manchester | nowhere fast [anthony]

1 FEBRUARY, 2004

Michael felt good about twenty-four. It was divisible by two, three, four, six, eight, and twelve. The Roman numeral was XXIV, which he was incorrectly pronouncing “shiv”. Yesterday, the Tutshill Tornadoes had trounced the Ballycastle Bats, which he was dealing with sort of like he’d deal with the second coming of Christ. Perhaps things weren’t going great -- Cordelia had inflamed half of the Ministry and was now crashing at his house, which was otherwise excellent but which had them both on edge -- but he could live with that. He was shiv years old.

Well, he had been shiv years old yesterday. His birthday was now over, and so was January. Michael always missed January once it was gone. The circumstances of his birth had been so providential -- sixteen minutes before midnight on the thirty-first -- that he had concluded at eight years old that he had been born in the month of January because the month of January had wanted him to be born.

He had told that to Terry and Anthony on his nineteenth birthday, over firewhiskey they’d smuggled up to their dorm, and regretted it as soon as he was sober and could remember that it was fairly asinine to think months were sentient. He had told it to Cordelia, last night; fortunately, she was his girlfriend and had to think his childhood idiocies were sweet. His friends were under no such contract.

He and Anthony both turned up early -- Michael a touch earlier, he realised when he spotted his friend wandering toward the entrance looking for him; he shaded his eyes with one hand and headed over to meet him halfway: “Alright, man? Thanks for coming.”

info; @Anthony Goldstein

Anthony was unreasonably cranky.

For one, it wasn't even Michael's birthday! It had been yesterday, the Saturday, the 31st of January, a day enshrined in his planner as Michael's day, set aside for his best friend since time immemorial (or, more realistically, 1992). And Michael had elected to spend the 31st of January, 2004, with his girlfriend. Anthony had written back that this was fine, he would see him on the first, moving the reservation of the day forward in his calendar to the next week and grumbling the whole while.

There was something nice about this decade, aesthetically, for their ages. 24, 2004. Last year, 23 in 2003. Next year, 25 in 2005. The zeros in the middle lent it all a sort of spaced symmetry that Tony quite liked. It was the sort of asinine thing he would have loved to share with Michael last night over beer or whiskey or firewhiskey -- but for his girlfriend. Tch.

Anthony apparated a few blocks away, tucking his wand into his peacoat pocket before turning the corner. He was early but suspected he wasn't early enough, having spent too long trying to pick a tie for the excursion before remembering neither he nor Michael had any sense of fashion on their own and forgoing the tie altogether. Maybe no tie was good -- it sent the message that he was here to have fun, at the --

Tony squinted up at the red metal sign. The Science and Industry Museum. This was the right place, then. Hands in his coat pockets, he had hardly looked down before seeing Michael walking his way. He pushed his face into a smile, going for a clap at the shoulder. "Course," he said, to both the question and the thanks. He wondered vaguely if Michael had gotten his present yet, a bottles of Cognac accompanied by one of those muggle "Buy a Star" things. He had seen it in a magazine in the summer and ordered one for Michael while drunk -- which one, he couldn't remember.

He looked up at the entrance to the museum. "Are we here for the science, or the industry?"
 

Anthony clapped his shoulder with a sort of grimace and Michael tilted his head in acceptance of the familiarity. “Oh,” he added, cheering up a little, “Aye, I got your gift in the post -- dunno that I can fit a star in the living room but I’ve got the certificate up next to me N.E.W.T.s scores.” It would break a great code of gift-giving to ask how much that had set Anthony back, but he was desperate to know -- the brandy alone looked a little over Michael’s explicitly asked-for price limit, and the star was too much -- so he said, “How in the hell did you wrangle that? It’s a Muggle thing, innit?”

They looked together at the entrance before Michael squared up his shoulders and started in -- “Both,” he said, glancing at Anthony with bemusement. “C’mon, they’ve got a display on the sewerage, didn’t you spend your whole childhood wondering how that works?” He’d been so concerned about where it was going that his father had gotten him a book about it, which had made him far more concerned about where it was going.

Besides -- it was his birthday, so he got to choose the stupid waste of time. Come July, it would be Anthony’s turn. Michael could admit that trains, planes, and automated textile mills weren’t quite in Anthony’s wheelhouse, but it wasn’t like Michael had had all that much fun at the Louvre. At least this was free. At least the process of going in was simple, probably because far fewer people gave a damn about Manchester sewerage than the Mona Lisa. (The Mona Lisa hadn’t even been that great.)

Michael selected a little brochure from a display past the door and flipped it open, biting his lip, headed first to look at a small aeroplane, cordoned off with velvet ropes, assuming Anthony would follow. For a moment he just stood and looked at it, before he decided he’d appreciated it enough and said, stubbing a finger at the map in his brochure, “If we snake around this way we’ll get through the entire exhibit without retracing, and we stop by the bathroom halfway. Do you care about aeroplanes, or can we skip ‘em?” Michael had never been in one and never wanted to be.

Another glance at Anthony, and Michael frowned. “Rough trip? You want to eat first?”

"What about the yard? I'm sure you could fit a star out there." Tony nodded approvingly. Next to the NEWTs was better than Tony had expected, for what was functionally a gag gift. He supposed it wasn't much of a gag -- Tony had too much of his own head up his ass to be good at jokes. What was funny about Tony, other than his inability to shut up? "They got these mail order forms in the back of the muggle magazines, and I had a spare Muggle money order from the last time I was at Gringotts. Wasn't so difficult, all in all -- they litter the streets with their post boxes, Muggles do, and it's not like my flat is unplottable, isn't it?" In classic Anthony Goldstein fashion, the words tumbled out faster and faster as he overexplained. He pressed his lips together before tacking on a final thought. "You should see what they're hawking in the Muggle catalogues, they're selling bits of the moon and the Berlin Wall now."

Both. But of course. Anthony cracked a small grin, much closer to a real smile this time. "I just assumed small demons lived in the loo and moved along to other ridiculous childhood obsessions." A true joke-- he had overheard a particularly alarming part of Talmud study concerning goats and outhouse demons when he was nine and lived in fear of the water closet for weeks afterwards. But now that Michael brought it up -- where did it all go? He was not not intrigued.

Behind Michael, Anthony plucked a brochure of his own, ostensibly to study but mostly to fiddle with as they wandered through the halls, to fold and crease until they emerged from the building Tony had a little paper pile of mush in his hands. He did run his eyes over it, once again realizing Michael had managed to pick something that sounded dull but was somehow interesting for their excursion today. They had a computer here! Tony was intrigued.

By the time he had caught up with Michael at the aeroplane, the brochure had already been bent in half between his palms. Aeroplans? Tony grimaced. "Flying makes me nauseous." Then, in case that wasn't a good enough answer, he added, "Lead on, mate."

Feh, did he really look so bad, or so irritated? Tony wasn't sure which was worse. "I'm alright, don't worry about me," Anthony said, waving off Michael's concern. Did he look too skinny? Was he too skinny? Tony shook his head, trying to dislodge the thought as he followed Michael to the next exhibit.

There was a stretch of silence, or what passed for silence with Tony which was about two seconds since the last person finished their thought. Anthony went to fill it; "So, how is --" shit what was her farkakte name, Michael's girlfriend, it wasn't Sarah still, starts with a "k" sound, "--Caroline, then?" That sounded right.

Given how much of it was being used for storage, Michael’s yard could barely fit Michael in it, much less a few tonnes of burning gas. Probably the closest it would ever get to that was Anthony himself (full of hot air). Distracted thus by this private cruelty, he stared blankly through the explanation of where the star certificate had come from (it was an overlong explanation anyway) and said, at length, “Maybe I’ll look into moon rocks, make it a set.” He’d never really been into astronomy, though — space, like the deep ocean and the rainforest, had always been exactly as bone-chilling as it was captivating. After a point Michael had opted to be interested in things that scientists weren’t still making groundbreaking discoveries about. Like sewers.

These small sewer demons, like a lot of weird things Anthony said, had a seventy-thirty chance of being a Jewish thing or just normal Anthony idiosyncracy. Michael drew his eyebrows together, very seriously: “And you didn’t think to look into that?”

They stood side by side, admiring the little plane. A war plane, Michael suspected, though it was painted more cheerfully than he thought was warranted. “You’ve been inside one of these things?” he demanded, unsure whether to be impressed or horrified. He glanced sideways at his friend — Anthony was making a grim face, so he left the topic hanging and folded his brochure, setting off for the trains. “Just saying,” he said; he couldn’t resist adding, “I know with you and Apparition…”

Michael wasn’t actually any better at Apparating than Anthony — probably the opposite, actually — so he let that go, too, although he was sure he’d only be tired of bringing up that he’d done better on his test than Anthony in another millennium or two. Anthony did look peaky, though — he glanced around to see if there was a vending machine somewhere, but that didn’t seem to fall under “science” or “industry”.

He stopped in front of a locomotive to admire it, but predictably, Anthony didn’t let him enjoy it in silence, asking after who he probably meant as Michael’s girlfriend. “Caroline from purchasing?” said Michael. “Seems alright, her son’s out of jail now. Cordelia is alright too, thanks.” He wondered briefly how much attention Anthony was paying to the scandal she’d had kicked up in the Ministry: he settled for, “She’s moved in for a couple weeks, since she did that article about the Obliviatiors.”

Michael's vacant stare meant he was rambling -- Tony shut up, just nodding at the small comment about moon rocks. He seemed more distressed about the toilet sheydim, which, what had Tony expected? He shrugged. "They weren't hurting me, were they?" This had seemed reasonable at eight years old, slightly less reasonable at twenty-three.

Anthony had meant more flight in general, but he did have an experience to lord over Michael here. "Once," Tony said, looking with some concern at the flimsy-looking pilot's hatch. "Mum has some relatives in Brooklyn what don't know about --" he glanced around, checking the hall was nearly empty but choosing to be vague anyway, "-- us, insisted on picking us up at the aeroport." He remembered precious little about that trip, other than the boredom of hours in the pressurized Muggle death tube and the overwhelming loudness of the Rabinowitz simcha they had been there to attend. There were Goldsteins in New York, too -- luckily, they managed to Portkey back to England by pleading to stay with them. 

I know with you and Apparition, Michael started. Tony rolled his eyes. "Lay off that," he said fondly. Michael had outdone him on the license test, and would likely hold it over him until the day one of them finally bit it.

Her son? Tony opened his mouth to object - she had seemed younger than them, he had thought judging from the way she was draped around Ginny at the wedding and the sheer amount of alcohol she consumed - but Michael finished his thought before he could. Ah, shit. Some splotches of red around his neck formed, tattling on his embarassment. Caroline was close, Tony thought defensively. There were C’s and O’s and R’s and L’s and other assorted vowels in both names, weren’t there? Cordelia, Coraline, Caroline. Easy mistake.

Not that Tony wanted to be known for making easy mistakes.

He bristled a tad at the pointedness of Michael's tone. "My mistake," he admitted grudgingly. It wasn't like Michael made it easy to keep track, the serial monogamist he was. He stared at the locomotive engine for a moment. It was well maintained; in the polished metal, Tony's reflection was clear enough that he could see his own eyebrow hike up. "Oh, she's the journalist?" That could be taken a few ways -- she's the journalist as in the one Michael had slept with nearly a year ago, or she's the journalist as in the reason he had spent two hours with someone from the Obliviators office, trying to convince them that they had very few legal options. The name was ringing a bell, now - C. Leighton, as opposed to either L. Leighton from the Quidditch pool.

"Moved in?" Tony asked, willing his eyebrow back down to a normal level. "What, permanently?" He couldn't imagine any woman willingly staying in Michael's house, coated as it was with years of clutter. "She's been sacked, then?"

“Not yet,” said Michael. Sometimes he wondered where Anthony had gotten all his neuroses – he sure didn’t seem to have had any healthy paranoias as a child. Anthony might have had all the hallmarks of a severe anxiety disorder, but Michael had always considered himself the true pessimist of their friendship. He’d spent half of his childhood with a vague expectation that things were out to get him. Particularly the government.

As usual, Anthony wanted him to lay off the Apparition thing. “Never,” said Michael cheerfully, as they moved on.

“No, it’s fine,” said Michael, not interested in an argument on what was no longer technically his birthday, but was at least close enough. It wasn’t like he could blame Anthony for losing interest, which he thought had happened sometime in 2001. Although – really – he’d been seeing Cordelia for a good deal longer than he’d seen anybody since Cho Chang, and Anthony had actually met her once, and weren’t lawyers supposed to have good memories? and so, on second thought, he was a little offended.

It wasn’t like Anthony kept him up to date on his exploits, though, so – no, it was fine. He frowned at their reflections, rippled over the curved, shiny surface, and smoothed a bit of his hair off his forehead, watched with mild amusement as Anthony’s face contorted with either confusion or comprehension (he could rarely tell.) Oh, she’s the journalist could have been taken any number of ways, so Michael opted for the least offensive. “Not permanently,” he said, “And she’s still working, she’s just not comfortable staying on her own, I think she were getting threats in the mail.” She had been cagey in the details and Michael had not asked. He added, after a moment, “Figure it’ll die down soon.”

Actually, he didn’t, which he wasn’t telling Cordelia: he considered himself a greater pessimist than her, too. But – for her sake – he did hope it would die down, even if he liked not living alone. He moved to the next locomotive, which was very similar to the first, and subjected it to the same scrutiny.