cw: light body horror

January 2nd, 1895 — Emrys' House, Bristol

The woman in the booth, promising change, had posed a problem for Arthur. There were countless things he would change about himself — his impulsive personality, his inability to be alone, his struggles with focusing, the way his hands itched when he walked past the casino in Irvingly. What he settled on, though, was simple enough: his knee, which had been twinging off and on since he broke it in the pit.

On January 1st, he'd felt strangely numb all over — not as if his skin were tingling, but as if sensation were muted. He nicked his face while shaving and didn't notice. But that wasn't too unusual — sometimes he was distracted when he was shaving, and the cut was too small to catch in the moment. Right?

On January 2nd, he'd gone to practice and had not realized he'd been struck by a blunger until one of his teammates pointed it out.

Cleaning himself after practice, Art saw the ugly purple bruise forming on his shoulder — and that was enough to drive him to Bristol. He was not in the habit of showing up at Emrys' without warning — they were both fairly busy people, and he did not want to accidentally find Mrs. Angelica Selwyn there — but he couldn't talk himself out of it. He apparated from the pitch to the walkway in front of Emrys', knocked on the door, and if the staff were surprised to see him then they made a good show of not showing it.

He knew this looked strange. He didn't show up without warning. There was something nervous about his energy, more than usual — he was bouncing his leg, with the traitor knee, up and down while he sat on Emrys' couch. When Emrys entered his own parlor, Art was pressing his hand to the opposite shoulder, hoping to feel the bruise underneath.

Emrys Selwyn

  

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set by MJ <3

Emrys had not been having a very merry Christmas. He had also not had an exceptionally happy new year, and now that they were on the other side of the holidays things showed very little sign of improving expeditiously. He'd tried to distract himself with work during the day, but there was nothing to do during winter that was suitably distracting. Most ships were out and not due to return for weeks or months. The art scene was in hibernation, ready to emerge in the spring and feed their newest creations to the hungry maw of society. He'd run out of things to do by early afternoon, and then he'd had to find other distractions, and none of them were sufficient to take his mind off things. If he couldn't be distracted he might as well be numbed, he decided, so by the time the servant announced he had company he was lightly intoxicated. Not really enough to noticeable, but enough that he had to ask for clarification on who was here to see him — he thought at first that he must have misheard.

"Mr. Pettigrew," he said as he came into the parlor. He said Mr. Pettigrew because the door hadn't finished closing behind him yet and he cared too much about his lover's privacy to risk even his exceptionally-discreet servants overhearing anything, but his tone said my dearest. This was unexpected; he didn't feel the need to say so. They didn't often see each other without having made plans first, and even when they did there was usually at least a letter first to warn of the intent. So something must be the matter, he thought, and Arthur's demeanor seemed to confirm this. His brows knitted in concern. "A drink?"

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Lou made this! <3

At least Emrys did not seem irritated with Arthur's surprise appearance; he said Mr. Pettigrew so warmly that if he'd been in a better mood, Arthur would have preened. As it was, an actual smile was still able to slide its way onto his face. There was a mark of concern on Emrys' face, and Art's smile dimmed slightly — he bit his lip. (There was no accompanying feeling of his skin stretching from it, so he stopped, quickly.)

"Sure," he said, finally letting go of his own shoulder. "A drink is great."

  

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set by MJ <3

Emrys fixed the a pair of cocktails for them, nearly identical to the one he'd abandoned upstairs in his longue when they'd announced he had a guest. The purpose of his was primarily to put Arthur at ease and avoid his feeling conspicuous if he was the only one drinking. Emrys didn't plan to have anything more to drink until he'd determined the gravity of this conversation.

He delivered the cocktail and considered his seating options briefly before taking the open space beside Arthur on the couch. (The wrong choice if Arthur had come here in order to leave him, but a good choice for almost any other kind of trouble that could have driven him here — the easier to reach him if he needed a steadying hand on his shoulder, or to be held).

He didn't ask. Maybe he would have if he hadn't still been sporting some scars from his disastrous conversation with Angelica in December, but now he was especially sensitive to anything that felt like intrusion. He didn't need to push. Arthur had come here for a reason — presumably because he trusted Emrys enough to talk about whatever it was he had to say. He'd tell him when he was ready.

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Lou made this! <3

Emrys never pried, which was one of the things that Arthur loved about him. If he wanted to, he could sit in silence here while they drank their cocktails, and then he could leave without having investigated this further at all. He contemplated that, sipped his cocktail, leaned slightly towards Emrys on the couch.

He hadn't come here to keep secrets; he'd come here to check whether or not he was imagining things. "There's something wrong with my skin," Art said quietly.

  

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set by MJ <3

That wasn't what he'd been expecting. Emrys looked down at Arthur's nearest shoulder as though wondering whether it or not it was contagious. He looked fine. Well, no, he looked frazzled and haphazard and out of sorts, but his skin looked fine. No discoloration or odd spores or anything like that.

At least it seemed unlikely that this was a prelude to Arthur leaving him, so he could cross that concern off the list.

"What happened?" he asked. He'd decided Art probably wasn't going to give him a disease — or that if he was, Emrys didn't care enough to move away. He reached out to put his fingers around the inside of Arthur's arm in a gesture that was meant to be comforting.

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Lou made this! <3

Emrys had not recoiled from him, which was a bit of a relief. Arthur's eyebrows knotted as he considered how best to articulate his symptoms — part of why he had come straight here, instead of to the hospital, was that he was worried a healer would dismiss him. So in some ways, trying to explain it to Emrys was a test.

"I got hit by a bludger, hard," Art said, testing out the way the words sounded, "And I — didn't feel it. I still don't feel it."

  

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set by MJ <3

Emrys frowned. He only liked Quidditch insofar as he had to in order to follow Arthur's stories when he talked about it, but he had never really understood why anyone would willingly subject themselves to being hit with bludgers. They were terribly violent. A woman had died in the stands when one found her a few years ago. It wasn't the sort of thing you simply didn't feel.

"Can I see?" he asked, though he didn't want to. It felt like a necessary piece of information, though, if he were to unravel the problem of this. "You didn't take anything?" he asked, meaning the sorts of substances that would dissociate the user from reality. He didn't think Art did those things generally, and he certainly thought Arthur wasn't foolish enough to have willingly done them and then not mentioned that as a relevant piece of information, but things happened at parties. He might have been slipped something without realizing. "Could you have taken anything?"

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Lou made this! <3

"Nothing," Art replied. Because this wasn't like taking a drug, this was — something else. He hadn't done drugs since a party potion in the summer. "At least nothing on purpose."

Arthur glanced at his shoulder, then back at Emrys. "I'll have to undress," he said, not because Emrys had never seen him naked — Emrys had actually taken him once on this couch — but because the staff were still here, and he was not sure what Emrys' policy was on nudity during a surprise drop-in.

  

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set by MJ <3

Emrys understood the concern immediately. He nodded and rose from the couch. He went to the door and locked it, then moved to close the curtains on the windows. It was unlikely that anyone would have made an attempt to interrupt them anyway. He'd trained the staff by now to wait until they were explicitly asked for something like tea or refreshments, rather than proactively offering; there was too wide a range in the types of visitors he received for them to guess at what he might want. It was even less likely that any of them would have said anything, even if they'd seen Arthur bent over the back of the couch, but he understood the impulse regardless and he could never begrudge someone discretion.

He stayed on his feet while Arthur removed his jacket and peeled his shirt away. When he saw it he sucked in a breath, shocked in spite of the warning he'd been given. "Oh, love."

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Lou made this! <3

Without a mirror, Art could only see the edges of the bruise, but they were purple and angry — he'd really taken a hit. Emrys' inhale was enough to tell him that the center of the bruise had not gotten any better in the time since he'd seen it in the locker room. "I don't feel it," Art said, fear leaking into his tone — because if he didn't feel this, something had to be desperately wrong with him.

  

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set by MJ <3

Emrys used to be the sort of person who had bruise balm in the house, just as a matter of course, but he didn't think he still did. He hadn't been in a position to be hosting for years. He'd given that up for Angelica. If he had any kicking around in the back of a cabinet somewhere it had probably lost its efficacy by now. He'd have to send out for it. He would have gone and dispatched a servant for some immediately, except that Arthur was still shirtless... and there was something in his tone that told Emrys turning away, even for his eventual benefit, would have been the wrong move.

"Do you want me to get a healer?" he asked. It seemed evident that this was what Art needed, but if that was all he needed he could have gone to the hospital himself. He'd come here instead. "I can... find someone discreet. Who pays house calls." He didn't have a healer off the top of his mind. The one they'd called about Angelica's pregnancy could keep a secret, but had no relevant specialty for something like this. But if it was important for Arthur to be here then Emrys would find a way to make it happen. Money could buy quite a lot of discretion, when it came down to it.

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Lou made this! <3

Did he want a healer? He should see a healer. But honestly, Arthur wasn't that worried about the bruise itself — he had a cream for it at home, and he'd gotten worse bruises and gone without seeing a healer for longer. He considered Emrys, swallowed around the lump in his own throat. He had to articulate the fear.

"I want to — figure out how this happened," Art said. Emrys was smarter than he was. Emrys could help him figure out what, exactly, went wrong with him. "Before a healer." Because he really was worried that when a healer got to him they wouldn't believe him — about the feeling or about the lack of drugs in his system, or both.

  

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set by MJ <3

Emrys felt out of his depth with this, but he nodded slowly. This felt like strange magic to him, and he didn't meddle with much of that. The spells he cast were generally mundane. He went a bit more off the beaten path with potions and ointments and things, but Art had already said he didn't think he'd consumed anything that had led him here. He didn't know how they were meant to figure it out just with the bits they had... but he was willing to try, for Arthur's sake. It meant something that he had come here, when he could have gone anywhere; Emrys wanted to honor that trust as best he could.

"Has there been anything else?" he asked as he moved back towards the seat he'd had on the couch. "Anything before, or anything since?"

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Lou made this! <3

Arthur settled in on the couch, making no move to put his shirt and jacket back on — he felt exposed, but almost in a pleasant way, because the exposure meant that he wasn't alone in this. He mulled over the sensations of the past few days. He balled up his hand, and then loosened his grip. There was the nick from shaving, but that was not the most damning thing. The most damning thing was — "My knee hasn't hurt."

  

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set by MJ <3

Emrys didn't like that. Of course he never wanted Arthur in pain, and if he could believe that his knee had actually gotten better he would have been pleased for him, but he didn't believe that. The bruise spoke volumes there: his body was still feeling this, even if he wasn't. Not feeling an old injury was dangerous, because it meant he wasn't getting the warning signs he needed in order to treat it properly. He could quite easily blow right past them all and do more damage — maybe even cripple himself.

"Well, I hope you haven't been stupid about it," Emrys said. He reached for his glass on the side table despite his earlier resolve not to drink until he'd addressed whatever Arthur needed, because the idea of Arthur doing serious damage to himself put him in need of a drink. "How long?"

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Lou made this! <3