April 1st, 1891 - Ester's Rooms

Art was not sure how long he could actually get away with crashing with Ester, but the thought of finding somewhere else to go, or of going home, was still too overwhelming. At the least, he would have to flush the laudanum from his system before he went home — and he was not nearly ready to stop this familiar spin-out yet. The cycle of half-assed Quidditch practices that tipped into unfamiliar London flats and various opiates was soothing, it took the bite out of anything people were saying to him, and the nerves out of his system. He had a letter from Bella Scrimgeour that was kinder than he deserved, and he had not replied to it yet. To reply he was going to have to go to the post office to get an owl, and also — find paper somewhere in here, so maybe that was a future problem, something he could deal with when he was not letting himself be foggy.

He was in an armchair and wearing someone else's clothes again, although he wasn't sure where they'd come from, this was one of those things that just sort of happened in this situation. There was a cigarette in Art's fingers but it was mostly burning out, and he startled a little when the door opened, turning towards the door in his chair.

"Oh," Art said, all slow-blink and languid limbs, "Hello, Mr. Selwyn."

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Emrys Selwyn Reuben Crouch

  

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set by MJ <3

Emrys didn't frequent the homes of any of his less respectable friends, because none of them were so well accommodated that they could hold a candle to his estate in Bristol. If there were parties to be thrown or liaisons planned in advance, they were always at his house. However, he had never been one to abide unannounced visitors, from any circle of his friends, so when something came up at the last minute and he needed their opinion it was always up to him to traipse over to whatever meager place they were living. Another reason he disliked visiting this group of friends too often was that he wasn't keen on being seen with them by strangers — though this was likely immaterial, to be honest. Anyone who might be lounging around in Ester's rooms was unlikely to go talking about it at high society parties. Emrys had gotten through this much of his life with his reputation more or less intact — indeed, his brothers affairs had more of an impact on him than his own did — so was probably relatively safe at this point, but still. It never hurt to be too careful.

When he walked in and noticed another person in the parlor, then, he thought about simply turning around and leaving. He recognized the symptoms of laudanum use before he recognized the person, so thought he could probably escape without causing much of a stir — except then the fellow said Mr. Selwyn, so evidently not. He had been recognized. He took a closer look at the man on the chair and realized he'd seen him only last week. Arthur Pettigrew.

Oh, Emrys thought, moving a step further into the room. What an interesting development.

"Mr. Pettigrew," he responded with half a smile, moving to take a seat in a chair across the small room. "What a pleasant surprise."

OOC Note: Emrys has his earrings in, if you care!

  

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Lou made this! <3

Arthur tracked Selwyn with his gaze as best he could, focusing on the way the light caught on Selwyn's earrings, which he had not seen the last two times they'd met. He hadn't known that Selwyn knew Ester, if he knew Ester — there seemed to be a few transients that drifted in and out of here, and just because Selwyn was by far the wealthiest of anyone Art had seen here did not mean he wasn't one of them.

"Less violent circumstances, certainly," Art said, with a smile that was wry and slow, "S'long as you're not planning on dueling me, at least."

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set by MJ <3

"I would never," Emrys said, with a dismissive wave of his hand. Honestly, he couldn't see himself getting worked up enough about anything that he would want to duel about it. He certainly wouldn't have gone to bat for his sisters' honor, the way Mr. Crouch had; if he'd discovered somehow that either of them were cavorting around with strange men his first thought would have been well, good for them and his second would have been just to warn them to be a little more discreet, so no one else heard about it. He didn't think he would have accepted anyone's challenge, either — he certainly didn't have any sexual partners he considered worth dying for, and didn't see that changing any time soon.

"Besides, you don't look like you're up for much dueling at the moment," he pointed out, with a gesture towards Pettigrew's posture in the chair.

  

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Lou made this! <3

Arthur shifted in the chair, although he'd just become aware of his positioning, although he certainly didn't straighten his posture — simply resettled into the same slouchy languid look he'd had the moment before. He smiled at Selwyn, a flash of a grin. "No," Art agreed, "Definitely not up for all that — flashy spellcasting and running around." Explosions, arrow spells, flying rocks and slashing spells — he hadn't had any interest in them Friday when he was aware of everything, and never mind now.

A spark of thought: was Ben looking for him? He didn't have a Witch Weekly subscription, Art was pretty sure, but that didn't mean he hadn't heard. He shoved it down and dismissed it. Ester's rooms were like an oasis in the desert, so far removed from reality that Arthur may as well have been an ocean away from his actual problems.

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   Reuben Crouch

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set by MJ <3

"No," Emrys agreed pleasantly. You don't look like you're up for much of anything, he added internally, far less kindly than his verbal tone. This was a particularly interesting development because Emrys had seen Pettigrew so recently, and he had seemed rather put together. He'd been negotiating dueling terms and showing up for things at sunrise, at any rate, and now he was sitting in Ester's flat in a laudanum stupor. In Emrys' rather lengthy experience with these things, people didn't tend to spiral this far this quickly. Not people with wives and children at home, anyway. Not people with day jobs that required them to show up at specific hours and engage in physical activity. So either something rather dramatic had happened between Friday morning and now, or Pettigrew had been spiraling already when they'd met last week and he'd just been very good at hiding it.

"This Watchword woman is an interesting puzzle to solve, isn't she?" he asked in a casual tone, as though he had no reason to suspect Pettigrew would care any more about this than he did. "I've seen all three of her letters, and given the content of the last two I'd think she had something particular against you and your friend Mr. Crouch, but the first doesn't really fit the pattern."

The following 1 user Likes Emrys Selwyn's post:1 user Likes Emrys Selwyn's post
   Elon Wildsmith

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Lou made this! <3

Arthur made a pained noise in his throat and tugged at his shirtsleeve — (or, the sleeve of the shirt he was wearing) — at Selwyn's mention of Watchword. He'd had several aborted thoughts of sending a letter to Watchword, but there wasn't an address to reach her at, and what was there to say, besides? Just a 'fuck you' and nothing else? There were better uses of paper. (Never mind that he had not tried to find paper here, and that the thought of going to the post office to get an owl was overwhelming.)

"I don't know," Art said, with a shrug of his shoulders. "I've never met her to my knowledge. Maybe it's the Quidditch thing, Lachlan and Ben used to play." They were well past formality now, by sheer virtue of their location, Art could call his friends by their first names.

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   Reuben Crouch

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set by MJ <3

"Hm," Emrys said, unconvinced. He glanced down at his fingernails. "I have a hard time imagining anyone who cares about society life is also invested in Quidditch. No offense." This last was added as an offhand remark. He didn't really care if Pettigrew took offense, because he would rather have dealt with Pettigrew being annoyed at him than having to muster up the energy to pretend he cared at all about Quidditch.

"She seems to have quite a thing against husbands," he pointed out. "In the last two letters, anyway."

The following 1 user Likes Emrys Selwyn's post:1 user Likes Emrys Selwyn's post
   Elon Wildsmith

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Lou made this! <3

Art shrugged, like Selwyn caring about Quidditch didn't matter to him, which he supposed it didn't. The thing about husband's brought about a reaction, though, and he made another involuntary little humming sound. The laudanum was supposed to take him away from all that feeling, and it did to an extent — but there was something still poking through.

"Maybe she had a husband and he ruined her," Art suggested, tilting his head against the back of the chair so he could look at Ester's ceiling. "That would do it."

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   Minty Scrimgeour [Sofia]

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set by MJ <3

"Hm," Emrys said again, this time with a tone that implied he thought Pettigrew might be on to something. Emrys had hit on something too, it seemed, because Pettigrew had made a little pained noise before he'd answered. Husbands who ruined their wives might have been a bit of a sore subject, then. Did that mean Watchword was right, about the whole thing? Pettigrew didn't seem like the type to be angling towards a divorce he wouldn't bring up himself (or at least, Emrys didn't get that impression — he didn't really know him, but he made value judgements on people very quickly after meeting them). On the other hand, Emrys had a piece of evidence in support of that theory that Watchword hadn't known about: a week ago, he'd offered Pettigrew ten galleons for the honor of someone he had no particular reason to care about, and he'd turned it down. So maybe there was something to this idea that he wanted to be in debt, wanted to ruin himself because he wanted a way out.

It was an interesting case study, for someone contemplating whether or not it was worth it to marry.

"I'm not a gambler," Emrys said with a shrug. "Not really, anyway. A few bets here or there, but only for fun. I'm an investor," he continued, reaching into his interior jacket pocket to retrieve his cigarette case. "Same rush with much better pay-outs."

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   Arthur Pettigrew

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Lou made this! <3

Arthur hummed. "Too slow a payout, investing," he said, "Gambling you know, whether or not you've got it, right away." You got that feeling so soon after the bet, after the play — investing just wasn't the same, because then it was in the hands of the market, and he couldn't use it to plug at his feelings immediately. Or so he remembered. He hadn't made any investments since very shortly after graduating, and he didn't have the funds to do so, anymore.

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set by MJ <3

Emrys shrugged at that reply as if to cede that Pettigrew had a point (or at least half a point). "I'm a patient man," he said, putting the cigarette in his mouth and replacing the case without offering one to Pettigrew. He turned his attention to finding his lighter, then took the time to light it, take a drag, and put the lighter away. He took a second deep breath of smoke before he spoke again, though his attention was on his fingernails again.

"I wonder," he said speculatively, "if there's anything left in you worth investing in."

  

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Lou made this! <3

Art watched the cloud of smoke from Selwyn’s cigarette, gaze tracing the path it made towards the ceiling. He refocused when Selwyn spoke to him again, looking at the man’s face and the way his earrings caught the light.

A part of Art wanted to say it, decisively, there isn’t. But something else kicked in — self preservation, maybe — and held his tongue for him.

“And what do you consider worthwhile?” he said, instead.

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set by MJ <3

Oh, interesting. So he was open to bribes, at least in this context. Perhaps he was more desperate, now. Perhaps his gambling habit coming out in Witch Weekly had dried up other avenues. He was presumably out of friends, if he was here. Ester had presumably taken him in because he was a lost puppy, not because they had some longstanding secret friendship — Emrys thought he would have heard about Pettigrew in that context before this, if they were friends, anyway. Ester wasn't the sort to blush; she didn't keep many secrets.

So what did Emrys consider worth investing in? A great many things that Pettigrew would have no inkling about. Art, music. Pornography. That was an intriguing possibility, because Emrys wouldn't have minded seeing him naked, but he discarded it after only the briefest consideration. People could get touchy about that sort of thing; if Pettigrew's friends were conducting honor duels presumably he was one of a similar type.

"I have a wide set of interests," he said with a casual shrug. "So long as things pay off in the end." He watched Pettigrew a moment, and took another drag of his cigarette. "Perhaps we might discuss the matter when you've a clearer head."

  

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Lou made this! <3

”I’d be amenable to that,” Art said, as carefully as he could in his current state. He tilted his head as if he was trying to study Selwyn, which maybe he was. Art was used to dealing with rich people, was the thing — he could engage with them easily, could pretend when he wanted to. He couldn’t figure Selwyn out, though. Selwyn was a person who had tried to bribe him, and who was maybe trying to bribe him again; a person who kept company with Elmer Macmillan but also apparently with Ester. Art couldn’t get a good read on him. But to be fair, it was hard for him to get a read on anything at the moment.

”Might be a while, though,” he added as an afterthought, with a slow and genuine grin. He would have to consciously decide to stop taking the laudanum, he was going to have to spend a few days coming down and getting sober — (this was the worst part of laudanum, was why he tried to stay away from it except in particularly dire circumstances) — and was going to have to face Dezzie, face his life.

For now, there was just this — the gentle embrace of the haze of the drug and weird conversations with people he barely knew.

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set by MJ <3

Emrys smiled a little thinly at that comment, because he supposed Pettigrew had probably meant it as a joke. Internally, he marked it down as another piece of evidence to be considered as he tried to figure out what Pettigrew's story was. He was a famous Quidditch player; apparently his wife had miscarried and they were both miserable about it; he wouldn't take bribes on his friends' behalf but he'd consider one for himself; he liked the rush of immediate payoffs that gambling provided; he wasn't planning to be sober for a while.

"I'm a patient man," he repeated with a shrug. He considered his cigarette for a moment, without saying anything else. He took one more drag, then looked around for an ashtray to discard it in, despite the fact that he'd only smoked half of it. That done, he rose and walked past Pettigrew's chair towards the rest of Ester's rooms, his mind back on the business that had brought him here in the first place. As he passed the other man he reached down and squeezed his shoulder briefly, in a way that was almost indulgent — the sort of affection one might show for a pet.

"Maybe write it down somewhere," he called as he continued out of the room. "Before it falls right out of the other side of your head."

  

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Lou made this! <3