bakerstreet | they live inside us

Jeremy isn't sure if he wishes the conversation had stuck with technical details. Those are really easy to babble happily about, and in this crowd it's not often anyone actually wants to talk shop. Less often now. One of the only people who ever even slightly indulged his nerd babble was... Well. There are many reasons he spends so much time online. (Not all of them Transformers related.)

Getting to the core of it, though, that's not comfy. He should really be good at mourning. It's not his first go-round, but really he's bad at having feelings all around, and he can't imagine a time when he's ever okay talking about his failures and what he lost, let alone the fire that's gone out of the world.

But in a strange way it's easier with someone he knows as an email address. With people who knew Dolls and know him, there's baggage, there's recrimination--justified and otherwise--there's the present and the future to crash against. With the guy who knows more about frickens off the top of his head than the whole of Black Badge's records knows about much of any of its captives? There's not so much to get in the way of having feelings. He doesn't even worry he's going to get punched in the throat.

His second negroni might also be a factor. Doc may mightily disapprove of sugary mixers, but one of his oh-so-charming anachronisms is a failure to absorb the modern conviction that cocktails made entirely of alcohol are effeminate.

"I'm... I'm sure it wasn't on your end. Not, um, not to say your input wasn't super helpful. It's just, you know, the problem wasn't really the scaley side of him, y'know, per se, it was what sustaining that did to the parts that were still, okay, mostly human."

Alex probably would have been better at more technical talk, truth be told, but he does know enough about people to know when they're hurting.

"The only people whose end this is on are the ones who did that to him in the first place," says Alex, with real conviction in his voice. To do those sorts of experiments with sentient test subjects, human or otherwise, was beyond sickening. "They're the ones who wanted to CRISPR themselves a Captain America."

Pause. "If you ever meet my little sister, don't tell her I made that reference." The last thing he needs is Antimony thinking he's actually listened to anything she's ever said about Marvel Comics.

It's not that funny, but the fine edge of hysteria runs through everything lately and Jeremy's entirely too amused. "Okay, I won't tell her you acknowledged one of the most successful media properties of the last century. Do you also disavow all knowledge of Harry Potter and Big Bird?" Captain America. Pfft. Doesn't even count as nerdy at this point.

This is the dumbest thing, but it's a helpful distraction for a moment, and moment to moment is the best he can do right now. Maybe forever. Forever seems probable. "It's, I mean, it's not news that the clandestine quasi-governmental organization that's been messing with me most of my life's kinda evil, y'know? But, well, Cap's not good because Red Skull sucks. Fighting evil doesn't give points for effort."

"But you're not part of it anymore. Leaving the evil secret organization- that costs. You knew it would cost and you did it anyway." He clinks his now-empty bottle against Jeremy's glass.

The overlap between Black Badge and the Covenant was enough to sour him pretty firmly against the organization.

"And it makes me inclined to think pretty well of you. Maybe my family history makes me a bit biased there, I admit. Do you know anything about the Covenant of St. George?" More importantly, he wonders, does what's left of Black Badge know about the Covenant, and vice versa?

It's even trickier when the evil secret organization has all the keys to your traumatic past and all kinds of proprietary shit in your head, but he's pretty sure you need to be past the second drink to open up the fun story, they experimented on me, too can of worms. At least with someone he's not attempting to hit on.

(Which also might change with more drinks. Not that he's seen any indication Alex is anything other than straight and, statistically, probably taken, but fuck has that never stopped him before. Maybe switch to ginger ale after this one.)

Much better to focus on footnotes. "Uh. Rings a bell, but I was usually on the lab side of things, not the library. And some light IT, but, y'know, I think that happens to everybody whose boss is over forty? Though it maaaaay have been kind of a race thing, now that I think about it."

"Imagine a medieval Black Badge surviving into the modern age. Religious zealots with the view that any living being specifically not cataloged on Noah's Ark- no, I don't know where they got their list- is of the Devil, and must be destroyed..." he goes on for a bit about them. That their extermination of unicorns caused the 1832 cholera epidemic, their attempt to wipe out the entire ecosystem of Australia and causing the extinction of the thylacine, not to mention several cryptid species.

God, it's nice to have someone to be able to ramble about this to. Artie's said good things about Jeremy, and assured him of his trustworthiness. And he also can't help but think of his own family's struggles when the guy talks about leaving Black Badge.

"Until a few generations ago," he finally says, after summing up the extent of the evil-in-the-name-of-good of the Covenant of St. George, "my family was a part of the Covenant. It's a thing you're born in to- lots of arranged marriages and the like. My great-great-great grandfather," -he stops, taking a moment to count on his fingers if he got the right number of greats, Canadian beer really is stronger- "Alexander Healy, he made the connection between the unicorns and the purification of local water tables. Connected the Covenant's unicorn eradication to the epidemic. Realized they were essentially responsible for the deaths of 20,000 people. Took his wife and their son and the Aeslin colony, and ran to the States," he explains.

"We've been on their shit-list ever since. Our mice are probably already exchanging oral histories, so you can get all the details from them, if you really want."

Including the praises of Alice Healy, and her ability to seduce Thomas Price to the side of the righteous, making Alex's line of the family twice-damned traitors by blood. Alex prefers not to be around for those retellings. Way too many songs about his grandma's... physical attributes. Which she still possesses, but the My Grandma's a Dimension-Hopping Cookie-Baking Badass Who We Think Might Be Slowly Benjamin Buttoning Herself conversation is at least two more drinks away. Three, if this were American beer.

Jeremy may like to bore people with long, meandering rants about science, DC comics, soap-opera-esque speculations about acquaintances, reality TV, cats he wants, memes, long-term implications of the current weather, hair care regimens, good ways to find coupons on the internet... But to balance that particular quirk, he is a good listener. It helps to actually be interested. he's a quick enough thinker to mentally cross-reference Alex's information with the bits and pieces he does know as a low-level lab tech who "accidentally" breaks into classified files a lot. It's fascinating stuff, and soon he's unconsciously sipping ice.

He snaps back when his companion seems to require an answer. "Well, uh, my... I'm hesitant to call them mine? That feels kind of weird for sapient... things... even if they all fit in a lunch box. The mice in my lab don't, well, I usually have to do a lot of bargaining to get a lot of information out of them. And, like, that's not so bad budget-wise, but I'm afraid hot cheetos aren't great when your stomach is the size of a pea? And I've been putting food coloring in sprite because I'm pretty sure the amount of Mountain Dew they've been demanding will make their little hearts explode? Like, um, they're magic, but... A normal heart rate for mice is 840 per minute, and caffeine was developed by plants as an anti-predator measure..."

"They're a bit more like family, definitely not pets, it's true," he agrees with Jeremy's sentience point.

"What are they worshiping? The colony that lives with my family worship... um, us. It's is handy for record-keeping, less so for sleeping when they're celebrating the festival of the date of your conception," he admits. "Turns out when a mouse asks your ancestor if they're a god, it really doesn't matter if they said yes or not." Not that any of the mice ever asked, but the joke works better with the Ghostbusters reference built-in.

He'd brought some of the family's field guide information about the Aeslin, some notes from his own necropsies (his splinter colony considers having one's dead Examined By The God Of Scales and Silence Before Being Put To Rest to be part of the funeral rites- a tradition Verity is very glad her larger colony hasn't taken up).

He's just a little jealous. Not terribly. It's probably super inconvenient to have a cult, even a cult of sort of mean mice. He's never envied any of their evil overlords that particular aspect of the whole black-magic-tyranny thing. But of course no one thinks to ask if Jeremy Chetri is a god. Hmph.

"Um. So." Jeremy suddenly becomes really interested in the lime slice and scatter of mostly melted ice at the bottom of his glass. "Two things. One, Black Badge had no idea what they had. Going theory was some kind of group possession, and since the little guys weren't eating anybody or secreting chemically interesting compounds... Anyway, I was the first one to get interested, and, uh, should clarify? I've been working with Black Badge... like... always? We're not talking the proudest period of my life when I moved them into my office. Not that I'm saying I'm ashamed of their choices? Just... maybe a little that I encouraged..."

"Oh." Lab mice. Alex had been assuming Jeremy had found them in the wild, or maybe that the friend he was mixing the drugs for had found them.

He nods, slowly, his frown more based in concern for the mice than any judgement towards Jeremy. His own brother-in-law was a genuine former Covenant agent, and he had to admit Dominic was a pretty decent guy, for someone who had sex with his sister for which some adolescent part of him still felt the need to insist was a bad quality in a person.

"How long had they been in captivity? And any idea where they were found?" It was entirely possible they hadn't captured the entire colony, and that there was another one in the wild somewhere- if Aeslin were good at anything, it was avoiding human notice.

Oh, good, logistics, now he doesn't have to explain yet what religion a bunch of stir-crazy magic mice under the guardianship of a barely drinking age Jeremy came up with. "Hey, no worries, the monster zoo has garbage record keeping. We just spent months around here getting repeatedly paralyzed by ghost demon-wife-witch-bug-vampires who stole faces and had a lot of catching up with the feminist movement to do. And Black Badge was literally keeping them in unmarked boxes before they got out." He looks a little smug for just a moment. "I totally wiped the records. Far as anybody knows, I just have some mice friends because I like watching them run on their little wheel. It is nice for stressy times. But nah, details are pretty pathetic."

"If it makes you feel better, my sister recently killed a giant snake on national television, not long after my fiancee and I got back from fighting werewolves in Australia," he lifts up the sleeve of his t-shirt to show off the scarring where one of the lycanthropes had bitten him.

"Narrowly avoided infection, too. So I get you about weird. But I grew up with it, so I guess it's kind of my normal?"

He reached in to his duffel bag. "Hey, wake up in there," he murmurs to it, unzipping the bag to reveal one of Antimony's shoebox travel habitats, where one mouse is curled up on tiny doll furniture. "I need you to go back to the hotel room and tell the others to hold off on contact- the new colony's essentially been living in quarantine, so I want to take more precautions than we'd initially planned. Oh- and say hi to Jeremy, he's the one who broke them out of prison," he adds with a smile.

"HAIL Jeremy! Bringer of Food and Freedom To Our Cousins!" squeeks the mouse. "We will feast in your honor tonight, for we have hunted well in your grasslands!"

"Garter snakes," Alex offers in whispered explaination to Jeremy. "And a few sparrows. Probably a gopher by now." Because they're going to try to share, and that's really the kind of thing you need to warn a guy about.

In this moment, Jeremy learns his ego is susceptible to mouse manipulation, which is maybe not great? And also that it works in both directions. "Man, that's so much nicer than what my little guys call me. Have a good feast, guess?" Sounds horrifying and all, but he might be a little desensitized. Hell, werewolves sound kinda relaxing to him right now. He could be seriously in need of a restructuring of his priorities. Instead he just adds, "There's a thing of barbecue sauce I fitted with a little mousy spigot if you want? It's sweet chipotle, if that's cool. Think the honey bourbon was more of a hit but the grocery store was out last time I got down there."

He's clearly perfectly happy talking to a mouse. But he does take a moment as they chat to scooch the standing plastic menus with happy hour options on them between the little guy and the rest of the room. Just in case.

The mice have already cleared Shorty's basement of most of its summertime pests, and have learned their way around the place since getting here. Doc might be happy to know that the Chipmunk Issue has been resolved in an ecologically friendly way.

The little mouse is dressed in scraps of fabric and, as of arriving in Purgatory, a tiny cowboy hat stolen from a Polly Pocket set. They like to go native as much as they can. He squeeks his thanks (with Many Audible Capital Letters) before scurrying off to relay his news to the rest of his travelling companions- not Alex's whole colony, but a much larger contingent than he took with him to Australia.

"What do they call you?" Alex asks, genuinely curious now.

He does slightly regret that he didn't get a picture of the mouse cowboy for his lock screen. He could just tell people it's photoshopped. Note to self, poke around ebay for any bulk doll clothes they might have around. Craft night plans.

That briefly amusing digression inside his own thoughts is about all he can justify before he has to admit it. "Um. Humble Servant of the Killer Queen. Look, with no context of what I was getting into, 'There is no god but Freddie Mercury' seems like a really funny thing to say." Mice were talking to him without warning. Who'd be at their best, exactly? "It did keep Dolls from being able to get them to call me anything worse..."

Alex just grins at that- but he keeps himself from laughing, not wanting to give Jeremy the impression he's laughing at him. Glam-rock Aeslin might just put the family's colony to shame with their celebrations.

"Wow. Please tell me you get musical numbers too." He can't wipe the grin off his face, because the mental image of teeny tiny paws tapping out the rhythm for "We Will Rock You" is worth the effort it took to smuggle the small arsenal he regularly travels with past Canadian border patrol alone.

"Oh, yeah, I don't keep recordings on my phone because nobody around here has a concept of personal privacy." Wynonna steals his phone all the time, and he's not putting her in the same room with he mice. Waverly, maybe, but that bond of sisterhood thing makes that a risky venture. "Stick around a while and you'll get one, I'm sure. My favorite thing is actually the mythos they came up with to explain why Mercury liked cats, though, that's really fun." Almost created a serious crisis of faith. He probably shouldn't have rigged up a couple cheap smartphones for them, but he doesn't like the idea of them getting bored days he's not around.

"I'm sure if he'd met a church griffin, he would have been won over," Alex says, though he is admittedly biased. Even if he does have to put locks on the fridges at both home and work.

He stops talking Cryptid when a waitress (whose flirting Alex has been totally oblivious to since he got here) comes to collect their empty glasses and bottles.

"Studying their mythos-building, I mean. With the family as the pantheon, we've only gotten to see them invent ritual observances. Usually right after thing they're observing happens," he shares. "It does mean never forgetting birthdays, though." Or being able to sleep on their own, usually. Luckily for Alex, the mice who chose to serve the God of Scales and Silence are often the more introverted mice. Of course, introverted for an Aeslin is... not on the same scale one would measure for a human.

[ooc: um so I might also be voicetesting a Wynonna and kind of have a cameo idea to make things kind of hilariously awkward with a cameo (mainly her assuming Alex is Jeremy's date, and Alex going along with it since it's good cover). Interested? ALSO I PROMISE I DID NOT MEAN TO RESPOND WITH THE WRONG ACCOUNT LAST TIME. Gah.]

Jeremy is privately sure that any longtime resident of Purgatory, particularly one who works right at the epicenter this way, wouldn't bat an eyelash at the general content of their conversation. But since the specifics are still kinda secret (Dolls knew, because Black Badge and because Dolls, but no one else was ever invited in on this project), he also goes quiet and pretends to check his phone to cover the lull in conversation. Secret agent stuff.

"Sounds like there are advantages to being pretty peripheral to their cosmology." He'd still like to have a cooler title, though. Maybe Alex's mice will convert his? Actually, huh. "They're not going to, like, have a holy war or anything, are they?" Upsetting.

[OOC: Definitely go for it, he'll want to die.]

"Nah, they understand their own nature- they know any seperate colony is going to have a different pantheon. They also know they're on the brink of extinction," he says, a little sadly. "They might want to do an exchange program of some sort, even-" he's about to start talking about widening gene pools when he's interrupted by a tall brunette in an outfit Antimony would kill for, who comes up from behind Jeremy and leans down to put her hands on his shoulders.

"Alright Jer-Bear!" she "Looks like I'm not putting Grindr back on your phone after all!" Wynonna says in a singsong voice, alluding to the reason she stole it last time ('you deserve a little action!').

Without hesitation, Alex gets up and extends his hand, putting the other over one of Jeremy's as he leans over the table to shake Wynonna's. "Hi, Doctor Alex Preston," he says, then looks to Jeremy, even throwing in a wink- meant as much to encourage him to play along as to sell the idea of flirtation to Wynonna. "Didn't expect to meet any of your friends so quickly. Byproduct of a small town, I guess. I know how that is."

"A doctor!" Wynonna whispers in Jeremy's ear, and high-fives Alex in place of shaking his hand. "Nice. He's cute, too. Get it, Jer-Bear." Jer-Bear? Yeah, by the smell of her breath, she's been pregaming before getting here. Rye-drunk Wynonna likes nicknames.

It's only about now that she realizes she's interrupting- "ah, right. I'll just-- leave you to it."

"I hope that was okay," Alex says, sheepishly, when Wynonna finally departs. "It seemed like as good a cover story as anything."

Jeremy sits very still. The beginnings of questions about mouse exchange programs (and a marginally clever remark about them getting college credit for the program) remain on the tip of his tongue for a moment and then slowly fade away as he sits still and wishes the universe would white out like his last pokemon just fainted. He doesn't seem to be needed in this interaction--it's rare for Wynonna to notice he's talking--so mortified stillness is fine.

It is a good cover story. Admirable bit of maneuvering. He's even pretty impressed. Or rather he knows he should be impressed. But at the moment he's dead. Deceased. His soul has departed his body for whatever's the next thing that happens. (All the bullshit he's surrounded by has a weird bias toward a vaguely Dante-esque pseudo-Christian mythology if you look at it kind of sideways, and he has a long list of unsupported theories about why that might be.)

A moment for a deep breath and he ceases to be quite so dead. "No, it's fine, when she asks why you're not around I'll just say you noticed my personality."

"Hey- there's nothing wrong with your personality," he assures him. He also straightens an imaginary tie in an exagerated gesture of personal pride.

"Besides. Doctor Preston doesn't do one-night stands. I'm going have to come back here at least a few more times. People aren't going to try anything if they think you have a boyfriend, will they? I don't want to put your safety at risk for the sake of my cover." Alex starts to look around the bar, as if violent homophobia were something he could spot with the naked eye.

"Is your friend who reminds me way too much of my baby sister going to tell anyone, do you think?"

Self-deprecating humor is a handy refuge when it tends to agree with everyone else's assessment of you. Pretty much no one bothers to contradict him anymore, but it doesn't really break his stride. "It's probably not gonna be a thing? Like, non-zero chance of issues. Nicole and Waves sometimes get--oh, they're some more of the merry band of crazy, I'll point them out if they walk by--get some shit, but mostly people have bigger things to worry about." When you might get eaten by a vampire at any time, your neighbors' tastes in romance aren't that important. Even the locals who persist in pretending everything is normal generally have to work hard on denial. Then again, both halves of Wayhaught are much tougher than he is.

"Wynonna, though? Anywhere from no one to every person she knows, depends on the mood." And the quality and quantity of alcohol. "Though there's like five people who'll talk to her." You'd think they'd get over themselves already, but there's still a powerful strain of anti-Wynonna sentiment. Though there are times he kind of gets it.

He gives Jeremy what he hoped was an encouraging look. "Hopefully your reputation will survive dating 'me,'" he says.

"And if you're willing to help me with a little field work when I'm in the area, it'll explain why we're going on camping trips."

It's nice to be estimated capable of field work. It improves his mood a bit. At least if the cover story is horrifically embarrassing he'll get to do some cool stuff, and try not to faceplant or get kidnapped or break stuff. "Okay, but, full disclosure, I'm allergic to everything."

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