It's around six, still two and a half or three hours until sundown, and
it's really rather warm, and humid, and kind of sticky, and the air is
very heavy and doesn't move at all. The air, in fact, gives most sounds a
strange muffled quality - at least when you're outside. It's also, it
should be noted, warm enough that Pete's wearing short sleeves instead of
just rolling the long ones up. No jacket, no tie, half-unbuttoned. And
he's standing outside Lindsey's door with a bag of lo mein and Coke.
Knocked a second ago, and trying desperately not to stew over the fact
that Hebrew vowels are, indeed, dots.

The door opens after only quite a short time. Lindsey has been staring at
the TV for quite a while now, but at some point he actually turned it on.
Some movie with loud explosions is playing. The lawyer looks serious, as
he usually does, and slightly bruised, as he often does. Week-old marks
tread bright colours across the right side of his face. Kitty's bandaging
handiwork remains clean and secure, despite a change into a T-shirt in
response to the rising heat. "Hey."

"H'lo," replies Pete, then holds up the bag. "Brought lo mein. Talked to
Pryde. Told me she'd been. Also told me to ask if you'd taken
painkillers."  Still standing outside the door, but not expecting an
invitation, 'cause he's no fool. His eyebrows go up. "Mind me here for a
bit? I can go."

Never, ever issue invitations, to anyone. Several times bitten, several
more times shy. Lindsey considers for a moment, then steps back to give
Pete room to enter. "I took some Tylenol." A couple of hours ago. He
doesn't like taking painkillers.

Can sympathize, absolutely. But before you stands a managed man, so he had
to ask. Wisdom steps through the doorway. "I'll let her know so she frets
less.  Hungry?" I'm sorry I've been stewing for so long. You disappeared
after the Marley incident. I didn't want you to think I hated you because
of Deimos.  I didn't want to - life is a series of apologies, if you let
it be. Pete doesn't voice any of this, just watches Lindsey briefly before
setting the bag down on an available surface. Watches with an expression
somewhat akin to regret.

Hungry. That's a question that takes some thinking about. "Yeah," Lindsey
concludes, and alters course towards the kitchen to find plates. No
dropping noodles on the new carpet which is almost completely free of
bloodstain.  If Pete's tacit apologies are even noticed, let alone
accepted, he gives absolutely no sign. It's been rough lately. "Kitty told
you everything?"  Obviously.

"She does that, yeah," says Pete, and there's no apology there. It's being
acknowledged, so he looks up as he's taking the food and the cola out of
the bag. "Don't have to rehash unless you want to add anything. We were
worried."

Coulda fooled me. Okay, that thought wasn't fair, make it go away...gone.
Good. Lindsey re-emerges with plates and forks. Chopsticks are not
something he owns or believes in. "She got the important parts." He sits
on the couch.

Chopsticks are great until it comes to noodles. And then things fall
apart.  Pete divvies up the delightfully unhealthy takeout, hands Lindsey
his plate and a coke, then brings his own plate over and half-sits,
half-leans on the arm of the couch. Left his soda on the counter, don't
want to juggle. "No one objecting to my spending time with you. D'you want
to work? On what we were discussing. Or do you want me to do anything
else? I'm allowing for 'fuck off' as an answer, incidentally."

That last actually gets a smile. It doesn't last long, but it definitely
happens. Lindsey mimicks Pete's posture on the other end of the couch,
which makes conversation slightly difficult but by no means impossible. "I
don't mind." Which is code for, I don't care. He's hoping Pete will talk
so he can eat. Eating slowly is not a skill he's mastered yet. "Is Kitty a
nurse?"

Now that Pete's not afraid of getting his head bitten off, he will. He has
no compunctions against talking with his mouth full, which is usually
unfortunate, but occasionally - like now - useful. "No, she's - she's
always had a lot of opportunity to be really versed in first aid. A
reasonably fair number of--" Bite of food. "--levels of it." Chew,
swallow. "So she learned.  'M pretty familiar with it, myself." Actually,
I've had training as a paramedic. But that's beside the point.

When Lindsey eats, he eats with dedication and concentration. A minor
holdover from the days where if you didn't finish quickly enough, you were
liable to lose half your dinner to a bigger sibling. In a pause for
breath, he remarks, "I'm glad she came by." He would have had to go to the
hospital. Again.

"You want me to tell her that?" asks Pete, taking another bite, then
stopping a second and wincing because he swallowed a mouthful without
chewing. "Not to say she's - I mean, she's still worried, but that's all.
And it's one of her hobbies." You didn't hurt her feelings or anything,
she knew she should have known better.

"Sure." If it'll make her feel better in any way. It's not like she did
anything other than try to draw him out when he was in the kind of mood
that puts fists through glass. Lindsey must be deep in thought because he
slows down, twiddling some noodles around his fork. "If you see Kess, let
me know if she's all right?"

Well, she doesn't particularly feel bad. But it'll be good to know. Pete
eats a lot while Lindsey's thinking hard, not interrupting him - and jeez,
no wonder Kitty calls watching him eat like watching a car crash. Then he
nods, swallowing again, and replies. "Haven't seen her in a good long
while. But I will. She passes by upstairs from us on occasion. What kind
of timeframe of 'all right' am I looking at, here?"

"I upset her today." Right after she upset me, but that's not the point.
Lindsey gets back to eating again, something in him refusing to leave a
plate half-empty. Must. Finish. Noodles.

"You were upset today," Pete points out unnecessarily. "Not everyone has
the kind of skills necessary to know when not to talk to someone who's
upset.  But I'll keep an eye out." Ha ha. An eye. Daaaahgh. He eats some
more, kind of quickly, because awkwardness if Lindsey is done and he's not
- but it ends up with him with way too much lo mein in his mouth, eww.

No such thing! Lindsey cleans his plate and just barely suppresses the
urge to pick up the leftover sauce with a finger. He sets the empty on the
coffee table and casts Pete a glance. A glance which ends up lingering. "I
thought *I* shouldn't eat in public." Hee.

Wisdom gives Lindsey one of those grins where your mouth is mostly closed
but there's kind of issue with that because /waah/ so much stuff in mouth,
and chipmunk face because cheeks full, ahaha gross. And then there are
contortions and a wince while he actually manages to kind of chew and
swallow, again.  And he only drops one noodle back on his plate. Then he
/grins/ at Lindsey.  "Whaaat."

"You're an animal." Lindsey leans back on the couch and regards his
bandaged hand. "Mind the couch." Do not be spitting sauce on my
expensively-reupholstered furniture. The mild humour sinks fast. Oh yeah,
and then there's all those things that are so horrible wrong. Thanks for
reminding me, brain.

"People keep /telling/ me this," returns Pete, joke-complaining, mildly.
He glances at his plate, then at the couch, and grins again. "Am. Didn't
bring over the cola yet." Little bit left, Pete polishes it off quickly.
"Can you be distracted?" he finally asks.

The bandaged hand is briefly upraised. This was a distraction, for exactly
five seconds. "Not for long." Lindsey has considered getting drunk and
decided against it. "There's just...a lot."

Pete's gotten halfway to spectacularly drunk exactly once since Kitty's
been here, and regretted it intensely. "Yeah. A lot. Seems like a lot all
around,"  says the spy, suppressing a mild sigh completely and standing,
setting his empty plate on the coffee table as well, then standing to go
get his soda.  "I'm going and actively seeking out things to make me
mildly surly so I don't think about the things that'll make me reach for
the Scotch. D'you know Hebrew vowels are /dots/? They're - they're all
these fucking *dots*. That go in different arrangements. Around other
letters."

"I didn't know that." Lindsey knows Latin, and a very very small amount of
Romanian thanks to that stupid souling spell. Poor Darla. Okay, don't go
there, there are much more important things to brood about. Brood.

Oddly enough, Pete knows Latin too. And they say it's a dead language.
Pffah.  "Yeah. It's annoying. And I'm still upset over Entwistle - you
know, bassist for the Who? - but I'm over Brazil winning the World Cup."
He's giving examples; walks back, opening his Coke. "Could be seething
over the doctor what hurt Seravina. Over what's happened to you. Over Kurt
stopping coming by.  Over the goddamned flying rat Kitty loves so dearly.
Over half my mates fighting with the other half over the damned doctor.
Not, though, 'cos it's still going on."

The doctor?...Lindsey makes a mental note to go to the hospital sometime
soon and kill that guy. Killing people is too easy these days. "Yeah."
See, other people have complicated and nasty lives, too. He rubs his eyes
with the bandaged hand, carefully. "I hope it all works out for you."

"Yeah, well. Price of concern," shrugs the black-haired pirate guy,
sitting back down. "I'm sure it'll all work out. If it doesn't, I'll
probably be past giving a damn." He glances at Lindsey again, watching him
closely for a second. "There anything I...?" Can do. Can help with. Tell
me what you want me to do. I'm losing a kind of grip here, things are
going over my head.  Found a focus but losing other kinds, need to keep
them /all/. "Mind what I said about displacement. 'S fantastic. Tell me
what you need and I'll do it."

What I need. Lindsey thinks about it, honestly does, trying to figure out
the best possible answer. What does he need? "I'm so...I'm so tangled up.
I've dug myself in so deep." Pause, and, much more quietly, "I need help."

What /Pete/ needs is something he can sit on with his feet up on a rung so
he can lean his elbows on his knees. But he'll make do with the arm of the
couch.  He calmly regards the lawyer for a moment, then briefly chews on
his lip.  "I'm offering it. But I /do/ need to know what you want me to
do, or I'll end up treading on your feet."

"I don't know." If he knew that he'd just ask for it. Lindsey looks to
Pete, tired and bruised and just about at the end of his rope. "You don't
happen to have about a million dollars to spare, do you?"

"Er. Not at the moment," says Pete, clearing his throat and looking away.
"See what I can do. Not promising a million dollars or anything, but."
Also not saying heck no. "Anything else?" Direct look again, no longer
vaguely embarrassed. Less lost-looking, though. He remembered something,
apparently, or thought of something.

Can't immediately think of anything. Lindsey doesn't hold eye contact for
very long, finding the soda can that sits on the coffee table extremely
interesting. "I don't think so. Thanks." Get me out of this mess. This
horrible, complicated mess.

Yeah, I'll do my best. And to do that I need to find out as much as I can.
Pete takes a sip of the soda, standing up. "All right." A pause. "Any
names you can give me to work with? Or locations?" Another pause, shorter.
"I was - I don't recall if I told you. Where I came from, I worked for
British Intelligence. If there's anything you think would help by being
disappeared or changed, let me know." Meantime, I'll talk to Kitty about
spin-doctoring.

Oh. Right. Wow, the looming court case, Lindsey had almost forgotten about
that. "No. The circumstantial evidence is pretty conclusive. I'm sunk."
Unless Raven can think of a better way out, that is, and then he'll owe
her even more than he does already.

We'll see. Also, we'll try and get you a sane, reasonable, responsible
girlfriend. Okay? That'll be good. Pete doesn't agree, but he also doesn't
go and say 'look you, don't be talkin' like that'. "Well. Don't give up."
Pete's tone is firm there, and then sardonic in the last. "Even if all I
can give you for now is a cliche. I've an appointment to keep. Mind if I
stop by tomorrow?"

"That's fine." Don't give up - well. Yeah. Lindsey doesn't plan to, but
nor does he plan to fight as hard as he could. Whatever happens, happens.
"Thanks for dinner."

"Not a bit of it," grins Pete, waving a hand. "Had a feeling you hadn't
eaten." He'll take his Coke with him, go and head for his appointment -
stupid dots. "See you tomorrow, then, Lindsey. Oh, right. When they've
stopped bleeding, take the bandage off so they don't stay sticky. Heal
faster.  'Night." He's headed for the door, opens it.

Huh. Random medical advice from friends. "Night." Lindsey doesn't offer to
show Pete to the door. He knows where it is.

Best kind! It means no doctors, which may or may not be Evil. Quick nod,
and Wisdom heads out the door, locking it as he does, shutting it behind
him.  No whistling as the footsteps recede, however.