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Lindon is home early today. He was sent home because of a persistent headache. He gets them sometimes even without the visions. It's just the relentless presence of the knowledge that presses down, creates pressure. There's a note on the coffee table in his neat print saying he's in his room taking a rest. The kittens must be with him, which is typical. He pampers them.
*
The kittens are…..a welcome sign that Lindon wants to stay. So, while he likes cats well enough in their own right, he enjoys them all the more for that. With no sign of them….well, they must be comforting their owner. In a fit of English practicality, he's got a tray of some herbal tea and a packet of headache powders, and balances it on one hand as he raps, gently.
*
"Come in," comes Lindon's voice, faint but conscious, and inside, he's in his pajamas already, sitting up in bed with kittens draped over his legs and a book in his hand. His eyes are a bit sunken, and his smile when he looks up at Lamont is rather pathetic. He must be truly sad when he has a cold or something. "Hi," he says. Pye stretches, then looks up at Lamont and slow blinks. Athena doesn't even wake up. She plays hard, she sleeps hard.
*
It's the eyes. And that bone structure, all of which conspire to give Lin that air of Byzantine solemnity. He may be a practicing (if lapsing) Roman Catholic, but the looks are all Eastern Orthodox. "I figured," Lamont says, pragmatically, "You've got a headache. These will help," He sets the little tray - black lacquer, with gold and copper accents, clearly some Japanese bijoux he picked up in the East. "Pressure a bit much?" For all the accent's upper class New York, the phrasing, sometimes, is just painfully English. But tonight's not the night for the revelation of his real identity.
*
"Sometimes it gets to me," Lindon admits. He closes his book and sets it aside. Pye paws idly at Athena's sleeping face, causing her to curl up and complain. Then Pye stretches and comes over to the edge of the bed where Lamont is. Mew? She picked him, and so he must clearly be here for her. Lin gathers up Athena and gives her a cuddle, then he sits himself up further. When he sets her down on his lap, she climbs off it to come up behind Pye and bowl into her. Time for some rabbitkicking. Lindon looks toward the tea with interest. "I was thinking I might take dinner upstairs tonight," he says, half in apology. "But you'd be welcome to join me."
*
His face softens a little. "Whatever feels best. Magical backlash can bring on the megrims in earnest, and sometimes quiet is what's needed. I can bring you a bag of ice, if you wish. But first, drink that and take that powder. It'll help with the physical aspects, at least." Then he scoops up Pye, kisses her between her tiny ears, extracting her from the tussle.
*
Pye purrs and cuddles up to Lamont, as if she were too innocent to have ever been part of any fighting. She was attacked for no reason, surely. Athena mews, sitting on the edge of the bed. She just wants to see her sister for a second! Bring her back! Her tiny tail swishes back and forth. They're both going to be devilish beasts, aren't they. Lindon takes his tea and his powder delicately. "They've been at it all day," he says. "They were so sweet when I saw them at the store."
*
Lamont chuckles that low laugh he has. "Of course. They wanted to get out, and were flirting with you, the little hussies. Now they're secure and ready to be trouble." He shifts Pye to one hand, uses the other to scoop up Athena. The powder's mere mundane painkiller - the tea is something delicately spiced and scented. Delicious, honestly - it seems to settle the stomach immediately.
*
Athena mews and nuzzles Lamont. She's a sweetheart too, see? Innocent. "I think you've got it," Lindon says. "It was bait and switch." Pye bats at Lamont's lapel, then draws it closer so she can sample it. Erf, not tasty. Ptoo. Lindon takes his medicine, and he settles back with a sigh. "Is Josie home?" he asks. With the new girlfriend in her life, not likely.
*
A touch at the wards. "Not at the moment, I fear. Do you want her?" he asks. Not that he can find her by any particular supernatural means. "I saw her the other evening at Lambert's restaurant," he adds, after a beat. Presumably that'd be one of the evenings he didn't come home until gray dawn.
*
Lindon shakes his head and says, "No, no, it's all right." He smiles a little and says, "Oh, right. How is Lambert?" He knows. He's not said anything of it, but he knows. They've got an arrangement, after all, and Lindon is still feeling his way around the prospect of having a relationship. Should he be worried? He doesn't feel worried. It'll just be awkward if he ever sees Lambert again, but awkward is what he does.
*
Which has Lamont gazing into his face for a long, calm moment, as Pye attempts to start shit by reaching over and swiping at her sister. "He's all right," he says, and there's rueful humor in his voice. He needn't touch Lindon's thoughts to realize who knows what. A glance down at the kittens, and he notes, not looking at Lindon, "….if you want me to stop, I shall."
*
Athena swats back, all too happy to answer shit for shit. Bring it, sis. Lindon shakes his head and says, "No, no. It's fine. It's just, ha ha, a little weird. There's not a lot of known protocol for this sort of thing." He ducks his gaze, takes another drink of his tea, and adds, "He's a nice guy. Maybe sometime bring home some of that wine if he'll part with it."
*
Lamont bends to deposit them on the floor - let them scramble back up on the bed by themselves. His gaze hasn't wavered. "Are you sure?" he persists, and there's that hint of tenderness. "Your opinion matters to me, Lindon Mills."
*
The scuffling begins anew with Pye giving chase and Athena galloping toward the bathroom. Their paws can be heard scrabbling about on the tile. Lindon pats the bed beside him. "I'm not bothered. Everything is so awkward with me, you know that. Does he… does he know? About us?"
*
He settles down at Lindon's side. "He knows I have other lovers. He doesn't know that it's you. Shall I tell him? I don't want anyone to feel dishonored or deceived or unhappy."
*
Lindon squinches his cheeks as he thinks about it. "I don't know," he admits. "I'm not sure how I—" He blinks slowly, and he grimaces, rubbing at his forehead. "How I feel. I feel nauseated. Lamont." He doubles over like he's about to lose his tea, but instead he sucks in a breath and his head jerks back, lips parted in a silent scream.
*
He's already snatched up the bedside wastebin, quite prepared to help. But then…..then it's a seizure. He drops the bin with a clatter that sends the kittens skittering, and reaches for Lindon with both hands and mind. Maybe he can help.
*
Lindon scrabbles at Lamont's arms, clutching them painfully tight. The words that come out of his mouth aren't English. They're not any Indo-European language, or any language spoken by living people today. They have the cadence of a chant, a tuneless song he delivers with a weak, dimly fearful voice. He repeats the chant, then in his own faltering English, "Paper. I need paper."
*
Lucky for them both, he's got that wiry strength, listening. And then when he demands paper….well, there's a pocket notebook, complete with pen, that he hands over. He's not been present during a full vision before, but he knows better than to ask questions. They can come later.
*
The pen and paper are grabbed, and Lindon starts to draw. He can draw rather well to begin with, not from any particular training, but from putting into practice what his mind already tells him about the craft. It starts with several concentric circles, then he starts drawing figures and characters in between them. "I've got to… listen to me, there's a darkness. It's alive. It's dreaming."
*
"I am listening," he says, and his voice is flat, faintly metallic. It's the Shadow who's listening now, not Lindon's lover.
*
Lindon babbles as he writes. Something about a living force and weak walls in Greenwich village, and awakenings. When he stops writing his circles and the figures within them, he starts to sketch tendrils, and attached to the tendrils are people. In another sketch, the tendrils terminate in the creatures that were all disjointed claws and maws of angler fish teeth. Lamont would know them well. He attacked by a family of them.
*
For that little while, he's the inadvertant tripsitter. More concerned with making sure Lindon doesn't hurt himself. But those images…."What do you know of them? What are they?"
*
Lindon sketches nightmarish creatures, a patch of shade occupied by a multitude of demon eyes. "They're fingers," he says. "Fingers and hands." He wiggles his fingers as if that might help. He draws straight lines through the tendrils, and on the other side of the line, he draws more shading, more eyes. "Feeling through the cracks."
*
"I've met them," he says, and there's still that note in his voice. "They touch minds, and dreams…..but they are all rooted in one, are they not?"
*
"Yes!" Lindon tears the sheet away and starts on a fresh one. He draws an amorphous shape. Inside, he draws the demon eyes again, all over the place, eyes everywhere. Then the tendrils coming off of it. "It sleeps, but it dreams of better places." He draws the concentric circles again. This time, he draws tendrils coming through them. "Feeling around, feeling for cracks." He frowns, frantic as he starts to write things down, describing the phenomenon. It's a creature with a name he renders in a language unspoken on this plane. Doomed to dream in the dark for a thousand years, and that time is coming to a close. Its dreams are vivid, in and of themselves a type of reality.
*
"Strange and I and some others encountered it. But….I will take these to him, as soon as I may. Will you remember what you're saying now? I don't know that tongue, I can't render it." He's all cool poise, gray eyes.
*
Lindon shakes his head, but it's not so much an answer to the question as him not quite understanding the words being spoken. He utters a high-pitched, agitated hum as he keeps writing. He tears the page away and begins another. A thousand years ago it tried to emerge from its world into this one only to be shoved back in its box by the people living here at the time. Before they did that, the tendrils were prying at the holes in reality, letting through every manner of interdimensional creature as it set out to explore. In its exploration, it devastated villages, pulling people apart to see how they worked, that sort of thing.
*
Lamont lays a hand on Lindon's cheek, lightly. Mind to mind touch is easier….and perhaps he can overhear, if he can't be told directly. Listening in.
*
What comes is a roar. If his normal mental chatter is a rainstorm, this is a hurricane. It's a physical weight on the mind, pressing on the back of one's eyes, trying to burst through into the world through one's cranium. On a similar topic, another page is torn away and Lindon continues writing. It's a recipe, some of the ingredients accessible, some unheard of in the modern age, and the essence of one plant that appears to be extinct. He jots down a side note that a vial of the essence still remains hidden deep below Greenwich Village. He chants quietly under his breath as he writes down the words to said chant. Then a murmured, "Ow ow owie," under his breath. A few impressions might hit Lamont hard: a holy man with his followers around him, all anointed, a chant.
*
Were he not a master mentalist in his own right, he'd be blown away like a leaf in the storm. But he braces himself, faces into the onslaught….trying to remember, trying to understand. And trying, most of all, to bolster Lindon himself.
*
Lindon finishes out another page before he pushes the pad and pen away and clutches at his head. "Lamont," he groans. "Lamont, I need you." His voice is so plaintive, so heartbreakingly emotional. "Please, please, please." He's written down his piece, at least for now.
*
And of course, Lindon'll find himself folded in Lamont's arms, with that careful tenderness. Both mind and voice speak - it should be a maddening echo, but somehow it's seamless. "I'm here. I'm here with you, my dear. I won't leave you."