Prompt Post #1

[fantasticbeasts_kinkmeme]

 ROUND 1

FUCK IT WE'LL FIGURE OUT SPECIFICS LATER

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FILL: "Nothing Shall Be Impossible" Part 22a/? - Grindelwald + Graves/Credence Breeding Program

[(Anonymous)]

Credence slept fitfully, his hands constantly reaching for Graves. He woke frequently, just enough to verify that Graves was still awake – still with him, before falling into restless sleep once more. Graves tightened his hold on Credence, since Credence had always found that reassuring in the past, and promised himself he was never, ever going to let Credence go.

Attacking Grindelwald had been stupid. He ought to have cast incarcerous first; he saw that clearly now. Then finite incantatem, just to even the playing field a little. But no, he’d given into his rage and his desire to hurt his captor and cast dilaceratio at him like a stupid fucking rookie with a chip on his shoulder instead. Using Grindelwald’s own spells against him was meant to be a method of last resort, not an opening salvo. It was a rookie mistake.

Graves didn’t make rookie mistakes. He couldn’t afford to. He was a Graves – the only Graves of his generation who felt called to serve MACUSA, and Seraphina’s rival to boot.

When Graves made mistakes, people died. This was worse, because if he got his fool self killed now, Credence and their son would suffer for it.

He wouldn’t make a mistake like that again. The next time he went after Grindelwald, Graves would kill him. It was the only way to make sure Grindelwald couldn’t hurt Credence or their son, ever again.

Credence stirred faintly, close to waking again.

Had he spent the whole two weeks like this? Graves didn’t like the automatic way Credence kept waking up and falling back to sleep. It put a guilty twist in his stomach that hurt worse than his lingering bruises.

Graves cleared his throat and began to sing quietly. “It seems there’s none for me although my aching heart discovers – in a story play or picture show, a host of perfect lovers.”

Music was its own form of magic. The British wizards he knew preferred wizarding music, but Graves had always liked music for its own sake and didn’t care who wrote or performed it. Gershwin might’ve been a No-Maj, but no one could deny that the man was a genius at what he did. Summersea and his wife Angelica both adored jazz, and Graves had once bought them tickets to see Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue performed by a live orchestra as an anniversary present. (And an apology. Summersea had gotten the brunt of Graves’ temper on a case, and afterwards, Graves realized that Summersea hadn’t deserved it. He’d bought the tickets as an apology, in lieu of actually saying the words, and Summersea had been gracious enough to let him get away with it.)

“Somebody loves me, I wonder who – maybe it’s you.”

He hummed his way through the bits of the lyrics he couldn’t remember, and then moved on to singing the quiet lullabies his Irish-born mother had sung him to sleep with. Dindrane sang them to her children. Graves had too, when he’d had a chance to babysit. He’d sing them for his own son, soon.

Credence relaxed into true sleep somewhere during the third song, but Graves kept singing anyway. It was relaxing, and it kept him from focusing too much on how badly he’d fucked up.

Cura dat victoriam, Percival, he thought, giving the words the French Quarter accent of Seraphina’s youth.

Professor Galen was finally right. Caution was the only thing that would bring him victory now. Graves would wait. He’d be patient, and when the moment was right – he’d strike like a serpent, exactly the way his namesake had learned to.

Graves dozed lightly, still keeping watch. He woke whenever Credence grew restless, launching into another lullaby or, once he ran out of those, the drinking songs he’d learned from Harry and Liam. (The drinking songs he’d learned from Merak and Theseus would probably traumatize Credence; they had typically pureblood filthy minds. Too much money and not enough restraint had that effect on most purebloods, even American ones.) He could at least sing the ones he’d learned from Harry and Liam in public, although he hadn’t done so since he’d made Head of MLE despite Hughes’ best efforts.

Eventually, Credence stirred, showing signs of waking for real.

“I didn’t know you could sing,” he said, sitting up slowly and carefully.

“I don’t, much,” Graves admitted. “I thought it would help.”

“It did,” Credence said, shy in a way he hadn’t been since the first time he’d done magic.

“Would you like me to sing something now that you’re awake?” Graves asked.

“Could you sing the first song again?” Credence asked. “The one about somebody who loves you?”

“Of course,” Graves said, going back through the familiar lyrics once more. At the end of the song, before he’d finished singing, “Maybe it’s you,” Credence bent down again and kissed him.

“Yes,” Credence said. “It’s me. I love you.” He sat back, meeting Graves’ startled gaze with something that looked a whole hell of a lot like defiance. “I didn’t want you to die without telling you that,” he explained.

Graves sat up carefully. His ribs hurt like someone had dropped half a building on him. Pain didn’t matter, though. Nothing else mattered right now but Credence.

Graves cupped Credence’s face in his hands and kissed him, pouring every ounce of longing and desire he’d kept hidden since the first time he realized that he wanted Credence to be his. “I’m not going to die,” he said. “I love you.”

Credence leaned into him, his expression raw and full of a longing that matched Graves’ perfectly. “Promise?” he asked.

“I wish I could,” Graves told him, pressing his forehead against Credence’s, savoring the closeness. “Being an Auror’s not a safe job. That’s partly why I want you to meet Dorothy Collins. This is the sort of thing you should have a support network for. But I can promise you this, Credence: when I die, it won’t be Grindelwald that kills me.”

Credence pulled back, something unreadable and dark in his eyes. “Are you going to kill him first?” he asked, so quiet Graves couldn’t tell if the prospect of murder bothered him or not. Maybe it did. Murder was a sin, according to the No-Maj religion.

“Yes,” Graves said, unapologetic. “It’s a lot harder for dead men to hurt the living, and Grindelwald’s hurt too many of us already.”

“Good,” Credence said, voice savage. His expression was just as savage, about as far from Credence’s typical sweet nature as it was possible to get.

Credence Barebone – Credence Graves, he corrected himself – was a man to be reckoned with. Feared, even, in the same way that Graves himself was.

Graves stared at him, completely unafraid. Here was the partner he’d never let himself want, in all the lonely years before Credence. The one who could balance his warrior’s nature with a healer’s heart, a partner who could be leaned on. And more than that, the partner who would stand beside him and fight when it counted, who could look at the savage, animalistic parts he normally kept buried and not flinch.

Someone who would instill just as much fear in their enemies as Graves did.

“If you don’t kill him, I will,” Credence continued. “I hate him.”

“I’ll kill him,” Graves promised. He kissed Credence, hard and biting, the way he hadn’t dared to kiss Credence before this. How stupid he was, to think the Credence couldn’t take being kissed like this. He should have trusted Credence’s strength.

He would, going forward.

“I love you,” he said again. “I think I was waiting for you, all those years I spent married to my job.”

“Good,” Credence hissed again, biting back. “You’re my Percival, now, and I am never letting you go. No one gets to take you from me, not ever.”

That was the kind of talk that would have sent Graves running for the hills not long ago, wary of committing to a life partner that wasn’t his job. Now it just sent a thrill down Graves’ spine.

He wanted to haul Credence up, get those long, long legs wrapped around his waist and fuck him up against the wall of their cell, and then he wanted to do it again. He wanted to put his mouth on Credence’s cock and keep him hovering on the edge of coming for so long Credence forgot that anything but Graves existed. He wanted to press kisses over every single one of Credence’s scars, to watch Credence’s skin go goose-pebbled with anticipation.

He hurt too much for that, though. And Credence wasn’t hard at all.

“I’m too tired for sex,” Credence said, when he caught Graves looking.

“I’m in no shape for it either,” admitted Graves. If he tried to pick Credence up now, he’d probably wind up dropping them both. His ribs hurt in a sadly familiar way – the one that meant there were fractures if not outright breaks, and a smart wizard would get himself off to the infirmary for a lecture, some healing, and quality time with a bottle of Skele-Gro to ensure what was broken was as good as new. There was a tightness in his shoulders that suggested something similar. Graves couldn’t tell if it was muscle damage or more hairline fractures, but the bone in his right arm was definitely broken. Athletic sex was absolutely out of the question. Non-athletic sex was quite possible also out of the question, although he was certainly willing to give it his best shot if it was what Credence wanted.

He looked over at the breakfast spread that had appeared, sometime while Credence slept. “Breakfast?”

“Breakfast,” Credence agreed, with one last kiss.


*


Graves’ memories of everything that happened before the world went black were still crystal clear. Grindelwald was hunting for something – something he could only find in New York, if the map on his Investigation Board was any indicator.

Was that why Grindelwald had come to New York in the first place? Was that why he’d stolen Graves’ position at MACUSA – because he thought being the Director of Magical Security would help him find it?

Graves was still mostly convinced that Grindelwald’s visions were pure bullshit, but he had to concede that it was possible that Grindelwald had a vision of something he wanted to find and saw himself finding it in New York.

Grindelwald had been frustrated that the Spell Contraventions Map hadn’t helped him find whatever it was he was looking for. He didn’t like that it didn’t track creatures, or beings of pure magic.

That was a damning list of things to mention in the same breath. Add that to his peculiar interest in Modesty Barebone, who was all of eight years old and there was really only one possible conclusion.

Grindelwald was looking for an Obscurial.

Obscurials tended to manifest as powerful destructive forces, once the parasite grew strong enough. The Obscurus would lash out to protect its host, sometimes at the host’s instigation but never under the host’s control. Graves wasn’t one hundred percent positive, but he was fairly certain there had never been a single recorded case of the host being able to control the parasite – the Obscurus.

Could Grindelwald? Most Obscurials died before they reached ten years old. Graves supposed you could argue that the reason none of the hosts had been able to control their Obscuri was because they were children, who either lacked the will or the training to control a parasitic magical force. An adult might be able to do better, if the Obscurus could be extracted.

Graves was fairly certain there had never been a single recorded case of a successful extraction, either.

That wouldn’t stop Grindelwald from trying, though.

Graves could imagine what Grindelwald would do with an invisible destructive magical force under his command. It wouldn’t mean anything good for the wizarding world or the No-Maj one.

Fuck. What was he supposed to tell Credence, if the Obscurial turned out to be Modesty Barebone? He’d be heartbroken.

Maybe it wasn’t, though. Grindelwald knew who Modesty was and presumably where to find her. The fact that he hadn’t found the Obscurial yet meant that it probably wasn’t her.

Graves wondered if the Obscurial had manifested yet, or if it only existed in Grindelwald’s visions. He wondered what kind of damage the Obscurus was doing to his city, and if it had hurt any of his people.

Wondering what if would drive him mad in relatively short order. He learned that pretty quick, in the first awful days of captivity. Graves made himself focus on the here and now, cataloging his bruises. He was a mottled yellow-brown pretty much all over; his bruises were healing. Some of them, he noted, were in the shape of a man’s shoes, like Grindelwald had spent some time literally kicking him while he was down and couldn’t fight back. Knowing Grindelwald, he probably had.

He’d lost weight. He’d been losing weight since Grindelwald trapped him in the basement, but the difference two weeks of limited nutrition made was startling. There was no mirror in their cell, but Graves could see his wrists and ribs well enough to know that he probably looked unattractively gaunt. The loss of muscle mass was worse. He hated feeling weak. Building his strength up required more nourishment than Graves was likely to get, though.

He stopped trying to give half his meals to Credence, who had given him a fierce, hot-eyed glare the first time he tried it and informed Graves that if he tried it again, Credence would force feed it to him. Judging by the ferocity of his tone, Credence meant every word of it.

Credence had hit the fatigued portion of pregnancy Graves remembered distinctly from before all three of his nieces and nephews were born. First trimester Dindrane had bitched, endlessly, about being tired all the time and hating how the hormones made her cry at the drop of the hat. She’d hated the loss of control over her own body. (Second trimester Dindrane had been less emotional, but terrifyingly energetic and full of equally terrifying and traumatizing details. Graves hadn’t been able to look his brother-in-law Robert in the eye for weeks while Dindrane had been pregnant with Arthur.)

Graves figured it was okay to abandon their magic lessons for the time being, and just let Credence nap while he stretched, slowly and carefully, testing the limits of his range of motion. He needed to know what would hurt and what didn’t. (Pretty much everything hurt, though, but it was the sort of pain Graves could push through. What were a few fractured bones, compared to the Cruciatus?)