"So?" Queenie wrung her hands in the sitting-room of the Paris safe house. Grindelwald nodded at her and confirmed,
"When I scouted out his place in the Marais, it seemed he was still there. But it's a Sunday. We'll have to wait until tomorrow to visit him. I'd forgotten that he'd never receive a visitor on a Sunday."
"Why not?" Queenie asked, furrowing her brows, and Grindelwald cleared his throat.
"Valentin is an odd bird. He worships the Muggle Christian God. He goes to their Catholic churches and pays homage to him there with prayer and song, and he does it on Sundays. He reserves the day for worship; none are to bother him on what he calls the Sabbath."
"So we can't go to his house today," Queenie said, sounding disappointing. Her face looked disappointed, too. She looked around the Parisian home and shrugged. "What are we gonna do until then, just sit here and twiddle our thumbs while he goes to church?"
"You will find, Queenie, that patience goes a very long way in dealing with this man," said Grindelwald. "He is an eccentric, and we must tread lightly. You and I must both be humble and patient. Can you do that?"
Queenie let out a long, slow sigh. She glanced around the richly decorated parlour and hummed, "I suppose so."
"You are impatient," Grindelwald noted, "because of what was done to you. I understand. Really, I do. But today, we should distract ourselves from the idea of seeing Valentin. We'll go see him tomorrow. You'd have been impatient at Nurmengard, too."
"Yeah." Queenie's stomach growled, and she asked, "Can I go make us something to eat?"
"I'd like that," he told her. He watched her stalk through the house into the kitchen, where she pulled out her wand and started pulling out ingredients. She began to whip up some sort of beef stew, by the looks of things, and soon the kitchen smelled delicious. Grindelwald went to the dining room and sat, waiting, drumming his fingers on the table.
Gaspard Valentin was a strange creature, he thought, but they needed that strange creature right now. They weren't going to make it without him. They needed Leopold, their son, and without Valentin's knowledge of counter-Curses, Dumbledore's wicked deed would go unchecked. Grindelwald licked his bottom lip and stared at the table in the dining room as Queenie came walking in with bowls of stew. He gratefully accepted the stew, and when Queenie sat opposite him, he began spooning beef and carrots and onions into his mouth. He let out a low little moan, and Queenie asked hesitantly,
"Well?"
"Well?" Grindelwald repeated. He spooned more stew into his mouth and drank deeply from his red wine. Queenie clarified,
"Do you like the stew, honey?"
He scoffed. "Queenie, of all the reasons why I love you, your cooking is far and away one of the most profound. You do realise that, don't you?"
She grinned and blushed, shaking her head. "It's just food."
Grindelwald folded his hands on the table and said softly to her, "I admire you immensely for your Legilimency abilities. I quite like your happy personality. I like your intelligence, too, and the way you smile at me. I find you very beautiful. But your cooking, Queenie, is unparalleled."
She laughed a little and waved him off. "You're making fun of me."
"I assure you I am not," he said, and he finished spooning stew into his mouth in silence. He drank more of his wine, and that got him thinking. Finally he looked at Queenie as she Banished the Scoured dishes to the kitchen, and he stared at the wine rack in the corner of the dining room, and he said, "Seeing as we've nothing but time and all manner of anxiety, what do you say to getting blisteringly drunk with me on good French wine?"
Queenie smirked. "What, we're just gonna drink a bottle of Merlot each?"
"Something like that." Grindelwald Summoned a few more bottles of wine, and soon enough they'd set to drinking. They sipped steadily, each of them taking a draught and then a rest of a few seconds before sipping again. After a few glasses' worth of wine, Queenie started to look blurry, and after his fifth or sixth glass, Grindelwald felt properly drunk. He finally started to feel a little sick, so he cast Nonemesis Charms on both himself and Queenie to stave off nausea, and he pushed away his empty bottle of wine. He poured himself another glass, accidentally sloshing it out of the top, having not realised he'd filled it so much. Queenie giggled madly at him, and he laughed a little as he slurped the wine out of the top of the Beaujolais glass and Siphoned it up off the table. Queenie asked him in a slurred voice,
"Do you remember, honey, the first time that you ever kissed me?"
"I do," Grindelwald answered confidently. "I asked you if you wanted to be excited, or something like that."
"No. No. That was the second time you kissed me. I meant when you kissed me on the forehead. I have to tell you something," Queenie droned. "I thought you were gonna kiss my mouth."
"I also thought I was going to kiss your mouth, but you made a coward of me," Grindelwald informed her. He slid the full wine glass over toward himself and carefully picked it up, sipping at the wine and then deciding he'd probably had more than enough. He set it back down, and Queenie frowned rather adorably.
"Whaddaya mean, I made a coward of you? You're no coward, Gellert."
"I was, with you, at first," he admitted. "Kissing you hard in the snow that day took more effort than it ought to have done."
"Why?" Queenie demanded, and Grindelwald huffed.
"Because I wanted you."
"That makes no sense!" Queenie squealed. "If you wanted me, why didn't you kiss me?"
"You made me nervous!" Grindelwald drawled. He met Queenie's eyes square on at last and gulped, nodding. "You made me nervous."
"I'm sorry." She seemed genuinely sorrowful then, but he shook his head and insisted,
"I don't mind any of it now. It's all... it worked out for the best, didn't it? Don't you think? Hmm?"
"Yes." She blinked a few times and demanded, "Why didn't my sister flinch when I mentioned Dumbledore Cursing me?"
"You said it in passing to her," Grindelwald noted, "at her wedding. Perhaps she didn't even hear you say it, or didn't believe you. Or... perhaps she's in on the whole thing and thinks he did you a favour. Could be either way, really."
He watched Queenie spin her empty wine glass slowly on the table and chew her lip.
"What if Gaspard Valentin won't help us because I'm a dirty, arrogant American? Or because he doesn't like you? Or because he doesn't know the counter-Curse? What if I'm stuck like this forever?"
"I will not allow you to be stuck like that forever," said Grindelwald simply. "If Dumbledore can find your sister and Scamander in Wales and undo my memory alterations in a flash, then I can quickly undo his little infertility Curse on my wife. Two can play at this game. I will not allow him to dissolve the vision I had. The one of..."
He trailed off then, remembering the sight of himself cradling the little blond-haired infant in his own arms whilst Queenie looked on lovingly. His eyes burned suddenly, and he finally finished,
"Leopold. I won't let Dumbledore destroy the idea of Leopold. So."
Queenie was crying a little now, he could see, and he wanted badly to make her stop. He wanted her to be happy, or at least distracted. Grindelwald heaved himself to his feet and stumbled around the table, tripping a little on the corner. He made his way over to her and pulled her up to stand. He put his right hand at the small of her back and took her other hand in his left one. He held her in the dancing stance, and she stared up at him, tears streaming down her confused face.
"There isn't any music," she said softly, and he sighed. He pulled her back a little, into a more open space in the dining room, and he yanked her more tightly against his body. She gazed up at him, her eyes glassy from drink, and she marveled. She was in awe of him, he could tell. She was desperately in love with him. Well, he was desperately in love with her, too. He let out another sigh and licked his lip, beginning to sway as he sang in a low, steady voice,
"Verlass mich nie, Geliebte. Ohne dich bin ich gar nichts."
Queenie started to cry again. Her tears came fresh from her eyes, watering down her cheeks as she swayed to the two-step folk song that Grindelwald had begun to sing. He smirked at her and bent to kiss at her tear-streaked cheekbone, and then he sang,
"Wenn du mich verlässt, Geliebte, Ich würde in das Nichtsein schrumpfen."
"Gellert." Queenie whispered his name as he hummed the song's interlude, and as they continued to sway, she whispered frantically, "I love you. I love you so much."
He answered by singing the last few lines of the song.
"Du bist mein Leben, Geliebte. Wohnen Sie mit mir; Sei immer neben mir. Ich liebe dich. Ich liebe dich. Ich liebe dich so sehr."
He stopped dancing then and bent to kiss Queenie, taking her face in his hands and pressing his mouth to hers. He gently slipped his tongue into her mouth, stumbling a little on his feet from all the wine. She was so unsteady that he finally wrapped an arm around her and held her against him as he kissed her. She kissed him back eagerly, dragging her tongue over the roof of his mouth. When Grindelwald finally broke away, he murmured,
"I'm not a coward anymore around you, Queenie, but it's no mystery why you rendered me one."
"Well, I do apologise," she whispered against his lips, and he shook his head.
"I'm a damned fool for you. I can take that."
"You're my husband," Queenie pointed out, staring into his eyes, searching for regret. She wouldn't find any. Grindelwald nodded and tucked her hair behind her ear.
"Best decision I've ever made, marrying you," he declared, "and I've made many decisions - some very foolish and some brilliant. By far the most brilliant was marrying you, Queenie Grindelwald."
Her lips curled up at that, and she swiped away the last few tears from her cheeks. She asked quietly,
"Was he a sweet little baby? In your vision? Leopold?"
"Yes." Grindelwald nodded. "He'll be a sweet child when you bear him and nurture him. Our Leopold. And if Valentin can't help us, we'll find another way. But I think Valentin has the knowledge we need, Queenie. All right? So all we need to do is go in there humbly and carefully tomorrow. Promise?"
"I'll follow your lead," Queenie swore. She touched at her Deathly Hallows pendant and vowed in a drunken drawl, "Through flame over and over for you, Gellert."
"This we do together," he said. "Hand in hand."
As if to prove his point, he threaded his fingers through hers and began to lead her out of the dining room, his steps staggering and uneasy, and he murmured,
"Bedroom's this way."
Author's Note: Sorry for the delay in updating; I have been very busy on the last few days of my vacation and couldn't write. Tomorrow is a travel day, so I'll have to see if I can write on the plane or not. Otherwise, the next update will be the day after tomorrow. Thank you for your patience with my travel.
We'll have a brief lemon coming up followed by the visit to Gaspard Valentin to see if he can undo the damage caused by Dumbledore (darn you, Dumbledore!). Sorry for the super fluffy chapter, but I wanted to take a breather and re-establish some of the romance between these two among all the chaos. Thanks so much as always for reading, and PLEASE REVIEW! Thank you!