Holding my world together with a boot string
Living the dream
Benzos and gasoline

30th January, 1895 — Robert Rowle’s Residence, Bath

He had spent the afternoon heading up a research committee meeting which had been duller than ditchwater, and far too many hours spent sitting still pretending to listen to people – which meant Philip had, accordingly, an overflow of energy. And nothing good to put it to.

But an outlet presented itself as he crossed the Atrium: his brother, heading home (presumably) through the Floo. Philip cut in front of a magical maintenance man in the Floo queues to take the next fireplace and follow Robert home. He spun out of the Floo and into the room just after Robin – so Philip clapped him abruptly on the shoulders from behind with both hands and a little more force than necessary. (Just in a lighthearted attempt to give him a heart attack.)

“Robin,” he said, in a faux-bright tone, as if visiting his brother was ever something he chose to do for fun, and as if it was not markedly too late for Robin to protest. “Mind if I drop by?”

Robin would be thanking him here, really – Philip was supposed to visit their father tomorrow, so a check-in seemed prudent, to be sure they still had all their stories straight.

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Robert Rowle/Aldous Crouch

  

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"What in the hell do you think you're playing at?!" the wizard demanded of the unwelcome intruder, throwing out an elbow in an effort to dislodge Flip from his shoulders. A housemaid gave a startled squeak and strateigically left the parlour.

There was a level at which Robert knew he loved his brother. It was, however, buried very deep, and well-hidden beneath layers of disdain, disappointment, anger, resentment—and wrapped in a coccoon of obligation. He most certainly did not wish to see Philip, the loosest of the family's canons, in his home without invitation.

(Or at all, but that could not always be helped.)

Philip Rowle

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   Elias Grimstone

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— set by mj —

An elbow catching him in the chest was pittance to pay for the pleasure of harassing Robin, any day.

Still, he let go with a laugh; the housemaid had yielded the room to them, and Philip began to poke about the room idly (while Robin presumably regathered his breath and his wits and prepared to glower at him for no good reason). “Oh, you know the Rowle way,” he said, satirically (and as if he much cared what Robert did in his plodding day-to-day). “Always have to have a finger in everyone’s pies. How have you been?”

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"Been better," his reply was curt and cool, the wizard frowning as he raised his eyes pointedly. Philip did not typically need a reason to be the bane of his existance, but if there was one, Robin wished to know of it sooner than later.

Philip Rowle

  

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— set by mj —

But had Robert ever been better, actually? Exhausted and exasperated seemed his natural state of being, curse or no.

Still. “I’m visiting our dear old father tomorrow,” Philip said loftily, to cut to the chase. He picked up a frame off a side table, grimaced at the child in the photograph, and set it down again at a more unnatural angle. “Thought I’d better warn you, in case one of us doesn’t come out.”

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Robin did not think it was possible for him to be any more tense in Flip's company, but his body proved him wrong, stiffening at the younger man's declaration.

"I am sure," he remarked carefully, "that Father will appreciate the company, so long as it's good."

He would never admit it aloud, and certainly never to Philip, but a part of Robin wished he had relented, allowed the his headstrong brother to kill Algernon when he had been seemingly on the cusp of death already. He did not know if it was filial duty or cowardice that had stayed his hand—it would require a level of introspection he did not think would be comfortable to be certain either way—but it would have made things so much easier now.

That particular window, however, had closed, been bricked over. Surely Philip knew that?

Philip Rowle

  

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— set by mj —

“Oh, I’ll be perfectly pleasant, but you know there’s no pleasing Him, whatever I say,” Philip said jauntily. He would have to take the calming draught to get through it, he knew, because if he was brimming with this excess of overwrought energy already he would be impossible tomorrow.

(At least his siblings would know instantly, these days, if he came out cursed again.)

But perhaps he could deflect the subject onto Algernon’s first, more favoured son (who had, all the same, somehow managed to disappoint him enough once in his life to suffer the same fate as the rest of them). “Any lies you’d like me to tell him about you?”

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