in all chaos there is reason / LORCAN

[Lysander Scamander]

Lysander Scamander was stood in the tiny kitchen of the flat he shared with his twin brother with his head stuck in the fridge. This would have been quite a sight in itself, but as he was also dressed in nothing but a pair of boxers emblazoned with the phrase "LET'S GET PHYSICAL" over and over again it was double the treat. Since Lysander had, you know, his head in the fridge, all he was currently looking at was the side of a box containing a Tesco's cheesecake. Lysander was frowning at this box. Frowning really quite ferociously.

He was actually fairly uncomfortable. Either side of his face was pressed against very cold shelves, and he could feel a bag of carrots digging into the back of his scalp. He shifted his weight from his left foot to his right, and continued frowning at the cheesecake. When he'd originally put his head in the fridge he hadn't really been sure what to do with his hands, so he had one resting on the handle of the fridge door and the other on the bottom of the fridge in front of the veg drawer, where it was getting rather chilly.

The burn on his chest - the thing he'd come here to cool down in the first place - was hurting abominably. He was also extremely hungry, which was the reason he was glaring at the cheesecake. It felt rather like being taunted to have it so close but so out of reach. Experimentally, he stuck his tongue out to see if the box had somehow absorbed the taste of the cake. To nobody's surprise but his, it hadn't. Lysander put his tongue away and swore in surprisingly cheerful tones for a boy with his head stuck in a fridge.

Fortunately for him, he heard the rattle of keys in the front door, and only a few seconds later his brother's footsteps shuffling in.

"LORCAN!" he bellowed, smacking the bottom of the fridge with his cold hand to get additional attention, "HELP."

[Lorcan Scamander]

Lorcan came home feeling quite cheerful. He'd gone out to have lunch with some friends, and, considering they'd all split the bill, had had enough money left to get an ice cream, too. He came in the door, whistling, only to abruptly stop at Lysander's yell. He turned around, and then stopped in order to fully absorb the tableau in front of him.

"Er, Ly, even if you're being overworked at the Ministry, there are better ways to kill yourself," he said, dropping his keys on the side table, before noting one important detail he'd missed. "Oi, those are mine!" he yelled, pointing at the (obviously) distinctive boxers. He tilted his head and then winced. "Ly, I don't think those are washed, either," he added, before focusing on the situation at hand again, and starting to walk towards Lysander again.

"Do I even want to know what you're doing right now?" he asked.

[Lysander Scamander]

Lysander huffed out one very long, exaggerated sigh. Trust his brother to focus on the non-essential details.

"Mine are all in the washing machine," he informed Lorcan shortly, pulling his hand off the fridge door handle in order to wave it vaguely in the direction of the washing machine, which was so full of clothes it would almost undoubtedly succeed in getting absolutely none of them clean, and then put his hand back. "These were on the lamp so I just put them on."

Shifting his weight again, Lysander gave another very pointed sigh. His face really was very chilly.

"I," he said with extreme emphasis on all the syllables he could manage, "Am cooling my burn down. Obviously. If it isn't too much of a hassle for you, dear brother, could we maybe continue this conversation when my head is slightly less stuck in a fridge?"

He braced both hands against whatever surfaces they were on and gave his head another experimental wiggle. It was no good. Trying to pull it even half a centimetre backwards made it feel like his ears were going to get ripped off. And Lysander really did like his ears. They were so handy. And he felt like the whole aesthetic of his face would probably get thrown off if he was suddenly wandering around without ears.

[Lorcan Scamander]

Lorcan rolled his eyes and ignored Lysander's sigh. "You are a wizard," he said, "Why don't you learn how to use a cleaning spell? And I don't understand why my dirty clothes are any better than your dirty clothes," he finished, shooting a baleful glance at the washer. It wasn't as though either of them actually had any idea how to work the thing anyway, it always just ended up being Lorcan fishing dirty clothes out of the thing and using a cleaning spell once neither of them had anything left to wear. Probably Ly thought some sort of magical washing elf came by to do it, since he was usually at work when Lorcan had days off.

"It didn't occur to you that the lamp isn't where I usually put clean clothes?" he ventured, and then rolled his eyes again when Ly mentioned that he'd burned himself - again. 

"Oh, obviously," he muttered, before getting in closer to get a better look at Ly's head, and then leaning out of the way while Ly gave it another try. "That probably would have worked before if it was going to work," Lorcan said, and then gave the fridge a little poke. "I don't think pulling's going to help much," he said, seeing that Lysander seemed firmly edged in on all sides. "I could try enlarging the fridge?" he offered, "That'd give you some room. Or, I could take off the back of your head, which wouldn't wreck the fridge as much," he added, deadpan.

[Lysander Scamander]

Lysander paused for a moment to assess his brother's question. The cheesecake was treated to another frown, but more of a ponderous than cross one this time as he thought through Lorcan's response. "I think I missed the lesson where we did cleaning spells," he concluded eventually. This wasn't really much of a surprise, since it was reasonable to assume that if it wasn't a Care of Magical Creatures lesson, Lysander had probably either slept through it or not turned up at all. He did not deign to answer the second part of Lorcan's grump. He hadn't known they were used, and had given them a cursory check-over before struggling into them. If they'd been at all dirty he wouldn't have put them on.

By giving his head a bit of a wiggle and rolling his eyes so far down they almost hurt, he could just about make out Lorcan's shape moving around assessing the situation. He huffed again. God. It wasn't like he was going to break him out of prison. He just needed to be out of the damn fridge.

"Good idea," he told his brother in a tone laden with sarcasm, "Chop the back of my head off, great plan. It's not like I need it, oh no. You'll probably say it's an improvement. Like those lobotomonomy thingies someone said I ought to get. Lysander doesn't need his head, not really," he continued more to himself than anybody else, hoping that Lorcan would just get on with it and enlarge the stupid fridge, "It's not like he's got nice hair or anything, or a brain he needs to go on living and stuff, nah. Just chop it off."

[Lorcan Scamander]

Lorcan made a face at Lysander and said, "How many did you actually go to anyway? You'd probably have picked up a lot more basic level spells if you'd attended regularly." Lysander had actually not been marked down for all of the classes he'd actually missed, since Lorcan would occasionally pretend to be him if Ly's string of absences got particularly long or noticeable. Except inCharms since Lorcan actually liked Charms. Nevertheless, Lorcan had no trouble believing Ly had missed the class on cleaning charms, and would have been mor surprised if Ly had said he'd been there.

"I don't think lobotomonomy is right." Lorcan said, seizing on to the most irrelevant portion of Lysander's angry ramble, "Too many syllables. And, you know, you probably could get away with only having half a head," he continued, with a carefully indifferent tone of voice, "Or maybe I could just take an ear or something." He snorted to himself at the thought of Ly walking around with only one ear, and then having to explain that he'd lost it in a deadly fight with a refrigerator - 'Vicious, you know, deadly creatures'. Still sniggering over his imaginary dialogue, Lorcan fished his wand out and muttered the enlarging spell.

"There," he said, "You had better hope that didn't break the fridge."

[Lysander Scamander]

"Well I don't know," Lysander responded somewhat tetchily. He really was cold, and debating attendance records was so not high on his list of priorities right now, "If I'd known how many I was supposed to be at I might have attended more. It's not like I missed them on purpose, I just forgot them."

He gritted his teeth as Lorcan set to winding him up in earnest. Usually he was extremely content to let his brother rabbit on as long as he liked, but since he had a very pressing need for something else to be happening right now he was really not prepared to let it slide. Grimacing at the cheesecake one final time, Lysander decided, fuck it, his ears weren't that important, and they probably would stay attached if he heaved just right....

And did so just as Lorcan enlarged the fridge. With a loud yelp of astonishment, Lysander tumbled backwards, knocked over by the force of his own attempt at pulling, and crashing heavily into his twin.

"Fuck!" he shrieked as he caught his funny bone on the corner of the kitchen table, landing heavily on Lorcan and then rolling off to writhe on the floor in agony, clutching at his elbow. His day was going so badly. It really wasn't fair at all.

[Lorcan Scamander]

"You say that like the problem with you missing classes was your reasoning, and not the fact that you were, you know, missing classes." Lorcan responded, somewhat smugly. Usually, Lorcan wouldn't be having quite so much fun at Ly's expense, but then, he also wasn't likely to find Ly with his head stuck in the fridge, either.

Unlike most normal people, making fun of Ly about being stuck in the fridge was less likely to get him riled up than blathering on about something else; even though Ly was so absentminded, he tended to get very irritatingly practical when there was a proper problem to deal with, so the best way to get a reaction out of him was to be as annoying and inefficient as possible.

Predictably, though, the second Lorcan actually decided to be a good person and dealt with the fridge, Lysander came barreling into him, knocking the wind out of him, and nearly impaling the both of them on the kitchen table, before they both tumbled into a groaning mass of Scamander on the kitchen floor.

"What - in the hell? Have you forgotten how to walk recently?" Lorcan wheezed from the ground as Lysander proceeded to swear in pain.

[Lysander Scamander]

Now that Lysander was gaining on a fairly normal human temperature and free to move himself around as much as he wanted, his mood predictably sky-rocketed. Still nursing his sore elbow, he scraped himself off the floor and then cocked his head down at Lorcan.

"You crumpled like a paper bag," he told him in faintly admonishing tones, extending a hand down to offer him help to his feet, "I always thought you'd take a hit better than that."

Now that normality was restored and Lysander could feel his chilly ears, his attention began to wander and very shortly latched onto the next most immediate problem on his list: the burn he'd sustained whilst trying to coax his moody salamander out of the fireplace so he could rebuild the fire. Pushing his chin so far in it almost disappeared, he got a good long look at the angry welt on his chest. It was really quite sore. He would have been quite content to patch himself up, but he'd left his wand at Dominique's by mistake and not gone back to get it yet. He was reasonably competent with healing spells - a necessity for someone with such a proclivity for getting themselves into dangerous and painful situations - but he didn't particularly want to try them out with a borrowed wand, even Lorcan's. Speaking of which -

"Hey," he said suddenly, jerking his head back in his twin's direction, "You're all into charms and stuff. Can you fix this?"

[Lorcan Scamander]

Lorcan gave Lysander a particularly sour look before taking Ly's hand and levering himself up. Unlike his now practically chipper brother, Lorcan was not at all in a better position than he had been, considering previously he'd actually been in a good mood. And not bruised.

"You say that like I've taken a hit before," he grumbled, "Been bitten a fair bit, I suppose," he added, a little ruefully, "But if most of the things we've seen hit me I'd be squished flat."

He winced as he got up and tried to stretch out and feel his back where he was pretty confident he'd hit the ground. He watched Lysander peering at the burn on his chest - which did look rather painful now that Lorcan could see it properly.

On the one hand he felt a little ashamed that he'd gotten that irritated with Ly. Of course he wouldn't have gone straight for the fridge if it hadn't been a bad burn and hurting, but on the other hand, both of them taking stock of various injuries after getting out of a scrape put him in mind of some of the more exhilarated memories from when they were younger. He shot Ly a little grin, almost seeing the thoughts spinning in his brother's head, and waited for him to speak.

He rolled his eyes at Lysander's request. "Merlin, Ly, you can't be that lazy. You wouldn't have been hired if you didn't know how to do a healing charm," Lorcan grumbled again, before performing the charm.

Unlike his twin, he didn't have to deal with injuries that often so he checked to make sure the burn was actually looking better before he stowed his wand away. "Why didn't you do a healing charm first thing, anyway?" He asked.

[Lysander Scamander]

Lysander grinned broadly at his brother and inclined his head to concede the point. As children, one of the first things the pair of them had learnt was to get out of the way quickly. They both had quite impressively fast reflexes, and Lysander was certain that this was entirely due to their upbringing. He'd seen Lorcan dodge out of the way of things so quickly he'd barely seen him move, and was quite sure he operated in a similar way. Inside their flat was quite a different matter, since neither of them were ever really expecting to be attacked or stampeded or otherwise injured, and Lysander at least tended to hurt himself a lot more at home than he did out on the job, weirdly.

"I hired myself," Lysander told Lorcan with a snooty tone, and was about to add something pompous and entirely false about never wanting to be beholden to a boss (since he was strongly considering doing just that) when he felt the burn on his chest disappear and craned his head back down in delgiht. "Hey! Thanks!" Grinning from ear to ear, he bounded across the room to seize Lorcan briefly in a hug, and then danced back towards the fridge to poke through it for something to eat. Now he was pain-free and generally alright, hunger was the next priority.

Pulling out the cheesecake that had been mocking him bare minutes ago, Lysander pulled a fork out of the drawer and then turned around to lean against the counter and direct a withering look at Lorcan.

"You think I didn't think of that?" he demanded, stuffing a large forkful of cheesecake into his mouth and having to speak messily around it, "I left mine at Dom's."

[Lorcan Scamander]

Lorcan scoffed at Ly's highbrow tone. "You didn't," he said scornfully, "You had to go and interview just the same as everyone else." He was tempted to belabor the point and make fun of Ly for submitting to the boring structures of society or something, but was honestly a little worried that too much ribbing would make Ly dramatically resign or something equally silly.

It was clear Lysander's burn was better, since he came bouncing across the room. Lorcan submitted to the hug with good humor, and then asked "How did you get that burn, anyway?" while Lysander rummaged in the fridge again. "Careful," Lorcan called out, grinning, "Might get stuck again!" His expression changed again when Lysander pulled out the cheesecake. "Oooh, was that in there the whole time?" he said, and then hurried up and reached over the counter to grab his own spoon before digging in. They had a mismatched set of cutlery that had somewhere between five to six more spoons than forks or knives, so he wasn't very surprised.

"At Dom's?" Lorcan gave a little shudder. "I don't blame you for not getting it back, then," he said between bites of cheesecake. "Entering that flat is like walking into a den of manticores."