Conrad Achenleck had clinical OCD.
This was not, say, the OCD of popular media, where everything in his life had to be tidy and the man merely had to wash his face seven times or turn the toast over thrice before buttering it, no. He didn't keep his shoes in any neat array in their closet and he didn't mind a weekend of just sitting in amongst the takeout cartons and pizza boxes to watch season after season of Downtown Abbey. There had been a brief hand-washing phase in his teen years, but the germaphobia had waned after he'd gotten free of highschool and he was left with the garden-variety, non-quaint kind of mental illness that only ever served to bring misery crashing into the forefront of his life.
Obsession was the inability to let a matter drop - the less pleasant the thought, the more viciously his brain would cling to it. And it was his brain's fault entirely, imagination rife with all sorts of unlikely claptrap to come flooding in (the flavor of the week being stubble against the scrape of his teeth as he'd -). Had he left the iron on? Better go check. Had he just turned the iron all the way off, or did he imagine the little click? Better go check again. What if there was a ghost who just now turned the iron on for the specific purpose of burning down his condo and the insurance company wouldn't cover the cost on investigating 'negligent behavior' BETTER GO CHECK THE IRON AGAIN.
The compulsive side of this was that, often, the thoughts had little actual resolution and Conrad was left with nothing to do but revisit bad scenarios until his nerves were worn down to smoking little nubs (he'd bit Worth, and Worth had moaned and oh god -). What would seem compulsive to outsiders was in fact the balm to alleviate the anxiety - checking the iron five times to make sure it was off, knocking his shoes together three times exactly to dislodge any poisonous spiders - then three more times just in case, then a third round of three more times because he couldn't let the number stand at three by two, but then there were two shoes so he'd repeat the process for a grand total of eighteen times they needed to be knocked together and if there were any spiders in the dark crevasses of his footwear they'd have long been dead from the trauma.
But then of course Conrad's train of thought would derail entirely, because spider fangs actually held some amount of zinc and other metals and would literally NOT DECAY and what if there was still venom in the spider corpse of course there was still venom if it hadn't bit anything yet and best to just boil the shoes in a pot on the stove which he wasn't ever going to eat out of anyway and that was how bad it got on a good day. Boiling shoes, repetitive precautions, assuming the worst was just around the corner ALL THE TIME FOREVER EVEN WHEN HE WAS TRYING TO SLEEP.
Conrad had been on clomipramine up to and beyond the point of his death, though he wasn't entirely sure how well medications could affect the undead, and felt the old uninvited horrors creeping back into his peripheral long before the fiasco at Worth's clinic. But since the mauling of Hanna's back-alley doctor, the Obsessive bads and the Compulsive worsers were popping up like spring daisies, and the condition was in full Disorder mode. Life-stopping, relationship (ha) wrecking, shoulder-check tackle dis-order. Because he'd bitten Worth, had a part of a human being in his mouth, a breathing pulsing stretch of skin and salt and he'd wanted the blood, the hot tangy rush, and the spike of golden something that happened in his mouth and all the way down his throat right before Worth had moaned and ruined everything.
"You okay, man?" Veser's muffled voice floated through the mahogany of Conrad's bedroom door, knocking again to make sure Conrad was awake.
Conrad had been awake since sunset, paralyzed in bed, feeling absolutely amazing physically - and the opposite of amazing mentally. He felt attacked by his own memory. Under fire. Was taking cover. He bunched the flat navy comforter tighter around his shoulders and grumbled out a response, anything to reassure his house-guest and relent the assault on his mental meltdown. The worst thing about his condition being that, not only could Conrad not stop feeling shitty, but he didn't even want to stop thinking about all the shitty things that made him feel that way in the first place. If he turned his back, he was certain the threat would only grow and overtake his life in catastrophic ways - recalling that spike of a (reallygreatamazing) something in the taste of Worth's blood, trying to actually stamp out the way it had felt on his tongue, the heat, the rasp of the man's breathing, the scrape of warm wet stubble against his cheek and - ugh, ugh. Ugh.
The knock returns. "Dude, are you sick? Hungover? Look, man, you've got, like," a loud sigh, "Company. I can tell her to go away if you want. Elvis has left the porcelain palace, something like that?"
Conrad startled upright, blinking wide. Female company? Client? Marcelaine from Publishing? His mother? He scrambled for his glasses and mashed them onto his nose, pyjama top tugged straight and bedhead smoothed into something amenable before a shaking hand wrenched the door open. "What, yes, I am awake, whoisit?"
Veser jerked back, large green eyes blinking in surprise. A small impressed 'huh' escaped before he lowered his eyebrows, voice low. "Ipres. Toni Ipres. Dude I can tell her to take a hike. Or like, offer her some soda or something."
"Or you could go home," Conrad offered without much heat. It was an old joke in the long attempt to leave Veser with some of his pride intact, Conrad pretending to want to kick him out all the time and Veser only really leaving when he had to check up on his alcoholic parent or do a load of wash.
This time, however, something in Veser's usual expression went soft, then died. "Right. Gotcha." He turns, finger wagging like a loose pistol, and Conrad can hear him from the living room - "Sorry, babeness. The bossman is up and my services are no longer required here. Maybe give him a few minutes?" The sound of a duffel bag packing followed Conrad back to his bedroom, where he dressed with all due haste.
Toni Ipres was waiting beside the front door just as Veser was leaving through it, her arms curled under a canvas bag with a shirt sleeve poking out of the top. She glanced up, worried, blinking once in surprise with her blue lipstick forming a near-perfect O in silent regard. Conrad's eyes narrowed and he glanced behind himself, then down at his clothes - nothing out of the ordinary, looking back up with clear puzzlement. "Can I help you, miss Ipres?"
A sharp laugh, Toni's eyes crinkling merrily and her cheeks warming. "Everybody's calling me that lately. What is with you guys? Like we haven't totally solved a murder crime together. Here," she shoves the bag out in Conrad's general direction, taking a few steps into the condo. "I guess I borrowed these. Thanks, umm...?"
Hesitantly, Conrad steps forward to take the bag. "Um, what?"
"Sorry," a whisper, "we had it cool in that alley but I didn't actually catch your name last time - ?"
Conrad's mouth drew back in a grimace. "Achenleck." An expectant silence, a huff as he closes the front door. "Conrad."
"Right! Connie! Sorry, I thought Connie was the green dude or something." Another laugh, full-throated and merry as she offers a hand forward. "You can call me Toni."
"Er... right," Conrad takes the hand and shakes it limply by the fingers, slinking away with attention squared on removing his clothes from the canvas bag. "Thank you for - I mean, you're welcome for the loan. I'm not entertaining visitors tonight, so if that's really all we need to say here - ?" He is folding the canvas bag over his forearm and turning to offer it back to Miss Ipr - to Toni, who had followed him a bit into the livingroom with imploring eyes.
"Actually, I -" a hesitant breath - "I was wondering if I could talk to y-"
"No," Conrad tosses the bag when Toni fails to reach it quick enough. "Not in the mood for company right now." A swallow, throat thick with encroaching panic. Was he going to bite her? Did he want to bite her? Would she transform and kill him on the spot if his body lunged at her without his control or consent? "Sorry." And, at Toni's puzzled expression, "Some other time. Probably." A glare, the last go-to for getting people as far as fucking away from him before he lost all his shit right in front of any hapless bystander.
Toni's expression matches what Veser's had been - part 'crestfallen' and part 'resolute', and she turned with a mumbled apology to leave a cardstock thanks scurrying through the front door as it shut.
Conrad had dropped his crossed arms and ghosted across the room to the foyer to listen at the door, briefly suspicious that Veser would have hung around outside to harass Miss Ipres on her way out, but all he heard was the scrape of a boot on pavement and then - a gasp, a soft sob tapering into frustrated, stuttered hiccoughs of grief and no -
"Nonono, no," Conrad flings the door open, startling the young woman on the cement stairs. "No. Why are you crying? You can't be crying. What the hell are you even - get in here before somebody calls the cops on me or something!"
Startled enough to take action, Toni scrunches the canvas bag in hand and darts back inside the apartment, backing up against the couch and scrubbing at her face with a choked-off sniffle. "It's just that - I'm sorry, guy, okay? I'm not proud of what happened. I feel really, really shitty and Hanna won't answer my e-mails and I'd feel like a total stalker if I just up and went to his place and - I mean - you've killed people before, right?"
Conrad had closed the door after surreptitiously checking for onlookers, and straightened like he'd had a knife thrown at him. "Rgk. What?"
"You know," a sniffle, "For survival? It happens. It's the shittiest thing in the world, but it just happens."
Conrad took a deep, careful breath. "Yes. Sure. More people killed by cars than sharks. More people killed by lightning than airplanes. That kind of thing." Expression still held tight. Cautious. "You feel badly... for killing someone?"
"I don't know! Nobody will talk to me! I think I might have, but then -"
"But then it isn't really your fault." The gravity of the perpetually responsible entered Conrad's voice, "I'm not saying it's Hanna's fault, either. Lord knows the man tries. It's just. A matter of circumstance."
"R-right." A sigh, Toni fishing a tissue out of her pocket to dab at running mascara. "So you don't all just think I'm a terrible monster who can't control her stupid half-blooded gifts?" It was a rhetorical question with the tang of self-abasement-for-laughs, even coupled with a wet chuckle and a shrug, but Conrad bristled.
"Who thinks that? Nobody thinks that. It was - what happened - I mean, I wasn't there for the whole thing, but obviously -" A sharp huff, Conrad raking fingers through his hair. "Have you ever thought that maybe Hanna is just embarrassed? On his own account? He was tasked with fixing your, um, thing. And -"
"Oh, no, that's what I've been trying to tell him." A wince, Toni's eyebrows going up in ever-present concern. "That wasn't his fault. I also need to get a hold of him, for like, a job? Because this -" Hands squared to the right, "Has everything to do with that," hands chopping to the left, ponytail bobbing as she tilts her chin. "Are you picking up what I'm laying down right now, or do you need specifics?"
Conrad would have liked to pretend ignorance, rolling his eyes and clawing down his face. "I'll call him."
"Thank you. Sorry I spazzed there for a minute. It's always a bit... eh, for me, after a big upheaval like that." Following Conrad into the kitchen, taking a stool at the breakfast counter. "Is it like that, for you?" A carefully attenuated curiosity, "I mean, did you - have you just fed? Recently?"
Conrad's mouth pinches over the phone, the tops of his cheeks flushing purple despite the acidity of his voice, "How could you tell?"
A cackle, "You look good, dude!" A facepalm, "Ugh, I look like crap. Utter crap-o-la. Feel like it, too," Toni's eyes peeked hopefully up through her fingers.
Conrad felt perhaps something was expected of him in that moment, to which he replied, helpfully; "How did you get my address, anyway?" But then of course Hanna had answered his phone with the usual rambling aplomb and Conrad handed the receiver over to his guest with a fumble because he really wasn't actually in the mood to talk with anyone that night, but especially with the man about whom he was magically obligated to give a fuck.
