monstermanual | visitor

All things considered, while Niko had gotten annoyed by how stupid Cal and Gerry were about each other he had never actually taken that annoyance out on Gerry beyond exasperated sighs and looks. Given what had been done to Jack, Gerard sincerely had no idea how very gentle Niko was being about the whole thing to him.

"We behave ourselves when he's home. When we have the place to ourselves, well..."

"Hm?" The question of a sound was followed almost immediately by: "Oh! Right, him too, I guess, but I meant Cal. Not thinking he deserves to be happy, it's a helluva thing to get over, and last I checked he was holding onto it way tighter than I ever did, but it was still something I held onto for longer than I should have."

A little shake of his head, settling back again, "Don't even think it's totally gone, either. Just not as present as it used to be."

Yeah, Gerard wouldn't know anything about that. He still often woke up wondering how he lucked out to be there, with them. Kept waiting for it to all come crashing down. For Cal to get tired of him. For Niko to decide he was more trouble than he was worth and was better off gone. For a hundred other awful things to happen and to end up alone again as he so often was.

Dark moods, but they passed, now. It wasn't always gray.

"Oh - any cheat codes for helping him through that one?" if there was anyone to ask... "I just... feel like I'm always saying the wrong thing when I try to help."

He shook his head, "I wish. We aren't as alike as we probably could be." A twitch of a smile, the corner of his mouth quirking upward for a moment, "And since I don't really know how I did it either, probably even less help."

A thoughtful little sound, "Best I can say is if he actually gets steamed about something, give him a few minutes to let it off before you try and correct and explain. I'm going to guess you already know that one, though" It was a rare occasion that if it got to that boiling point that trying to explain right away would be believed. That, at least, was something the two of them had in common, or had done the last time he'd been by to visit.

A bit disappointing, but it put him no further back than he already was. He also tried to remind himself that the main person he was comparing himself to was Niko, and that was an unfair contest to put himself in. Knowing that logically and taking it to heart were two different things, of course, and at Cal's last comment he readed up to idly rub at his own cheek. There was a thin scar there, it had healed very well. Hard to even notice at all now, let alone realize that it had hit bone and only barely avoided taking out his eye when it happened.

"Yeah. Figured that one out early, mostly," Gerard said, voice not quite as light as he wanted it to be but hoping it was enough.

"Yeah, always figured that particular angle of the temper was something we got from mommy dearest." It was rare that he referred to Sophia by anything other than name or variations on 'that bitch'.

Though the epithet was still clear as day in his tone even without actually saying it.

"But honestly? I'm not so sure anymore. Never really was in the first place, just seemed like it came from her instead of them."

"Suppose you're in a rare position to observe and make calls on nature versus nurture," Gerard said, happy to focus on something else than the potential dark paths his thoughts like to wander down if left unattended. He was on medication and irregular therapy, but Rome wasn't built in a day. Destruction was so much easier than repair. He also noted how Cal referred to Sophia - he was close enough to the brothers here to have heard quite a bit about her by now. Niko showed him pictures, stashed away in a shoebox. Commiseration over differently horrible mothers.

"There's plenty of ways humans are fully capable of being awful with no input from anything supernatural," he pointed out. "My mom was definitely a born psychopath. Supernatural shit just gave her better tools and a goal."

Gerard on the other hand looked everything like her and acted nothing like her. His childhood would have been easier if he had been more of his mother's son.

"Mm, and Sophia's rage issues combined with the Auphe killing instincts is definitely not a good mix." Especially when you threw volatile teenage hormones on top of it.

It was still a surprise to him that he'd turned out mostly normal, let alone the resident Cal. Odds had been stacked against them from the start, but they'd both managed to push through, if not in the same way or for the same reasons, but they had and that was what mattered.

"And he'll probably stab me for telling you, if you haven't figured it out already, but snacks is always a good way to take a rising simmer back down." He figured that was something Gerard already knew if he'd been around the other two for any real length of time, but it was worth mentioning just in case.

Gerard had noticed Cal's greater appetite compared to his own, though mostly when that was brought up it was getting on Gerard's case for not eating enough.

"I do like to get candy bars for him whenever I have to run some errands, especially if he comes with," Gerard admitted with a little grin. A thanks for the company. Of course, that grin faded quickly, expression going somber and withdrawn. "... He shuts me down a lot when I tried to do things for him though, and... and none of that is any of your problem, christ. Talk about giving a bad impression."

He shook his head quickly. This was not his place to ask for relationship advice.

"Speaking of food - how do you feel? Still want to make sure you're not queasy or want an actual non-poptart meal?"

"I can also get away with throwing a package of beef jerky at his head, I don't know if you can." In theory, sure, in practice, maybe not.

He could also accept the question for the change of subject that it was, he knew all about that as well, though it still got a soft laugh out of him, "I got comfortable and forgot 'more food' was even an option. Clearly I was in dino-world too long if that's how I'm still thinking." He nodded all the same, "But yeah, I could eat."

Okay, the suggestion of throwing a pack of beef jerky at Cal's head did have Gerard letting out a quiet breathless kind of laugh again as he pushed himself up to his feet to stand again. Cal, his Cal, was always trying to get Gerard to roughhouse with him, but while Cal had grown up with an older brother and a mother who didn't give a shit mostly what they got up to, Gerard had been an only child with an utterly overbearing mother and never spoke to a child his own age until he could no longer really be thought of as a child. Roughhousing was only finally no longer becoming an alarming thing to witness, and he'd likely never learn to do it himself.

"All the food you could want - well, okay, we haven't gone grocery shopping for a few days so not quite that. But there's some leftover Indian food, a quarter of a breakfast casserole, and I'm filly capable of making something as well if neither of those sound good," he offered. He wasn't as good a cook as Niko, but he was learning to copy his recipes acceptably - though he did not mention that part, not wanting to step poorly onto that subject given Cal's loss of his own Niko and the complicated feelings for this one.

He took a moment before shifting the weighted blanket off and over the arm of the couch, he'd get it back later, because even if it didn't do much for his mental state, it was still nice, almost the same kind of relief as getting an ace bandage wrap on a strained joint, though he wasn't really sure how to explain that.

"If there's eggs and milk that means there's pancakes." He said as he pushed himself to his feet, pancakes were an any-time food, and pancake mix was a pantry staple, or at least it had been the last time he'd been through, and he doubted that much would have changed, "If there's any kind of fruit to throw on there, fuck it's been a while since I had fresh fruit." One of those things he hadn't really thought of, and wouldn't have thought would be a problem for a dimension populated with dinosaurs, except that it had been because even he herbivores were territorial, and it was apparently difficult to keep them out of orchards.

People regularly discounted the ability and willingness of herbivores to fuck you up. A carnivore needs to consider if the calories obtained from a meal would be worth those expended to obtain it. An herbivore has no such concerns - make it a prehistoric mega-fauna and yeah. Bad news bears.

"There are milk and eggs," Gerard confirmed, leading the way to the kitchen and fetching the ingredients from the fridge. "And plenty of fruit. Strawberries, blueberries, a couple bananas, a few apples - not really pancake mix-in for that one but can be a snack while they're being made if you want."

Probably more fruit than Cal and Niko regularly had on-hand before Gerard arrived, even if Niko preferred healthy eating. Gerard did not like most overly-sweet things which included most candies. Add in the fact that he did not feel hungry especially when upset, getting much-needed sugar into him when his mood tanked was just the kind of puzzle Niko liked to solve and had found the answer in fresh fruit with clotted cream being something Gerard would happily eat without complaint as much as he was allowed to.

"Blueberries go in, strawberries and bananas go on." Theoretically both of those could also go in, but strawberries tended to get weird faster than blueberries when they got hot, and Cal detested warm bananas, there wasn't much he was picky about, he hadn't been able to afford to be more often than he had been, but that one stuck.

He was a little surprised to find that the kitchen hadn't been totally re-arranged in the time he'd been gone, which meant that his autopilot to start making the batter didn't stall out until he got to the actual pan portion of the process, "Alright, I give up, pan, ladle and spatula are where now?"

Gerard figured Cal knew how he liked his pancakes best so he had taken the cutting board out to get some strawberries and bananas cut up for toppings when Cal asked where some things were. Ah, right, it had been a while for him, hadn't it?

"I got them, here," the pan was easy enough to fetch first, the ladle and spatula out of the way from where they had been drying from breakfast use and subsequent washing.

"There's also clotted cream if you'd like for a topping - it's a bit like a thicker but less sweet whipped cream," he said, assuming Cal didn't know what it was given his own Cal was unfamiliar with it until Niko found some at Gerard's request, too.

"That actually sounds like a good idea, especially with the fruit, makes more sense than syrup." Not that he had anything against syrup, it just felt like it would be an uncomfortable flavor clash.

Aside from being used for pouring batter into the pan, the ladle was used for stirring the blueberries carefully into the batter, something that seemed to take quite a bit of focus for a moment before the first batch was dipped out onto the hot pan.

He had deliberately only measured out a half batch of mix, because he knew that if he didn't, he'd end up eating more than he should in one sitting, and he'd regret it, and regretting pancakes was never fun, "Okay, few minutes, feel like we should use this for lightning round questions or something."

By the time Cal got the batter into the pan Gerard had the fruit cut up and ready for topping. Niko had been teaching him to use a knife for self-defense, but he was significantly better at it in the kitchen.

"A lightning round? I'm not sure what to ask," Gerard said with another quiet laugh. He knew his own Cal so well, but surely they differed in plenty of areas… "What kind of music d'you like?"

"That depends on both day and activity, and to a lesser extent, mood." There was amusement in the tone, however, so probably a good sign, "Pretty much everything has a time and place except for the machine noise that Niko likes to listen to in the garage."

And maybe he didn't anymore, but Cal sincerely doubted that.

"Same back to you, I might think up a better question next round and probably should have before I even suggested this."

Gerard's grin turned a little bashful, because his answer was, of course- "... that machine noise that Niko likes to listen to in the garage. Look, the harmonies or German industrial aren't for everyone but if you gave Baroness or Woods of Ypres a chance…"

He liked punk and rock just fine as well, common ground for his Cal and him, but Gerard had been a heavy metal fan since he was a pre-teen and had gotten a third hand Mastodon album from a charity shop.

The answer got a short bark of a laugh out of him, "Okay, probably should have figured that." He shook his head, "I don't know if it has the same effect on Cal here, but it does something to the inside of my head, just kind of..."

A thoughtful grumble, turning to flip the pancakes over as he thought about how to phrase it, "Okay so you know how the joke is that water at 3am tastes better because that's when your ancestral fish brain is more present? It's sort of like that, except I don't have an ancestral fish brain, I've got an ancestral Auphe brain."

"I have never heard that joke before, ever. But I also didn't talk to anyone my own age until I was basically an adult so I can't be trusted for what's normal," he admitted, leaning back against the counter and watching Cal make the pancakes. Even being fully aware this wasn't his Cal, it was hard to not feel that same warmth and adoration Gerard had for the one he knew. Caliban had tried often to explain what being part Auphe did to him, so Gerard would believe that metal music affected some part of him as to why he didn't like it.

"Is that your question? About fish brains?"

"And it might not be something people say here. I've been, y'know, a lot of places." Which was something he had to remember to keep in mind himself when using colloquialisms and the like.

Another quiet laugh at the question, shaking his head, "Nah, give me a second, I'll come up with something." He got down a plate and a pot lid, setting them on the counter so that pancakes could be kept warm until they were all finished cooking, "Okay, chocolate cake with white buttercream icing, or yellow cake with chocolate buttercream icing?"

Gerard made a face like he was being asked to choose what method of torture he preferred.

"Yellow cake I suppose. I can scrape the icing off," he decided, before explaining lest this Cal also take that to mean Gerard Hates All Sweets as his Cal had done when he opted to not drown his pancakes in syrup. "I don't have a thing against chocolate specifically, I just don't like overly sweet stuff, especially not a lot of it. Two bites of cake is about all the cake I want for the year. S'why there's a lot of fruit on-hand now, it's sugar I'll actually eat for when I need some. What about you though? Is that two wonderful options for you to pick from?"

"Cake's all the same to me, really, I'll eat a snickers or a handful of jellybeans before I have a slice of cake. Not high on my list."

A little shake of his head, "If I'm having cake I prefer chocolate because then it's more like brownies if it's done right, and I like those. But that question turned into a multi-hour debate for the people I was staying with in dino-world. I was confused as hell, which is not really that new, but I was curious if other people really have that kind of strong opinion about it."

Gerard did not see how such a question could bring such fierce debate either, but he had already admitted to also being out of touch with a lot of people.

"Caliban talked about gooey brownies before," Gerard said with a little grin. Ones Nik made for special occasions. He wondered if this Cal had the same. "Okay, if you could go anywhere in the world - stop, don't give me a damn look, let me finish - if you could go anywhere, and it would go exactly as you wanted it to - get there safely, no danger except any you were hoping to find, you don't have to worry about money or language barrier or anything - where would you go?"

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