Morange Part II

Drinking was the closest thing Matt could get to freedom from the nightmares that plagued him. The only problem was it made certain nightmares a reality. Not only was he battling with his drinking and nightmares but he had developed a rather nasty cough. A small part of him was afraid it may be a case of the "green itch". But he didn't want to get his wand in a knot over nothing so he simply carried on, scotch bottle in hand. Matt wasn't quite drunk yet but he was well on his way. If someone didn't stop him now he wasn't sure how bad he'd end up that night.

Oh, this one looks fun.

Hallucinations were starting. He could almost feel the knife being driven into his thigh. The cruel laughter was audible over his screams of pain as his arm was dislocated for the seventh time. He got no peace, he hadn't slept in days and his mouth was dry and full of the constant taste of blood. There was a light hanging overhead, he looked down and saw a chest plastered in blood and a blur holding a knife above him. "Having fun yet." it asked in a menacing voice. Matt made an attempt to reply but nothing came out of his mouth but a wheezy cough. "Traitor."

He grasped the bottle even more tightly in his nightmare it had appeared as though he had fallen to the ground. He was suddenly aware that he was in an alleyway of downtown London. He was sweating heavy and his face was dirty. Hair plastered to his forehead from sweat and his clothes were tattered. He couldn't recall anything from the past seventeen hours or so. He needed to find someone he knew fast. He through the scotch bottle away and it hit the ground with a definite crash.

He disapparated to the safest place he could think of at the moment. As he staggered up the steps towards the home of Jack Dyllan and Nemo Omara he was aware of the pain in his shoulder. He grasped it tightly and let out a wheezy cough as he banged on the door, hoping Jack wasn't home. "Mo! Open the f*cking door!" he called loudly and angrily.

To have left Nemo lying dead and gut-loaded with the drink and the drug of his choice would have been more merciful than the procedural confiscation of his wand; a cruelty which had reduced Nemo to a mess of a muggle. Without his usual methods of release during a bout of mania, Nemo could do no more than waltz throughout his companion’s home with fistfuls of class, swaying with the fluency of an auror to the rhythm of ancient rock songs. Thus, he would have been better left for dead, than alone amongst the coffee mugs and window panes.

Nemo swung a violent arm across his torso and strummed the strings of a nonexistent guitar with the base of a lamp, feet moving across the floor smoothly, swiveling in time with his feverish playing. “I’m gonna take it down – Oh, down, down, down! So don’t you play around!” Nemo sang in high falsetto, and with a fierce jerk of his arm, he threw the lamp against the nearest unsuspecting wall whilst he danced. “I’m gonna pull it – pull it – pull the trigger!” He dove to his knees and slid upon his their caps towards the sofa, fingers trailing along the ground and the fractured glass that he’d scattered there as he flew. In his wake, all that Jack had previously owned which could be broken lay in pitiful heaps of threatening shards.

And what a beautiful song they had made.

Nemo snatched the remote control from the coffee table and leapt to his feet with a flourish, spinning on the spot. “Shoot to thrill” - he hurled the device towards the television – “way to kill” he sprung atop the table and outstretched his arms. At his feet before his stage’s edge he had aligned five coffee mugs, and with his fingers twitching off his palms at his sides he kicked each from the table. One after another, the mugs met their ends, and as though he had choreographed his act of destruction, the last note of ‘Shoot to Thrill’ erupted throughout the house at a volume capable of puncturing eardrums and dissolved to silence.

A silence which was interrupted immediately by a familiar conductor of curses.

“Sparky?” Nemo stretched from the coffee table to the sofa and climbed over its back towards the door. “Did you bring my wand?” He inquired with an audible and almost childish hope as he stumbled upon bleeding soles across the room. But in an abrupt change of direction he veered from his path, opting to pop his head through a hole in the shattered window. The pane’s glass teeth grazed his jugular, and he grinned madly on; as though he found the present danger adorable. “Wuzzup?” He shouted over the introduction of the next track.

Matt balanced himself against the door frame that was the home of Nemo Omara. His head hit the wall sideways and he sighed heavily. He wasn't even sure if his friend was able to hear him over the sound of his music. However as the notes ended he noticed the appearance of the face of a man whom Matt frequented sexual favours alcohol from. He smirked grimly as Nemo's neck came awfully close to the jagged edges of glass that was their window. There were many things Matt should have said, however the only thing going through his mind was one simple thing.

"Jack is going to kill you." he said, as he pointed to the window in which Nemo's head was protruding. Then again Matt was almost certain that Jack put up with things very similar to this hourly. It was not like Nemo to simply sit and watch tele with a cold beer. In fact he wouldn't doubt if as soon as he entered their home that the floor was covered in blood. As the pain in his shoulder sharply worsened he buckled slightly. "Okay, I'm coming in." he said as he grabbed the doorknob and with a forceful twist he fell through his doorway onto a glass covered floor. Not the most inviting landing pad but what else did he truly expect.

“You didn’t bring my wand,” Nemo noted sourly through his makeshift noose, though the frantic drumming of his red-sticky toes against the ground to ‘Speaking in Tongues’ subtracted greatly from his forced frown’s effect. “Or the Scotch,” he added as an almost-bitter afterthought when the favorable smell of alcohol caught the attention of Nemo’s senses. His eyes, visibly clouded by the near future that had invaded his mind, followed Matt’s fingers when they coiled around the doorknob.

He pulled his head back, so to withdraw it from the window – to no avail. He cocked his head to the side and stepped backwards, but his impatience foiled his attempt.

His palms stuck like suction cups to the window when he flattened them along the glass that held him captive and with great force he pushed against it, jerking his body backward simultaneously. But when he freed himself at last, his prediction had expired; Matt had fallen. He looked slowly downward at the streaks of blood that he had painted across the surface that now served as his friend’s bed, before tearing through the ramblings of The Eagles of Death Metal with a level tone, “You aren’t supposed to lay in it, man.”

But rather than proposing to lift Matt from the floor, Nemo dropped in a swing of limbs to lay flat upon his back at his friend’s side. He sung carelessly as he lifted his arms to fold them beneath his head, “You’ll speak in tongues – now let me demonstrate baby,” but his voice ran quickly through the words; at a far faster pace than the lead. He tapped his feet together repeatedly and leveled his gaze with Matt, “Wanna help me break the mirrors?”

Matt groaned as he felt stinging coming from his palms which he had instinctively placed in front of him as he fell. They had gotten the worst of it, and seeing as his suit was already pretty tattered and bloody it was impossible to tell if he had sustained any new injuries. And of course his friend simply prattled on about nonsense. But that was one of the reasons Nemo was such an enjoyable presence, nothing really got him down. Well, nothing except everything...and everyone. But as he felt Nemo's presence next to him a smile began to form on his face. Some part of him was going crazy and his companion was only pushing the process. "The more time I spend with you the crazier you seem my friend." he told him as he began to lift himself from the glass covered floor.

He saw fresh blood pool as he lifted his hands from the floor and he looked at them. His hands were velvet red, for some reason it seemed comforting to him. He was on his knees and he could tell they were damaged a fair amount as well. Laughter erupted from his mouth as he finally got to his feet and shut the door. Matt and Nemo hadn't technically started a conversation with each other yet. They were both pretty much talking to themselves, this thought only increased Matt's laughter.

His laughter diminished as he looked at his friend who had remained unmoved from his spot on the floor. He looked like utter hell, more so than usual. Assuming Jack had taken his wand and other means of recreation he had resorted to wreaking havoc to their home and himself. "We should get you cleaned up." he said as his face fell. Matt was not in a very stable mental state at the present moment. But he felt as if he needed to deal with Nemo first then spill his guts.

While it had not been Nemo's immediate intention to draw a laugh from Matt with his actions, for the too-present buzz of energy beneath his crawling skin had all but stolen his attention, the pride in having acted as the catalyst in his friend's amusement bloomed all the same.

"Crazy?" Nemo pondered aloud - and climbed to his feat in a forward lunge towards the stereo. He skidded, glass crystals dragging beneath the tearing flesh of his heels. But there was no pause between his startlingly lively activities before his middle digit pushed back a button on the player, spinning the CD onward. "All aboard!" Nemo cheered alongside Black Sabbath as he folded in half, leaning back against gravity with his air guitar in hand, until he had arched so far upward as to peer over the tuffs of his overgrowing hair at Matt's lean form.

"We could smash the bathtub!" Nemo agreed at Matt's mention of 'cleaning up', a term which brought to mind a far more frightening concept of 'getting clean'. For Nemo's thought processes traveled at a hellish speed when he was in such a state; it took little more than a gesture to birth an entire hive of doubts and tempting whispers. But he danced on, turning and leaping and swaying erotically erratically in the midst of the ruins of Jack’s household. “Go find the hammer!”

Matt unbuttoned his suit jacket and loosened his tie, or what was left of it. He grimaced as the sun shone through the window and hit the trail of blood that followed his friend across the floor. Allowing himself a moment of mental rest before the latest of Nemo's music blew his eardrums. He made a jump from the clear area of the floor to the coffee table which seemed to be one of the safest of places of his not so humble abode.

He simply stared at his lively friend, his actions unhindered by the damage done to his heels. There was an aura of awe given off by the look that Matt had as he stared. He had never met anyone such as this man, Omara. A faint smile crossed the Lestrange's lips as placed his hands in his pockets, watching the movements of Nemo. "Where's the nearest ATM?" Matt said under his breath. Yet he spoke loud enough so that if Nemo was listening carefully he'd catch it. He had strayed far from the path of any attempt at helping his friend. He simply pulled out his wand and twirled it between his fingers. Mocking Nemo he said "Why get a hammer when I've got one of these?"

He smirked playfully at his friend and pointed it at his stereo. Increasing the volume of the device by a few octaves.

Warm fingertips drew staining trails down the seams of Nemo’s sides while his hips rocked perpetually on. He dipped, both towards the floor and in to the seemingly inexhaustible supply of life that sloshed throughout his veins. Such vigor he possessed, that it threatened to rip through him; that he felt confined to too small a bottle while he was capable of spilling an ocean of energy. “Crazy! But that’s how it goes…” He hummed, lest he lose himself in the tangle of his limbs.

And while the more notable of the questions that Matt had posed had been lost in the heavy ring of instruments from the stereo, the sudden presence of the other’s wand pulled Nemo towards it in the manner of a magnet. Jelousy did not flood Nemo, as he had expected after having gone so painfully long in the absence of his own weapon, rather he was overwhelmed by a nauseating excitement toward being reunited with the world of wizardry. “Maybe, it’s not too late…” Nemo purred distractedly and jumped atop the island of wood atop which Matt had sought refuge from an ocean of glass, and he proceeded to dance at Matt’s side. “To learn how to love, and forget how to hate,” He chimed, helium high, and flattened his back against his friend’s chest, casting him a backward smirk.

With a grip that stated clearly that his desire was not to steal from Matt his wand, Nemo joined the other’s hand around the weapon. Simultaneously, he tipped his tense neck back to rest his head on Matt's shoulder and with a liberated chuckle he called, “An explosion on three!”

The situation you would currently find Matt in could only be caused by Nemo. It seemed as though the haggard man brought the worst out of him. Not that there was much complaining about it, ever. But all of Matt's troubles seemed to evaporate like the puddle that was there yesterday but gone today. No longer was he plagued by hallucinations or nightmares, or the want to punish himself. Instead all he could think of was destroying the home of Jack Dyllan. The woman who had jump started this entire situation. And as Nemo joined him on the table he couldn't help but let his hips sway along side his companions. The reason he had nearly died numerous times, the reason he was here, the reason he was about to destroy an entire home.

He looked down at the man who's head had found it's way to his shoulder. A chuckled erupted and words followed. A smirk found it's way upon Matt's face and his eyes widened in excitement. Nemo was a dangerous man and even more so now. A million different things rushed through Matt's head all at once. His present state of cognitive awareness was not one unlike a four year old child on a sugar rush who hasn't slept in 24 hours. All he knew was that he had a wand and a room to destroy with another four year old with an even bigger sugar rush and even less sleep.

He took one look around the room. Thinking of the varying ways to piss off Jack. Turn the wallpaper bright orange. Splatter the blood on the walls, there seemed to be an infinite quantity coming from Nemo's body. He let out a childish giggle as Nemo held his hand and guided the wand around the room. "You point, I'll cast." he told his friend with great enthusiasm.

There had been no escaping the anxiety; an ever-present force not to be reckoned with. Yet the lemon-lime smile that Nemo had worn as he had performed his solo act for the sake of the Jarveys and what furniture remained to be broken had been overtaken by a beaming expression. His eyes, stupidly blue, were set alight by this new exhilaration, which was neither like a whirlwind nor suffocation, as his previous fit of mania had been. With Matt as his audience and willing stage hand, the chaos had an entirely different feel. This was enjoyable. This was, quite literally, explosive.

“One…” Nemo drew the number out over an agonizing length of time as he guided Matt’s hand around the room, and he looked at all that they had yet to reduce to rubble from the perspective of the tip of his wand. He pulled Matt’s hand gently in the direction of a window in the only display of self-restraint that Nemo had shown during his antics – before shouting out a decisive “Nah!” and moving elsewhere. Alas, coming to the conclusion that he cared less about where the explosion was aimed and upon what the damage was cast than the destruction and the show, Nemo closed his eyes, swayed his hips and pointed his and Matt’s hands at whatever stood before him, and yelled, “Twothree Fire!”