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And it was, to Conrad's surprise, the house of Ples Tibenoch what had sheltered Veser after the mysterious spat of condominium arson. Not that it was surprising Veser would have anywhere else to go - he was chummy enough with Hanna and could boast an entire handful of neighborhood friends to couch-surf alongside - it was just surprising that Veser had chosen the dark, creepy mansion over all that smiling friendliness he could have shacked up with instead. Ples was certainly a degree removed from 'friendly', looking more put-upon and vaguely guilty than anything, really, and oh holy hell wasn't that just exactly what Conrad had been?

Veser certainly had a type.

Conrad tried not to pull a face until Ples' back was turned and the invitation to step foot inside the manse drifted sleepily over his shoulder. Conrad pulled all the faces ever as he stepped through the door, covering his nose and mouth against the overwhelming press of alcohol and mechanical oil. "Is he sleeping?" Conrad guessed from behind the shelter of his designer scarf. "It's fine if he is. You don't have to wake him up."

"Mr. Hatch keeps a nocturnal schedule to suit his employ," Ples assures wistfully, leading the way through the foyer and atrium to a dining room full to brimming with ticking clocks. "The community college offers night courses, as well. I believe he attends a trade class."

Conrad's insides pinched a bit to hear it; so much had happened in so little time as he'd been away, and unable to even e-mail the people he'd come to consider close friends (as much as tragedy and weirdness could pull people together). God, they must have thought he'd abandoned them.

Tibenoch draws himself up with a breath, eyes soft with pity (and is Conrad that obvious, his expression that hurt?). "He was in a state, after the fire. There might have been a drop-out, from the course..?" a shrug.

Conrad's mouth pulled back. "Don't ask me," he protested mulishly, confidence scuttling under layers of self-reproach. Don't ask me, I'm a shitty fucking friend. "I'm not his freaking surrogate."

And here Tibenoch's look goes cold and sly and his voice dips, "Aren't you, though?" Hands folded primly behind his back, Tibenoch wanders the length of the dining room. "I will fetch our man in question." And something about that phrase was supposed to come off as dignified and educated but to Conrad's ears just crawled across as queerly sinister, or maybe just that of a sinister queer.

Conrad caught the snicker behind his teeth and hoped his grin wasn't as sour as it felt. He hated this guy, this Ples Tick-Tock Asshole, and he didn't know if the grudge was one of understandable history between them, or Something Else. He shoved his hands in his (new!) coat's pockets and studied the dimly lit room with artistic interest, waiting for Tibenoch to return. The ticking of the clocks had deafened him to Veser's approach, and he startled at the hug, actually squawking his surprise as his shoes left the polished marble flooring.

Veser set Conrad down, grip anchored in Conrad's sleeve, tug-grappling him across the room. "C'mon," Veser blurted, large eyes bright with optimism, sharp teeth flashing in an open-mouthed grin.

Conrad's dress shoes (having prepared that night, like many other nights, to interview his ass off for anything hiring) slipped on the tile and he had no choice but to follow, throwing an alarmed glance at Tibenoch as they passed.

Tibenoch's answering smile wasn't the sour flinching warp of his guilt, nor was it the cold, cackling mania, nor the removed smirk. Tibenoch's smile carried in his eyes, eyes cured of their exhaustion behind their wire-frame glasses, a young face under a half-grayed head of hair. Conrad was startled to recognize the smile; it was Hanna's smile, the smile Hanna wore when he thought the vampire napping on his ceiling wasn't watching. Conrad was tugged away, up a flight of winding stairs to a narrow second floor hallway; Tibenoch following, unafraid to let his smile linger, grow, a chuckle battering its way past his long throat.

"So hey," Veser starts, stopping them both in front of a hall of doors. "Did you know this place is a rental property?" Veser waggles his eyebrows. "And Ples' landlord is this neat old lady who totally offers discounts if we promise to keep the place up for her, yanno, fluff the installation, patch the roof, update the wiring, shit Ples has mostly done on his own but, hey, this place needs improvement to keep its property value, right?" Excited, nudging Conrad in the ribs. "Riiight?"

Conrad is at a loss, "Right? And?" Was he being propositioned for a job?

"So there's rooms to rent in this hugebig nice-ass house, dude." Veser deflates, then re-inflates, opening one door of many to what looks like a bedroom. "It's a fucking boarding house! There's a shared kitchen downstairs, and I guess this place also tried ta be a B'n'B but the landlady wanted really, sort of, more permanent residents? Ples fucking bought her out for like these last few months and he was gonna vamoose after Hanna fixed his, um, his problem, buuuut," mouth open in a grin, eyes expectant.

Conrad's head shakes slowly. "But what?" then, to Tibenoch, "Could you excuse us for a minute?" Conrad takes Veser's arm, flipping the light switch to the elegantly furnished bedroom and closing the door behind them. "Are you asking me to live here?"

"You're a vampire!" Veser argues passionately. "This house is like, the most vampiric thing I've ever seen. Except maybe the science lab in the green room, but eh," a shrug, a grin, "Ples sleeps in the green room; rest of the place is usually empty." A pinch of heavy gray eyebrows, "Isn't that the saddest thing?"

"Sounds peaceful," Conrad scolds. "I wouldn't want to impose."

"Hey, meet the landlady, ok?" Veser wheedles. "She's really cool. I think you'd get along; she likes, uh, tidiness." Veser bounces on his heels. "I need your help, okay? I know a little bit about plumbing and wiring, but this place is old and you said you did some interior decorating stuff, right? Do you know how to fix waterspots in plaster?"

"I do," Conrad admitted reluctantly. "But I'd rather just give your landlady the contact information of people who do that kind of thing for a living. Let her sort it out to her tastes."

"You'd get paid. Room and board. C'mooooon," the plea is deep and throaty and not at all obnoxious like maybe it ought to be and Veser stops short of tugging on Conrad's clothes, but his hands have fisted in his coatfront. "Don't leave your Renfield in this sweet-ass vampire castle all alone."

"You're not my anything," Conrad slaps Veser's hands off, flustered. "And you wouldn't be alone."

"You know what I mean, man. And hey, if you want to hang out at Hanna's place for the rest of your life, just say so."

Conrad rolls his eyes. "That's a bit dramatic. It's a temporary - he's doing me a favor."

Veser eyeballs Conrad right back. "You bought him a bed."

"In my attempt to pay him rent he just tried to hire me into one of his 'gigs'; so buying some goddamn decent furniture was me avoiding indentured servitude. And the bed folds into a couch! It saves space."

Veser just holds his hands up, mouth pinched. "Like I said, if you'd rather sleep on Hanna's ceiling, I ain't gonna judge."

"You can't bully me into renting from a communal home. I liked having my own kitchen."

"I'm the only one in this house who actually eats food!" Veser rages. "This is the perfect setup for, like, safety!"

Conrad's chest twinges. "Oh," he breathes, nodding curtly, once. Right. Of course. "Hey, um." Conrad waits for Veser's emotions to fucking simmer before continuing. "We haven't - I really never did get to - er. Did Hanna tell you what -"

Veser scoffs, arms crossed, chin up as he studies Conrad lazily. "When the Insurance Agency cleared you from suspicion, the casefile got declassified. I read it yesterday. Your passport was found in a corner of the crater where the livingroom used to be. Intact. Which means that shit wasn't teleported all the way from Egypt until after your shit got burned down. Hence, the cops thought either you set the fire, or somebody fucking made off with your persons and left a cute taunt."

"Jesus," Conrad breathes.

"There were two investigations," Veser reminds. "The cops that came around the first time, I dunno. They said your studio had called in a missing persons case," he shifts uneasily from foot to foot. "Something didn't seem right. I told them you were on a trip but they tossed the place like they knew what they were looking for. A second pair of cops came around after that, but I just hoofed it out of there. Bad vibes." A sigh, scratching the back ruff of his hair. "Then, the fire, and the second investigation trying to put a warrant out for you. Guess because they found the passport."

"Sooo we're assuming Noah didn't lob an apocalyptic fireball into my bedroom window."

"Fire didn't start in our place, man, which is why it's so weird. Like either it really has nothing to do with you or me, or somebody was trying to make it look coincidental. But then why would they suspect you of torching your neighbor's place just to second-hand destroy your own? No goddamn sense."

Conrad hummed, sufficiently creeped out. "I'll consider a month-by-month lease, if it'll help you feel safer," he capitulates, and the look Veser weighs on him is patronizing and knowing and unsettles Conrad a little harder than the usual enthusiastic sarcasm. Conrad leaves the room to find the hallway empty - and there he had been cautious with his words to spare Tibenoch's feelings. He turns to mumble to Veser, in the doorway, "I can't trust the other tenant. I wouldn't feel any safer here, for myself."

Veser nods, mouth pinching up. "Guess you're going to have to just trust me, huh? Like, when I tell you Ples is not at all a bad guy?"

Conrad closes his eyes. He crosses his arms, hand waving out. "Nobody is 'not at all' one thing or another."

"I'm not at all a bad guy," Veser insists, the heat of some long-sitting anger lurking behind his teeth. "You're not at all a bad -"

"OH, hah," Conrad cracks. He strikes for a nerve, because Veser's confidence is somehow intrusive, unsettling, "Really, mister avoiding-the-police? You think the cowardice of your good intent is somehow on par with my moral ambiguity, and that we are the both of us, blameless?" Eyes narrowed, stepping closer, "I'll help you, not because you're asking me to, but because you avoid things like police and gossip and committed relationships and asking questions and looking other people in the fucking eye."

Veser looks as if he'd just been slapped with a wet fish, disgusted and confused but not at all wounded.

Conrad tries to needle further, tries to apply the usual venom of his judgement, but all he manages is a handful of truths that come out more complimentary. "You're perfectly content to just assume I don't kill people to feed myself, and it's really just a happy coincidence that I don't, actually; but you don't get to tell me to trust you to be 'not at all' a bad person. You have to be a bad person, by your circumstances alone, and you have to know that such ambiguity will blind you to other people being not quite all that good, and you have to, you absolutely must be able to recognize that." Conrad snaps his fingers between them, once, "Or the world will eat you and your good intentions alive."

Veser flicks his eyes toward the wall. "Yeah okay, but seriously. Ples got all the crazy tinkered out of him; it's really just a low buzz bipolar disorder at this point." Flatly, "And I guess I've already had plenty of practice living alongside that."

Conrad shrugs his coat closer around his shoulders, waiting for elaboration. "You aren't talking about me?" he prompts, turning on heel to start a march down the hallway back toward the stairs.

"Naw, man, I'm talking about the other fatal asshole who is melodramatically convinced he's the worst thing to inflict himself on other people - but who also swings into these, like, furious bouts of creative productivity. Not you at all, nooo. Nope"

"I'm not bipolar, sharkshit, I'm manic-depressive." Conrad calls over his shoulder as he flees the stairs, "Difference."

Veser takes the stairs similarly, like they're an obstacle course to be monkeyed down, and he crashes into Conrad at the bottom landing.

"And I'm not even -" Conrad steadies Veser with a hand on his shoulder, "It's not something that needs diagnosing, because it doesn't interfere with my ability to function day to day. Everybody is a little bit manic, a little bit depressed. It's a sliding scale, until it's not."

"So you'll be back by morning?" Veser deadpans. "Ples can get ahold of Gretta for tomorrow night."

"I don't have a job," Conrad argues futilely. "My references are probably fucked." He steps away from Veser's warmth, rubbing a crick from his neck, exhaling hard. The sound is lost in the sea of ticking clocks, the house's high ceiling dark and full of echo.

"It's cool," Veser shrugs, nonchalant. "Trust. Give me it, okay?"

Conrad inhales, bracing. He thinks about the promise he made to himself, after the Boggart, and knows that he shouldn't let Cairo's small victories outweigh the fact that he still needed to live, to do more living, even if that included scary new crap like biting strangers and trusting friends. He shouldn't, either, let the small march of tragedies in his life dissuade him from the changes he'd already set in motion. Misfortune was a constant in Conrad's life - sometimes to the point of absurdity - and he'd been stepping through his years like a beaten dog, certain that if he winced enough and appeased enough and scuttled out of the way of every set of feet, the kicking boots would never find him. But they always had, and they probably always would, so what was the point in skulking?

"Okay," Conrad agrees, frowning as if he was giving a new IPA its chance to impress him. "I'll be back by sunrise, then. Be sure to let the other tenant know."

Veser scoffs, walking Conrad to the looming double doors at the front of the house. "Mr. Tibenoch was already pretty sure you'd say yes. You'd have won me ten bucks turning us down."

Conrad frowns economically. " 'Us'?"

Veser's expression freezes, eyes darting to the side, "Well, yeah." He shrugs, leaning past Conrad to tug a door open with a squeak of the old brass handle. "We have to vote on who moves in. This is supposed to be a safe place, yeah? Discreet, like. 'S already got the fences, the security windows. Good for, uh, your sort? My sort? 'Us'?"

Conrad dips his chin, watching Veser from under the furrow of a thinking brow, " 'Lions and tigers and bears, oh my'?"

Veser's teeth flash in a one-note chuckle. "Yeah. Something like that."