other spells and see how you defend yourself against those."

That didn't sound like a good idea, to be honest. "You won't shoot fireballs at me though, will you? Or do even more dangerous spells?" I asked, fastening the velcro wrist straps on my own gloves.

He gave me a look. "I'll make sure not to harm you. I swore an oath to protect you, after all."

This, my copper brain noted, was not a clear No on the fireballs. Good thing the gym had a fire extinguisher hanging on the wall (a modern one even, not one left over from a hundred years ago) and currently a wizard inside it who could follow up any stray fireballs with a nice big Aqua...

The lesson started off the usual way, with Nightingale alternating between Impello and actual physical punches, and me trying to maintain a shield spell and to get in some attacking moves of my own. The last part definitely wasn't easy, because Nightingale has several decades of both boxing and magic training on me and is unfairly fast and light on his feet for a man of his (real as well as apparent) age. Nevertheless I was having fun; I liked the challenge, and I've always been more of a practical learner than a studying while quietly sitting on my bum type. Maybe we could do Latin boxing sometime? Have Nightingale throw punches and Latin verbs for me to dodge and conjugate?

"Peter, focus," Nightingale interrupted my thoughts, with an added Impello for emphasis. I managed to block it with my shield, but didn't have time to enjoy my success before I had to quickly focus on my shield again or risk having my eyebrows burnt off. Yes, Nightingale had actually resorted to a fireball, but thankfully he was holding back a bit - the thing flew at me much slower than the fireballs I've seen Nightingale produce in the firing range, meaning I actually had a chance of getting a shield up in time.

"Good," he said, then followed up the fireball with several spells and punches in quick succession, the combination of which left me sprawled on my back and panting hard from the exertion.

"Time for a break, I believe," said Nightingale as he appeared in my line of sight and extended his right hand (sans boxing glove) to help me up.

"Yes please." I let myself be pulled up, took off my own gloves, and gulped down about half the contents of my water bottle. "You know, I feel weirdly sorry for..." I managed to stop myself from saying 'Tiger tanks', because those aren't really a topic to joke about. "...erm, for all the paper targets you've blown to bits in the firing range," was what I settled on.

If Nightingale noticed my brief hesitation he didn't mention it. "Well, you do have an advantage over those targets."

"Three-dimensionality?"

"The ability to conjure shield spells."

"I know, sir. It was a joke. Not a very good one, I admit."

He pushed a few sweaty strands of hair away from his face before reaching for his boxing gloves. "Be that as it may, are you ready to continue this lesson?"

"Yes sir," I confirmed and reached for my own gloves, privately thinking, So long as there won't be any more fireballs, that was a bit too close for my comfort.

There were no more fireballs, but instead I got a big Aqua dumped right on top of my head. Blinking water out of my eyes I glared at Nightingale, whose lips were twitching in a very telling way as he tried not to laugh out loud. "Sir, you seem to have an unreasonable fondness for drenching me in water," I declared with as much dignity as I could while standing there in a half soaked Star Wars t-shirt with more water trickling down my back. (Cold water, too.) "First the raincloud spell, now this..."

He grinned, completely unrepentant. "I'll admit to using the raincloud spell on you for a bit of a laugh, but that Aqua just now was a perfectly serious exercise: an opponent may also attack from above, so it's important to learn how to defend oneself against that."

"Noted," I said. "But not right now please, I'm kind of drenched in cold water and starting to get cold."

"Of course," Nightingale said graciously. "Go shower and warm up; I can wait a few minutes."

I'm not going to lie, I did consider using up all of the hot water in revenge for that Aqua attack. I didn't though, just took a five minute shower and got dressed again (minus the wet t-shirt, which I scrunched up to carry it in my hand). "Shower's yours, boss," I told Nightingale as I passed the open door of the gym. He nodded his thanks, walked past me towards the showers, and I just couldn't help it - I conjured a water ball of my own and flung it at Nightingale's retreating back.

He quickly pulled up a shield (without even turning around, the show-off) that sent the water down to make a puddle on the floor instead of drenching his shirt. Then he dropped the shield spell and did turn around to face me, simply because he'd consider it rude not to while speaking to someone. "Seven years in an all boys boarding school, Peter -  I'm quite skilled at dodging both non magical objects and spells being aimed at me from behind." He gave a quick smile. "Nevertheless that was a good attempt from you, quick and powerful."

"Thanks boss," I said, smiling back. (It seemed we were doing at awful lot of mutual smiling these days. Not that I minded - I'd take smily Nightingale over, say, scowly Seawoll any day.)

"It's just the truth. Now if you'll excuse me-" 

"Sure," I said, watching him leave (without any surprise attacks this time) before squatting down and doing my best to mop up the spilled water with my already damp t-shirt. Molly doesn't speak with words but still makes it perfectly clear that she doesn't approve of people spilling things on the Folly's floors, usually by serving the culprit cold tea for a few meals.

That done, I went up to my room to change back into work clothes. While walking up the stairs I replayed the last ten or so minutes in my head: Nightingale had definitely looked a bit flustered at seeing me shirtless (again), which only served him right, really, as he'd been the one to drench my shirt in the first place so I couldn't put it back on after my shower. Not that he seemed to mind seeing me shirtless; in fact I was pretty sure by now that he was not or at least not exlusively interested in women, and I keep pretty fit if I say so myself.

As for me, well... I'm not gay, I've never done anything with another bloke apart from kissing my cousins Mark and Edward at a family thing when we were sixteen, slightly drunk, and bored out of our minds. (Mark, by the way, is now married to a very nice woman from Bristol, with two kids and a third and fourth one - twins - on the way. Ed lives with his boyfriend, an expat Canadian named Fred, and their two extremely grumpy cats.)

Still, Nightingale's appreciative looks at my body were quite flattering even if I was sure nothing more would come out of it, at least not while I was still his wizarding apprentice and he was holding a much higher police rank than me. But in the meantime I decided there was nothing wrong with enjoying some We're never speaking of it again but I did see you shirtless moments.