multiversallogs | are there even goats in flag hill

Who: Antonin and Rodolphus
What: death drinkers anonymous
Where: a bar in Flag Hill (one that hasn't had its front wall ripped out by the militia)
When: evening, after Rodolphus finishes Hellsing work; after Bellatrix's arrival
Notes: MY WIIIIFE/MY LIIIIFE
Warnings: not actually anonymous in any way

Word gets around, one way or another, and Rodolphus is somewhere between indifferent and grateful. It is an intensely personal matter, but people at Hellsing are more or less accustomed to his ways, and if they understand why he's a little slower for the rest of the work day, struggling to focus on his work instead of being the dutiful machine he usually is, that is acceptable.

He tries to make up for it the next day. It helps that the Flag Hill warding job is more complicated than usual, requiring his full attention. If he's slow today, he's also very careful. Hellsing has a reputation to maintain and maybe he does too, a little bit. When he finishes that evening, he walks for a while in an attempt to clear his head instead of apparating back to an empty house that will become an echo chamber of his own obsessiveness. Rodolphus passes a bar, then slowly backtracks to consider it. Tomorrow is the weekend, and barring any emergencies, he may not be required. And people rarely talk to him at bars, for some reason. Perhaps this could work. Perhaps he could simply sit for a while, alone.

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"It might suit you," he says with reluctance. It's true, and he doesn't think Antonin is wholly serious about it, but Rodolphus would still prefer, in as much as he has any say over what Antonin will or won't do, that Antonin find some other employment. Looting corpses is better. It doesn't take place in the Fog.

"You know I'm not much of an adventurer." It's possible for something to be said in a drier tone than that, but only just. Even that old and familiar irony is somehow wan in the face of the subtle roiling patterns of the Fog, the suggestion here and there of faces, both human and otherwise. The suggestion, muffled by distance and the noise of the skyrail, that there is something to be heard out there.

"Never were," Antonin agrees. The Fog doesn't draw him, per se, but it's hard to look away all the same. The mind wants to forces those patterns to resolve, to confirm whether or not those are faces indeed.

Antonin is curious, but not so curious he feels the need to pursue it, at least for now.

"Do you come this way often?" he asks, finding that somehow unlikely.

"Never," he confirms. Lucius goes into the Fog repeatedly, he knows. That is how Lucius is, and Antonin is a little like that too, hence the concern. Whereas if Rodolphus went into the Fog, he simply wouldn't return, and it has little to do with his dreams. "I usually Apparate. But I don't feel like being dismembered tonight."

At length, the skyrail begins to curve away from the Fog, back to the comparatively more mundane view of the city. It too is sullen in the dark, but it's the familiar sullenness of close, crowded living, pollution, dinginess, and industry that comprise urban life.

As the view becomes less compelling, Antonin sits back. "I didn't get you that drunk. How long were you there?" It's almost like concern, except it comes out more like a light judgment on Rodolphus' tolerance. Because Antonin is the best of friends.

Rodolphus closes his eyes, feeling the swim of his head while maintaining, as ever, the same wooden exterior. Just checking.

"This is only the second time I've been drunk since Azkaban." Because they do not talk about this, and they still aren't, but so much as referencing it is a way of proving his point. Which Antonin knows, but Rodolphus felt like doing it anyway. "It does not help. But I won't dream."

Or at least, he won't remember.

Post-Azkaban dreams are, on their own, unpleasant enough that Antonin doesn't think anything of this. Instead, he says, "I know." Which is closer than they've ever come to talking about it.

Instead of expanding on that, he says, "If you come have another drink, it will be later, and if you are exhausted, this helps also." With the not dreaming, he means. It's excellent logic.

A different man might punch Antonin in the shoulder. Rodolphus has never been or wished to be that kind of man, but he feels the impulse all the same, which is strangely hilarious. He smiles very briefly to himself, eyes still shut, and then reluctantly opens them to look at Antonin, unsurprised, and comforted by it.

"Very well."

What's another bad decision, after a lifetime like theirs.

Antonin grins, a bit more broadly as they leave the fog behind. "Good. It is only because I am so concerned you get your rest, you know." He is pleased with himself, and while it isn't like old times, it's an echo of old times. That, for now, will probably do.

"How much farther to where we get off?" he adds, glancing back out the window.

are there even goats in flag hill

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