Ford tensed slightly. “I don’t want you keeping anything volatile in the house,” he said. His tone made it clear this wasn’t a suggestion or an opinion, but an order. He would never have dreamed of saying something like this, normally — he still did not really feel, even in this moment, that he had the rights to do so — but it was the only viable strategy that occurred to him. He didn’t want to try and make rules about what Noble could or couldn’t do, but somebody had to be smart about this, and his brother was making it abundantly obvious that it couldn’t be him. So this was a line that he could draw in the sand, then, and Noble might be angry about it in the same way Clem was angry that Ford had stopped her spending money for the month, but if it got them through this then Ford could handle that. He didn’t want to lose Noble as a confidante and as a friend, but if that was the price he had to pay to avoid losing him entirely, he was willing to do that.

He could make the case for his having the authority for it, too. This had originally been Noble’s house but Ford paid as much of the rent on it now as he did, and as far as anyone outside the pair of them was concerned it was Ford’s residence first and foremost. And he had to look after the girls, and Mama, and if Noble was keeping something in the workshop that he’d described as volatile, he could put his foot down on safety grounds. Noble had just demonstrated that he didn’t know what he was doing — not really, not entirely — so having them lying around was a liability they couldn’t afford.

“If it’s only three things, we’ll throw them all out and you can replace them,” he declared, as though this resolved the matter entirely and it needed no further discussion.

  

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Set by Lady!

Noble straightened further in his chair at Ford’s tone, a rigid posture, and frowned at his brother. Ford didn’t use that tone with him, orders and declarations and all ‘this is the way things are’ — or at least Noble could never recall Ford using it on him. It chafed, right away and in a bone-deep way, like the sound of nails on a chalkboard.

”Excuse me?” Noble said, because there were plenty of other arguments he could make against this (that it was too expensive, that he needed volatile ingredients, that Ford didn’t really know what he was talking about.) But this was the first thing he said, because he could not get over this: the sound of his brother ordering him to do things. Ford was older, but they were friends, and this had been Noble’s house first — Noble’s space to live and work and do whatever he wanted in.

(Also — well, it was not like Ford knew enough about potions to be able to tell if Noble actually followed through on throwing out these ingredients. But still this protestation was what popped out of his mouth first, because Ford couldn’t tell him what to do. He wasn’t one of the girls. This didn’t apply to him. And maybe Ford would back down and he wouldn’t want to have to lie.)

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set by Bee

The way that he said that was difficult for Ford to handle. It was like he’d planted his feet with his declaration a moment ago, and this excuse me was Noble pushing back on him; he felt it physically. He wavered, almost fell back — wanted to fall back — but steeled himself and kept his footing. Whether Noble had done this on purpose or on accident or maybe secretly a little on purpose without realizing it didn’t matter, at the end of the day. The fact was that it had happened, and if Ford didn’t do something about it, it might happen again. And he refused to lose his brother to this. Potioneers died doing stupid things all the time, apparently — there was a diary hidden away in Ford’s bedroom from one such person — and Noble was being reckless, either because he was miserable or because he was desperate or a little of both. In any case it was probably Ford’s fault, at the root, because he’d read Noble in to this whole mess in a way that wasn’t really fair. This wasn’t Noble’s problem, any of it, and it had been irresponsible of Ford to push it off on him, even to the slight degree he had. It had taken a toll, clearly, whether Noble knew it or not, and it was Ford’s fault. He was going to fix it, whatever it cost him.

“You heard me,” he said coolly. He looked at his glass so that he didn’t have to look at Noble, because he hated this and Noble would have seen that in his eyes and known he wasn’t capable of keeping it up. “Get rid of them.”

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Set by Lady!

Noble’s eyes widened, and he felt surprisingly wounded — he was used to Ford trusting him, and this revelation that he wouldn’t grated again, like maybe Ford only thought he was an adult when he was backing him up. And Noble was sick of this, was sick of losing his life to his siblings — Clem hearing him with Daff and Ford telling him he couldn’t keep things in the house, and there was a layer of anger under his chest, all the time, and sometimes he thought it was growing.

Noble got up, found himself steadier than he’d expected — maybe the anger was doing it for him — and crossed the room to make himself a drink. “This is my job, Ford,” Noble said, voice flatter than he would have wanted as he tried to constrain that anger. It was his job and his life and it had been his house, and Noble was the one who had almost killed someone, so — surely he should get to decide the path forward.

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set by Bee

He looked up abruptly as he saw Noble start to rise, out of the corner of his eye. He felt a surge of nerves, wondering if this was alright. Was Noble steady enough to walk yet? Was alcohol really a good idea? But his brother made his way across the room without incident, and Ford swallowed and tried to pretend he hadn’t been worried about it in the first place. It made it harder to keep up this charade, but hopefully it wouldn’t take much longer. A few minutes, and maybe Noble would storm out of the room and Ford could just sink into this chair and take a moment to recover from the effort of pretending to be someone he wasn’t.

“And looking after the family is my job,” he replied stiffly. He raised his glass to his lips briefly but didn’t drink; he didn’t need the taste so much as the smell of alcohol, just for a second, to bolster his nerves through this. “And if you’re going to mess around with things you don’t understand —”

  

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Set by Lady!

He flexed his hand before reaching for the gin, as if to make sure his grip would be fine. Noble uncorked it and grabbed a glass and was very deliberately letting things clink against the shelf, as if that was making a point — a tiny expression of the anger he was trying to quell before it spilled out of his mouth. Ford was probably the person Noble talked to most often, definitely the person who empathized the most with the things that did make him angry, the things he couldn’t say to Daffy — he didn’t need to burn that bridge just because Ford wanted to look after him.

Noble had just convinced himself not to blow up when Ford said things you don’t understand. And like a lighter catching, he blew up. He wasn’t even thinking, it was just all reaction — the rage he’d been building for the last year finally starting to bubble up.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Noble spat, eyes flashing towards Ford. He still had the empty glass in his hand but his hand was shaking, and he didn’t think he could set it down without too much force. “What, you think I’m stupid?”

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He’d expected this — had intentionally provoked it — but he had to fight the urge to cringe at Noble’s explosion all the same. This was the fastest way through the conversation, though, so he was sticking by this — like when he’d stuck with needling Darrow until he’d broken down and cried, except no, not like that, because he wasn’t going to push his brother that far and Noble wasn’t holding him hostage in a fucking observatory…

“I think you’re doing stupid things,” he said, tone measured but irritated (and he was a little angry at Noble, for forcing him to do this, because Ford hated this and Noble would have known that and could have been a little more responsible if he was going to go around fucking poisoning himself). “I think you passed out at dinner and you nearly got yourself taken to the hospital. And I think you might do something stupid again, just to prove a point — just because you think you’re smart,” he said, gesturing at Noble and causing the drink in his glass to slosh a tiny bit onto his fingers. “And I can’t let you. I’m not going to let you — blow up the house, or get yourself killed, because you — miscalculated something.” This was easier, because this was closer to the truth, so the words were flowing more readily now and the tone of his voice was less of an act. “I can’t — do this without you,” he said, and realized as soon as the words left his mouth that this was too honest. He hadn’t been planning to say that part, but now there it was, and he couldn’t take it back.

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Set by Lady!

Noble was mutinous, and looked it; there was a rigidity to his posture that he usually didn’t have, and his shaking hand was white-knuckled on the glass. He was too angry to interrupt Ford, too ready to let something horrible come out of his mouth — he felt like he was backed into a corner. He should have let Ford think there was something wrong with him, rather than admit what he was doing, because he wouldn’t — couldn’t — let his brother tell him how to do this.

The last sentence struck him as if a blow; Noble’s expression twisted as some emotion in his chest was wrenched up and out of him, and he took a half-step back from the gin.
He didn’t know what to say to that, couldn’t come up with anything — might have found it almost endearing under other circumstances but all he could think now was you think I don’t know that? Noble knew it well, knew it better than anything — sometimes in his worst moments he thought that he would have done a better job at steering them through than Ford was, and he was always relieved that he didn’t have to.

“And you won’t have to,” he said, and it was still, maybe spat out — he was still pissed even though he was trying not to be, was trying to reel himself back in to something reasonable, some version of himself that was familiar rather than the version of himself he kept carefully caged. “But you can’t make me change how I work just because one scary thing happened.”

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One scary thing was downplaying it significantly, and in a way that wasn't really fair. Noble had collapsed at the dinner table. He'd probably traumatized the girls (maybe Lestrange too, but Ford thought not; Lestrange seemed more difficult to traumatize). He could have died, and Ford had thought for a minute that he might — and he'd thought for a minute that he wanted to, which was almost worse. And Ford knew that he put too much on his brother, and he knew that he shouldn't have said I can't do this without you, he’d known that even before he’d seen the way Noble face twisted at the words, but he couldn't, and no matter what he said Noble didn't really seem to get it. If he'd understood, he wouldn't have looked so angry now.

"So what'll it be next time?" he asked, unsure at this point whether the anger in his voice was real or feigned. He was angry at Noble, but he also had the instinct to bend, to apologize. To offer amends until Noble looked a little less explosive. "Make yourself sick while you're supposed to be chaperoning one of the girls? Make a fool of yourself in public because you accidentally got yourself drunk? Get yourself addicted to something? Get yourself killed?"

A word popped into his head and Ford hesitated, wondering if it was a step too far, but then he said it anyway: "You're a liability."

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Set by Lady!

Noble was trying to stop — shaking, being angry, having this conversation, all of it. He was trying to contain that furious thing under his skin. Nothing Ford said was helping, though — the glass would have been rattling in his hand if there was anything in it, and he could feel his blood pressure rising. He had been testing potions on himself for years, since he’d first apprenticed at sixteen, and Ford thought he knew better just because he was older? Just because he’d been scared?

There was a part of him that got it, underneath — he remembered the way the boggart at the Courtly Love party had practically stopped his heart in his chest. And that was just a boggart. He couldn’t imagine how he’d feel if Ford collapsed but —

Liability?! His breath hissed out. Noble took two steps closer, without even thinking about it. His entire body was shaking now and he could not stop it, may not have even been aware of it. “You’re just mad because your friend was here,” Noble accused, not meaning it, just wanting to say something to expel the rage that was bubbling all over his body, coming out like steam from a tea kettle.

He meant his next sentence though, said it with eyes narrowed: “You’re not my fucking father.”

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set by Bee

The jibe about Lestrange was a stupid thing to say, because it was so obviously untrue, and Ford had already thought of what to say to counter it when Noble hit him with something much worse: you're not my fucking father.

All the air went out of him for a second and he was visibly shocked. It was like Noble had hit him (he'd wondered for just a split second as Noble stepped towards him if he was going to; a part of him felt like he deserved it, after that). He didn't know what to say, or what to think. He didn't want to be Noble's father. He didn't want to be any of their father, and he had never asked for this. Not to be the oldest, not for their father to die, certainly not to be left responsible for this whole mess with their finances and their futures and everything. And he knew Noble hadn't asked for it either, and if anything had been different, anything, then he could have done as he pleased and Ford would have had no right to protest. He understood why Noble was angry, and he hated this too, but —

But he wasn't going to let Noble leave him here alone with it, intentionally or not. And if Noble was going to make it difficult, then — fine. It could be difficult.

He closed his eyes for just a second, recovering himself, then stood. Noble was taller than him. It had never occurred to him to care before but it seemed to matter now, and Ford wished he had a few extra inches so that he could be looking down at Noble when he said this.

"Well, someone has to be," he said coldly. "Because you're acting like a child."

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Set by Lady!

Stop shaking. Noble would have blamed the potion but he was sure the tremors were just because of the rage, he could feel it coming off of him in waves, and he hadn’t meant to say that, even though he’d wanted to wound, in that moment, and he had found the most wounding thing he could. He regretted it almost immediately, especially when Ford’s eyes closed, but he could not take it back and he did not trust himself to speak again or he would say something worse.

After the revelations which followed their father’s death, Noble preferred not to think of him at all — he did not actually want to compare Ford to the man who’d ruined them.

Noble’s eyes widened; he took a step away as if he’d been struck. He had an impulse to throw his glass down on the ground and let it shatter. He had an impulse to tell Ford that they were ruining his life, all of them, that he wanted them gone. Both were too childish to give into, given the latest statement, and neither were how he actually wanted to respond. He took another step back.

He was still shaking with anger, couldn’t regain himself enough to say anything: he just looked wounded. A liability. A child. Was this really how Ford saw him?

He could be a child, if he had to be; he could be petty like one.

“Fine,” he said, and he wished he could have sounded angry, because he felt angry. Instead, it sounded as if he’d been scraped raw. “Fine. You win. I’m a liability and a child and you know best, and I can’t throw out ingredients because I can’t afford it. Do you like that any better?”

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Ford watched his brother retreat with both regret and anxiety. Ford did not actually have any power here, and he knew it. If Noble just said fuck you and stormed away, there was nothing Ford could do about it. He had to hope that his gamble had paid off here, and that he hadn't just destroyed his relationship with his brother for nothing. But Noble didn't leave, and he said you win, so that was something.

It didn't feel like much of a win, but it was a relief. Ford didn't like this any better, he didn't like any of this, but at least now he felt like there was something he could do about it.

"You said it's three ingredients," he pointed out in a much gentler tone; attempting reconciliation now. "Set them aside and I'll figure it out. You can get me the amounts, to replace them. I'll figure it out."

  

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Set by Lady!

Noble swallowed like that would steel him, like that would take some of this out of him. He had poisoned Mrs. Crouch and he had poisoned himself and he was fighting with Ford, and he was sure that at some point in this conversation he’d made a misstep. If he’d said something different somewhere along the line, then he wouldn’t be fighting with what was probably the most important person in his life, and he wouldn’t be trying to find some way to rationalize himself out of the anger he tried to hard to avoid feeling.

“No,” Noble said, quicker than he’d like. “You can’t. Grace has to come out.” The shaking in his hands and his body was starting to still, not necessarily because he was any less furious — if anything, it was just because the physical manifestation had worked its way out of his body.

The thing was: the ingredients were not actually that expensive.

But — he wanted to know. If he’d poisoned someone he needed to know what had gone wrong. There was some part of his mind that was trying to work through a way to get around Ford’s ultimatum, even if Ford held him to it — keep some amounts of the possibly-tainted ingredients, find somewhere safe to isolate them, maybe even in the crowded workshop itself. There was a way around this. He just didn’t feel very good about it.

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Ford swallowed at this and tried his best to look unfazed, but his mind was racing. Noble had said three things. Replacing them was so expensive it would jeopardize Grace's Coming Out? Shit. They'd already paid the deposit on the ballroom, so they couldn't back out.

"Grace is going to come out," he said, trying to infuse more confidence in his voice than he felt. He wanted to seem cool and collected — like he had this under control, like Noble could trust him for this. Whether or not he was managing it, he couldn't have said. "I'll figure it out. How often do you use these things? How soon would you need them replaced?"

  

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Set by Lady!

Noble tilted his head, as if he was thinking very hard about the answer. If he’d wanted to do what Ford suggested, it would have been easy enough to actually go through with it — he probably could have gotten hellebore from Daff for free, and gotten the extract himself from there. Valerian root wasn’t actually expensive. Moonstones were, and then you needed to powder them, but that wouldn’t actually break their carefully-maintained bank. He’d been hoping that Ford would back down, but hadn’t managed to push him there — and they were treading closer to things that were actual lies, which he didn’t feel great about. At least Ford hadn’t mentioned the potion-amplifying ingredients Noble kept carefully stored since before their explosive fight.

And if he got rid of the ingredients, if he just tossed them, he wouldn’t know. It was the ingredients or he had in his own right nearly killed a woman. Noble wanted to know.

He exhaled. “If I promise I won’t test them on myself,” he said, “Will you let this go?”

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set by Bee