A little past midnight, and the night was just starting for Leonardo George Saville. He woke late in the day, helped with a bit of prep for the evening dinner rush at The Black Boar on his day off and left while the night was still young.

Chopping vegetables was meditative, and his own kitchen was bare and empty. He liked the monotony and routine, the long hours of the work. It kept him occupied and busy, and the Anderson's were fair employers. They kept him fed, and paid him well enough. Enough to get high on some of The Billy Goat's finest.

Nate Briggs, the piece of shite, promised a round of drinks if he came out. They'd agreed to meet in Edinburgh, though both of them lived in London. He wasn't sure what made his friend so cagey, enough to leave their home turf to get drinks. It was far enough away from home that getting drunk and apparating back to his flat with a lady friend could end in a splice, so was he trying to keep him mostly sober? Keep him from getting laid on his day off?

Still, Georgie was a good champ and agreed to meet up with him anyway. Maybe Nate would tell him more about his lay, some "scary" lady that started working at Wolf & Lamb. Exchanging conquests, getting high, boozing. A bit of a routine, another comforting routine.

He snapped into existance in front of the pub, The Sweet Sorrow, brushing off the dust he kicked up from reappearing out of thin air. Entering the pub, he took a seat in one of the empty leathery aged booths, waiting for Nate to show up and buy him a free drink(s) of choice. Wednesday nights weren't exactly busy at his own pub, and it appeared the same at The Sweet Sorrow.

His large hands fiddled with his wand, both arms sleeved with a hodgepodge of tattoo's collected over the years. Simply dressed, a white tee and worn jeans adorned him, with a pair of those thick black no-slide shoes. He didn't bother dressing down for the night out.

Bored, and alone, he decided to leave the secured booth and headed past the scattered tables and chairs to flirt with the barkeep working the slowest night. She couldn't have been great at her job, but she had a nice smile. He leaned in, talking sweet nothings.

A sharp clap on the back, of a character that has no intention to be chummy, announced Nate's arrival to Georgie who was being smarmy with the witch behind the bar. Nate and him had become two people who tolerated each other over their shared time in kitchens, and that was as much as Nate would commit to the friendship considering Georgie was a piece of shit.

"Knock it off," he said then held up two fingers. "Two of Big Hairy."

Then he laid a little silver on the bar and clapped Georgie again to get him to follow to a booth by the window.

He'd been so wrapped up with the witch, that he hadn't noticed Nate sneak up on him. The sharp clap reverberated through his bones. There weren't many who would touch him, let alone slap his back so casually. It meant that Nate Briggs finally made it. "mhmm Sorry Missus" He apologized to the witch as Nate laid out the silver and pushed it up after his request. "Seems I'm called off now."

Her eyes narrowed at Georgie but she replied to Nate, "Two Big Hairy's coming up." The sickle stayed on top of the bar top, untouched. She flicked her wand and the whiskey bottle shot into her hand. Two fingers later, and the glass cups were laid out on the top for them. They may have been the customers of the house, but she wasn't going to bring them it.

Georgie lingered at the bar top. "I'll be seein' you later?" He winked.

"Depends if your mate allows it." She looked over at Nate who was now sitting alone at the booth.

Georige scowered, "He ain't my keeper." He took the two cups from the bar top, while the barkeep grabbed at the sickle and moved away from him and toward the register.

He didn't care that Nate seemed in a rush to sit, this was on Georgie's time. Approaching the booth table, he abruptly slammed Nate's drink, though it's contents didn't spill out. Charms work, Georgie was good at it.

Taking a seat across Nate, "Well, well, dickhead. Why the fuck is we out in Edinburgh?" He asked playfully, his scurrilous use of language an indicator of his station.

While Georgie's tone might offend the more delicate sensibilities of others, Nathan Briggs had for many years had little choice but to tolerate scoundrels and dirtbags. He did miss, however, the gentlemen terrorists and necromancers he'd associated with between previous Azkaban sentences. Nathan tapped his glass against Georgie's and took a sip. Luckily 'Big Hairy' was the name of the distillery's mascot and not a description of its mouthfeel.

"The lovely weather," Nate replied as rain pattered the thick-glass window to his right.

Then, swallowing his pride, he took the leap. "I told you I was fucking Sal's bodyguard, right?"

Salvador Falcon of course, the owner of the restaurant where Nate worked, the Wolf and Lamb, and the owner of several more properties across Britain. And Hunter St. James the quote 'security' unquote he'd hired not at all relevant to Romulus Wilde apparently intimidating him through his manager. Nate had found himself attracted to him, or attracted to her hot and cold attentions to him. He'd gotten off on the oscillating rounds of negging, all the while assuming she wasn't insane.

He'd been wrong.

Georgie clanked his cup against Nate's, and took a hearty sip of the whiskey, swishing it in his mouth before letting the smokey flavoured poison fall down his esophagus. Local fare made for better drinks, they cared more the end product. The clientele who'd consume it.

He grinned in approval.

"Yeah, what 'bouts her?" Why the fuck did Nate Briggs want to talk about a goddamn shag in another country. It annoyed him that they'd had to leave the United Kingdom for this, when he could have just met him down at the corner. There was a brief pause from Nate. "You means to tells me, wes out here to talk about some fuck? And wes couldn't do it at home?" Well, Georgie had a story about a nice little lady at the Leaky he'd been seeing. Not seriously of course. He worked too long of hours to commit to any one individual.

"What, did you walk here?" Nate pushed back, annoyed that Georgie was whining about sitting in a different building to drink. "Just drink that so you're nicer."

He leaned forward on his elbows and scratched his stubble. Georgie was the worst person to talk to about this, about anything, but he was Nate's best option.

"Anyway, revelation: she's upper tier crazy. I've now had the unsettling sex I've had in my life. I can't be sure, but I think she tried to kill me. I mean, it was hot."

Nate tried to save some face by adding in that last part. But the details of that night were unusually jagged. Not the fuzzy haze of alcohol or drugs, but like something was broken up or carved out. Strangest of all, Hunter had continued to act as normal - that is, intense and changeable.

"So I looked into her."

A normal thing to do.

tw: derogatory sexist language; mention of dirty mags

"Just drink that so you're nicer."

He glowered, "Right, alright." And took a second sip of his cuppa, rubbing the building condensation off of it. Surprisingly, the aura of cheap swamp gillyweed, dilated pupils, and languished body movements were all Georgie brought in this date. This was his first drink of the early evening. He was...restrained.

Georgie leaned up on the table to get closer to Nate, "...wait, what?" He then leaned back in the booth, "The crazy bitch tried to kill you?" Repeating himself in disbelief, "She tried to kill you?" Inside his pea brain, he couldn't help but to ask our of curiosity, "What way was it hot? Like she choked you while you guys was...?" He looked around the table before getting closer to Nate, whispering, "And you liked it?"

Now this was the wildest thing that Georgie could conjure up. He didn't know how he felt about knowing that kind of information about Nate? Did that mean they were actual friends? He was pretty vanilla himself, only previewing that kind of material in the naughty magazines.

"Didja find out anything interesting?" Suddenly, he forgot he was upset about being in Edinburgh. This was interesting. 

Nate endured Georgie's voyeuristic fascination with an unperturbed smirk. "Yeah, what if I did enjoy it? You're the rank degenerate of the both us, so I'll always be ahead of you."

Didn't matter. That wasn't the point. The fact was, he'd woken up the next morning with a screaming headache, a lump on his skull, and a large red and purple bruise on his neck. He did remember Hunter slapping him in the face, but that had been nothing. It'd been foreplay. He grimaced and tapped his glass.

"She's not who she says she is. Hunter Doğan is not Hunter Doğan. Her real name is Hunter St. James."

The St. James name among British wizard folk wasn't the most notable name, but you probably had heard of it. They were everywhere. In Nate's shady cricles, the St. James were known to have an association with Death Eaters, but a clean name.

"And she's fucking ghost, mate. No Ministry records. But I did a few months with arsonist from Istanbul. He poked around. He'd heard of a St. James in Turkey. Dead now, but the timing works."

He realized the dots wouldn't connect for the idiot across the table. "She's a fucking spy or something. You know Falcón's into the shit if Wilde's going after him."

Georgie's eyes expanded, enlarged, his mouth held open on a hinge. Nate fuckin' Briggs, playin' it up like he was a chad. "No, fuckin' way." He clapped his hands together in disbelief, "I'd never have guessed you were into that shit."

While he gawked and gooped, Nate revealed even more about this "Hunter St. James," he'd been bagging. (Or is bagging? Georgie wasn't following).  He couldn't help feeling a little jealous that she'd picked Nate,[1] and wondered what was so appealing about the shithead sitting across from him.

Georgie took another sip of his alcohol. Thinking. Registering. Uploading the new information. "You're telling me you're fucking a hot spy?" He didn't really get that this 'Hunter' could be dangerous and that's why they were in a whole different city. Leaning up against the table, again, he sat closer towards Nate, "How did you manage that?" He voiced incredulously.

1.	Not that he wanted to be potentially killed in the process!

"I fucking hate you," Nate said to one of his most tolerable worst-loved friends. He let his head hit the back of the booth and wished he'd ordered a better drink. Later, when he didn't have to look at Georgie while drinking it.

"I don't think she's a spy, I think she's eats the heads of her mates like a praying mantis," he said. Something really weird had happened that night. If spies were real, then Hunter had about all the subtlety and placement of a neon road sign. There'd be no reason for Sal Falcón to have hired her if she wouldn't actually be effective at staving off the psychotic Wildes. It was something else.

Nate scratched his chin, regretting asking even before he finished asking the question. "You don't know any healers, do you? Like who don't keep records? No, nevermind don't answer that. I'd like to keep both my kidneys."

He smirked, brimming. It seemed he found a bit of a sore spot, or he missed the point. "...that's kind of sick." Georgie commented, "in a twisted way." He laughed, taking a drink of his whiskey.

Nate asked about a healer, but Georgie didn't know any, anyway. He was a simple cook, collecting tattoo's like they were out of style. New American tats, badges all over his arms. Some of them magical images would change positions, move to a blank canvas on his body. The cry baby on his arm looked up at Nate, sniffling, crying between snickering.

"What's your plan then? You gunna keep fuckin' til she pulls off your head?" He asked semi-seriously. It would, in fact, be sad if something happened to Nate. A little bit of him realized that maybe Nate was being serious and it wasn't a joke. He slapped his arm to stop the tattoo's snickering.

Having talked to Georgie, Nate Briggs actually felt worse about the whole bizarre situation. He didn't actually know anything, he realized. If he had a knut for everyone in the restaurant business who was hiding something, he'd be a rich man.

When Georgie asked if he'd continue on cavorting with Hunter, Nate leaned forward on his elbows and put his face in his hands. His clarity of self-knowledge concerning his messed up tendency to always running directly into the most self-destructive choices and he moaned in chagrined acceptance.

"Yes..."

As much as he sensed danger, the attraction (or obsession) was impossible to resist.

Georgie gave Nate a bewildered look, struggling to understand the other man's propensity for trouble. They'd been friends long enough that he knew about his stints in Azkaban, and probation which barred him from owning and using a wand.

How did Nate get here? He decided against asking, the answer was probably not worth knowing.

"....why?" Georgie asked. Part of him knew the answer, but he wanted to clarify. "Youse really want to fuck and find out, eh?" Maybe it was the way that Nate leaned up against the table, contemplating his decision, that made Georgies spine shiver. Danger didn't seem to bother Nate, Nate looked like a kid at Christmas about to open his presents. He looked excited. 

Delayed processing meant Georgie only realized that Hunter was meant to starve off the Wildes from doing some wild shit.  And Georgie, despite his pea-brain, had quit working Falcón's kitchens because he had a semblance of self preservation.

"Just shut up," Nate said for the second time, and sat up again. He knew he was doing something stupid when Georgie thought he was off the plot. He wasn't proud of it, but he sure as hell wasn't going to stop.

He skulled the rest of his drink and tapped the glass twice firmly on the worn wooden table. He'd reached his Georgie limit and regretted pulling him into it. He really really needed to get better friends, but he hated everyone, so the predicament continued.

"This is not for broadcast," he said shrugging on his coat. Then he realized that maybe Georgie didn't know what that meant, so he clarified. "Don't tell anyone what I told you. Right? Okay, I'm out."

FIN