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1.
Queenie was bringing her sister a cup of hot coffee - and maybe just a little hot gossip - when she caught a thread of alarming thoughts. Someone in the Auror’s department was being chased by an enormous pile of animated paperwork. It was a bit like a memo, except instead of an almost cute little rat-thing it was the size of a horse, and had three heads, one of which was breathing fire. Queenie gasped and reached for her wand, because it was outlandish but not entirely impossible, but when all three heads started asking for “leave for personal reasons, just for a week or twooooo” in dissonant chorus, she realized that it was a dream.
Specifically, it was Mr. Graves’s dream. Queenie paused outside the door of his office, trying to decide whether or not to knock and wake him up. On the one hand, it was a very stressful sort of dream, and she felt terrible for the poor man. On the other, Mr. Graves might shout at her. But no, Queenie couldn’t just leave him like that. Maybe there was a third option. She bit her lip, slowly opened the door, and crept in.
Mr. Graves was asleep in his desk chair, with his head tipped back against the backrest. It looked, frankly, excruciating. How tired must he be to have dozed off like that? Tina had said he was working awfully long hours...
Queenie set down the cup of coffee and did a little light charming to arrange things more nicely - the backrest of the desk chair rose and became padded, one of the visitor chairs shrank and became a cute little footstool, all very temporary, of course - and then used gentle hands to ease Mr. Graves into a more comfortable position. His dream softened, and Queenie smiled with satisfaction.
She left the coffee, with a little warming cantrip on it to keep it hot for when Mr. Graves woke up. Tina would understand.
2.
President Picquery was not particularly famous for compassion. She was famous for her firmness of purpose, her dedication to the best interests of the wizarding public, even for dressing exquisitely at all times - but not for kindness. Nonetheless, she did care about people. Especially the people she worked with, who were hand-picked for their own very excellent qualities. Graves, for example, was a dedicated Auror, absolutely committed to the law and the protection of the common wizard, and she respected him immensely.
She respected his work ethic, too, though she did think he was taking things a little too far a little too soon after his recovery from Grindlewald’s imprisonment. It was obvious that the man wanted to show everyone that he hadn’t been affected, that he was as firmly on top of things as he had been before Grindlewald stole his identity. Unfortunately for him, Grindlewald had been shirking Graves’s paperwork, and as a matter of pride Graves had been taking up the slack personally, putting in ludicrously long hours as well as handling all the day-to-day business of the DMLE.
So when he fell asleep in the middle of a briefing, President Picquery stopped talking, fixed everyone in the room with a piercing stare, and pointed at the door. They all shuffled out obediently, and she dimmed the lights before she closed the Imperturbed door behind herself.
3.
Red had not been aware that humans could sleep standing up. He took his break early, put an “out of order” sign on the elevator door, and left Mr. Graves to it.
4.
Credence couldn’t help being interested in the real Mr. Graves. The man who had worn that body and stolen that name was a cruel liar who had, Credence now realized, only wanted to use him, not help him at all. But he couldn’t get out of the habit of looking at that face and thinking “friend.” So he checked in on Mr. Graves now and again, following him around for a while here and there, peering in his windows to see if he was well.
He saw mainly that Mr. Graves was working too hard. He came home from work late every night, left early every morning, and in the meantime was more often than not up for hours and hours looking through files and making notes.
One night, Mr. Graves fell asleep on his sofa, papers on every nearby surface and a slowly dripping fountain pen in one hand. Credence slipped through a crack in the window and concentrated hard on rematerializing. He needed hands to slip Mr. Graves’s shoes off, and put his feet up, and cover him with a blanket.
And 1.
Tina was too tired for this hooey.
“Boss--” she started.
“Darling,” Graves said pointedly. They were posing as a married couple, potential buyers for house elves that were being smuggled into the country from Europe. They had been invited by a contact to a little resort area Upstate, where they would need to keep their cover in place for at least a week.
Which was the source of the hooey.
“Beloved,” Tina said. “Stop being so pigheaded. There’s plenty of room, and neither of us needs to sleep on the floor.”
Their rented room was supposed to have been a suite, but there had been a mix-up, and it was one open space, dominated by a huge bed and with only a pair of armchairs and a spindly table besides - no sofa, not even a padded bench.
Graves was still standing by the door, where he had paused in consternation, holding his suitcase. Tina took it from him, then took him by the elbow and dragged him all the way into the room. “Look, it’s enormous. We could fit three of us in it. And we both need to be well-rested and alert tomorrow, and I don’t know about you, but I can’t get a good night’s sleep on a cold, hard floor.”
If it came to it, Tina would take the damn floor. Graves needed the sleep more than she did, both because he was the stronger duelist and ought to be the sharper of the two, and because she knew for a fact he never got enough sleep when he wasn’t on assignment to begin with. If she got nothing else accomplished this week, Tina vowed to herself, she would at least get Graves to spend an entire night in an actual bed for once.
“Goldstein, It’s hardly appropriate--”
“I think you mean, ‘My dearest, of course, how foolish of me. Let’s go to bed.’” Tina opened her case and took out her pajamas. She’d found in her time as an Auror that acting like an argument had been settled often made it so.
Graves looked like he knew that strategy too, but also like he was very tired and not actually eager to sleep on the floor. “If you feel even a little uncomfortable…”
“It’ll be fine, boss. I mean, honey.”
They turned their backs to each other to change. Tina couldn’t resist sneaking a tiny peek - she was only human, after all. He had nice shoulders, she thought, before she made herself stop looking.
She was glad she had on her nicest chemise, just in case he’d given in to a similar temptation. Queenie had been right - one always ought to travel with one’s very best underthings.
They finished getting ready for bed in a slightly awkward silence, which was gradually being supplanted by a comfortably sleepy one, then slid beneath the covers on extreme opposite sides. Tina used her wand to turn out the light before slipping it under her pillow, close to hand.
“I mean it, sweetheart,” Graves said, in the darkness. “If you want the bed to yourself, just say the word.”
“Go to sleep, baby,” Tina answered back. She closed her eyes and curled up on her side, drowsy and content, having successfuly tricked her boss into bed. Wait. Not like that! she thought out of habit, though Queenie was nowhere nearby.
Anyway, now they could both get some rest, and be refreshed and ready for action first thing in the morning. Tina smiled.
Graves started snoring.