monstermanual | visitor

Real people help, yes. They were not close enough then for the brothers to suggest any magical healers to Gerard. He stifled a laugh at that description of a hospital as opposed to a magical healer.

"It's no problem, I like being able to help," Gerard said, sincere. He'd had to basically beg to be put on the chore wheel. "There, all patched. ... I think there might still be some pop tarts in the cupboard. The brothers probably won't be back until morning, though. Job. I think it's a werewolf thing."

He almost winced, shaking his head, "Yeah, if it's Kin that's at least an overnight job, and you know I'm going to have pop tarts, I'm going to go steal one of Cal's shirts first, though." He wiggled his fingers through the ragged tear in the one he'd been wearing, "This one's ragpile fodder now."

A quick little flicker of a smile followed, "And I know which ones I'm not supposed to touch." Though it occurred to him that it had been long enough since the last time he'd made it here that the list might have changed. But even if it had, the organization system probably hadn't. He took a moment to clean up the wrappers from everything that had been used, dropping them in the trash on his way to Cal's room. He was entirely amused to find a shirt that if it wasn't one he'd left there the last time he'd been there, was one with exactly the same print on it, 'had my patience tested, came back negative', and that was good enough for him.

Returning to the kitchen he was likewise pleased to find that the pop tarts were still in the same cabinet, and he jostled the box in Gerard's direction, "You want one? I got good at making the edges crispy without burning the middles." Which was basically the extent of his culinary expertise.

Gerard had a brief moment of mild concern that some of his shirts were left in Cal's room, but if he had they would probably be in the dirty pile anyway. He put the first aid kit away in the meantime, made sure there wasn't any blood spill that needed cleaning up too, and put more pop tarts on the grocery list.

"No thank you - they're a little too sweet for me," Gerard said with a small smile that said he really was grateful for the offer, though. The most pop tart he usually had was a single small bite of one Cal offered him and that was enough for him. "I know my Cal likes coffee more but I make a good cuppa tea if you'd like."

He considered for a moment as he went about unwrapping a pair of pop tarts, dropping them into the toaster and adjusting the setting, "Sure, just as long as it's not the green stuff Nik likes to pretend doesn't taste like boiled grass clippings."

And sure, Cal preferred coffee, but he wasn't going to look a gift drink in the mouth, either, or however the saying went, "Because it definitely does, still not sure how he can't taste that."

Gerard chuckled. He liked a good green tea on occasion, but tonight was a night for staying up until the brothers came home so he was going for the caffeine kick. Of course, matcha was good for that but he was pretty sure that fell under the 'grass' that Cal was complaining about.

"English breakfast it is, I won't even be judgmental about how much sugar is put in," he offered, prepping the kettle and the mugs. Contrary to what his Cal often thought, Gerard did like sweet things on occasion, just not ... the made from mostly sugar stuff the half-Auphe liked.

"So... you jump realities often?"

That first statement got a twitch of a smile out of him, lifting both hands briefly in mock-surrender, "If it's good and there's actual milk in the fridge and not whatever non-milk Nik's using now, I'll only use a reasonable amount of sugar." Granted, their ideas on what was reasonable were bound to differ, but that was beside the point.

He snorted at the question, "And that's uh... not a question with an easy answer. Sometimes yes, sometimes no." There was also the fact that his gates had to go through Tumulus every time even if it was just briefly, and that definitely complicated things.

"Sometimes when I gate I end up in the same place, same reality I left from, sometimes it's another one, a lot of the time I don't even notice right away because there are a lot of them that are really similar." He'd gotten better at recognizing ones he'd been to before, at least, "Sometimes I'll get bounced to a new one every time I open a gate, sometimes not. Case in point, I've been trying to get away from the dino dimension for..." He blew out a breath, shaking his head, "I don't know, maybe a week?"

There was indeed actual milk in the fridge. For cereal, but it would do for tea as well. Though Gerard did not mind nut milks - even if it was a struggle to not make a dirty joke about them every time.

He managed so far, but it was a game of Russian Roulette and someday he was going to lose it.

"Christ, that's rough," he said, sympathetic, brows creasing as he considered what that meant, though. "...What about your Nik?"

He couldn't imagine Niko letting Cal go for so long without worrying sick, but maybe this Cal's Niko was different?

So far the only non-dairy milks that Cal could tolerate -and even then only in small doses- were oat and barley, the rest of them just tasted capital-letter Wrong in one way or another that he'd never really been able to pin down, and didn't really see a need to, in the end.

He just nodded at the initial response, about to answer that yes it was, but he'd mostly gotten used to it, when the question right on the heels was enough to make him go still. It had been long enough now that the grief and rage of it weren't in any danger of overwhelming him, but not long enough yet that it didn't hit him like a kick to the gut.

While the sudden and intense lack of response was probably enough of an answer for anyone with eyes and a working sense of empathy, he still answered: "Gone." His tone quiet and final.

Gerard knew it was the wrong thing to ask the moment Cal went still. He knew how codependent his Cal was with Niko, that this one could survive so far ... it couldn't be without a struggle every damn day, could it? The kettle started to give the first breathy whispers of a whistle and Gerard turned off the heat without looking, moved it to a different burner where it could be ignored.

"Oh - Caliban, I'm so sorry-"

For it happening, for asking about it. Knowing better, that this wasn't his Cal, didn't change Gerard's first instinct at seeing such pain out in the open like that on a face he loved. Always careful to make sure Cal saw him coming, Gerard reached out to hug him tightly.

Telegraphing his movements was definitely the best call, as that kept Cal from bucking away instinctively. He was, however, still tense and unresponsive to the hug, but that was what happened even with the resident Cal and Niko as often as not, at least at first, "S'fine. You didn't know."

The answer was followed by: "And it's just Cal." As far as he remembered, the resident Cal didn't mind the full name, and he definitely did, and he was starting to get a better picture of just why Gerard was there. Meanwhile, he hadn't tried to extricate himself from the hug yet, but the tipping point to when he would wasn't far off.

Gerard murmured "Cal," and didn't push it. Even his Cal had a sometimes complicated relationship with his name, but permitted it from Gerard because if what it meant to him... a bit like how Gerard stopped dying his hair because of how Cal made it into something different than another reflection of his mother in him.

That was his Cal though, not this one. He let go with a final squeeze and stepped back. Fuck, right, the tea. He busied himself with getting that poured.

"Sorry," he said again. For bringing it up. For the hug without asking, the full name in a backwards sort of too familiar when using it. "I'll get the milk and sugar, just a sec-"

There was another little head-shake even as he turned to pull a plate down, popping the toaster and flipping his pop tarts onto it, going about buttering the undersides even as he replied, "It's fine. Really." Though that level of fine mostly hinged on not bringing it up again, which given what felt like an actual apology, didn't seem likely that he would.

But it was time for a change of subject, which was why -during his almost-too-precise buttering job- he asked: "Have you been here a while?" Clearly it had happened sometime after he'd last gone walkabout, but as he wasn't 100% sure how long he'd been gone, there was a lot of space to work from.

Quick to latch on to the subject change, Gerard nodded.

"A little over a year now? I do go back to Morden on occasion though to tend to business, but - I've got my own room here and it feels more like home than the bookstore ever did," he explained, bringing the tea to the table along with the milk and sugar to be added to the tea as needed. For his part, he added a little bit of sugar but that was all. Milk generally only went in his black tea when he was upset. "I take art classes at the university too."

Cal added enough milk to cloud the liquid over, and not much more than that, and did actually take a sip before adding sugar, definitely more than Gerard had used, but not as much as the resident Cal probably would have.

His head tilted a little at the answer as he did so, calculating, "That sounds like..." A little head shake, "I don't know, but not too long after the last time I wandered off. Time's weird in Tumulus, but I try not to stay there any longer than I have to." Especially when combining that with not knowing fur sure what dimension he was going to pop out into when he left the place.

Gerard didn't know Cal to drink tea at all, so they were already in new territory that way. He was good at making it, though, both for his own tastes and up to Niko's exacting standards. He made a grimacing face, knowing that his Cal at least got trapped in Tumulus for years and came back with only days missing.

"I was there for about ten minutes and that was more than enough for me," Gerard said with a little shudder. Of course, part of that was the ruptured connection to his patron which always left him reeling.

That got his attention, head popping up and the red that had faded from his eyes after his arrival -a side effect of gating, especially when he was already running an adrenaline high- seeping back in, just briefly, more like the reflection of an animal's eyes in camera flash than anything, there and then gone, "Cal took you there?"

The only times he'd taken people there was to leave them -or parts of them- there, or in the rare instances where there had been no other choice but to use it as a bypass. He vaguely recalled using it as a storage area, very very temporarily, for some cash and safe deposit box contents from a bank, but the memory was hazy at best as he hadn't been entirely himself at the time.

"Cal's family took us there," Gerard said with a wince. Maybe his estimate of ten minutes had been off as well - then again, Gerard was more than slightly out of it at the time. Could have been two minutes. Could have been an hour. He had only recognized the trouble breathing when he felt how nice it felt to get home where it had been easy. "There was an... incident. I was investigating something back in London, a... house. Something was there I didn't expect. I was kind of out of it after the encounter, and it was bad enough that even Cal's family were alarmed that he'd gotten too close to it and yanked all three of us into Tumulus rather than wait for Cal to get a gate going himself. He opened a gate home from there."

As he explained the story, a hand went up to tug at one of the piercings - an industrial through one of his ears with a small metal spider on the bar. It was difficult to take notice of, the eye and the mind sliding off of it as anything important. Just another piece of jewelry in a face already admittedly full of it. He had another industrial on his other ear, though that one lacked ornamentation.

"That said all things considered since I was already so fucked up the gating itself was one of the easier ones for me."

The movement caught his eye, but didn't register as anything more than some kind of mild nervous tic, something reflexive and not necessarily worth noting as anything more than that, but the explanation definitely made him curious, "What is it you do?"

Something that had been enough to make the cousins decide he needed a rescue was already Something™. Cal had met the family here, they were no less murderous than the ones he avoided back home, but they weren't especially murderous towards him and that was really what made the difference. He'd even played with some of the youngest a time or two when he visited, which was still strange to him.

There was a briefly startled moment at the question from Cal - Gerard hadn't dealt with someone who didn't know in so long it threw him for a loop. And of course the hesitation, how much was safe to say - but it was easier to come to the conclusion this time. He knew what his Cal was able to handle, able to understand, and that regardless additional knowledge would not put this Cal in more danger.

"I deal with haunted books. Only they're not haunted by the dead, but something else. The Auphe here call them 'psychic vampires', and I guess that's not wrong?" he began, figuring that might be easier for Cal than the whole metaphysical explanation from square one. "They're things that live just outside of our reality, they are our fear, as well as feeding off of it. They can't interact directly, so they send parts of their power through. One of the ways it manifests is the books. Back in the 90's some Scandinavian asshole tried to collect a bunch of them but he just put a bunch of powerful bad shit in one place and the expected happened and now they're out. I try to track them down and ... take them out of circulation."

He listened intently, watching Gerard's face as much as he was actually listening to what he was saying, just nibbling at his pop tart, alternating with equally careful sips of his tea. Considering what he'd been eating the past few days, maybe jumping right back into highly processed high sugar wasn't the best idea, but he'd never really let that stop him before, and had only regretted it a handful of times.

The idea of something being both made of and feeding on fear sounded familiar, but not in a way he could actually put his finger on, so he just let that simmer in the back of his mind for now in case anything surfaced.

There was an exasperated huff at the rest, shaking his head, "Why do people keep thinking that storing that amount of Not Good" and somehow he managed to pronounce the capital letters, "all in one place is going to end any other way than badly?"

There were plenty of leftovers in the fridge should Cal decide he want something more filling - moreover, Gerard was good at some basics of cooking by now as well, even if he wasn't Niko.

"I know right?" Gerard declared, exasperation and annoyance in clear evidence, such a sharp contrast to the mild and soft-spoken deference of before. "The only worthwhile thing to come of that is that since nobody's seen him since his library went kaput is that he was probably killed when it happened. Thank fuck. He ruined enough lives in his time."

Gerard counted his own among that number.

He couldn't help the flash of a smile at the obvious aggravation, he was always glad to know that other people were capable of that kind of thing, and doubly so when he wasn't the cause of it.

"Always makes things easier when they do themselves in." He agreed, "'Course, someone still has to go in and clean up the mess, but at least they aren't getting in the way of it." That sounded like the voice of experience, and sure, he tried to stay out of things when he ended up in unfamiliar territory, sometimes he even managed it, but he also wasn't the kind of person to just stand by when someone was causing that level of trouble. People being idiots about things, that was something that could go either way, but people being actively malicious? That was when he stepped in, especially when it was with some kind of magical artifact or some kind of Paen on a leash, and generally one that wasn't as sturdy as it needed to be.

Gerard wasn't quite ten when the library of Jurgen Leitner imploded and let all those unspeakable horrors back out into the wild. Probably for the best the man was well beyond Gerard's reach by the time Gerard had the means to do something about him.

If he wasn't already dead, Gerard would kill him himself.

"The point is - see anything with a bookplate on it saying 'from the library of Jurgan Leitner'? Don't mess with it. Throw it in a box and bury it. Some can be safely destroyed but others -it's about containment. Cal, my Cal, says they've got a particular smell to them he can pick out easily now, but for anyone unfortunate enough to deal with it regularly ... it's a vibe you learn to pick up."

"Noted." He replied, giving a little nod and dusting the crumbs from his fingers, "That also mean I should dump the guy himself in a river if I ever meet him somewhere?"

One of the problems with multiple dimensions was that sometimes there were people who had only died in one or two of them who shouldn't be allowed to continue on in any of them, and for the most part Cal tried to stay out of that kind of quandary as well, if only because different circumstances may have made them a different person, or led someone else down the path they'd taken everywhere else, and Cal didn't like being the one responsible for figuring that out.

"At the very least," Gerard said, bitterness in his voice. He took a sip of tea. "If the option to feed him to your extended relatives comes up, I cannot emphasize enough how much he fucking deserves it and I've seen them eat."

Gerard meant it when he said Leitner ruined lives. His mother was interested in the books long before Leitner ever made a name for himself, but he turned it into an obsession that controlled every aspect of her life and thus Gerard's as well.

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