Who: Adrian and Caius When: End of April Where: Mila’s house
It had been a while since Caius had to make a housecall for someone he was trying to help, and he was almost amused at himself as he pulled into Mila Moretti’s driveway. She’d moved since the last time he’d been summoned to her door, and he approved of the upgrade. His father was paying her well, that was obvious, and it was a good thing. He was there more for his own curiosity than as a favor to anyone this time, interested in Mila’s not-dead brother’s problem. He’d called and picked Shayna Mae O’Reilly’s brain about what she knew about this sort of thing, and had learned some interesting wendigo folklore that he was still taking with a grain of salt. The indigenous people of the area surely knew a lot more than they ever got credit for, but he didn’t know exactly what Adrian was dealing with, and he knew how twisted Point Pleasant could make anything and everything. But it was some interesting background to take with him.
Caius greeted Mila at the door and went into her house with some murmured thanks, waving off her offer of anything to drink or snack on. Her big dumb boyfriend wasn’t home, presumably off running the Lucas dive bar with his equally idiotic brothers. The very idea of doing favors for anybody connected to Caden Lucas kind of pissed Caius off, but Mila was an exception since she was an employee now, and her brother wasn’t a Lucas. He was ... well, Caius aimed to find out what he was.
Mila led him into the living room where Adrian was waiting, then gave them some space and privacy. Caius looked the other man over without trying to hide it, curious about this man back from the dead, so to speak, then offered out his hand to shake. “Caius D’Onofrio,” he officially introduced himself.
Adrian wasn't sure what he'd been expecting but Caius was both less and more intimidating than he'd thought. Physically he wasn't scary looking, a good looking guy who was about the same height as Adrian and not bulky but there was something about him that had Adrian a little on edge. "Adrian Moretti," he replied in same as he shook Caius's hand and just like how he couldn't make up his mind on whether Caius was scary or not, he also wasn't sure if he was glad or disappointed Mila wasn't there with them. On one hand they could speak freely without him worrying about her feelings and on the other... well, Caius was a little unnerving. "Have a seat?" he offered, gesturing to the couch and trying to remember how to be a decent host or some variation thereof.
Mila’s brother was handsome even with his scars, though there was a haunted sort of air about him. Handsome but tired. Hunted, maybe. Or perhaps Caius was projecting. He took off his jacket and set it down on a chair before accepting the offered spot on the couch. Caius watched Adrian sit down as well, casually draping one arm along the back of the cushions. “So,” he started, aware this was probably uncomfortable for Adrian. Might as well get right to the point. “Mila told me a little bit about your affliction, but I’d like to hear it from you, if you don’t mind. Can you tell me what happened to you and what your life is like now?”
Adrian didn't love this part but he'd braced for it because he knew it was coming. How could anyone help him if he refused to tell them what the problem was. He didn't need to get into all the gory details though, he was pretty sure that was beyond him even now. Some of the probably necessary details were also beyond him but he'd see just how much Caius could help him without them before divulging in the more awful things he'd done to survive. "I don't know how much Mila told you," he said, unable to keep his knee from bouncing as he thought about the story he'd had to tell before. It was somehow easier to focus on the time he'd told it than the story itself, remember the hospital room instead of the cave. "This thing - I've only heard it called a wendigo but I don't know if that's what it really is - attacked us in the woods. Gave me a few scars, broke my leg, ate my friends." He swallowed dryly and licked his lips. "I was the last one so I... I got out, I guess it wasn't as hungry. After that I started to change- actually, here. Maybe it's more useful if you just see the tattoos." He pulled down the collar of his t-shirt to show off the magic scribblings on his chest. If Caius was really a witch maybe he could suss out what kind of magic it was and Adrian wouldn't have to tell him too much.
Caius’s chin lifted a bit and he leaned forward as he peered at the tattoos Adrian revealed. The sigils looked vaguely familiar and he recognized the alphabet that the words were written in, but it wasn’t a magical language he knew well enough to read right off the bat. He slipped his hand into his pocket to pull out his phone, then quirked a brow at Adrian. “Can I take a photo of the whole thing?” he asked. “It’s not something I’m fluent in, but I recognize it from somewhere. It’ll take a bit of research.” Since he couldn’t identify and decipher the tattoos immediately, he thought more questions were probably in order. “You said it gave you scars ... did it bite and scratch you? Did you exchange bodily fluids in any way? I’m wondering about possible transmission ... if it’s something passed physically or more of a magical curse.”
Adrian nodded and pulled his t-shirt off, letting it bundle around his arms. The only thing Caius needed to see were the tattoos below his clavicle and he was somewhat thankful he wasn't bashful about his body. Even if he had been, it was effectively wiped clean by being a legitimate science experiment for too long. "It didn't bite me," he replied. "I didn't even really see its face until much later. It had uh, it was wearing a skull like a mask." No wonder everyone called it a wendigo, maybe that was exactly what it was. It wasn't like the doctors had shared their notes with Adrian. "It scratched me," he added. "This one is from a fall though," he added as he gestured up at his head. The night it happened had been chaotic and it was hard to remember anything after he fell except the pain.
Caius scooted a little closer and aimed his phone at Adrian’s chest. He was completely uninterested in the flesh under the tattoo, and vaguely glad that Adrian wasn’t weird about it. Once he had a clear shot of the tattoo, he sat back, zooming in on it a bit to examine it more closely while he listened to Adrian’s answer. “What sort of changes did you go through?” he asked after a beat, looking up from his phone to focus on the man again. “Mila said you have to eat a lot ...?” It really wasn’t much information to go off of. As much as Adrian might not want to talk about it, Caius needed to know what the effects were, what exactly these magical sigils etched into his skin were supposed to protect him from. He had a million more questions about who had done it to Adrian and why, but those weren’t as important.
"I need to eat a lot of meat," Adrian replied grimly as he pulled his t-shirt back on. This was starting to feel more like a doctor's interview in a way, clinical and detached and that he could do. "If I don't eat I start losing myself, my thoughts get fuzzy and I want to hurt people." Eat people. That was a bit harder to say but he hoped Caius understood his meaning without him having to go into details. "The last time though... I was with Mila and Aaron and that, I don't know, it helped keep me focused." The power of love was a cliche he might have rolled his eyes at otherwise but it was heavily applicable here and he was relieved for it. "Can you feel any magic from this?" he asked, patting his chest. "Or is it just the words."
He did indeed understand what Adrian meant. The wendigo legends were closely tied to cannibalism, from what he’d read and heard from Shayna Mae. Which made Adrian highly dangerous, especially if his body changed into something stronger as he started losing himself, as he put it. Caius’s dark gaze fell to Adrian’s chest again, though it was covered now, and he nodded after a beat. “I feel some. But it’s not strong and it’s not familiar to me -- I don’t think I’ve encountered magic quite like it before. You’ve had the tattoo a while, haven’t you? Can you tell me what benefits it gave you? Like did it stop any physical changes in you, or tempered your hunger, or ...?” He trailed off and raised a brow.
"Uhm," Adrian started as he considered it, reaching up to scratch idly at his chest as if the tattoos underneath his t-shirt might tell him what to say though it wasn't a conscious gesture. This was hard to talk about, though he wasn't sure if it was harder or easier with a guy he didn't know. He sure as hell didn't want to tell Mila half of what he'd been through - of what he'd done - but if Caius was going to help him he needed to know what he was dealing with. "I don't remember much before getting them, but I don't know if I was in... in shock or what." Those first weeks - months? - were a fog in his memory. He hadn't been able to speak at all, had lashed out when people got too close and cried a lot but that was about all he remembered; a jumbled chaos of embarrassing shit. "I know uh, if I get too hungry the tattoos start to bleed, like they're... I don't know. A crumbling defense."
More vagueness. Caius tried not to be annoyed about it, aware that whatever had happened to Adrian had been hugely traumatic and life changing. Maybe he truly didn’t remember what he was like until after whoever had done the tattoos had gotten a hold of him. But it still didn’t really satisfy his curiosity very much. The bleeding was interesting, but that probably came more from the magic than the curse. Caius reached up and rubbed at one eye as he thought for a moment, then tried a different tack. “So what are your goals?” he asked, his dark gaze studying Adrian’s face. “I can’t promise that I can help you, but if I can, what do you want me to aim for? Less hunger, more control? Or should I try to eradicate it completely?” Caius had no idea yet if such a thing was possible, but he was sure Adrian’s answer was going to be along the lines of ‘a normal life.’ Caius just needed to know what that would entail.
Adrian didn't believe there was a cure, though at this point he was questioning everything he'd been told after he'd been betrayed and left to turn. Maybe that had been the endgame all along and in that case the doctors wouldn't have wanted to fully help him. "If there is a cure then I'll jump through hoops to get it," he said with a cautious smile. "I was told there was none, but that they could keep it in check. I want... Less hunger, less rage." He clenched his jaw at that, it wasn't a fun thing to admit, the violence that sometimes bubbled up in him, told him to tear people apart. "There are things that I can do when I'm hungry that I guess are kinda cool, if I had any control over them." He gestured to the door with another little smile. "I could hear the heartbeat of my sister's baby."
Caius wanted to know more about those cool things -- he mentally ticked off ‘enhanced senses’ on the list of possibilities in his brain -- but the mention of a baby distracted him for a moment. His brows lifted with a bit of surprise. “Mila’s pregnant?” he asked in a murmur, then let out a ‘hmm’ because the answer was obvious. That was interesting, he wondered if his father knew yet. It wasn’t essential information though. “Congratulations to your family then. All the more reason to get this under control and get your life back.” Caius gave Adrian a faint smile. He couldn’t help his nature, and part of him was already thinking about how useful it might be to have a creature like this at his beck and call. He still didn’t know if Adrian physically changed when he went hungry, but if something like that could be unleashed and then pulled back at will ... what a powerful sort of ally to have. He cleared his throat and sat up a bit straighter. “There might not be a cure, so don’t get your hopes up. But I will look. I do feel confident I can at least strengthen what they started,” he said, nodding at Adrian’s chest again. “Maybe redo the whole thing so it’s more effective, and you feel normal more often. I do need some of your blood though, are you okay with that?”
Adrian thought he'd known and he winced a bit at his faux pas. It was so obvious to him that Mila was pregnant but that apparently didn't mean much. He just hoped this wouldn't get her in trouble at work, things were finally going well for her and Aaron and he didn't want to cause them more pain than he already had. He nodded at Caius's question, long since used to bleeding for research, though he was curious whether Caius would be as clinical about it as the doctors had been. "How do you want it?" he asked. "I could probably get my hands on a needle and collection tube, unless you want to just slice me open." He gave Caius a somewhat tired smile at that and thought of Toby and how he probably could go to him for some equipment if they wanted this to stay clinical.
Caius let out a chuckle and moved to stand up. “I came prepared,” he said. He went to where he’d draped his jacket on the chair and dipped into the pocket to pull out a medium-sized capped syringe. It would be enough to get the blood home where he could start analyzing it magically. Caius arched a brow at Adrian to ask for his approval as he took a couple of steps closer again. “It’s not my first rodeo, I promise. Do you trust me to take it?” In Caius’s experience, people weren’t really good at drawing their own blood, so he hoped Adrian would be agreeable. He wanted to get started on this as soon as possible.
Adrian considered doing it himself but it was fair to say he was probably out of practice and maybe he was morbidly curious about how good a witch was at drawing blood. "I was an ER nurse," he informed him with a small smirk. "So I'm going to be judging your performance." That was a yes, he wasn't sure he trusted himself to do it because this was very different from treating a patient. There were a lot of things to keep in mind when drawing blood but he wasn't overly worried about it all, not when he'd been flat out murdered so recently and come back from that, did he really need to worry about an infection? "You have a tourniquet too in there? It's easier."
“Ah yes,” Caius murmured, dipping into his pants pocket to pull out a rubber strip and an alcohol swab. He hadn’t been professionally trained, but he was thorough in everything he did, and he’d had some practice drawing blood now in a more civilized manner. “I welcome any pointers,” he told Adrian with a little smirk as he sat down closer again. “For some reason this appeals to more people than just being cut and bleeding into a bowl. The transport is cleaner too.” It was a bit tongue in cheek, but Caius didn’t actually mind when Adrian corrected him on a couple of things as they went through the process, making mental notes. He didn’t completely fuck it up though, and soon enough he had a syringe full of of Adrian’s blood. Caius re-capped it and stood to tuck it back into his jacket, just in case Mila came back in the room. He wondered vaguely if she’d told her brother what he was. “If you were an ER nurse, I bet you saw a lot of crazy shit here, huh?” he asked.
"Nothing that prepared me for this," Adrian replied ruefully, pressing a tissue to the injection site. "Mercy is haunted, but everyone knew that. I worked in Portland for a while so I wasn't here for some of the wilder things." Maybe he should have stayed there, they all should have fucking stayed there but that just brought to mind the fact that he was back here, that his whole family was here, that this man - Caius - was here. Why did nobody leave? "You've seen some crazy shit too," he said and it wasn't a question, Caius was there chatting idly about him being a monster and how to possibly curb that monster inside him, of course he'd seen crazy shit before.
Wasn’t that a familiar story? Someone had left Point Pleasant and then come back. Only to have awful things happen to them. It was such a common narrative. Caius had been tempted to leave himself, more than once, but ultimately he knew his legacy was here. It wasn’t naivete on his part, this was just where he belonged. He knew that more than ever now. “My entire life,” he said with a faint chuckle, glancing back to Adrian. “I am the crazy shit, to most people. We have that in common, I suppose.” It wasn’t exactly an equalizer -- Adrian was technically homeless while Caius would never want for anything financially -- but it was some kind of connection. Adrian had lived with something for years that most people wouldn’t survive, especially not with their sanity intact. Caius had to respect that.
Adrian was pretty sure Caius was referring to being a witch, oblivious to what else was going on with the man, so he nodded with a little smile even if it didn't feel all that comparable. Being a witch, he assumed, meant Caius was in control of himself and had abilities that were beneficial while Adrian... Well, he was just fucked. Still, he appreciated it, feeling like he wasn't the only experiment in the room, so to speak. It was also kind of nice in a low key way to be taken care of by a handsome guy when he wasn't in too much pain to appreciate it and that stray thought made him wonder if he should tell Caius about his more than near death experience. He hadn't told the people who were last meant to help him, and he was glad for that now, well aware they would have used it against him and experimented with it just like he'd been afraid they might. Caius was someone Mila trusted enough to bring here, but Adrian wasn't too sure. It was on the tip of his tongue but he decided against it for now. "I hope I didn't get my sister in trouble," he said instead. "It's not gonna be an issue, is it?"
“What, her pregnancy?” Caius asked mildly as he tucked the rest of his supplies away in his jacket. He had to assume that was what Adrian meant -- he had no idea what their maternity leave policy was in the company, but if she wasn’t even showing yet, they had time to figure it out. “Of course not. Naturally we’ll be disappointed if she quits to be a stay at home mother, but we recognize how important family is.” It was probably a vague answer, but Caius wasn’t honestly sure how his father would feel about his fairly-new secretary taking off weeks and weeks in the near future, so he didn’t want to commit to anything. Anthony’s opinions mattered much more than his when it came to those matters. Since they seemed mostly finished here, Caius slipped into his jacket, quirking a brow at Adrian. “Do you have a phone number or anything? Or should I just contact you through Mila?”
"Yeah... Maybe don't mention it to her," Adrian muttered with a pained look, still regretting letting that slip. He got up and slipped his hands in his pockets, these clothes actually fit as Mila had bought him some and he was trying oh so hard not to tally up all the cost of him living with her. "I don't have a phone yet, haven't needed one since I'm pretty much housebound." He missed his car, sometimes thought about borrowing Aaron's car to drive out there and see if it was still parked where he'd left it but the thought was weirdly scary even if everyone at that facility was supposedly dead. "Just talk to Mila." He smirked. "Or drop by. I'm pretty much guaranteed to be here." He doubted Caius would do that and Adrian might not open the door unless he could covertly check who was knocking.
Caius planned to pass the information along to Anthony, but he wasn’t interested in getting into Mila’s business and asking her questions about it. She would have to tell them eventually anyway, they could work it out from there. He nodded to the rest of what Adrian said. Unless he found some information that just couldn’t wait, he doubted he would drop by, but who knew. This favor interested him, he hoped it would end up being a useful endeavor for all involved. He was still thinking about what he could take as trade for his work, but those sorts of things usually made themselves apparent when they needed to. In the meantime he offered his hand to shake with Adrian again. “I’ll be in touch soon,” he said. “Please give Mila my best.”
"Sure, man," Adrian replied as he shook his hand though it was just as likely he might meet her on the way out. Then again maybe not. Adrian would walk him out himself if it wasn't for his paranoia so he felt somewhat legally excused to be a shitty host. "Thanks for your help, I hope you find something," he muttered and he could at least see Caius to the door of this room. He didn't exactly dare to hope this would get him somewhere but there was still a small sense of 'maybe' there that he found himself clinging to but of course it was mixed in with a hundred fears.