monstermanual | visitor

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?"

It had only been the start of a face, one brow beginning to inch upward, not about to actually make a correction to the question, but amused by it all the same. He lifted one hand in a mock-surrender at the self-interjection and went about flipping the first batch of pancakes onto the plate, covering them with the pot lid and ladling out a second batch while he waited for the actual question.

He considered for a moment, "There's this cliff along highway 1 in California." A snort, shaking his head, "Okay there's a lot of cliffs along highway 1, kind of a feature of the road. But this one, I don't know if it was part of some kind of state park or what, but it was always quiet when I managed to get there, it's only been a few times."

Another little head-shake, "It's an observation point, a few yards out from the road, safety railing goes out that far too, so it's definitely meant to be there." He made a gesture with his right hand, "Bridge off in the distance if you're standing there, trees on the opposite side of the road behind you, and everything else is just... ocean. It's quiet there. The water's far enough away you can barely hear it, but only if the wind's in the right direction, and the trees are far enough back that unless it's really windy, you can't her them, either, never been any traffic when I've ended up there. One of the few times I haven't minded being outside, away from modern conveniences."

Gerard understood it was a strange thing to ask someone who had it in their power to literally go anywhere, but given how often things went wrong or got complicated, he thought clarifying in an ideal scenario made a difference. He smiled as he listened to Cal describe the place. Gerard had been briefly to California in his travels, but wasn't familiar enough with the state as a whole to know where Cal was talking about. It sounded nice, though. Like a beautiful place - peaceful - and Cal's description was vivid enough that he could close his eyes and picture it in his mind.

"Sounds real lovely," Gerard mused, voice soft.

He nodded, "That kind of quiet is hard to find." More than that, there was some kind of gravity to the place, and that he couldn't even begin to describe, always figure I'll make it back there eventually, been there enough times I could probably gate there without trouble. Just never been worth it to try."

He considered a question for a moment before asking: "If you could go someplace you've only read of, or seen pictures of, I guess. Where would it be?"

That was a better question for Gerard than the one he'd posed to Cal - Gerard had been to many places after all. More countries before puberty than most hit in their whole life. Narrowing it down to places he hadn't gotten to go to yet, it was something he had to think about.

"... Does it have to be a real place?" he asked, thoughtfully, as he considered his answer to Cal's question.

That wasn't a clarification request he'd expected, though maybe he should have, and after only moment of thought he gave a shrug, "Don't see why it has to be, because now I'm curious."

There weren't many imaginary places or story-settings that he'd want to visit himself. He could pretty much count them on one hand and would still have fingers left over.

"If it had to be a real place I COULD think of something," Gerard clarified, insisting. It would just take more work. A place he hadn't been, that he'd wanted to see, that wasn't too cliche, on the other hand-

"Always thought the Dreaming seemed cool. I got a used copy of the 'Fables and Reflections' graphic novel when I was a teenager and the idea of this whole fantastic realm where theoretically my patron couldn't reach seemed … pretty awesome. At least, when I was fifteen it did," he explained with a little shrug. He was learning how to block out the Watcher in dream, but it was an exhausting endevor and hit or miss for success rate. Back then, he couldn't at all.

"Of course, knowing my luck I'd fall straight into some pocket nightmare and get trapped, but I think I'd still like to see it."

He considered that one for a moment, finally shaking his head, "Might be an interesting place to visit, but I don't know if I'd be able to stay for more than five minutes before wanting to shake the guy in charge."

And not even out of any real malice, probably, but just because Dream had always seemed like someone who needed a good hard shake to knock some sense into him, "But I don't think I've read the whole thing in order, just a couple of pieces a few years apart." He shook his head, "I don't even remember the titles."

Gerard had to give a laugh, because he couldn't even argue with that. He hadn't read them in a while but it seemed like that was a plot point during some part of it.

"Same, really. Stuck with me, though. Parts of it anyway. Guess I also liked the idea that there was some kind of cosmic entity out there that wasn't entirely malicious in nature," Gerard admitted. He couldn't believe in fully benign ones - after everything he'd seen, it simply Wasn't Possible, to the point that he had been taking lessons with Ish for some time and still firmly disbelieved in angels. Something cosmically powerful that was in it's own way petty and selfish but was capable of being kind? That was ... nice. A nice dream.

It didn't exist either, but it didn't stretch his ability to believe like most religions did.

"I remember that Death looked like some kind of goth Joan Jett, but that she was... kind." Which had been the most unbelievable thing for him at the time, "Always kind of hoped that part was real, even though I didn't think it really could be."

A thoughtful sound, considering for a moment even as he turned the pancakes over, "Now, I don't know. I've seen weirder things."

Gerard nodded, understanding that. The idea of kindness in an unkind world. It had been something his own Cal and him had bonded over, too.

"What's the weirdest thing you've ever seen?" Gerard asked with a little smile. "Fun weird."

Hopefully it wouldn't lead stumbling headfirst into more landmines of bad memories to ask.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject