April 5th, 1891 - Just after midnight - An Iffy Muggle Bar
Art had broken into Fitz's empty house on the third. He couldn't ease up into something approximating sober functionality if he was staying with Ester, because in addition to generally having a lot of drugs around, she sort of served as a walking advertisement for the benefits of burning your life down. He took advantage of her heading off to — some party, he didn't know which — to find Fitz's London home. Fitz wasn't home, but surely he wouldn't mind — besides, Art would be long gone and at home by the time his break-in was discovered.
Or not; he'd just managed to jimmy the latch on the back window when the face of Fitz's butler appeared in the window. Art had a series of cheerful excuses on his tongue, but before he could use any of them the butler was letting him in through the back door and steering him towards a guest bedroom. It turned out, or so Art supposed, that Fitz's butler was still under instructions to let him crash here if he turned up looking a mess. Maybe everyone in his life had really just been waiting for the other shoe to drop, and hadn't told him —
— and he couldn't even be too angry about that, couldn't be offended, because they'd been right. And because it was easier to stay in Fitz's house if he wasn't there illicitly. The butler was feeding him more regular meals than anything he'd dredged up at Ester's. He didn't really have to make any decisions here, one of the maids had laundered the clothes he'd worn to London. He was able to find paper and to access an owl, and finally responded to a few notes — Irish first, and on the fourth he knew that he finally had to face Ben, because dropping off the face of the Earth like this was something he was supposed to have outgrown.
His letters were maudlin and he knew it, but it was hard to scrape something else together when he still had to face the wreckage of his own life and when he was coming down from days of consistent laudanum usage.
This, this was why he didn't regularly take laudanum — certainly it was why he didn't spend days at a time in a cloud of it. He'd forgotten what it was like to fully come off of it, all of a sudden — there was a pervasive shake in his hands and he felt as if he was running a fever. It was lucky that he didn't have a game this weekend, because he would have been lucky just to take a bludger to the skull. He looked shit, too — something drawn and twitchy and overtired about him in Fitz's mirror. At some point he'd mangled his fingernails by chewing on them, and the skin around them was a little raw. His beard was overgrown as to what he generally preferred but he wouldn't be able to shave until he got rid of the shakes, and that didn't seem like it would be a high priority for a while. None of that was the worst part, either — the worst part was the plummeting sense of nothing interspersed by deep waves of anxiety, and he knew, he knew that at some point he would recover himself to where he'd been a week ago, but that was no help now when he sat curled on the couch in Fitz's sitting room, paralyzed by it.
It was on one of these waves at nothing that he scrawled a letter to Ben he knew he shouldn't send, the Well, at least someone is, and instead of crumpling it into a ball as he should he attached it to the owl and sent it to Irvingly. And he should have expected a note back, should have expected Ben to ask to see him. He wasn't ready for this, he wasn't ready to actually face anyone, and he was certainly in no condition to. But. The alternative was to sit in Fitz's darkened house and wait to see if he could sleep tonight, and so maybe he should take this for what it was, a lifebuoy thrown from a raft he couldn't see. He could not think of going to anywhere there would be other wizards, because that would mean reopening himself to scrutiny without the protective shield of a laudanum haze. Certainly he could not go to Irvingly (casino) or Hogsmeade (Desdemona) and so he arrived at the muggle bar via process of elimination.
He'd almost written off the possibility of it happening at all when he got Ben's final note. For a second, Art considered not going at all: but he could face Ben or he could be alone here, and in the moment the latter sounded much worse.
He couldn't apparate like this so he'd taken Fitz's floo to the closest floo point in wizarding London and scurried out of it even though no one else was around. The early spring air seemed more chilling than it should have, either because it was so late or because of the physical aftereffects of leaving the laudanum, and Art scurried through the streets until he saw the glow of the bar's front door.
The crush of sound when he first entered the bar — and maybe it wasn't really a crush, maybe it was just the sound of a few conversations because it was so late, and maybe he just hadn't been prepared for the sound of people again — was almost enough to send him scurrying back out into the dark. It was easy enough for him to spot Ben, and Art took a breath in to steel himself before he slipped into the other side of the booth.
"Hey," Art said, unable in the moment to muster anything else, because talking himself into coming here had been difficult enough.
Reuben Crouch
Or not; he'd just managed to jimmy the latch on the back window when the face of Fitz's butler appeared in the window. Art had a series of cheerful excuses on his tongue, but before he could use any of them the butler was letting him in through the back door and steering him towards a guest bedroom. It turned out, or so Art supposed, that Fitz's butler was still under instructions to let him crash here if he turned up looking a mess. Maybe everyone in his life had really just been waiting for the other shoe to drop, and hadn't told him —
— and he couldn't even be too angry about that, couldn't be offended, because they'd been right. And because it was easier to stay in Fitz's house if he wasn't there illicitly. The butler was feeding him more regular meals than anything he'd dredged up at Ester's. He didn't really have to make any decisions here, one of the maids had laundered the clothes he'd worn to London. He was able to find paper and to access an owl, and finally responded to a few notes — Irish first, and on the fourth he knew that he finally had to face Ben, because dropping off the face of the Earth like this was something he was supposed to have outgrown.
His letters were maudlin and he knew it, but it was hard to scrape something else together when he still had to face the wreckage of his own life and when he was coming down from days of consistent laudanum usage.
This, this was why he didn't regularly take laudanum — certainly it was why he didn't spend days at a time in a cloud of it. He'd forgotten what it was like to fully come off of it, all of a sudden — there was a pervasive shake in his hands and he felt as if he was running a fever. It was lucky that he didn't have a game this weekend, because he would have been lucky just to take a bludger to the skull. He looked shit, too — something drawn and twitchy and overtired about him in Fitz's mirror. At some point he'd mangled his fingernails by chewing on them, and the skin around them was a little raw. His beard was overgrown as to what he generally preferred but he wouldn't be able to shave until he got rid of the shakes, and that didn't seem like it would be a high priority for a while. None of that was the worst part, either — the worst part was the plummeting sense of nothing interspersed by deep waves of anxiety, and he knew, he knew that at some point he would recover himself to where he'd been a week ago, but that was no help now when he sat curled on the couch in Fitz's sitting room, paralyzed by it.
It was on one of these waves at nothing that he scrawled a letter to Ben he knew he shouldn't send, the Well, at least someone is, and instead of crumpling it into a ball as he should he attached it to the owl and sent it to Irvingly. And he should have expected a note back, should have expected Ben to ask to see him. He wasn't ready for this, he wasn't ready to actually face anyone, and he was certainly in no condition to. But. The alternative was to sit in Fitz's darkened house and wait to see if he could sleep tonight, and so maybe he should take this for what it was, a lifebuoy thrown from a raft he couldn't see. He could not think of going to anywhere there would be other wizards, because that would mean reopening himself to scrutiny without the protective shield of a laudanum haze. Certainly he could not go to Irvingly (casino) or Hogsmeade (Desdemona) and so he arrived at the muggle bar via process of elimination.
He'd almost written off the possibility of it happening at all when he got Ben's final note. For a second, Art considered not going at all: but he could face Ben or he could be alone here, and in the moment the latter sounded much worse.
He couldn't apparate like this so he'd taken Fitz's floo to the closest floo point in wizarding London and scurried out of it even though no one else was around. The early spring air seemed more chilling than it should have, either because it was so late or because of the physical aftereffects of leaving the laudanum, and Art scurried through the streets until he saw the glow of the bar's front door.
The crush of sound when he first entered the bar — and maybe it wasn't really a crush, maybe it was just the sound of a few conversations because it was so late, and maybe he just hadn't been prepared for the sound of people again — was almost enough to send him scurrying back out into the dark. It was easy enough for him to spot Ben, and Art took a breath in to steel himself before he slipped into the other side of the booth.
"Hey," Art said, unable in the moment to muster anything else, because talking himself into coming here had been difficult enough.
![[Image: AAgFt3c.png]](https://i.imgur.com/AAgFt3c.png)
set by MJ <3