“Wha’s with you locking your door all of a sudden? I know you’re in there. Quit bein’ gay and open up, seriously. Right, listen—are you listening to me? Right, mate, second I…second I find my bloody wand I’m gonna unlock your goddamn door and then I’m gonna turn your eyeballs into blisters. Are you listenin’, Nate? I swear—“

“He lives next door!”

“Oh. Well.” When Phil’s lips parted in a smile, he felt the door wood drag on his gums. “Well, when he gets back you tell him to wait right here for me, yeah?”

Spindly white fingers unlatched from the door jamb, and he went stumbling down the way. There was the problem that they hadn’t quite told him which ‘next door’ to go poking at. More interrogations might be needed. He fished into his pocket for his wand, and dragged its tip over the old wood paneling as he scuttled further down the hall. Phil leaned heavily against the next door and traced the numbers embossed on the plate.

He poked at the door knob with his wand.

“Reducto.”

The poor brass knob blasted through the door like a bullet, leaving a charred ring in around the wood. Philomenes kicked the door open the rest of the way. It clattered against the wall to further announce his presence. He shuffled into the dingy flat, smiling peacefully.

“Nathan, dear? Oh, Na-than, Nate, I’m in love!” he called, silver bell clear words not matching up with the jelly soft buckle and sway of his legs. “Put a kettle and a record on, if you’d be so kind. Also find something heavy to hold the door closed. Hate to get snow all about the place.”

He knew the place well enough by now that he could lithium shuffle about with his eyes closed, no problems. His eyes weren’t much for seeing right about now, so the skill came in handy. Worked well enough to get him over to the couch, and his legs held out long enough for him to flop down on the mangy old things with his limbs hanging off every which way.

“Happy Valentines ‘n’ shit.”

A ruckus in the Sodding Arms was not uncommon.  Twas like the birds of spring, chirping merrily outside a window.  Twas merely the melody of Knockturn and nothing to get off of the toilet for.

Ackerly Fox?! A bloody Auror?

Nate scowled and flipped the page of today's Witch Weekly.  "Re-fecking-diculous..." he grumbled.  Since October he was no friend to the red-robed warriors.  Since they blasted his door down, hexed him unarmed and drug him to the Ministry all for just blowing up Cinaed Tawse's tavern with highly volitile contraband.  The Aurors could go eat his shi-

BANG!

The doorknob exploded out of the door into the flat.  But with the door to the w.c. half shut, he didn't see who it was coming in.  Pants around his ankles he covered his head and nearly fell off the toilet. 

"Holy hell!" In a few seconds he regained his bearings and nearly fell out of the bathroom as he was pulling up his trousers.

He stood panting in the doorway, one hand holding up his pants, and the other on a plunger.  (His wand was on the bed.)

Philomenes Kecklepenny.

He scowled and chucked the plunger at the blond-headed junkie draped on the dingy couch.

Nate and Dazmond lived in one room on the seventh floor of the Sodding Arms.  There was there bed.  That dingy old sofa, a table and chairs and a hearth and floo.  Their chandelier was swinging and that poor red door that the Aurors had blown in was hanging without dignity on its  hinges.

He stomped to the bed to grab up his wand and retreive the doorknob.

"Not happy you're here, Phil.  You look like you've drowned yourself in nightshade.  Reparo."

The knob wiggled and squirmed in the mishapen hole that had been its home.  Splinters knitted together and he could hear the metal sliding back to where it had been.  He wiggled it and then shut the door, only to turn around and glare at him.

But he cracked a half smile. 

"Something wrong with your couch?"

Phil had only given the plunger a lazy glance, not bothering to drag his face up out of the couch cushions.

“Why, yes. It seems there’s no breasts on my couch. Nor on yours,” he observed, after his muzzy eyes took full stock of the dingy room. Propped up on his elbow, Phil tried his best to focus the dim watt of his gaze on Nate. Didn’t work too well. He probably looked blankly annoyed at the fireplace. “Wherever is that lovely wife of yours?” And laughed. There was nothing pleasant in that laugh, beneath the shallow prettiness.

“Oh dear.” Smiling then, all teeth. “Oh my. I daresay, that would be a lovely Valentines gift. I think I’d like that more than the best thing in the world.” Philomenes flopped over onto his back, sluggish as a pancake burnt to the bottom of a pan. His arm fell off the side, and his ridiculous ibis legs hung a good foot of the end of the couch. With a bit of coaxing of one foot on the other, he popped his boots off hands-free.

“I meant it, y’know, ‘bout the record. And me being pickled in nightshade has nothing to do with you. I’ll have you know it’s more hellebore, though.”

He arched his spine all sinuous as a cat’s, then went about prodding the sleeves of his sweater. The raw flesh in the crook of his elbow made him wince, but all the same he pressed his thumb hard against the tender tracts. Pinpoint pupils flicked over the bruised yellow-purple skin there, but Phil didn’t treat it like anything of importance. He snorted in that charming phlegm-y way of his, shook his head, and let the sleeve fall back into place.

 “Maybe it’s one of them operant conditioning things. See her pretty wine-stain mouth, then I get t’shoot up. Kind of like those dogs with the bell, yeah?” He smiled slowly and closed his eyes. This seemed like answer enough for Phil.

“Just because she keeps human skulls all over doesn’t mean she cooks eyes near nice as Addie did, though. S’bit of a cop out, if ya ask me, having skulls and not eating nothing in them.”

Most people hadn't had the moxie to ever bandy about or bludge on Nathan and Dazmond's strange by solid life-matery.  And those that had found out in no uncertain terms that they were savagely effective in their defense of one another.  The Fidelus Charm had nothing on the Wiedman-Briggses. 

Philomenes slurred onward and inward, in his loll-headed stupor.  What a bloody mess.  Nate took a seat at the table, in the same chair he'd sat in when Dazmond had used her most caustic stuff to clean out his Runespoor venom burns.  Dazmond was good at her witchcraft - too good.  But Nate hadn't realized she was cooking jollies for scabs like Phil.

"You can talk about Daz's breasts when you're tired of having teeth, you mangy-arse junkie," he said and scratched at the scars on his shoulder.  They were slightly blue. 

"Dazmond's whereever the hell she wants to be.  So why don't you get your arse out of my flat, pretty boy."

Phil knew he should probably be feeling something right about now, but he didn’t. He tried to keep his facial expressions up into something apologetic, or upset, or just anything other than owl-eyed blank.

“Hff. Babe, calm the fuck down. I didn’t bloody mean it.” Not so sunk, that would have come across as more sincere, maybe. But for now his voice was all muzzy languor, no real inflection or emotion. Phil’s big bug eyes fluttered open against the lead weight of his eyelids, and he squinted over at Nate.

“Like…you realize she’s seen me sneeze vomit before, right? I mean…I know it’s funny, but…yeah, mate, no sparkle charm in the world could make that marginally attractive. Veela glitter don't work on her like it does on you."

Hauling himself up into a sitting position took way more effort than it ever should, sunk or not. He spared a sharp glance for his jelly-limp arms. He dragged his legs up to his chest to free up space on the couch. Phil’s spine had enough of this whole ‘moving’ thing, and his head flopped back onto the arm of the couch.

“…’sides,” he told the inside of his eyelids, “Dazzie’s a loverly witch. I can’t be with a girl unless I hate her or want to steal her purse.”

"You're fecking barmy, you ugly git," he mumbled although his ire was fading.  The image of the white-colored Philomenes spraying chunky vomit from his long nose was enough to cheer up any red-blooded wizard like Briggs.   He got up to go to the hearth where he and his Lovely Daz kept a row of bottles, flasks, vials and drams two deep.  Some of them were alcohol, some of them were poisons, and some of them were both.  It served as kind of a booby trap, I guess, for those rare bandits who broke into your flat to drink your booze. 

He rifled through until he found a cobalt blue bottle, square and squat.  Satyr's Cabron Tequila.  He thumbed off the cork and brought it back to the table.  He took a seat this time in the chair closest to Phil and kicked his feet up to rest on the arm of the gold-colored striped couch. 

He took a swig direct from the bottle.  He loved Valentine's day.

"I thought you were getting your juices from Meredith Renfield. She run cold on you?"

Nate knew very little about who Dazmond dealt with, and most often he didn't care.  She tended to keep her business out of his apartment.  He knew she provided wolfsbane to unregistered werewolves, and nasty potions and poisons to people with grudges or the killing kind of occupations.  But he hadn't ever imagined she was dealing to junkies like Phil.  That somehow seemed... more wrong than all the other things she did, which he didn't really give shit about. 

"You've not neglected to pay her, have you? She bites, you know."

“I haven’t.” Stammered for air a bit. “I know.” Licked his lips, tried again. “I wish.”

Philomenes stretched, or tried to. His muscle, bone, and sinew seemed to get too tired half-way through and he went limp on the couch. Water smoothed against his bones and his head was filled with smoke. His eyelashes pressed low against his cheeks, innocent as a girl.

“…’m cold, mate.” He said, over his multitude of scarves and the rabbit fur collar squishing against his throat.  “Sorry ‘bout the door. Wish your fireplace worked.” With gargantuan effort, Phil slivered his eyes open just enough to glance at the rickety red door. It was whole, it was closed.

“Oh.” And then he added, “Huh.”

When he tried to flop his legs over the edge of the, his head swung limp on his neck. His chin bobbed against his chest and Philomenes went very still, as if he’d fallen asleep. But he jolted back into consciousness after a few moments, body rigid and wide eyes shot wider, as if lightning had streaked down his spine. He smiled, however weakly. He shivered.

Phil wriggled his way across the grody couch, moving closer to Nate, to the tequila. Once he was as close as physically possible without having to use his legs, Phil stood and scuttled across the two feet of distance. There was a jelly knees jinx way about him that managed to make that look difficult.  He leaned heavily on the sagging arm of Nate’s chair, the other hand making a muzzy half-hearted grab for the bottle.

“Don’t boggart it now, mate. S’cold.”

This whole ‘standing’ business was proving far too much for him, so he settled for drooping down into Nate’s lap and tilting his head back against his shoulder. …well. How voluntary either of those motions were was kind of debatable at this point, but all the same. Phil wasn’t too compelled to correct his body’s boneless flopping about. Nate was warmer than the couch.

“You know. Titties completely unconsidered and unimportant. If…if something goes I dunno -- wrong, do you have a way of getting to her?” Phil paused for breath, swallowed, tried to force a lightness into his voice that almost made it but not quite. “Just…just wondering. No reason."

Nate watched with some amount of proto-horror as Philomenes's body wormed and jolted and changed states like some living ooze, like a Polymorphed face flitting back and forth between home and disguise.  The length of the white wizard was exaggerated in his contortions and physical efforts and Nate couldn't help but thinking Inferus. 

He'd never seen Phil like this, this spiced.  What kind of demons did this kid have to have to drown it with so much acid?  Nathan thanked his parents for having birthed him smarter and prettier than everyone else.  Poor old ugly, stupid Phil.

Their apartment was snuggly warm, and Phil hadn't shed his winter things at all - how the hell was he cold?

Nate did not let Philomenes have the bottle, which was as easy to keep away from the sot as it was easy to keep something away from a baby.   Ugh, he stank.  Nate's nostrils flared at the offense and he craned his neck away when all 7 stone of Phil collapsed in his lap.  How many elbows did this guy have?  Every one of them seemed to have knocked him in the junk.  He winced and tried to make this comfortable.

"This shit's too good for you - you'd not even taste it," he told him, referring to the tequila which he was swigging even then.  "Wasteful," he coughed, clearing the burn from his throat.

Nate tried to look at Philomenes then, after he said 'titties' again, and then asked if he could get a hold of Daz in case of trouble...  Trouble?  Phil's head was lolling and he could have swore his eyes had turned opaque grey.

"No."

Nate dropped the word on the floor and it hit heavily.  That was part of the trouble sometimes.  Daz had disappeared for months and there was nothing Mr. Briggs-Wiedman had been able to do about it except wait.  There was flat out not a way to find Daz if she wasn't keen on getting found.  And she usually wasn't. 

He didn't want to ask, but coy Kecklepenny wasn't going to spit it out.  "Why - you know of something going wrong right now, mate? You've got plans to keep breathing, right?"

“I...fuck, Nate.” The strange, silvery noise that shuddered up from his throat could have been a laugh. There was nothing good about that laugh. “I planned on lots of things.”

Phil wasn’t a nervous person, soaked in opiates or not. Maybe it was the Charm, maybe it was Ted Bundy grade ASPD, or maybe it was much more simple than all that and it was just how Phil was. Whatever the reason, it didn’t happen.

That said, a shiver slipped down Phil’s spine. His arms snaked protectively around his chest, his too-long fingernails plucked at Nate’s shirt sleeve. Phil sucked down more breathe than could possibly be needed for four little words. It sounded more like he was re-surfacing from the bottom of the ocean.

“Might be. Hope so.”

He stopped that, though. Breathing didn’t feel so important. It hurt his throat. Where they had been flesh and bone and fabric beneath him moments before, simple feelings like that bled away. Phil couldn’t decide what that absence felt like, so he decided it felt like he was lolled back on nothing at all .

There was a dull tingling burn starting up in the very tips of his toes, his fingers, replacing the numbness. A thought twitched in the depths of his brain, a word flickered. Ischemia. It was from a book. But whether it was a spell or a plant or disease or anything, he couldn’t remember.

Pale skin fading grey. Purple grazing his knuckles. Faint blue under the beds of his nails. The veins traversing his wrists looked thick, swollen. His tongue nudged his lips apart. They were too dry and sticking together.

“If I...just don’t, y’know? ‘Cause I’d hate that. So if Dazzie...”

His eyes didn’t close, he didn’t collapse, he didn’t anything much at all.

Phil’s fingers paused in the middle of a weak gesture, relaxed, slowly fell back onto the arm of the chair. His head drooped against Nate’s, temple to temple. It might have seemed affectionate if it hadn’t just been gravity acting on the dead weight of his skull. His eyes were huge and pupil-less, the little black dot constricted to something almost imaginary. His mouth was ashen, slightly open.

It looked like there was a thought there, still poised all hesitant on the edge of his lips.

"Phil."

Nate shrugged his bony friend away from his face, after he sort of bonked over onto him.  For all accounts the shifty bugger was either going to vomit or attempt to make love and neither were amenable prospects at the moment.  Phil was...

"Phil?"

His shrug had rearranged Philomenes like a wooden marionette.  Things had moved just so they might had only gravity and joints been a factor.  No muscle tone or even liquid will shaped Phil's movement.  It was even spiced lolling about.  It was a dead limpness.  No! Don't say dead.

Nate's heart beat faster as he pushed harder against Phil-On-Top-Of-Him and his body responded in the same way.  In a quick motion, Nate suddenly pulled himself out from under, leaving Phil in the chair.  Phil with open eyes and open mouth and all the bright colors of soggy marshmallow.

"Phil!"

Hands snatched at Philomenes's face, grasping the angular jaw, slapping the sunken cheeks.  Even his yellow-white hair had lost its ethereal glamour.  As Phil's organs grew quiet, Nate's were heating up.  Heart racing, shaky breathing.  Now, some shouting please.

"Phil! Phil, don't be dead!  Phil, stop being dead!  No no no no, wake up! Wakeupwakeupwakeup!"  Tequila?

Nate grabbed for it and quickly evaluated its usefulness.  He couldn't dump it down his throat - could kill him worse.  He abandoned it on the table and flew to the mantle.  Again, his hands worked rapidly, but ultimately without any helpful knowledge.  Nothing was labeled, most of it was probably poison and the rest reagents or perhaps essences of this and that.  As he flicked from bottle to bottle, he spared a thousand glances back to the chair where Phil was looking more and more like a dead body.

"Stop staring at me!" he yelled at him.  "Just fucking-!  You motherfrogging laywaste, why in my house!" 

Where the hell was Dazmond when she was needed?

It had to be Mungo's.  There was no where else.  His hand finally landed on something useful - Floo Powder.  He dug his fingers into the grainy powder and then cast it into the dying fire.  The room was illuminated in a flash of green light as he activated their connection to the Floo Network.

Luckily for them both, Philomenes was on a junkie's diet and weighted as much as a little Hufflepuff girl.   Nate could nearly carry him under his arm like a handbag, he was so light.  He held him chest to chest and stepped into the cool green flames.

"Mungo's!"