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After the initial stress and excitement of settling in had worn off, John decided that cohabiting with a retired serial killer slash war criminal was… surprisingly boring.
Once Bellum had been reasonably certain that John wouldn’t be a liability (via ‘training’ that definitely violated several international laws, but ensured he’d survive if captured and/or tortured by any of Bellum’s numerous enemies) he’d helped John find a job, open a bank account, and given him the keys and floo passwords to his main safe-houses. That was a thing with Bellum. He didn’t have a home, not in that sense of the word. He had safe-houses, hundreds of them. Scattered all over the world. (Definitely some form of PTSD, but John wasn’t paid enough to be his therapist and was not about to touch that with a ten foot pole.)
John had moved into the second floor suite of the least dusty safe-house which coincidentally also happened to be a professor’s quarters at Durmstrang. (For some reason, there were no teachers living in either of the adjacent maisonettes. When asked about it, Bellum would just give him an ominous smile and John would calmly exit the room.)
Regardless, the fact remained that it was boring.
Sure, Bellum took him on the occasional life-threatening field trip, and meal-time conversations were always a delightful minefield of statements that toed the line between normalcy and criminal-insanity. But for the most part, John was left to his own devices.
Bellum often woke before him, leaving the floo open for John to get to work. Most nights, he would return long after John had retired for the night. Only rarely would he wake John up if he was already asleep. On non-field trip weekends, they’d take meals together but again, John was free to skip them if he so wished (he found this out quite by accident; he’d lost track of time while building a 1:70 model replica of a 1537 Cocca Veneta merchant ship, and food had appeared out of thin air on his desk two hours after he was supposed to be down for lunch).
Anyway.
Boring. John needed some hobbies to sustain himself. At first, he tried experimenting on the level of indulgences, luxuries, and unreasonable requests he was allowed. He hadn’t yet found a request that Bellum wouldn’t accommodate. Nothing seemed to faze the man. Sure, he'd dramatically sigh and groan and moan and snidely insult how terribly American, how remarkably average and basic everything about John was. And then he'd gamely agree to fulfil the latest unreasonable demand of the week.
Once that got boring too, he really did need some hobbies to stop himself from going stir crazy. Being confined and powerless and stressed had been his norm for years. Without his chains, without that niggling sense of confinement, of being trapped? With his sudden unlimited freedom and access to Bellum's seemingly unlimited reserves of wealth? Having so much excess wasted time felt like a crime.
Yeah, he needed a hobby. Obsessively building model ships and catching up on the music of the 80s was all well and good. Getting Bellum to buy him rare limited edition Batman comics was awesome. But that only filled up so many hours in a day.
Sometimes, he felt like there was a gaping maw inside his soul. A maw that had been ripped open years ago and never allowed to heal.
(John knew, deep down, that it would never heal. But that didn't mean he couldn't fill that hole in his heart with meaningless joys instead of despairing over spilled milk.)
But what was a good hobby he could start off with?
He'd posed the question when he'd been taking his lunch break with his nicest colleague, Madam Felicia.
She was in charge of quality control at the tiny magical confectionary company he worked at, and he thus trusted her views on the quality of hobbies.
“Well,” said Madam Felicia, “I suppose you can't go wrong with reading for pleasure. It's convenient, affordable and safe.”
That's it.
“That's perfect! I can't believe I never thought of it! I mean, I see you reading your books between meetings and product evaluations all the time!”
Madam Felicia looked rather embarrassed at his observation.
“I should get started right away! May I borrow the book you're reading once you are done?”
“What? No I don't think you will enjoy this, Mr Smith, its er, I mean, I'm sure you'll enjoy reading a different genre. It's a romance, you see? Wouldn't you prefer a nice book about, er, medieval sailboats instead?”
John smiled softly at the older woman. She was so lovely, remembering that he loved building model ships. But…
“Part of the joy of starting a new hobby is making new friends! We're already friends, but if we read the same books wouldn't it be nice to bond over them?”
Madam Felicia looked even more embarrassed, but she gamely handed over the latest novel she had been reading.
“Why John, I didn’t realise you enjoyed reading bodice rippers.”
“Fuck off, Bellum. I can do what I want.”
“Is it really interesting enough to ignore me? During lunch?”
John scowled irritably as he finally looked up from his book.
“Well, Wilhelmina just got married to the elderly Duke Nowisthon, even after Gustav begged her to run away with him. And I’m pretty sure Gustav was planning to break into the Duke’s manor to either kidnap Wilhelmina or secretly make love to her when you interrupted me – you can’t deny that lunch with you is pretty boring compared to this.”
John smirked before going back to his book. The interruption may have been a little irritating, but the look on Bellum’s face was priceless.
John was under no illusions as to his place in this world. He was as far from important as a person could get. He had been a shiny new toy for a fickle dragon, and now his lustre was dulling. Soon, he’d outlive his entertainment value and be thrown aside.
But until then, he’d cherish every moment of this peaceful, boring everyday life he had cultivated. Working his boring job as an accountant for a tiny Swedish magical confectionary company. Buying and building ‘boring’ model ships, collecting rare comic books, getting dragged into yet another annoying spar to ‘keep his reflexes sharp’. Starting yet another hobby, much to Bellum’s exasperated amusement. Sharing leisurely meals over unhinged conversations.
Going on the occasional international vacations and simply… revelling. In the way nearly everyone cowered at the sight of Magnus Fucking Bellum. In the way those vivid eyes captured the light, how they flashed and darkened like violet gemstones when they turned their gaze to look upon John.
At the very least, John thought, he had a job and a tidy sum of money he could fall back on after he was inevitably cast aside and replaced by a brand new shiny toy.