Evening

Nicholas was curled up on the couch listening Kip Baugh.  Even after his conversation with Abby the day before, he had decided to spend one more night with his mum.  Putting it off one more night had helped a little bit.  Though only because he was able to get a good night sleep without fear of robbery or mind reading.

The extra day had also given Nicholas time to ruminate over Abby's nonchalant attitude about Virgil's legilimency.  He was still annoyed that it had taken Virgil so long to tell him.  He was also grateful that Virgil had been able to cut into the nightmare he'd been stuck in the night of the robbery. And he still planned to keep the idea that he'd obliviated Virgil for reading his mind foremost in his thoughts.  He'd also spent about an hour looking up occlumency in the Ministry library.

He pointed his wand at his tea cup and it floated over to his hand.  He took a couple sips of the tea that he'd put a drop of calming potion into before sending it floating back to the table.  It wasn't a long term fix.  But it took the edge off without a hangover.  It was a lot easier to get through class with a hangover than a day at work.  Hartsell made his life hell anytime he showed up with a hangover and he was almost done with training.  No reason to let circumstance screw that up.

Although it had been an irregularly long day at work, in formal attire no less, Virgil returned to their flat in high spirits this night. His sister took him out for a dinner to commiserate over Ministry gossip and they had shared a bottle of wine. Not to mention, he'd received a reply[1] from Cepheus yesterday, confirming that the older wizard did not in fact hate him.

The loss of his violin and the break-in felt like awful but distant memories, now.

"Good eve-ning!" Virgil greeted musically as he shut the front door with one hand and unbuttoned his vest with another. Pyjamas. Pyjamas and hot coffee and book to burn the night away, he thought.

Dante slipped out from underneath the kitchen chairs and he approached her, bending over to pick up the Turkish Angora. "Irresistible thing! Brilliant creature!" he scratched behind her ears with great and drunken affection but she slipped out of his arms, meowing for supper. Like cat, like owner.

"Staying here tonight?" Virgil asked Nick while he drew his wand to fetch food. "Or should I be advertising for a new flatmate?" The icebox door swung open and a couple of fresh sardines drifted off its shelves. Dante purred around his feet, both pleased and impatient.

1.	9th Oct - Caught Out Cold

Nicholas groaned when Virgil made an entrance into the flat.  If all the world's a stage, someone should have shot Shakespeare and saved them from all the actors.  He watched as the cat came out of hiding for her owner.  He'd have been happy to share the couch, or a leg, or his lap, or really anything but his head with the cat.  Why couldn't Virgil have had a dog?  Why hadn't he gotten a dog?

"No, I'm not moving out.  I like Ari too much to leave."  He summoned a blanket over to him, he felt more exposed curled up in pajamas than he would standing nude in a room full of people.  Then again, that might just be because he knew his thoughts weren't safe and he was trying to keep them on the memories he erased from Virgil.

"You're in a good mood?"  He asked, unable to keep the accusatory tone out of his voice.

            "I like Ari too much to leave."

"She is wonderful isn't she?" Virgil remarked in the same mirthful tone while he set down the saucer of sardines in the corner where Dante took her meals. " I hope those elf ears are burning." Ari had the sweetest ears - probably. Everyone seemed rather very nice tonight because of the wine.

He turned around, pulling out a kitchen chair so that it faced outwards into the living room where Nick was bundled up. Oh. Was Nick not feeling very well? Would they be needing chicken soup tomorrow?

            "You're in a good mood?"

"I am indeed," he sat down and began toeing off his velvet shoes. Nick's voice didn't sound ill. He sounded... annoyed, if anything. A little furrow appeared between Virgil's wan eyebrows as he gleaned the surface of the other wizard's thoughts for a moment.

And then he started laughing, looking more baffled than amused.. "Nick!" he declared, stifling the giggle. "I'd be able to tell if you were in here," Virgil tapped his forehead, unconsciously imitating Yavin. "You'd leave footprints. You've barely been obliviating a year."

Minister Glass might get away with it, he thought, or the senior Obliviators. Even then, memory charms didn't entirely destroy memories, and Virgil had been learning mind magic since before Hogwarts. They still studied it on level nine, which had to do its own Obliviation sometimes. But why was Nick even trying to make him think that?

"What's the matter with you today?" he rubbed the back of his head, making an effort to sober up from dinner. "You're not still moping?"

[M for Language]

Nicholas just looked at Virgil when he mentioned Ari's elf ears.  He wasn't sure what that meant, other than it likely meant Virgil had been drinking or smoking the good stuff.  Someone wasn't worried about a hangover the next day.  Must be nice.

"Harumph! I'll have you know I'm quite good thank you very much." He pouted before rolling over and facing the couch and not Virgil.  Eye contact was necessary right?  He couldn't remember.  "And subtle."

He pulled the blanket tight around him and stared at the weave of the cushion on the back of the couch.  At least Virgil had only gotten the thoughts that he'd wanted him to.  He wouldn't be asking what was wrong otherwise.  Right? 

"Today was fine.  Everyday has been fine.  And I'm not moping.  I'm just upset.  I just want to be able to talk about the stuff that has happened in the last year without feeling like an emotional mess while everyone else is fine.  The only person who ever really cared was Peyton.  And I don't want to put him through all that again.  And Abby, she cared.  She doesn't even know me and she cared.  But she has her own shit." 

He took a deep shuddering breath before turning just enough to barely see Virgil.  "You're the only person who has been through the same damn shit but you just...you just act like you.  Like nothing happened."

Nicholas sat up and forgetting completely the eye contact, looked directly at Virgil, while hugging his knees and the blanket to him.  "I can't drink and fuck my way through the next few months."  Again.

He had to stop himself from laughing again when Nick turned around to face the back of the couch; a stunning reenactment of Virgil's little brother throwing a sulk. Clearly something was the matter - beyond the usual. He continued taking off his shoes and socks, bundling up the latter into a ball while his flatmate addressed the cushions.

Abby? Nick spoke to Abby recently? Virgil leaned back in his chair, crossing one lanky leg over the other as he folded his arms across his middle. So this was about the kidnappings in February. And feelings.

Merlin. February. Eight moons ago. Life had slipped by so quickly.

            "...but you just...you just act like you.  Like nothing happened."

Virgil's gaze, lowered in reminiscence, flicked back to the sofa just as Nick sat up again to stare at him straight on. It was no big leap of the imagination to grasp that the drinking and fucking was Nick's way of dealing with trauma. He'd assumed as much. The Unspeakable was quiet for a moment, trying to think through his inebriation.

"You don't have to. Shouldn't have to," he muttered and ran a hand through his hair, which was now sticking up in all directions. "If you feel like that, then you need help, Nick. You need to talk to somebody. A professional."

Virgil remembered the leaflets he had seen in Ceph's mind[1] that strange night in his flat. "St. Mungo's has counselling services," he added as he looked away, not meeting the other wizard in the eye.

But even then he knew that wasn't what Nick was implying, and it was mean to pretend it was. He breathed out slowly, a fae-like sigh. Be a grown up, Sleepy Boy!

"Group therapy isn't exactly my forte. I'm not the best person to talk to about this," Virgil looked down at his bare feet, toes wiggling idly. "I'm sorry," he glanced up, having lost his smiles for the time being, eyes clear,"if I made you feel alone in your... um, suffering."

There. That wasn't painful.

1.

Quote from: Cepheus Gamp on February 04, 2018, 03:34:20 AM It was then he glanced down to look at the leaflets - amongst them were a support group for spell damage and victims of spell damaged wixes, one to one counselling with a legilimens, and a serious looking one titled: considering self-obliviation? - Between Chaos and a Dream

Nicholas practically growled in frustration when Virgil suggested talking to a professional.  He had at Hogwarts.  And it hadn't done him that much good.  It was time and the time not fucking with Peyton that seemed to actually do good.  Made him feel safe.  He didn't want to talk to a professional.  He wanted to talk to someone who knew him, who knew what he'd gone through.

He knew Virgil wasn't the right person to talk to.  But that had made more sense before he found out how much Virgil seemed to listen in to private thoughts.  How could a person who had no problem listening in not listen when someone actually wanted to share.  He didn't understand. He didn't understand without the legilimency.  Let alone with it.

"I don't need you to be my counselor.  I don't want group therapy.  I just–I just don't understand why you can't be a friend.  Why you can't be someone who knows exactly what I went through?  I get it, it didn't effect you the same way.  You don't get stuck in that room when you are trapped in a nightmare by some bastard thief."

He put his head in his hands, making spots and colors dance behind his eyelids.  "I just want to be able to talk to my friends.  Without feeling like a milksop."

He fell quiet as Nick spoke, glancing over at the kitchen where Dante was enjoying her supper - oblivious to the weight of conversation her human was presently facing. What bliss it was to be a cat; to be fed and loved and tolerated, claws and all. Virgil dragged his attention back to the living room.

             "I just want to be able to talk to my friends.  Without feeling like a milksop."

"You're not a milksop," he replied in a dry voice, corners of his mouth curling delicately. "It's reasonable for you to have nightmares and to feel afraid. I know it isn't... easy. But it doesn't help me to talk about it, Nick. It's painful."

Virgil simply wasn't the sort. He preferred to unwrap his hurts in solitude, every now and then contemplating each one like a bauble from a jewellery box, only sometimes making remarks to close friends. Reliving the kidnapping through Nick's fear and Nick's pain, that was just awful to him. It made him feel nauseated.

"On the night we were robbed..." Virgil hesitated, rubbing his eyes tiredly. "That wasn't nice of me. I wasn't interested in feeling and I was selfish. I'll try to be better, I just don't want to discuss what happened to us on level nine."

Certainly not the way Nick wanted to discuss it. Virgil didn't mind references to the crime or Mortimer Gamp - but Merlin deliver him from a heartfelt chat about the kidnapping.

Nicholas stood suddenly and walked over to the wireless, switching it off. "That's the point.  It's supposed to be painful.  That's what makes it less painful." Or so they'd told him. The Professionals.  "And I know its reasonable. I don't need to be told it's reasonable.  And it's not like last time."

He walked back toward where the blanket had fallen, picking it up and throwing it back on the sofa.  "It can't be."  He added in a small voice.  He sat on the edge of the arm, leg bouncing up and down.

"Fine.  We won't.  I don't forgive you for that night.  Do you know...?  It was like being back there.  Except it was our place.  You can't tell me you didn't know that when you were an ass.  When you were so Virgil.  I mean thanks for waking me.  I don't think I actually said that. But you had to have known what was in my head.  How can you be like that when you know what its doing to someone.  To me."  He pushed himself back and put his feet up on the sofa.  Kicking at the pillow in front of him.

"I know we aren't about to get matching jewelry.  But I wouldn't kick you when you were down."  I'd hex someone if they did, he thought to himself.  Knowing that not-speaking it didn't make it private with Virgil.

             "Fine.  We won't."

Thank Merlin! Or, that is, Virgil would thank Merlin if Nicholas hadn't gone ahead and started talking about how it felt to wake up like they were back in that black and bloody room again. The kind of rooms he worked in on level nine, the ones he passed by almost every day in the Ministry now.

"I'm an arse because I know my limits, alright?" he snapped, narrowing his gaze at his flatmate. "I don't need to deal with what's in your head in addition to what's in mine, and what's in everyone else's. I check on thoughts, sometimes without trying. I don't steep in them like a fucking masochist."

He did, of course, when he absolutely had to. When someone like Abby was having A nightmare or when they needed him to in the Brain Room. It was getting warm in here.

Virgil tugged off his vest, draping it on the back of another kitchen chair while he continued. "I've been back to that chamber, you know," he grimaced - there was a kind of dark humour in his face, the hint of a menacing smile. Nick wanted to talk; fine, they would talk.

"The Unspeakables have wiped it down, not a drop of blood. Of course." Virgil unconsciously touched the inside of his elbow, where the scar from the blood-drawing had long faded. "Just another room now. I know Mortimer Gamp is clinically insane but sometimes, when I'm down there, I understand."

Down there, where all manner of magic was possible, he could see why it might drive a wizard mad. "He thought he was doing something truly great," the wizard shrugged, "something unprecedented."

Nicholas glared right back at Virgil, "Well maybe you should try to stay out of everyone else's head." Seemed like a perfectly reasonable solution to Nicholas.  But then again, he'd have preferred Virgil never having been in his head. 

"How am I supposed to know how often you read minds?  I've only known for a week that you can.  And you've been in and out how many times since then.  Only once was for me."  Why did he keep starting arguments?  He really wasn't intending to.  It just kept happening.

"I've been back to that chamber, you know"

Nicholas just stared at Virgil dumbfounded as he kept going, describing how clean the room was now.  He wasn't sure which was worse, that they still used the room, that they had had Virgil go in it, or that Virgil had actually gone in it.  If it had been up to him, the room would have been filled in and sealed off.  And Gamp would have been drawn and quartered.  Or whatever the wizard equivalent would be.

"There's not a drop of blood in it in my nightmares either, there's a lake of it."  He wasn't even sure what to say about Virgil understanding Mortimer Gamp.  Though he guessed that was how Virgil could work on that level, in that place.  He picked up the pillow and held it to his chest, hugging it.

"He was a monster, and the fact that you," Nicholas made air quotes, "understand him is terrifying.  Murder was unprecedented once, didn't make Cain a visionary."

             "How am I supposed to know how often you read minds?"

That was the question, wasn't it? The one that people like Ariadne and Abby seemed to allow into the general uncertainty of the world, yet Nick could not. Virgil hadn't forgotten how he had felt when he outed Cadance's pregnancy in the school kitchens - nor did he forget Professor Duerr's words, after.

"You just have to trust me," he shrugged, shoulders lifting with effete grace , "and trust that I won't use your thoughts against you."

Sometimes he couldn't help hearing but the least he could do was not to misuse what he knew. It wasn't the power trip he was after, he didn't want to be the kind of person who did those things.

Nick wasn't amused or interested in what Virgil had to say about Mortimer Gamp. It didn't take a Legilimens to sense the repulsion behind his words, or to read the tense body language. He undid the top two buttons of his shirt and made a dismissive gesture in Nick's direction.

"I understand, I don't approve." Virgil frowned as he stuck out his bottom lip in a sulk. "What I'm trying to say is that I'm dealing with... with what happened, in my own way. Talking about it won't help me, or at least talking to you won't," he felt something rub against his ankle and nearly startled.

Only Dante, purring. She leapt on to his lap with a faint mreow and he could smell the fish on her breath. He ran a hand through her soft, white fur before glancing back at Nick.

"Mortimer Gamp isn't a monster, he's human." Virgil pictured the wizard in his mind's eye, the face that they hadn't even seen when they were kidnapped. "Doesn't that make him less scary to you? Flesh and blood?" he raised his eyebrows earnestly, expression serious. "You have to stop living in that room, Nick. It doesn't exist anymore."

Nicholas shook his head, incredulous, did Virgil really think anyone would trust him with anything personal.  That was just giving him a loaded wand to use when he was cross with you later.  "Really, I'm supposed to trust that you won't use a stray thought to cut me down the next time we are out with friends?  Do you even know what you got from me telling you versus what you got straight from my mind?"  Nicholas knew that he wouldn't be able to differentiate the two once some time had passed.

He knew that he wasn't supposed to take it as an insult that talking to him wouldn't help Virgil but it was hard not to.  Even though he remembered not wanting to talk about it.  In fact that was what led to him and Peyton sleeping together the first time.  It was a lot easier to jump on his broom than talk about everything.  But Peyton hadn't been there.  And he had started talking about it eventually.  And he was doing better until recently.  "I get it, you can stop telling me that talking to me won't help."

He played with a loose thread on the edge of the pillow.  "No it doesn't make him less scary as a human.  Humans can be monsters too.  I know enough muggle and wizard history to know that humans can be monstrous with all their flesh and blood.  I'd rather stare down a basilisk than come face to face with him." 

And it wasn't because he was afraid of Gamp.  Nicholas was honestly as afraid of what kind of monster he had in him.  He'd gotten into plenty of fights because of his temper and stubbornness.  What would he do to someone who deserved every-painful-thing possible?

"I'm not living in that damned room.  I can't control where my nightmares take me.  If I could, I'd be on a private island having non-stop....I wouldn't dream of that room if I had a choice.  I hadn't dreamt of that room in months.  I'm sorry Saturday brought up bad things for you.  I'm sorry that my fucked-up brain connected the two worst things that have happened to me. I'm sorry that we got robbed," he throw the pillow at his bedroom door, "and my damn silencing enchantment let it happen.  But Don't Tell Me that I'm stuck there.  I didn't go work there."

He rolled his eyes when Nick asked if he could tell the difference between what he learned in and out of the mindscape.

"You don't have to keep living here," Virgil pointed out and allowed his cat to climb on to his shoulders as he stood up, "or to keep being my friend. This is just how I am. And I haven't used anything to cut you down before - you do a fine job of that all on your own." Sighing lightly, he drew his wand to fetch out the coffee things.

His shift on level nine started late tomorrow and he wanted to use his free time tonight to read, to relax. Neither of those things appeared to be on Nick's list of preoccupations.

"God, please stop apologising for Saturday. I told you before, it's not your fault someone decided to rob us." Virgil stood at the counter with his back to the living room and filled the cafétiere with water, which bubbled hot as soon as it hit the earthen grounds. "And it's not your fault your brain works however it works."

The smell of coffee filled the space, teasing out a gentle smile from him. The pot was left to brew and he turned around, leaning against the counter and facing his flatmate again.

Dante had somehow draped herself on his shoulders, tail tickling his Adam's apple. Virgil crossed his arms languidly. Of course Nick would fill his dreams hedonistically if he could - he really was that shallow. "I like working on level nine," he stated emphatically, "and I'm sorry about your dreams but dreams are a reflection of our minds. You have to face the root of the problem."

And there wasn't a chance in Salazar's Chamber of him tugging Nick out of nightmares all the bloody time.

"You're being childish." Virgil gestured flippantly with his wand hand. "If you want to stop having nightmares, try another counselor. They're all different. You know that's their job, don't you? To help?" Personally, they couldn't pay him enough to be one of those Legilimen therapists. "I've been to one when I was younger. It helps."

"You don't have to keep living here, or to keep being my friend. This is just how I am. And I haven't used anything to cut you down before - you do a fine job of that all on your own."

Nicholas sighed.  He didn't want to move out.  And despite his better judgement he wanted to be friends with Virgil.  He also wanted to curse him.  But those weren't mutually exclusive desires. It was certainly less conflicting than wanting to jump and break the bones of more than one of Virgil's housemates back in school.

"Of course that's not my fault.  But I could have stopped it.  If I'd heard him, I could have stopped him."  Anything but being surprised in bed, and Nicholas was sure he could have stopped him.  He doubted they'd been robbed by some criminal magical genius.  He understood that he didn't do anything.  But that was the problem.  He hadn't done anything.  And that was almost as bad as everything else.

"You're being childish."

"Oh, Fuck Off!  I'm not being childish!  And I wasn't having those nightmares."  At least not that often. "But do you know how–how  disconcerting it is to know that is just lurking so close."  It wasn't like it took much to trap him in that dreamscape.  And magic being able to keep him there was terrifying.  How was he supposed to have an easy time sleeping after that?

"I don't want to see someone."  That was admitting he couldn't handle his business and he wasn't ready to take that step.  Not this time.