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Lindon comes around the apartment Cassidy shares with a few others, and he knocks on the door. He's dressed tweedy, very much the scholar. It should put age on him, but instead it makes him look younger, like a kid dressing up as a grownup. Except his suit fits flawlessly, tailored to his lanky frame. His hair is a little windblown, but he's otherwise immaculate.
Cassidy is not. Cassidy is dressed in a pair of baggy jeans too large for his thin frame, shirtless, tattoos covering most of his arms and shoulders, unshaven, and disheveled, his hair which is shaved on the sides and long on top a bit of a mess. He has a bottle in one hand, half-empty, and he swings the door open, staring at the immaculately neat Lindon standing there. "Oi, you're the guy from the scone place."
Lindon regards Cassidy for a long moment. He is every bit the sort of person Lindon would cross the street to avoid on the street. He looks dangerous. But they're both here, and there's nothing the book nerd can do about it. So he smiles a little as he says, "Yeah, from the, uh, from that place. I was wondering if John is home?"
"Nope," Cassidy says, then waves with the bottle at the interior of the house that they're squatting in, the one that belonged to a Wizard, the one filled with random spooky stuff that Cassidy likes to pick up and shake to see what it does. He leaves the door open and wanders back. "He should be back soon, though," he says as he makes his way in and finds a chair to sprawl in.
Lindon steps in gingerly, looking at everything that, in his vision, was kept tidier, laid out like a proper wizard's den. The visions he's had of this place! It's too familiar to him for this to be the first time he's seeing it. "I'm surprised you haven't, ah, changed things around," he says. "So, ah. You're a friend of John's?"
"Ain't my place, now is it?" Cassidy says as he drapes his legs over the arm of the chair that he's sitting in, sliding back into the corner of it. Dust goes up around him that's been gathered in the upholstery for years. He tips back his bottle and then holds it out toward Lindon in offer. "Ain't gonna go about redecoratin' or nothin', at least not unless we decide we're stayin'. Sure, I'm a friend a' John's. Who isn't? Bloke's more fun than a barrel o' monkeys, that one. You? Known him long?"
Lindon regards the bottle uncertainly. Nng. Social interaction isn't his forte. What's he supposed to do with the bottle? Thinking, thinking. He steps forward to take it, sniffs at it, and takes a small sip. Small as the sip is, he still coughs a little as he offers the bottle back. "Thank you," he says uncertainly. "Yes, John and I are friends, I'd say. He's interesting, and I think he's got a good heart beneath it all."
Cassidy nods his head when Lindon takes the bottle and sips from it, taking it back afterward and taking a swig, himself. Whiskey. Whatever the old Wizard had in his cabinets when Cassidy started raiding them. "Sure," he says, "You look like you could use a drink or two. Make ye're self comfortable." His Irish accent is thick, not having diminised in all the years that he's been away. "Interestin' is a good word for it." He then grins and takes another swig of the bottle. "So you're going to help him figure out who killed whoever it is got killed?"
Lindon looks around the place. There's a chair right there he could sit it, but it's like disturbing some sacred space. Or becoming part of it, touching the untouched. He moves so slowly, like a man in a dream. He does take the seat, though, sitting on the edge of it. "Yes," he says. "I have some information he might be interested in."
Cassidy watches Lindon with a little bit of amusement and says, "It ain't gonna bite you, none. We already checked for rats'n'bugs'n'shite." He grins broadly and takes another swig from the bottle. "I was thinkin' that we should try some of these things out.. see what they do." He points to some of the objects in the various shelves.
Lindon shakes his head quickly and says, "No, I wouldn't." He swallows, then adds, "Uncontrolled magic can have dire consequences, not just on yourself but innocent bystanders. People just walking by on the street with no idea what's going on in here." He takes a deep breath and lets it out. "I wouldn't mess with any of it. I'd box it up and hand it over to someone who knows what they're doing."
Cassidy grins then, a broad amused grin. "Yeah, that's what I figured you'd say." He pulls himself up out of the chair then and goes over and picks up a small box off of one of the shelves. He takes it down and gives it a little shake. There's a rattling inside. He wanders back to the chair and gives it another little shake.
Lindon stiffens and he holds out a hand. "Don't shake that," he says. He holds out a hand. "Just. Don't. Please." He intends to have words with John later about letting these outsiders in who play with matches when it's other people who get burned. Not that he's bitter or anything. "I don't want to have to report John to a higher authority because of his negligence."
Cassidy grins a little amusedly at Lindon and says, "Oh, I'm jus' fuckin' with you, mate." He opens up the top of the box and shows it to him. It's literal matches in a small tin. "I put'm there meself." He covers the tin though and tosses it to Lindon. "You need to lighten up just a little bit. You're gonna shite diamonds if ya keep that up."
Lindon relaxes, then shoots Cassidy an irritated look. With a sigh, he says, "I have a hard time relaxing around all this unprotected magic, and this place… There's a history I'm not entirely comfortable with. I couldn't believe John actually moved in and brought people. Then I realized, oh right, it's John."
Cassidy chuckles a little and says, "Well you can hang out outside if y'want. I'm gonna stay in if ya don't mind, though. It's a little early for me." He takes another swallow from the bottle, and finding it empty, sets it on the small table next to him, leaving in there for the time being. "What sorta history?" he asks out of idle curiosity.
Lindon glances out the window at the uncustomarily warm Autumn day. "The weather's beautiful," he says. The sun is shining, but at least it's weaker than it was in summer. Lovely weather aside, Lindon makes no move to get up. He ponders the question asked, in no hurry to speak until he has his words in order. "I had a brief acquaintance with the man who used to live here. It wasn't friendly. He messed with unwarded magic. I happened to be walking by just outside, and I got hit."
"Oh, shite. Sorry, mate. I mean, you look alright, snappy dresser, very uh, proper and all that. You seem to be all in one piece," Cassidy says as he squints over at Lindon, eyeing him critically as though trying to see if there were some sort of weird tick of a missing limb he hadn't noticed. "Guess that explains the caution, eh?"
Lindon glances to his hands, folded on his lap, and he says with a small smile, "I've had a little help with my wardrobe, and the effects of the spell were survivable because of John. I owe him a debt of gratitude." He nods a little. "Yes, caution. It's just so dangerous. Sometimes I wonder what possesses people to mess with it at all."
"Curiosity, boredom, stupidity, recklesness, a willful disregard for human life, …" Cassidy starts rattling off any number of reasons one might have for mucking about in things that they oughtn't. He grins then and he pulls himself out of the chair. "You want tea or somethin'?" He begins to wander off toward the kitchen, pausing to pick up a shirt lying on one of the chairs, lifting it to take a sniff, and seeming satisfied with it, pulls it on over his head.
Lindon shakes his head, and he doesn't argue with any of those reasons. He watches Cassidy move about, his head canting out of curiosity. "Tea would be nice," he says, "thank you." He shifts in his chair so he can continue to watch the now beshirted one. "So, ah, what about you? What do you do?"
Cassidy wanders into the kitchen and gets out a tea kettle that has been cleaned out and sets it on the stove after filling it with water. He turns the heat on and goes to find a box of tea that looks new, not something that was left in the house, and he scoops some into a diffuser, dropping it in a cup. He shuffles around, not paying attention to Lindon really as he does so. Once the tea is warming he runs his fingers through his hair, combing it a bit so that it isn't quite the wild mess it was when Lindon walked in. "I drink and I know things," Cassidy says with a flash of a grin over his shoulder. "And I'm handy in a fight."
Lindon smiles tentatively, crookedly, and says, "I don't drink a lot, but I know things. Couldn't fight to save my life." He pauses, then asks, with real interest, "What kind of things do you know?" Now Cassidy's in Lindon's wheelhouse and he perks up, relaxing despite himself.
"Lots of random things," Cassidy says as he prepares the tea and returns to the livingroom, bringing the cup on a proper saucer with a couple of butter cookies along with it. For himself, a bottle of beer out of the fridge and half a sandwich. He hands the cup and cookies over to Lindon before he slouches back into the chair he had been sitting in, unwrapping the half-eaten sandwich and going about chewing it. "Stuff you pick up kickin' around for a century or so."
"Ah, so you've been around awhile," Lindon says, pleasantly surprised though not shocked. "I imagine you'd pick up a lot. I'm a scholar. I'm afraid I know things but haven't done a lot of them." He takes a sip of his tea and murmurs, "Thank you." Tea in hand with a couple butter cookies centers him. This is a normal and civilizing thing, tea. "What area of knowledge interests you?"
"A while, yeah," Cassidy says between bite of his sandwich. He manages not to talk while he chews, keeping the mess to a minimum. He then takes a swig from his bottle of beer before saying, "Jus' the sort of stuff you pick up along the way. How to fix things, how things work, how people work, what sorta knicknacks you can shake and freak people out a little bit with an which ones you should probably leave alone." There's a sudden very perceptive intelligence in Cassidy's eyes as he regards Lindon across the way. Then his grin slides back in place and says, "And where t'find the best drugs nearly anywhere in the states."
Lindon catches the glance, that canniness that resides briefly in Cassidy's eyes, and he sits up a bit taller, but the poor man has no idea what to do with it. He's still learning Cassidy, and while he knows facts about social conduct, analyzing and applying them comes slowly. "I suppose for a certain set of interests, that's worth knowing," he says. My focus these days tends to be mystical in nature, the very things I prefer not to mess with or get enmeshed in. Knowledge is power after all."
Even if one knows the niceties of social interaction, Cassidy is far too inconsistent for anyone to use him as a barometer for anything. He goes from charming to callous to polite and back again at the drop of a hat. But, he makes a good cup of tea and the cookies, which he surely didn't make, but at least provided, aren't bad either. "For my set of interests, and that of those I travel with it seems to be sufficient," he says with a flash of a grin.
Lindon smiles, again tentative. Getting a bead on Cassidy is indeed a challenge. "John seems to have a thing for the mystical," Lindon says. "Our interests cross paths. His to pursue them, me to know how to avoid them. It's kind of funny. I live with a wizard who thrives on magic, and deep down I eschew it. I should probably tell him, but it's just kind of a revelation I'm having right now."
"I'm a vampire," Cassidy says with a shrug of his shoulders the same way he'd tell someone he was an Irishman or that the liked a good single malt. "Not sure how I feel about all this hocus pocus stuff, but I've seen enough weird shite to figure one oughta at least know what to avoid, or at least know someone who does." He takes another swig from his beer and finishes off his sandwich, wiping his face off with the paper napkin before shoving all the trash into the bag.
Lindon draws a sharp intake of breath, and he says, "Oh. Oh, you're… all right. That's all right. That's fine. I know, er, I know about vampires. You look remarkably human by the way." His stance is cautious all over again, but the poor man's response to flight or fight is the third option, freeze. "All this hocus pocus is incredibly dangerous. The man who used to live here was into some, ah, some questionable things. It's good that this place lay abandoned and that no one tried to clear it out. I just don't know what John intends to do with all of it."
Cassidy rolls his eyes a little at Lindon's reaction and says, "Look, it's not like all that Bela Lugosi sort of shite. Blood helps me heal. I don't age. But I'm not all pale and pasty and I haven't got any fangs. If you throw garlic at me, it better be in a nice butter wine sauce to go with some pasta, and franky I hanger more for a good single malt than anythin' else. So I'm not gonna bite ya, or try to bite ya." He waggles his sandwich wrapper and says, "Just ate, anyway." He pulls himself up and goes to throw out the wrapper.
"There are some vampires who do get rather pale," Lindon says, thinking back to a certain pseudo-vampire with a fond smile despite himself. "But there are different kinds of vampirism. I've never met one like you." He watches Cassidy when he gets up. Doesn't quite make eye contact, but watches him move about. "We've got rather fine scotch at the house," he mentions, meaning God knows what by it.
"Oh yeah, there's some that do, and then there's some that are jus' wankers," Cassidy says over his shoulder as he finishes off his beer and tosses the bottle in the trash. He comes wandering back out and raises a brow a little bit, "Yeah? Is that an invitation?" He grins a little broadly then and asks, "More tea? Biscuits?" Then he says, "I guess there are some different kinds. I've heard of'm, haven't seen many though."
Lindon considers. Bringing vampires around for a drink. What would Lamont say to that? Though the vampire in question hasn't done anything wrong so it would be a bit speciest to mind all that much. Hmm. "Yes, I think it is," he says. "Maybe you and John can come have a few drinks with us. I hope you're not allergic to cats. We have three."
"Oh, I don't mind critters," Cassidy says. "Cats are a good sort of critter to have — mostly take care o' themselves. Don't mind if ye gotta fuck off for a few days." He nods, seeming to approve cats as an animal companion choice. "What kinda cats?" he asks idly.
"I really like cats," Lindon says. "These are just kittens, two Balinese and a mix with a snowshoe coat. They're a little cautious at first, but then they'll get curious and want to check you out." He smiles, less tentative and more warm. If Cassidy likes cats, he can't be all that bad. "Lamont wants a dog, but we'll see. They're overly reliant and they smell, but I guess some are all right."
"Oh they're the fuzzy ones with the like, chocolate faces with the tan fur? Yeah?" Cassidy asks as he squints and tries to remember the difference between Balinese and Siameze. Then the other he's like, "Like a rabbit? You got a bunny cat?" He then shrugs his shoulders and says, "Dogs aren't that bad. Just don't get one of them little yippy dogs. Get a real dog if you're gonna bother at all."
Lindon nods and says, "Oh yes, most of of them are. These are dilute, though, so their faces are grey instead. They're very sweet." Here is a man who could probably talk about cats for hours, but he's gained enough social acumen not to dive in too deep. Okay, maybe a little. "Puck has the chocolate face and tan fur, or he will when he gets older, and the snowshoe feet." He takes another drink of his tea, still nursing it along. "It'll be Lamont's dog. I don't see him getting one of the little yappers. He'll probably get something with dignity."
"Alright, well as it isn't one of them little yappy shites then I'm sure it'll be jus' fine," Cassidy said, as though his opinion on the matter held any water at all. He stretches out a bit in the chair and says, "So, you're a friend of John's and all, and I can tell you're not gonna fuck with the magic shite in here on account of you bein' all careful so.. if you'd like, I can top up your tea, then I'm gonna head upstairs and take a shower and get changed. You alright to wait down here for John for a bit?"
Lindon seems to be in agreement, so in the vampire's opinion there is at least solidarity. "I see him getting a large dog," he muses, touching fingertips to his chin. "A Mastiff or a Great Dane. I could live with a big, stately dog as long as it got along with the cats." He nods then and says, "Oh, sure. I won't touch anything. I might actually head out for a bit and come back. I was going to go to a shop, and I could do that now and come back around? I wouldn't mind catching some of that sun." He pauses, then adds, "Sorry."
"Big dogs generally get along alright with cats from what I've seen. It's the littl'uns who got somethin' to prove," Cassidy says, making his way toward the stairs. He nods when Lindon says that he might head out. There's a broad grin when he adds that apology and he says, "No offense taken. Enjoy it for me, mate. Nice seein' ya. I'm sure John'll be 'round in a little bit."