Dirk Cresswell

RP blog penned by Steph for AmorFati. 

I also play: @missmary; @beeavery; @pembrokesbox; @epimetheusb; @nottsoinnocent

Character overviews

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Bertram rolled his eyes at Dirk’s comment but his lips remained smiling. It amused Bertram to no end whenever Dirk would let his guard down and complain about the wizarding world because the muggle world just did it so much better. Bertram himself didn’t have much contact with the muggle world despite his mother being a muggle herself. That’s why Dirk’s concerns entertain him deeply. “How else would they get their charming smile, Dirk? Not everything can just be down to natural looks, can it? Besides, how do muggles get nice teeth? How is that any different from whitening potions?”

Dirk’s voice crack prompted Bertram to stop midway. He got both of them out of the bathroom but they were still too far from the bed for Bertram’s liking. But Dirk’s hesitation no longer seemed like his usual kind wherein he simply needed a push. No, his hesitation seemed more… Pained. Worried. Bertram frowned. “What?!” Bertram sputtered when he realized what Dirk meant. “I’m not… I’m not trying to be fresh with you, Dirk. I just wanted to cuddle like I said.” He rolled his eyes as if it was obvious. “We agreed to take it slow. Part of that is not trying to sleep with you. I promise.”

“By flossing and by seeing a dentist twice a year to make sure there aren’t any problems and sometimes they have braces if their teeth aren’t naturally straight.” Dirk knew full-well that some people did use teeth whiteners but he wasn’t about to bring those up. It was just some jokey repartee anyway, and a nice distraction from the concerns that had chased him into the bathroom.

it had taken him a while since arriving home, but benjy finally remembered to go to gringott’s on his day off.  he still had most of the money he’d taken out for his trip, and he was tired of worrying about it.  it wasn’t that much, not once you factored the exchange rate between his parents’ muggle money and the ever-confusing wizard’s system.  he still didn’t understand how it worked, he’d always just let the workers at gringott’s figure it out whenever his parents sent him money or vice versa.  

“hi!  i’d like to make a deposit.  i have — ” was all benjy was able to get out before the goblin started reprimanding him.  he wasn’t even sure what he did;  he’d just touched the desk to give himself some leverage because they were so tall. it felt like he was on his tiptoes taking to the worker.  benjy had a strong look of confusion on his face until he heard dirk talking, and immediately his face turned red from shame.  “oh jeez, i didn’t know.  i feel so bad.”  he looked for the goblin he’d apparently insulted, but he’d already gone.  “i just wanted to deposit some money back into my account, but now i don’t know what to do.”

Dirk winced and shook his head. His tone had come across a bit harsher than he meant it to. After all, Benjy was muggleborn as well. He hadn’t grown up in a world where goblins run banks. In the muggle world, customer service was more important than perceived slights against the teller. “It’s okay. You live and learn. I can talk to—” But the goblin had already gone and Dirk sighed. “Pride is important to them but money’s more important. Give him ten minutes or so to calm down and he’ll be back. They’re used to wizards not knowing their etiquette and customs. The main thing is to be direct but not in a way they see as demanding. That’s why their desks are so high, you know, to remind wizards that goblins aren’t below them so they see touching their desks as wizards trying to object to that.”

Bertram laughed along with him even though he didn’t think his laughter sounded as pretty as Dirk’s. With only the two of them together, it hardly mattered. “I don’t think that’s how it works, Dirk.” Bertram calls Dirk by his name a lot whenever he was feeling affectionate. “But I’d love to see you get drunk anyway. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you.” With that Bertram wrapped his other hand around the one Dirk just placed over their interlocking fingers. He has no plans of letting go either. “Come on then. It’s not gonna fetch itself.” Even though it could with a flick of a wand. Bertram just thought that dragging Dirk around would be a lot more fun. The musician stuck a tongue out at his boyfriend. “Well, it’s not my fault you’re so prompt and proper all the time. You wouldn’t even entertain the thought of being late just so we could cuddle in the morning.”

He stopped and looked at Dirk blushing profusely. Bertram didn’t think it was something he should feel guilty about but it was nice to know that Dirk knew and yet, he didn’t mind all the same. He brought their hands up to his lips and kissed Dirk’s hand. “I don’t think you will hurt me, Dirk.” Bertram paused and let his sentiment simmer for a while before continuing. “But if you do. Think of all the amazing songs I’ll get to write,” he teased. “There’s gonna be a whole album dedicated to you. Each song would be about how a beautiful man stole my heart and called it his.” The musician looked up and smiled gleefully, waiting for Dirk’s reaction. “Now enough of that. Let’s get started with drinking.”

It was incredible the things Dirk had never noticed before. Like the fact that Bertram’s laugh lit up the entire room or how the way he said Dirk’s name was so soft, almost reverent, and Dirk wanted to hear him say it over and over just to hear that tone in Bertram’s voice. Had he really missed these details for all this time? Or perhaps they had always been there and he just didn’t realise that the reason he found it so easy to joke around with Bertram was because he had wanted to hear that laugh. “You’ve definitely seen me drunk before,” Dirk pointed out, but he was distracted from dragging up memories of Hogwarts parties and the early days of trying to fit in at the Ministry and celebrating the wins or commiserating the losses of both their careers in the years since. Their hands wrapped around each other was a much better thing to focus his attention on. “If you ever make me late to work, you get to be the one to explain to the goblins why.” He wouldn’t mind so much with his human colleagues but he had no intentions of making any dents in the good relations he had built up with the goblins with something so asinine as showing up late.

Arabella did not understand the relationship between wizards and goblins in Britain. She knew that the general relationship between the two groups was tense, as it was back home, but they had nothing like Gringotts back in the States. Or maybe they did, in a way, but there was one, singular bank for all American wix. First: the country was too large for that. Second: it was strange, wasn’t it? To put a group in charge of all your money who you didn’t understand and didn’t necessarily trust? It was strange to her, but she did her best to be polite when she needed to stop in at Gringotts. Changing muggle currency to magical coins and vice versa was probably a more demanding task than the average patron requested. Didn’t mean she always got it right.

She held back the sigh as the goblin dismissed her. She made to step back from the desk when the other spoke; she looked up at him with a small frown. “Oh. Is that it?” she asked, brow furrowed. “Have they considered signs about that then?” She shook her head. “Nothing I can’t handle another day.

“You probably caught him on a bad day as well,” Dirk admitted, lowering his voice so that none of the goblins would hear him. “They have to deal with wizards looking down on them all day long and some of them are better at being patient about the differences in culture than others.” It was part of why he valued his job so much. The dynamic between wix and goblins was a complicated one and most people didn’t understand it anywhere near as much as they should. Goblins played such a vital part in their economy and wix wanted to take advantage of their shrewdness without paying them the respect and rewards they deserved. “I imagine they would consider putting a sign up to be unnecessary. A bit like every office in the Ministry having a sign on the door to say ‘if you wish to be polite, you should knock before you enter.’”

It was a long shot that a random bystander would happen to know anything about the letter, and even slimmer that the letter would belong to that bystander. He sighed but kept a pleasant expression. “It was a worth a shot. I hate for something important to get lost down a storm drain. Could be a bill or love letter, you never know,” he said with a quiet chuckle. Ted squinted at the name again as the stranger rattled of his suggestion. “Maybe a Fawley? I think I went to school with someone with that last night.” They were a pureblood family, from what he remembered. Being married to the runaway Black daughter made him aware of those sorts of things.

He shrugged as he looked back up at the man, holding out the hand not grasping the letter. “Thanks though. Sorry if I distracted you from something.” He glanced behind the stranger and only saw a poster and a petition. “I guess I’m not surprised,” he added, nodding towards the petition to cancel the Quidditch cup.

“It doesn’t look like a bill, at least. Sorry I couldn’t be more help,” Dirk said with a shrug. “Maybe...” He didn’t sound convinced, though. Dirk forgot sometimes that the Wizarding World was as small as it was so he wasn’t in the habit of assuming something like this would actually be addressed to someone one of the two of them knew. There were a lot of potential surnames including those he knew from the Muggle world. “It might even be Finley. If it is a love letter, then they need to work on their handwriting if they want to be sure it gets there. I know owls don’t necessarily need that if you tell them who to go to but... Christ, what happened to the owl?” He looked up at the sky as if he expected to see an injured owl flapping around above their heads. That was more worrying to Dirk than the letter. He figured if it was that important, the sender could just write another one but there were few reasons that would cause a good postal owl to drop a letter like this and the majority of them didn’t bode well for the bird.

Bertram laughed as Dirk got all flustered. He was still unaware of the possible thoughts running through Dirk’s head. All he could think of was how cute Dirk was and how he can’t wait for the chance to pull him back to bed. He grabbed the tube of toothpaste and squeezed some into his toothbrush’s bristles. While Dirk was looking at him through the mirror, Bertram preferred to look at him directly as he started brushing his teeth. “Oh. I know,” Bertram tried to say with his toothbrush still in his mouth so it just came out as garbled. “How else do you think I maintain my megawatt smile.” It was a joke since Bertram rarely smiles for the camera. Not even a lot in front of a crowd. Most of his smiles were reserved for Dirk alone.

Dirk had just finished washing his mouth, so naturally, Bertram used the opportunity to lean over and press his still lips that were still covered with suds against Dirk’s lips. Bertram was smiling himself silly as he pushed Dirk away from the sink with his hips before rinsing his own mouth. “Now, are you done yet?” he asked, grabbing Bertram by the wrist. “I’d like to come back to cuddling, please.”

“The fact that Hogwarts never made sure we were seeing a dentist regularly did sometimes make me wonder how much education there was about that,” he commented, dryly. It was nice that these days he could say things like that to Bertram which screamed of his muggle upbringing without having to worry and it made it hard to believe that for so long he had avoided such a topic with his best friend. “They should change the name of Witch Weekly’s Most Charming Smile Award to the Best Use of Teeth Whitening Potions Award.”

He saw it happening only when it was too late to do something about it. Goblin culture could seen finicky to those who didn’t understand it but it was just like the differences with other wizarding cultures. Certain symbols and actions that might be neutral or even positive for one group could be deeply offensive to others. The difficulty here was that each Gringotts goblin had their own desk and one thing that they found very offensive was others placing their hands on their desks. For the most part, it was okay. This was why their desks were raised so high, not to keep them above wix (although Dirk was sure that played into it a little bit) but to keep those wix’s hands off their desks. There would always be someone who did it anyway, though, either out of ignorance or defiance.

She looked down at the tuna sandwich the other had handed her with a disgusted look.  “I –” she took a deep breath, trying not to come across as an asshole if this had genuinely been a kind gesture.  “am going to need a bit of clarification, I guess.  Are you trying to poison me, or are you doing a random act of kindness and just so happen to have horrendous taste in sandwiches?”

It had been years since she had lived at home, since she had been forced to eat the disgusting combination of tuna and mushy peas that her father seemed so drawn to.  It looked like cat food that had been partially digested, and it didn’t smell much better.  “Oh no,” she protested as they tried to take it away.  “I’ve got to eat it now, I don’t want to break your spirit or whatever.  You tried, even if you sort of failed.  Just – if I don’t make it past this moment I want you to call me beautiful and brilliant when you give the eulogy at my funeral.”  She sighed, peeling back the wrapping and taking the smallest bite off the corner.

Dirk checked his watch again, despite knowing he had plenty of time. It was just that the goblin he had a meeting with today was very particular. Or, perhaps, easily irritated was a better way of describing her. And particularly difficult to work with when she was irritated. A little prone to random bouts of violence in those cases, too. Dirk had learned over the past year that there were a couple of things that he could do to try and stop her from becoming irritated. One of them was getting there on time. Not early, because she considered that to be rude, but not even half a minute late because then he would be wasting her time. The other thing Dirk could do was bring along a tuna sandwich from her favourite shop. The gift of food really worked miracles.

He had enough time that he knew he would have to distract himself for a little bit if he wasn’t going to turn up at Gringotts too early and irk the goblin, so when he saw Aila, he walked over and lifted his hand up in a wave. Unfortunately, that move was just enough to let a piece of parchment fall from the file he was carrying for his afternoon meeting. “Here, hold this,” he asked of Aila, thrusting the sandwich into her hands so that he could get his files back in order before the wind took them. “No, it’s—” he started, getting distracted from his own words as he made sure the file was secure this time before he freed up a hand to reach out for the sandwich again. “I wasn’t—” But Aila had cut him off, holding the sandwich back from him so that he couldn’t take it and Dirk could do nothing but gape as she proceeded to unwrap his goblin peace offering and take a bite. “Ah, crap, I’m going to have to buy another now,” he muttered.

Bertram thought he knew everything about Dirk. From their days in Hogwarts to moving in together, he spent every day learning more about him. Sometimes, he’d think that he already knew all there is to know. But just their first kiss was enough to prove that he was wrong. So wrong. That first kiss taught Bertram more about Dirk than the decade they spent together.

And after their second kiss, Bertram was just rediscovering Dirk all over again.

Bertram looked at him weirdly. “I didn’t know my boyfriend is an aspiring alcoholic,” he teased before bringing up their interlaced hands. “Or I uh… guess not since you don’t look like you want to let me go. And to answer that question, it’s not a lot. Since you’re always so busy all the time,” he joked. Bertram squeezed Dirk’s hand back before looking up at his boyfriend. He didn’t know where Dirk’s declaration was coming from but it wasn’t at all unwelcome. “Hey, don’t worry about it. You have nothing to be sorry for.” Bertram thought about it for a few seconds before adding, “In fact, can I tell you something? It kinda didn’t matter because I’ve treated you as my boyfriend ever since we kissed for the second time. Is that bad?”

Dirk just laughed and shook his head. He didn’t really drink all that often, but with nowhere to be, he saw no reason to limit it to the evening. “The sooner we start, the sooner the hangover ends. I’m not letting you go, you’ll just have to take me with you.” He wrapped his free hand around over their joint ones to stop Bertram from trying to let go of him. “Oh, yeah, so says the one who works weekends. At least my job is a nice, civilised nine-to-five,” he teased back. It did limit their time together, however, when their schedules were in such opposition, which is why it almost felt enough to celebrate them simply getting a weekend to themselves.

Location: Diagon Alley Who: open

It was by instinct alone that Ted managed to catch the letter half-flying, half-skittering across the cobblestones of Diagon Alley. Ted frowned and squinted at it, turning it over. His eyes skimmed the lettering on the back, but the handwriting was chicken-scratch. He craned his head, searching for someone or something who might’ve lost it. Ted spotted nothing; no frantic people, no circling owls, no healers in sight. He glanced at the letter again, but the word were still scribbles. Was than an F or an L?

Motion in the corner of his vision broke his focus. He waved at the disappointingly calm bystander, picking up his feet to reach them. “You didn’t lose a letter did you?” he asked in a hopeful tone, holding it out for them to see. “I caught this, but I can’t read the name or address on it.”

Dirk left Gringotts with the intention of enjoying the fine weather and walking home, no need to rush now his work day was over. It gave him chance to look around and properly take in the street he had grown a bit too used to over the years. It was a shame that he had viewed magic with such scepticism when he was first introduced to the world, really. It was truly incredible and Dirk felt he had missed out on the full impact most muggleborns got when catching their first glimpse of Diagon Alley.

Bertram was expecting more kisses. Either given by him or coming from Dirk. Instead, Dirk was already slipping away. So much for staying in bed the entire day, Bertram complained to himself. Toilet, he says. Bertram supposed that he could at least excuse that. With Dirk out of the bed, Bertram’s side immediately turned cold. The bed still smelt overwhelmingly of Dirk, but already, Bertram’s arms were craving for something to reach out and hold on to.

When Dirk was taking longer than Bertram expected him to, he finally decided to throw himself out of the bed and followed suit. Thankfully, Dirk didn’t close the door of the toilet behind him. Bertram slipped in and found Dirk leaning against the sink, brushing his teeth. He smirked. Wandlessly, he gestured into the air. “Accio toothbrush.” Immediately, his toothbrush came flying towards his hand. “I don’t mind if your breath stinks, you know,” he teased.

He pushed the bathroom door to behind him and took a moment just to breathe. The whole thing was so overwhelming and Dirk didn’t know how to feel. Suddenly, it all felt so different to cuddling in the living room or even kissing. Something changed the whole feeling them lying in bed together, despite having stayed that way all through the night. Dirk splashed some cold water on his face to try and distract himself from his thoughts and then relieved himself. As he washed his hands, he realised he still wanted to put off going back to bed. Back to Bertram. Where he would have to face the fact that label or no label, lying in bed with someone he had been kissing recently might lead to certain expectations. Dirk reached for his toothbrush, not really thinking through the action until Bertram walked in. Dirk looked at him through the mirror, glad that having a mouth full of toothpaste was enough to stop it from being obvious that he was starting to panic. Just a little bit.