getting a favor

who: caleb and mathias
where: their house
when: morning before school

Caleb had been doing a lot of thinking since he'd parted company with Leija. He was working out logistics, trying to figure out how he could ask Nic for her help, and if he could pull this off at all. The weird thing was, was he'd had the idea when he'd been talking to her, and even if he'd gone over it all again and again, he was still thinking the best plan was the one he'd come up with on the fly. Which still meant he needed to talk to Mathias, so, he decided to do that, before he went in to school. And alright, he was going to wake the guy up, but...whatever. Caleb hadn't even been to sleep yet and had to head in to school today so he figured temporarily disturbing his brother was hardly the end of the world.

Knocking on Math's bedroom door, he stood back. "Math--I need to talk to you." he called.

Mathias hadn't gotten in from Babylon until the early hours of the morning, and when the knock came, he was very much asleep. It only took that one knock, however, to send him from deep asleep, to wide awake and he didn't bother answering back until he opened the bedroom door a minute or two later, bare chested and with bed-tussled hair, but other than that looking annoyingly together. "What's up?" he asked, no trace of sleep sounding in his voice.

Caleb, who looked like he'd been out all night doing serious thinking and not at all doing anything resembling resting or sleeping, just barely held back from rolling his eyes. "I need a favor." he said. "It's about Leija, I...I don't know. Saw her last night. Things are fucked." Then he paused. "More fucked than usual." he clarified. Because really, considering his life, he definitely needed to.

"Sure, anything," Math told him, heading past his youngest brother and out into the living room, grabbing his pack of cigarettes off the coffee table, along with his lighter, but not lighting up. He still had a small hesitation about smoking in Dorian's house - but he had to admit that that was slowly dying as they got more and more snow and sitting outside for a smoke became less and less appealing. He turned back to Caleb, playing with the pack between his hands. "What's up?"

Caleb went and dropped himself down onto a chair. "I saw her tonight, sort of accidentally ran into her type thing. And we got to talking, and...I know we've talked about her before, and how she's crazy. But I never really thought she was crazy. I thought she was being an insane selfish bitch, but didn't think there was anything seriously cracked in her head. But tonight, I changed my opinion on that." he admitted.

Math settled onto the couch opposite his brother, spreading out and looking immediately comfortable. He took a cigarette out and threw the pack onto the table, but still didn't strike up. "Yeah? What happened?" he asked Caleb, looking and sounding interested.

"I'm not even sure. We were talking, and I just...okay part of the reason that I've not spent much time with her after we broke up is because every time I get around her, she tends to start getting crazy heavy with everything. Like nothing's quite good enough if she can't have me, shit like that. Well it started out fine, we were talking, it was going alright, and then bang, she hits me up again with 'why do you care' and all that shit, like she wants to get a specific answer out of me. Nevermind she never listens to shit I've said to her before, if it doesn't fit in with her pity party bullshit. But that's neither here nor there. Basically, I asked her what she wanted from me, and she spouted off this just...shit, Math, I've never heard anything like that. And I wanted her to lay it out for me, because I was hoping if she said it out loud like that, she'd see the crazy. That maybe it would spark some kind of recognition that that wasn't okay. But there was nothing." He looked off at a middle distance, frowning. "It's...difficult to disturb me, but that did. Just the shit she said...and we're talking this is from a girl who I was actually officially with for a week. And yes, we had an intense relationship, or friendship, or whatever, but seriously. A week. That was it. And it's been almost two months. But she's still talking...christ it's like it was yesterday." he said. "It's like she's re-defining obsession. And she doesn't even see it."

Mathias nodded, looking very much like he knew what Caleb was talking about. And he did - he'd had one or two obsessive-types in the past, though not that many. Generally, he tended to skip town so fast that their heads spun, but there were a few. Anyway, Math tended to cultivate them from time to time - it was useful to have a girl who'd still be thinking about you years after the event, and who'd take you in at a moment's notice and drop everything for you. But when he did that, Mathias always made sure he picked his subjects carefully, really very carefully. "So, what you gonna do about it?" he asked, figuring that Caleb was leading somewhere with this, and that somewhere wasn't going to be 'so, I need to leave town'. the two brothers may have had similarities, but Caleb generally didn't jump to the same points Mathias did in that.

"It was after that that she told me she wanted to die, and asked me if I was glad that I was still around." Caleb said with a heavy sigh, dragging his fingers through his hair as he re-focused on his brother. "So, I've suggested her checking herself into the psych ward before she offs herself. Her mother did, she never really got over it and I think she's convinced she's going to follow in her footsteps. Basically, she needs help that I can't give her. But I want to try and set it up for her there. Which is where you come in. I know I could get pretty far with convincing Lisa to cover for her if she has to go out on a call? But I'm not positive I could do it. You, I'm positive can swing that."

And that was why he chose his subjects very carefully when he decided to encourage handy obsession. Because he didn't want to be left with some girl's blood on his hands. "She wants to die because you two broke up?" he asked Caleb. Not that the whys and wherefores mattered in the grand scheme of things - if the girl was suicdal, the girl was suicidal. But, still - it helped to know the cause, if shit was fucked up. "And yeah, I can talk to Lisa. I'm pretty such I could swing something there. We always kinda got on," he agreed, with a look behind his eyes that was positively evil and which knew full well that Lisa would kill for a chance to do anything with him again. or at all, since he hadn't even needed to do more than talk to her and drop her the occasional present to get her to tell him everything he'd wanted to know about Caleb and to get him in to see his brother whenever he'd wanted to. 'Visiting hours' were for other people.

"I have no idea. All I know is she was talking about all that, then things switched over to that. I don't think in Leija-land there needs to be a direct reason." Caleb admitted. "And gee, really? I hadn't noticed." he added sarcastically. "I told her you said hi when I saw her last." he tacked on the end there, wondering if his brother even knew that he'd stopped into the psych ward to check on the woman. Actually, there was a whole lot in his life he hadn't discussed with his brother. They hadn't exactly had a lot of heart to hearts lately. "But thanks." he added.

"You brought me up, or she brought me up?" Mathias asked, because that would be information he'd need if he was going to see the woman. He was already formulating a game plan in his head, but he needed to know how best to couch things to get the result he wanted. He figured from the way that Caleb had mentioned it that they'd just met in the street or something - that wasn't unusual in a town this size.

"I told her you said hi. But she was in the middle of dealing with ghosts in the psych ward, so..." Caleb said, trailing off. He shrugged. "She says hi as well." They hadn't necessarily had time to have a long talk or anything.

That caught Mathias' attention more, enough to get him off thinking about Lisa and Leija and really looking at his brother again, finally giving up and lighting the cigarette he'd been playing with. "What were you doing on the psych ward again?" he asked as he took his first hit of the day.

"Going to check on Lisa?" he suggested. "Nic had to go to the hospital anyhow to check on her mom, so while she did that, I went to see how Lisa was dealing. It was weirdly calmer in there than the rest of the place." Caleb commented. "She dealt with it better than I would have thought. She left me tending the front desk for a few minutes while she went to deal with someone who was freaking out, though."

"Nic?" Mathias queried, his attention caught not by the name, but by the repeated 'she' in there. Math was always a lot more interested when there was a female popping up in the conversation, if only because his brother seemed certain that he held absolutely no attraction for the opposite sex at all, and yet seemed to have more women hanging around than almost anyone else Mathias knew. "And, okay - so you were at the hospital and you went to check on Lisa. You sure you couldn't handle this yourself?" he asked, an edge of amusement in his tone - he still had the belief that Caleb was a lot better than he gve himself credit for.

Caleb rolled his eyes and gave his brother a look. "I'm sure." he said. "And yeah, Nic." he said, glancing away for a moment, then back. "She's...the girl I'm having problems not dating." he admitted. "I like her. She...came and stole my car yesterday to fix it." he added, as if that was going to give Math an idea about who she was. Which, he supposed did. Kind of. "She'll probably fix any damage she did to it when she ran over a werewolf with it." Yeah, it had definitely been a while since he'd talked to the elder Lockwood.

"Damn - you ever have one of those moments where you wonder where the hell you've been?" Mathias asked, since the new moon was getting on for three weeks past now. But then, he'd not been around much. Not been around much at all since they'd gotten back from their road trip, since Mathias had started working at Babylon. He'd mostly been, if not avoiding his brothers, definitely not actively seeking them out.

"You've missed a lot." Caleb said, shrugging one shoulder. "You haven't been around. I figured you were working or...doing whatever it is you do." Which could be just about anything, really. But then, Dorian hadn't been around a whole lot either. Caleb still sort of barely spoke to him, and Dorian didn't seem inclined to do anything about that either. So, Caleb was leaving it.

Mathias took a drag no his cigarette and slowly exhaled. "I have - been working, or doing whatever it is I do. You haven't missed much," he said, easily, shrugging it off. He didn't consider there was a whole lot going on in his life right now. "Olivia left town," he added, belatedly, more for information than anything else. After all, he'd called a halt to that little piece of insanity. he still didn't know where he'd honestly expected it to go, didn't know anything but what had happened - that it had gone nowhere. It had probably been a lucky break.

"Good." was Caleb's response to that. But then he'd never liked Olivia. The girl fucked with Math's head something awful, so as far as he was concerned, the farther away she was the better. "do you know where she went, or did she just disappear?" he asked, which was basically Caleb's way of finding out if they were still in touch, without coming straight out and asking.

Mathias shrugged a little. "She left me a message to say she was moving out to California. So - best that I have nothing to do with her, y'know. I'm not flavour of the month out there." Which was putting it mildly. He'd had a lynch mob baying for his blood from the heart of LA all the way up the damn state before he'd left. He'd severely pissed some people off out there and he wasn't intending to go anywhere near the state for a couple of years. give things time to settle. Give himself time to age a little.

"California not the best place for you to show your face?" Caleb asked, but didn't ask for details on why that might be. "But good. I'm glad she's gone." he said. He reclined back in the chair a little farther, half wondering just what had been up in his life lately that Math flat out didn't know. Probably a lot more than he was even thinking about. Though one thing came to mind, and that was getting rid of Lullaby's dad's body. Math didn't know about that.

"Really not - that was where I was before I landed here," Mathias said, but he didn't offer to go into detail. That was over, not important now. Math wasn't known for being a person who engaged in retrospection if he could avoid it. "And I know you never liked her. It just wasn't meant to work, is all. I'd called it off a while back now, but it'll be better for both of us not having to see each other everyday. But, tell me about this girl, what've you been up to?"

"So far she's not crazy, she's kind of more on a level with me intellectually. She swears a lot, tends to hit me when I make commentary designed to get that response, and when the werewolves hit town, we got caught downtown. One was trying to get into a bar, so I hit it. Told her to run. She did, but she came back for me. Stupid, but means she's got something." What, he wasn't sure. And he was still convinced she'd be the death of him, but that was hardly the point.

"Sounds like she's got some nerve," Mathias said, somewhat appreciatively. He didn't ask to meet the girl - that was far too formal for either of them, really. He might have taken on the role of quasi-parent, but he didn't want to push it any further than paying the bills and being an emergency contact. He figured Caleb knew where he was if he needed anything - as shown by the fact that he'd come to him with this - and apart from that, he had confidence in his brother to mostly look after himself.

"She does. There's a reason I like her." Caleb said. "...among other reasons, but yeah. She's a lot less insane than the girls I've gone for before. And I think she listens to me on some shit. It doesn't just go in one ear and out the other." Since he still felt like Leija did that. Rose did that. Rose. Who'd disappeared. "...Rose was here, and she's gone. I have no idea where she is, she hasn't called me back even if I've left messages." he added, not even sure if he was asking for anything on that, or just talking.

"Rose probably left to try and find her family - she was the girl from the empty town we went through, right?" Mathias checked. He knew that he wouldn't be able to stay in one place for long if he knew that his family was missing. And, for Mathias, a changed number was no big news story either.

"She did, she said she was going to. She's just dropped off the face of the planet with them. Either that or she just never wanted to speak to me again, which was entirely possible. She and I...let's say that we didn't get along so well and call it good there." Caleb said with a sigh. "But you asked what I was up to." he pointed out. "Other than that, not so much. Slowly introducing Nic to the wide world of fucked up supernatural bullshit. Attempting to pass my classes. Ducking ex girlfriends then trying to help save them from themselves. Y'know. The usual." he said. then he was quiet for a long moment. "Unless you count the night of the masquerade."

"People have a right to disappear," Mathias reminded him. "Especially if they tell you they're going to. She knows where you are, so, if she wants to get in touch, she will. But if you guys really didn't get along... Let her go. Your life'll be eaiser for it. And I'm including every night. What happened at the masquerade?" he asked. He hadn't seen his brother there - but then, he'd been in the bar and he knew Eris had strict rules about underage kids sticking to the club, so that wasn't surprising. And he hadn't heard about there being any trouble. There was just one other thing. "And you were at Babylon? You go there often?" he asked, keeping his tone casual as he took another pull on his cigarette, getting down toward the end now. He didn't like the idea of his brother going there a lot. He didn't want him near Eris - he didn't trust that woman.

"Did I ask to find her? Did I say I was looking for her? No." Caleb said, not really needing the advice about letting people go. As far as he was concerned, wherever Rose was, so long as it wasn't Marquette and around him, she was better off. "And yeah, I think pretty much everyone was there. It's where I met Nic." he said. "But either way, no, I haven't been back there since. Why?" he asked, since he didn't know why his brother would ask unless it was important.

Mathias considered his answer as he finished off his cigarette and stubbed it out. "Because I know the owner, and I don't trust her, is all," he said, finally. Not that he thought that Eris would do anything to Caleb, or with Caleb just because of who he was. He just didn't trust her around his family, and that woman liked playing games far too much. She'd play with anyone, regardless of who they were. And, if she got her claws into Caleb, she knew enough about Mathias to know that playing with the younger Lockwood would screw the eldest Lockwood as well. And whilst that might not be a reason in itself, it was definitely an added sweetner.

"Duly noted." Caleb said. He hadn't really planned on going back, the place was interesting, but not really his scene. If one could even say he had a scene. Whatever it was, that wasn't it. "And the night of the masquerade, I got called in to do a favor. Needed to disappear a corpse, and help patch people up." he said, as if it had been just that easy. But then that was how Mathias talked. Like anything he did was just simple. No real effort involved.

"Take it you didn't need any help with that," Math observed, not batting an eyelid at the news. He knew it wasn't his brother's first corpse, after all. "How were the people? Bad fight?" he asked, his concentratino more there. He figured that whatever it was that had died had caused the injuries that had needed patching up.

"Nope, didn't need any help." He'd actually taken care of it pretty quickly and about as efficiently as one could, in his opinion. Giving a corpse to someone who was going to eat it? Fairly good methodology in that. "They were banged up enough. Had to give a lot of stitches." His voice was slightly distant at that, gaze elsewhere. He still didn't like thinking about it. Killing shit he was adept at. Hearing screaming from pain you're causing, no matter the reason, wasn't something he could handle.

"Good job they had you then - you do a pretty good job of stitches," Math said, approvingly, but he paused a little as he caught the tone there and turned more serious, dropping the careless, easy going tone he generally adopted in day to day life. "You wanna talk about that," he added, sitting forward a little more.

"Not a lot to say." Caleb said. "I didn't especially enjoy listening to friends of mine scream because they couldn't deal with the pain of having to be kind of extensively stitched up. But they couldn't go to the hospital, and they'd already lost a ton of blood. I just didn't..." he broke off for a second, looking towards the window. "I didn't like hearing them scream like that." Or beg me to stop. I didn't like that either.

Mathias didn't ask why they couldn't go to the hospital - there were lots of reasons for that and every one was incredibly valid as far as he was concerned. They lived in a world where human facilities, and the things humans put into place to deal with existence didn't and couldn't apply. Hospitals were great things, but you couldn't always use them. "You don't need me to tell you that if they were losing blood and needed that many stitches then it was worth the pain for them - you did the right thing." Some people just couldn't keep their mouths shut, was all - that wasn't Caleb's fault.

"I know." Caleb said right away, because he did. That just didn't help matters much. And, after a few moments, he shared that thought. "It just doesn't make a difference. Doesn't sound any different. And no one's ever begged me to stop before. I don't...generally make a habit of hurting anything just to hurt it. I'll kill things if I have to, but I was never that kid that used magnifying glasses to set bugs on fire." he said. "I found three dead puppies earlier this summer, stuck on pikes in a playground. I buried them before any little kids could come by and be traumatized for life." he said, not sure where that had come from. Probably because someone had been a sick fuck on that score.

Mathias considered his brother, then stood. "I need coffee - you want?" he asked, before heading off to the kitchen to put a pot on, getting back as quickly as he could, without looking like he was hurrying. "It's different," he said, as he walked back into the living room, but stopped, leaning against the door through to the kitchen, so he could tell when the coffee was done. "In some ways, I'd imagine it's worse - doing that to a friend, to help them out. I've had people beg me to stop before, but that I was after something that they could give me. And it stopped on their terms, or it stopped when I'd had enough. With what you just said, you couldn't stop, not until you were done. Because it was something that had to be done."

"It looked to me like wounds I could have caused." Caleb said. Which, up until he said it, he didn't quite know that that had bothered him too, or played in. "Clean. Deep. One of them could have easily bled out if I hadn't got there when I did. The other...she would have too, not that much longer after the first." He was quiet for a long few moments. "You've tortured people." He didn't know if that was a question or not.

"I've done what I've needed to," Mathias agreed. It was one of those things - he didn't particularly like to kill, and he would avoid it where he could. But then again, he didn't enjoy torture either - it was just a means to an end. It was just a means that didn't cause him to lose sleep at night.

Caleb didn't say anything to that. He just took it on board. He wasn't sure what he thought about it. Probably not so good things. But then, he rated that above Dorian's stupid fucking admission of how he'd 'just wanted to kill something'. Or however the hell he'd put it. It was fucked up, no matter what was said on that. And it was part of why he didn't so much talk to Dorian anymore. He wasn't necessarily judging his brother, just wondered what the fuck kind of shit he pulled where something like that would actually be needed. He just wasn't stupid enough to ask.

"So, coffee?" Mathias asked his brother. He wasn't intending to change the subject - he just needed the caffeine fix to follow up his nicotine hit or he was going to be a grouchy bastard all day.

Caleb nodded. "Sure. I need the caffiene before I head to school anyways." he said, getting up to head into the kitchen, and hunt up a clean mug. Things like doing the dishes and shit kind of...didn't make his list of priorities. But then school didn't exactly rate very high either.

Mathias grabbed the coffee pot and waited for Caleb to find mugs, leaning back against the counter. "So - your friends, they come out of it all okay?" he asked Caleb. "And have you talked to them about what happened? About the fact that you were bothered by it?"

Caleb rinsed out two mugs and handed one to his brother. Pausing before he actually answered, he shrugged. "They both survived." he said. Which didn't necessarily denote 'okay', but that was relative. He wasn't sure how well Dean had done with it, not really, particularly considering he'd skipped the fucking country afterwards for a while. That didn't exactly scream 'I'm fine'. And at the last question, he got shot a look. "No." he said, as if this was really not at all a subject to bring up with anyone. He paused then. "Maybe a little, with one of them, but...whatever, does it matter?"

"Not a question I can answer, bro - that's up to you. But I take it from that that you've got no intention of ever bringing it up with them, so that's cool. Just asking," he said, filling the mugs with coffee and setting the pot back down again. "Can't say that I'd talk about it either." But then he didn't really share with people an awful lot either, preferring to play his cards closer to his chest than that. Then again, he generally didn't let it show he was bugging about things like Caleb had done a few minutes ago, and he didn't think his brother did either, so he was taking this a little more seriously than the norm.

"I wouldn't really know what to say. I mean, they've been through enough, I don't really need to add onto that pile 'yeah that kind of haunts the shit out of me'. It'll go away." Even if he wasn't at all sure it would do so, he was going to say it was. That was his story and he was sticking to it. It had better go away. Fade. Even if the other screams never did. The ones from the bar. That he didn't know if it'd ever drift back. He wanted it to, desperately wanted it to, but...he was aware it might not. It might just be there, beneath the surface. "They're the types that would feel guilty about it, even if it wasn't their fault, and we all know it just had to go down like that."

"Conscience is a wonderful thing - they call you for help, then'd feel guilty when you give it." People. "And how about you? Look, seriously, bro - they didn't like it. I'm assuming no real pain killers here, so - nobody likes being stitched up without, y'know. Not surprising you feel like shit doing that to someone you give a damn about. That doesn't say bad things about you..."

"I didn't say it did." Caleb said. "It's not about that. I don't feel bad about myself over it, it just sucked to hear. Just because something doesn't have some massive backlash on my self-image or anything doesn't mean it isn't having an impact. It just wasn't fun and if I can avoid ever having to do it again, I will." he said.

"That's part of it - learning what you can and can't stand," Math commented, taking a sip of his coffee. "So, you don't stitch your friends up again - and here's hoping they don't need it again," he added.

"...if they do, I will, but I can tell you this much, if I'm around to help them avoid it, I sure as hell will." Caleb agreed. "Because you're right. The whole...learning what you can cope with and I don't do so well with that, obviously. I'm not going to bail on someone because I might not come out so well from it, but avoidance would be great."

"And knowing where you can get something to knock someone out for it. Or at least numb the pain," Mathias suggested, though that was always easier said than done. It wasn't like this shit could be really planned in advance 'hey, please could you have your fight Wednesday at 10, so I can be there with drugs and a clean needle' didn't work all that well, and carrying that shit round was just asking for trouble.

"The best we had was a bottle of alcohol and they held hands." Caleb said. "But...yeah. having that stuff even available in an emergency would be good. That'd probably be more something you could pull off than I could though." he added. He might be able to, but he'd be far more likely to get caught than his brother, who could probably just get someone else to score it for him and smile while they did it.

Mathias smirked around the rim of his mug as he took another sip of coffee. "Well I am going to be going to talk to Lisa, I could see what I could rustle up there," he suggested. It was intriguing, he had to admit. He figured drugs were fairly well locked up in a psych ward. Just hard would it be for her to get him some? How far would she go for him? He might just have to find out - if nothing else, it might be some relief from the endless boredom.

"You are. So, why don't you try and figure that out?" Caleb suggested. "Other than that, I've got a really really outside contact with Nic's mom, who's a nurse. I'm pretty sure she works the E.R. I have to talk to her yet to see if she'd agree to be called in the event that Lisa can't cover for Leija on something. Like that could be the contact number and she could just say that Leija was with her for something. Outpatient...whatever. No clue. But that was my other angle to try and cover." he said, figuring Math should know the whole story on this thing if it was going to work. "...though can't say I'm not wondering just how badly this might go with asking the mother of the girl I'm currently interested in to help out the girl who's my ex and apparently still obsessed with me."

"Yeah - that really could be asking for trouble," Mathias agreed, wincing a little. "And you'd have some explaining to do there - not sure how you'd accomplish that... Unless you're going to start charming the parents now, of course," he added, appearing highly amused by that idea.

Caleb quirked a half smile that didn't last very long. "Already did that." he said. At least, he thought he'd done a fairly decent job of getting Nic's mom to like him. The woman was very important to Nic, and as far as he could tell, on the level, so...yeah. He put in the effort on that score.

Mathias raised an eyebrow. "You've met this girl's mother?" he asked, clearly and honestly surprised. He'd never been one for parents, avoiding them where possible. Things got complicated once you started to meet the family and Mathias preferred not to get involved. If he was being honest, Mathias knew that he preferred to pick women who had as few ties as possible - it made it easier to get them wrapped around his finger if they were alone in the world. He definitely had certain types he generally went for - the bored, the lonely. Emotion didn't come into it so much for him. Not usually. Olivia had been different, the first time in years he'd allowed himself to really look at that kind of a situation, and that had all come to nothing.

"Yes." Caleb said. "I've met her mother. It's just her and her mom. Nic was adopted. Lost her memory, so she only remembers like the past three years, as far as I understand it. She doesn't know what happened to her family, or her. She's got some scars...doesn't know what from. Her mom's pretty nice though. Seems to really care about Nic. And Nic really cares about her." he explained. And he wondered how that felt, sometimes. But it was nice to see, even if it was from an outside perspective. That it was possible. Kind of like seeing Dean and Thia together.

Mathias couldn't keep the twitching, amused smile off his face, finding the idea of Caleb meeting the family amusing for some reason. "Well, that's nice then, isn't it," he managed. "You gonna be picking up figuring out what happened to her next?"

Caleb didn't appreciate the amusement factor there, and rolled his eyes, knocking back more of his coffee. "Not unless she wants to, and right now she doesn't." he said. "And you can quit looking like it's fucking christmas. Doesn't really encourage me to let you in on whatever's going on with me if I feel like you're just making fun of me without actually saying anything." he added, rolling his eyes.

"Oh, come on - let me have some fun occasionally, bro, please," Math complained, but he did make an effort to look less amused. "I guess I just don't view any of us as the kind of guys you take home to meet mom, you know? And - maybe I would have said Dorian was, but lately? I'm reassessed on that one." he used to consider Dorian to be the stable one, but no longer, not any more.

"I'm still not, I can just play nice when I want to, I guess." Caleb said. Then sighed and shook his head, sipping more coffee. "And Dorian 'I just wanted to kill something' Lockwood? Him, not being the type to take home to mother? No, you don't say." he said, still thinking that was fucked up. Pretty much nothing was going to take the edge off of that one. He eyed Math for a moment. "I've been avoiding the shit out of him, honestly, have you talked to him?"

"Hey - at one time I thought that he'd be the nice guy out of us." Then again, at one point, Mathias had been hoping that Caleb would end up having a relatively normal life. Things just didn't happen that way. "But no - I've not really seen much of him lately. Dropped in at Nevermore last week to catch up, he seems to be doing okay."

"You and me both." Caleb remarked, since he'd thought that Dorian was going to be that too. But yeah. That was a whole lot of no. Hell, at current, he looked like the nice one, and Caleb was the one with crazy obsessed exes and more scars than probably the entire rest of the student population of MSHS combined. "And yeah? Well...that's good. I guess. Not heading for any new breakdowns or random flights from town?" he asked, finishing off his coffee. "And what about you?"

"No, no heading for new breakdowns or random flights out of town - for either of us," Mathias promised him. Nope, he was going absolutely nowhere. And he didn't do breakdowns. He was just stuck here for the foreseeable future where the only real perspective entertainment was messing with some nurse's head to get his brother what he wanted.

"Math, you know I'll be alright." which probably wasn't the best thing to say, since he'd had a history of being unstable. Caleb was fairly volitile, generally speaking, but lately he'd been more even. "And Dor...well. He'll either get his shit together or he won't. But you've got to be bugging. I'd even theorize that it's part of why I haven't really seen you and we haven't really talked. For a while there, you were asking me what was up with me all the time, now...I'm catching you up on shit that happened last month. And it was fairly major shit."

Mathias drained the remainder of his coffee and walked through to the living room, grabbing his cigarettes and lighting up again. "Yeah, I know you'll be alright," he agreed, though he didn't add any more. He wasn't here just for Caleb. In fact, the primary reason he was still in town was Dorian, though not because his brother needed looking after. He was here becasue of the deal he'd made to find his brother - his side of the bargain had been his presence at Babylon. So, here he was, still. In several feet of fucking snow that was getting old really fast. He just had to keep going, one day at a time. In this endless fucking winter that had hardly even begun yet.

Caleb set his mug down and didn't say anything, or follow for a few long minutes. Then he did, though he glanced at the clock to see how much time he had left before he had to leave for school. God today was going to suck. "So what's the issue then?" he asked, leaning against the wall.

"Who said there was an issue?" Mathias said, taking another drag on his cigarette and slowly blowing a stream of smoke out across the room, the hit helping to keep him relaxed, helping him to maintain the casual, devil-may-care posture and tone he always seemed to have.

"I did, because I'm not an idiot, and not one of the little braindead chippies that follows you around and believes every word out of your mouth?" Caleb suggested. "If you know I'm going to be fine, and Dorian's alright, why're you still here? I know you don't want to be. This place has got to be driving you batshit insane. So...I'll repeat myself. What's the issue?"

Mathias looked over at his brother and gestured slightly, off hand. "I made a promise," he said, as if this was nothing really to get worked up about. "Anyway, if I go you and Dor are likely to kill each other within a week. It's not like you get on or anything." he pointed out. He was still of the opinion that they both needed a mediator. It was just fucking scary that that job fell to him.

"Unlikely. He does his thing, I do mine, we haven't spoken since before we got back to Marquette. I'm pretty sure our arguing days are done." Caleb said. "I already said I was avoiding him. I'm positive he's doing the same with me. So...no actual issue. I think we're both good with our total avoidance of anything resembling contact, verbal or otherwise. So...we don't need a babysitter."

"Good - glad you've worked something out. Aren't you gonna be late for school?" mathias asked, both by way of deflecting the subject and also because he did wonder about that. They'd been talking for a while now, and Mathias wasn't in the habit of wearing a watch. Generally speaking, the world ran to his time as far as he was concerned.

Caleb rolled his eyes and exhaled heavily. "Haven't we got over this childish bullshit where you try to deflect and I just call you on it?" he asked. "It's been a while since we talked, yeah, but not appreciating the square one thing here." he said. "Yeah, I have school. I don't have to leave yet."

Mathias just looked at his brother. "You're digging - I told you, I made a promise, so, I'm hanging around. End of. This has nothing to do with you, it's just something I gotta do. So no, you're not gonna come home one day and find me gone. You're stuck with me, so if you have a problem with that, you're just gonna have to get used to it."

"It's a bullshit promise in the first place. I'm sure you've broken your word before, and no one's holding you to it anyhow." Caleb said, thinking his brother was talking about the promise he'd made to him to stick around. "And yeah, I've got a problem with it. I think if you're not already tearing your hair out and being massively unhappy that that's right around the corner. And that's not good."

Mathias smirked slightly and took another drag on his cigarette. "World doesn't revolve around you, bro," he said. "I'm not staying just because I think you need someone around - no matter how many times you go over and over and over that you've given me permission or whatever to leave. Which, by the way, is getting kinda old. I have my own reasons for staying, and yeah, someone'd hold me to it." Just not necessarily directly - if Mathias left, he was good at dropping off the face of the earth. But she knew he had family in town, so she had him by the balls.

Caleb arched a brow. "So if it isn't your word to me--who the fuck is holding you to something?" he asked. Though he had to admit, somewhere deep down, he felt both relieved that it wasn't him, and slightly disappointed that he didn't rate that high. It was a no-win type of answer. Still, none of that showed, just the curiosity.

Mathias shrugged a shoulder, finishing off his second cigarette of the day and contemplating lighting up another one - only he knew that Caleb knew that that was a tell. He smoked more when he was feeling stressed, and he didn't really want to be explaining this shit to his brother. So, he purposefully didn't start in on another smoke. "I made a deal, is all - its no big thing. I was going to be hanging around here anyway, so may as well formalise that," he said, that same brush off 'this isn't important' kind of tone.

Silence met that answer. Caleb had been waiting for his brother to grab another cigarette, but he didn't. But then again, he'd told him he noticed that he smoked a whole lot more when he was bugging about things. He just generally didn't like a blow off answer from Mathias. It was probably paranoid, but Caleb usually felt like if Math was deliberately blowing something off, if he had that tone, that it meant the opposite. That something was just there that he didn't want to talk about. Not only that but 'a deal' and 'a promise' wasn't generally the guy's style. And why set some other tether up if he was already in a situation he hated? It didn't add up in Caleb's head--not that everything Math did always added up to him. There was a lot of shit his brother pulled that mystified him. In the end he didn't say anything. He just kept his gaze heavy on his brother, eyes clearly conveying that he Wasn't Happy with things, and then he pushed off the wall to leave. Maybe he'd walk to school today. It would give him time to cool off, and maybe freezing his ass off would help wake him up more too.

Math held his brother's gaze, seeing the look, recognising it, and not reacting in the slightest. Caleb could be pissed about it, he just didn't have the automatic right to know what was going on all the time, especially not when it was something that Mathias wasn't entirely sure the guy would get on some levels. Sure, he'd come on the hunt for Dorian, but Mathias was of the opinion that Caleb didn't give family the same importance that he did, at its core, or understand why family was so important to Mathias, and he really didn't feel like explaining that right now. So, he let the guy go, leaving him to just not be happy about things. He wasn't just going to cave and spill on the back of a glare.