FF talkage. And original fic.
Mrr. This stuff will probably get thought over, and disagreed with, and changed (somewhere else though probably because comparing thoughts is fun), so… eh. Mrr.
III (DS-version): Ooooh, job-changing! Fun! I thought we only started that with V!
…okay, lower experience when people meet up. Um. That's… annoying. Plus, you input all your commands at the one point, which means you need to preempt the enemy doing enemy stuff, which means occasionally I end up with someone dead or petrified at the end of the battle, and that's annoying, because I like everyone staying around the same experience point state (leader highest, and all that).
Needs levelling, for serious. (Last dungeons pains to locate. WTH was that with the airship? D:)
IV: …I remember moving being a pain, but not as much as Lufia (THANK GOD now let's never talk about Lufia again particularly not how the hell the two were meant to mix WTH?). Haven't played it for a while, though, so I don't remember much about it.
I did get Edward to hide only a few times, though! :D
V: …Needs character detailing. Also, ow with the swapping Cara for Galuf. D:
This is also the game that convinced me it was 'choboco'. It's taken me a while to get over that. (His chocobo was called 'Boco'. It makes perfect sense to me.)
VI: Setzer! Locke! Espers! Half-Esper! (But what were you meant to do with the form? I didn't really use that much.) Everyone being able to learn spells! Without job swapping! Osmose was great here. WTH at Kefka being so… relatively easy, though. Oh, and Celes WTH was that in the tower afterwards? I liked you, just… what.
Also, I wonder what happens if you pick up no one save Sabin and Setzer afterwards. …Aside from probably die a lot.
VII: HAY I GOT A COPY AN' IT WORKS AN' AN' AN' CHOCOBOS AN' I'm gonna hafta go past the Midgar Zolom for more greens at this point. D: …Screw that.
BUT BUT BUT. SKITTLES ON LEGS. HEEE. AND THE ADORKABLE GRUMP. *hair-ruffle!* So it's good.
…And, y'know, not making any real pretense that it's not trying to rip my heart out. BUT THAT'S A RAMBLE FOR ANOTHER TIME.
VIII + IX: Have not played. Vivi is apparently adorable, though, and I'm wondering how much I'll want to strangle Squall.
X: NUKE THE OPTIONAL BOSSES FROM ORBIT D:<<< SO. MUCH. HATE. (And oh yes, I ran into the Dark Magus Sisters today. Didn't fight, thank heavens, but DEAR SWEET GODS I JUST WANT BLOODY ANIMA AND EVERYONE'S ULTIMATE WEAPONS ARGH. Can't even beat Valefor, rarh.)
…Let's nuke the minigames, too. Oh god Chocobo Hyper Dodger. D: And the butterflies *cries*.
More level pounding. With a grid instead of general experience. …Yeeeees.
XI: Does not exist. (I know, it's a MMORPG. Doesn't exist as far as I'm concerned.)
XII: You know, maybe it would make sense to set up gambits when you first start to use the things? Just a thought. Not that I'm objecting to Balthier teaching Vaan things in any way, just… that was frickin' annoying. And I have to go over and work out how to operate the system so he knows to steal and then attack, silly thing…
But it's kind of fun. Although again we've got the decreased-experience-with-more-people-in-your-party. Seriously, what is up with that, and is it dumb or what? I'll just have Vaan running around for a bit on his ownsome, I think. (Leader having highest level obsession returns! Whee!)
And now, some stuff people might actually be interested in.
Dahy doesn’t room with people often. Strange things tend to happen when he has roommates. Strange things happen anyway, but roommates seem more determined to bring them upon him.
He’s sure they don’t really mean it, though. His current roommate, Brendan, is a very nice man, and he doesn’t often share rooms with people who aren’t nice people. At least the strange things that the nice people he rooms with bring upon him are mostly harmless to other people, and he can take a lot before he breaks. He’s spent a long time doing that, for one thing.
This is why he is now somewhat reluctantly stumbling along behind Brendan. It’s a very nice thought, but really, he can manage, and he says as much.
“I’m sure you can,” says Brendan, giving Dahy’s hand a slight tug. “But the man you were rooming with before told me he had problems- he must have mentioned them to you at some point, you’re required to give your roommate a reason for leaving, aren’t you?” Dahy nods, slightly bemused- he hadn’t thought anything of it, just figured that the strange things that went on had probably preyed on James’s mind too much. At least it hadn’t been ghosts again; that had been a hard one to explain. He had thought the moaning could be melodic at times, and had been working on training them to sing in operatic style. James hadn’t seemed to appreciate it much, though. (But it was rather nicer than some of the things that the music industry was coming out with at the moment, Dahy feels. Then again, he hasn’t appreciated the music industry since they came up with speakers you could burst your eardrums with.)
Brendan’s been talking while Dahy’s been giving his thought processes a nice little piece of indulgence (and fancy, they didn’t even have to pay, and it wasn’t about lust or greed or anything like that), and Dahy scrambles to catch up, waving his thought processes a cheery goodbye. He’ll catch up again with them later, but right now he needs to figure out what Brendan was talking about before he said “…every night, Dahy, it’s just not good for you.”
Dahy figures it must be the reason they’re heading into the city (really, he likes the suburbs the hell of a lot better, he doesn’t have quite so many tall buildings to be disorientated by in the suburbs, although if they keep building apartment blocks he may just have to head west). He doesn’t get why all the apparently-good doctors feel the need to have their offices in the middle of the city. The suburbs could do with a bit more attention, really. Although he’s not really objecting if it keeps people out of his hair and hoons off the local streets.
He wonders briefly if playing Barry Manilow would really help, and then winces as Brendan pulls him into first the lobby, and then the elevator. If Dahy were to pick one particular section of the music section he loathed with everything he could put into loathing, it would be the person or persons responsible for elevator music.
And then they are playing some hellish commercial radio station in the office, with an overbearing announcer convinced that everyone’s tastes are the same as his. Dahy grits his teeth and wonders if he can introduce the announcer and the psychiatrist he’s about to see to one another. Or lock the announcer in the elevator; that’ll do just fine.
He hopes any action towards that wouldn’t get Brendan dragging him back here again, though. Really, once is quite enough.
---
He doesn’t think the psychiatrist quite believes him when he says that there hasn’t really been anything strange about his dreams, recently (and there hasn’t, really; it’s just been trees trying to eat him), especially since Brendan has apparently mentioned the screaming to the man. Honestly, though, wouldn’t you scream if giant white trees were trying to eat you? Dahy thinks.
He is dreaming more often, though, and that bothers him. He usually doesn’t get dreams all bunched up like this. He doesn’t think it’s something a psychiatrist can deal with, though, but Dahy doesn’t say that to the man. Let him think there’s something he can do. He has to justify the commute into the city and sitting at that desk all day, after all.
Dahy wishes it hadn’t involved giving him a prescription, though. Sure, it’s easier than commuting back and forth for talking sessions (and there’ll be some of that), but he and medicine are not happy buddies. The tablets will probably work, but he’s not sure what other effects they’ll have.
Brendan’s watching, though, and he’s never mastered the art of pretending to have swallowed something, so he forces the tablets down, helped by a glass of water, and wishes they had some honey in the house. Since they don’t, he settles for going to bed, and pulling another pillow over his head as Brendan decides it’s a good time to put on one of his CDs. Dahy doesn’t have much against metal, really, but it’s not something he likes to drift off to sleep to.
Grumbling, he does so anyway.
---
He wakes up to a sense of disorientation, not helped by almost falling over when he gets out of bed. Brendan has left the CD player on, too, and he pinches his nose for a moment before going over to turn the thing off. It clatters on for a few moments, and he frowns at the sense of flashes for a moment before shrugging it off and pulling on a coat. He’s told Brendan he’s going out to meet a friend, which is true enough; he hasn’t mentioned that it’s not this early, but he doesn’t feel up to discussing yesterday.
Nor does he feel like talking about the apparent change the world has gone through overnight, which he blames on birds deciding they’ve had quite enough of what humans are doing. He wishes it wasn’t affecting him as well, but at least they’re not attacking and trying to peck him to death.
He wonders how everyone else is coping with the buildings sounding slightly melancholic, though. It seems a bit out of place, for one thing- but maybe they’re agreeing that people should be spending more time in the suburbs. It’s very odd to be agreeing with buildings, though, for him or anyone else (except, perhaps, the builders), so he walks on, and hopes the train station doesn’t feel like whispering agreement.
The train station seems fairly normal, though, and he only gets a slightly odd look from the man in the ticket booth when he asks if he’s noticed anything unusual today.
It must be the medicine, then.
Hells.
He spends most of the train trip with his eyes closed, wishing he couldn’t hear, or that he could reduce his hearing somehow. The clacking of the train is normally reassuring, but today he’s getting strong impressions of bars of light going past. It’s annoying, and he would go home if Brendan hadn’t said he planned to be in for a bit, fixing this and that and the other thing, and if the friend he’s meeting wouldn’t come over and be a pain. Not that he’ll be any less of a pain in the park, but he restrains it when there are people around who’ll notice. A little.
It’s slightly less messy, anyway, and since Dahy doesn’t quite want to know what’d be happening if he had to deal with more than the usual mess at home right now, they’ll be meeting outside.
He had planned to visit the State Library, but he’s not sure what will happen if he goes in- maybe they’ll feel like they’re singing at him, or feel like the covers are snake-skin, and he’s not sure he can cope with that at the moment. It would probably get him booted out of the Library, too, and while they’d probably let him back in later, he doesn’t need to have that sort of thing hanging around in the back of his mind. So he walks to the park instead, trying to keep out of the paths of others more than usual- he’s always been more nervy about touch, even a general touch as people sweep past, than most- and finds a spot that fewer people come past. It’s not exactly close to the fountain, where they’d agreed to meet, but it means there’s less sound trying to mess his other senses up, and then he can focus on trying to keep everything separate. His friend’ll be able to find him, anyway.
He’s busy ignoring the sound of cars going past when he feels someone sit next to him, and thinks for a moment that an elephant is about to trumpet. Then reality mostly reasserts itself, and he turns to look at his friend. “It took you a bit longer than I thought it would to find me, Xephos,” he says, and winces as it comes out bright yellow and egg-shaped. He’s hardly fond of yellow, and would rather it stayed out of his speech.
Xephos eyes him for a moment, probably judging whether he’s all right or not, then says, “Well, I stayed by the fountain for a bit, thinking maybe you were just having a bit of a go with me. Besides, I thought people tended to wait at the place they’d arranged to meet before going off, don’t they?”
Dahy would respond, really he would, if it didn’t felt more as though Xephos is trying to explore the intricacies of building polydecahedrons with his tongue, and blue ones, at that. “Xephos,” he starts, about to try and explain this and maybe get Xephos to explain why he feels like doing that, except that the streets around them decide it’s an excellent time for a traffic jam to start and the resulting honking makes him decide he’s had quite enough for the moment.
Unconsciousness, it transpires, is an excellent way of avoiding having to work it all out. He can’t imagine why he didn’t think of it before, except that he knows Xephos, and Xephos is one of those people only to happy to tease the people he knows about their reactions to things.
---
When he wakes up, he feels rather silly. It doesn’t look like his place, for one thing- it’s probably wherever Xephos is staying at the moment- and it’s also rather quiet. He should have realised that Xephos could be quiet, although since Xephos seems to be exploding with noise and energy every time Dahy sees him, he can’t say how he would have formed a different opinion.
He thinks for a moment that maybe Xephos has just taken all his energy and explosive sound into another room, but when he turns his head to the side he can see Xephos there, talking to someone. He’s not sure who it is- he’s looking straight at them, and even though he thinks he’s over most of whatever it is the tablets caused, he can’t make out this person. From the sound he’s getting from them, he guesses that they’re someone very colourful- he or she gives Dahy the impression of bells of various sizes, from bells you’d wear on fingers and toes to bells not much larger than the dinner bell, chiming irregularly, though once they must all have been in time and together.
Dahy swings his legs over to sit on the edge of the bed, ready to get up and go over, but the other two are rising, the person he can’t make out to leave and Xephos to come over and rest a hand against Dahy’s forehead, checking his temperature.
After reassuring himself that Dahy is mostly all right for the moment, Xephos takes a step back and looks at Dahy. “All right,” he says, and to Dahy the tone is still tinged faintly solid brown, with faint streaks of a paler brown, “what was all that about? She said,” he adds, tilting his head towards the door, “that it wasn’t something she dealt with.”
Dahy doesn’t see any point in not telling him, and so relates the tale behind him being taken to the psychiatrist, and What Happened After. Xephos nods at parts, says he doesn’t think builders think buildings talk either, as a general rule, and at the end takes a deep breath.
“Dahy, we’ve talked about you and having mortal roommates before,” he says sadly. “I mean, I know now why you asked me to see if there was somewhere the ghosts could go, but honestly, Dahy. It’s not doing you much good, even if it helps save on rent.” An idea seems to strike him, and he grins. “Why not room with me? You know I’d be happy to have you, anytime.”
“Happy to ruin what’s left of my sanity,” Dahy replies, but with a slight smile; if anything drives him over that edge, he doubts it’ll be Xephos. He would have gone mad before now, if that were the case. He takes the glass of water Xephos offers, and drinks. Putting it on the bedside table, he adds, “It’s more trouble than it’s worth to try to take care of you, anyway.”
“Aw, I think I’ve sharpened up pretty well,” Xephos says, but he doesn’t seem to mind. “Just think about it more, okay?”
Dahy shrugs. “I suppose.”
He’ll move out after a while, anyway. Brendan has some truly dreadful musical tastes.
And on a LJ note, adult content marker. *facepalm* Familiarity with rating system sounding good now.
III (DS-version): Ooooh, job-changing! Fun! I thought we only started that with V!
…okay, lower experience when people meet up. Um. That's… annoying. Plus, you input all your commands at the one point, which means you need to preempt the enemy doing enemy stuff, which means occasionally I end up with someone dead or petrified at the end of the battle, and that's annoying, because I like everyone staying around the same experience point state (leader highest, and all that).
Needs levelling, for serious. (Last dungeons pains to locate. WTH was that with the airship? D:)
IV: …I remember moving being a pain, but not as much as Lufia (THANK GOD now let's never talk about Lufia again particularly not how the hell the two were meant to mix WTH?). Haven't played it for a while, though, so I don't remember much about it.
I did get Edward to hide only a few times, though! :D
V: …Needs character detailing. Also, ow with the swapping Cara for Galuf. D:
This is also the game that convinced me it was 'choboco'. It's taken me a while to get over that. (His chocobo was called 'Boco'. It makes perfect sense to me.)
VI: Setzer! Locke! Espers! Half-Esper! (But what were you meant to do with the form? I didn't really use that much.) Everyone being able to learn spells! Without job swapping! Osmose was great here. WTH at Kefka being so… relatively easy, though. Oh, and Celes WTH was that in the tower afterwards? I liked you, just… what.
Also, I wonder what happens if you pick up no one save Sabin and Setzer afterwards. …Aside from probably die a lot.
VII: HAY I GOT A COPY AN' IT WORKS AN' AN' AN' CHOCOBOS AN' I'm gonna hafta go past the Midgar Zolom for more greens at this point. D: …Screw that.
BUT BUT BUT. SKITTLES ON LEGS. HEEE. AND THE ADORKABLE GRUMP. *hair-ruffle!* So it's good.
…And, y'know, not making any real pretense that it's not trying to rip my heart out. BUT THAT'S A RAMBLE FOR ANOTHER TIME.
VIII + IX: Have not played. Vivi is apparently adorable, though, and I'm wondering how much I'll want to strangle Squall.
X: NUKE THE OPTIONAL BOSSES FROM ORBIT D:<<< SO. MUCH. HATE. (And oh yes, I ran into the Dark Magus Sisters today. Didn't fight, thank heavens, but DEAR SWEET GODS I JUST WANT BLOODY ANIMA AND EVERYONE'S ULTIMATE WEAPONS ARGH. Can't even beat Valefor, rarh.)
…Let's nuke the minigames, too. Oh god Chocobo Hyper Dodger. D: And the butterflies *cries*.
More level pounding. With a grid instead of general experience. …Yeeeees.
XI: Does not exist. (I know, it's a MMORPG. Doesn't exist as far as I'm concerned.)
XII: You know, maybe it would make sense to set up gambits when you first start to use the things? Just a thought. Not that I'm objecting to Balthier teaching Vaan things in any way, just… that was frickin' annoying. And I have to go over and work out how to operate the system so he knows to steal and then attack, silly thing…
But it's kind of fun. Although again we've got the decreased-experience-with-more-people-in-your-party. Seriously, what is up with that, and is it dumb or what? I'll just have Vaan running around for a bit on his ownsome, I think. (Leader having highest level obsession returns! Whee!)
And now, some stuff people might actually be interested in.
Dahy doesn’t room with people often. Strange things tend to happen when he has roommates. Strange things happen anyway, but roommates seem more determined to bring them upon him.
He’s sure they don’t really mean it, though. His current roommate, Brendan, is a very nice man, and he doesn’t often share rooms with people who aren’t nice people. At least the strange things that the nice people he rooms with bring upon him are mostly harmless to other people, and he can take a lot before he breaks. He’s spent a long time doing that, for one thing.
This is why he is now somewhat reluctantly stumbling along behind Brendan. It’s a very nice thought, but really, he can manage, and he says as much.
“I’m sure you can,” says Brendan, giving Dahy’s hand a slight tug. “But the man you were rooming with before told me he had problems- he must have mentioned them to you at some point, you’re required to give your roommate a reason for leaving, aren’t you?” Dahy nods, slightly bemused- he hadn’t thought anything of it, just figured that the strange things that went on had probably preyed on James’s mind too much. At least it hadn’t been ghosts again; that had been a hard one to explain. He had thought the moaning could be melodic at times, and had been working on training them to sing in operatic style. James hadn’t seemed to appreciate it much, though. (But it was rather nicer than some of the things that the music industry was coming out with at the moment, Dahy feels. Then again, he hasn’t appreciated the music industry since they came up with speakers you could burst your eardrums with.)
Brendan’s been talking while Dahy’s been giving his thought processes a nice little piece of indulgence (and fancy, they didn’t even have to pay, and it wasn’t about lust or greed or anything like that), and Dahy scrambles to catch up, waving his thought processes a cheery goodbye. He’ll catch up again with them later, but right now he needs to figure out what Brendan was talking about before he said “…every night, Dahy, it’s just not good for you.”
Dahy figures it must be the reason they’re heading into the city (really, he likes the suburbs the hell of a lot better, he doesn’t have quite so many tall buildings to be disorientated by in the suburbs, although if they keep building apartment blocks he may just have to head west). He doesn’t get why all the apparently-good doctors feel the need to have their offices in the middle of the city. The suburbs could do with a bit more attention, really. Although he’s not really objecting if it keeps people out of his hair and hoons off the local streets.
He wonders briefly if playing Barry Manilow would really help, and then winces as Brendan pulls him into first the lobby, and then the elevator. If Dahy were to pick one particular section of the music section he loathed with everything he could put into loathing, it would be the person or persons responsible for elevator music.
And then they are playing some hellish commercial radio station in the office, with an overbearing announcer convinced that everyone’s tastes are the same as his. Dahy grits his teeth and wonders if he can introduce the announcer and the psychiatrist he’s about to see to one another. Or lock the announcer in the elevator; that’ll do just fine.
He hopes any action towards that wouldn’t get Brendan dragging him back here again, though. Really, once is quite enough.
---
He doesn’t think the psychiatrist quite believes him when he says that there hasn’t really been anything strange about his dreams, recently (and there hasn’t, really; it’s just been trees trying to eat him), especially since Brendan has apparently mentioned the screaming to the man. Honestly, though, wouldn’t you scream if giant white trees were trying to eat you? Dahy thinks.
He is dreaming more often, though, and that bothers him. He usually doesn’t get dreams all bunched up like this. He doesn’t think it’s something a psychiatrist can deal with, though, but Dahy doesn’t say that to the man. Let him think there’s something he can do. He has to justify the commute into the city and sitting at that desk all day, after all.
Dahy wishes it hadn’t involved giving him a prescription, though. Sure, it’s easier than commuting back and forth for talking sessions (and there’ll be some of that), but he and medicine are not happy buddies. The tablets will probably work, but he’s not sure what other effects they’ll have.
Brendan’s watching, though, and he’s never mastered the art of pretending to have swallowed something, so he forces the tablets down, helped by a glass of water, and wishes they had some honey in the house. Since they don’t, he settles for going to bed, and pulling another pillow over his head as Brendan decides it’s a good time to put on one of his CDs. Dahy doesn’t have much against metal, really, but it’s not something he likes to drift off to sleep to.
Grumbling, he does so anyway.
---
He wakes up to a sense of disorientation, not helped by almost falling over when he gets out of bed. Brendan has left the CD player on, too, and he pinches his nose for a moment before going over to turn the thing off. It clatters on for a few moments, and he frowns at the sense of flashes for a moment before shrugging it off and pulling on a coat. He’s told Brendan he’s going out to meet a friend, which is true enough; he hasn’t mentioned that it’s not this early, but he doesn’t feel up to discussing yesterday.
Nor does he feel like talking about the apparent change the world has gone through overnight, which he blames on birds deciding they’ve had quite enough of what humans are doing. He wishes it wasn’t affecting him as well, but at least they’re not attacking and trying to peck him to death.
He wonders how everyone else is coping with the buildings sounding slightly melancholic, though. It seems a bit out of place, for one thing- but maybe they’re agreeing that people should be spending more time in the suburbs. It’s very odd to be agreeing with buildings, though, for him or anyone else (except, perhaps, the builders), so he walks on, and hopes the train station doesn’t feel like whispering agreement.
The train station seems fairly normal, though, and he only gets a slightly odd look from the man in the ticket booth when he asks if he’s noticed anything unusual today.
It must be the medicine, then.
Hells.
He spends most of the train trip with his eyes closed, wishing he couldn’t hear, or that he could reduce his hearing somehow. The clacking of the train is normally reassuring, but today he’s getting strong impressions of bars of light going past. It’s annoying, and he would go home if Brendan hadn’t said he planned to be in for a bit, fixing this and that and the other thing, and if the friend he’s meeting wouldn’t come over and be a pain. Not that he’ll be any less of a pain in the park, but he restrains it when there are people around who’ll notice. A little.
It’s slightly less messy, anyway, and since Dahy doesn’t quite want to know what’d be happening if he had to deal with more than the usual mess at home right now, they’ll be meeting outside.
He had planned to visit the State Library, but he’s not sure what will happen if he goes in- maybe they’ll feel like they’re singing at him, or feel like the covers are snake-skin, and he’s not sure he can cope with that at the moment. It would probably get him booted out of the Library, too, and while they’d probably let him back in later, he doesn’t need to have that sort of thing hanging around in the back of his mind. So he walks to the park instead, trying to keep out of the paths of others more than usual- he’s always been more nervy about touch, even a general touch as people sweep past, than most- and finds a spot that fewer people come past. It’s not exactly close to the fountain, where they’d agreed to meet, but it means there’s less sound trying to mess his other senses up, and then he can focus on trying to keep everything separate. His friend’ll be able to find him, anyway.
He’s busy ignoring the sound of cars going past when he feels someone sit next to him, and thinks for a moment that an elephant is about to trumpet. Then reality mostly reasserts itself, and he turns to look at his friend. “It took you a bit longer than I thought it would to find me, Xephos,” he says, and winces as it comes out bright yellow and egg-shaped. He’s hardly fond of yellow, and would rather it stayed out of his speech.
Xephos eyes him for a moment, probably judging whether he’s all right or not, then says, “Well, I stayed by the fountain for a bit, thinking maybe you were just having a bit of a go with me. Besides, I thought people tended to wait at the place they’d arranged to meet before going off, don’t they?”
Dahy would respond, really he would, if it didn’t felt more as though Xephos is trying to explore the intricacies of building polydecahedrons with his tongue, and blue ones, at that. “Xephos,” he starts, about to try and explain this and maybe get Xephos to explain why he feels like doing that, except that the streets around them decide it’s an excellent time for a traffic jam to start and the resulting honking makes him decide he’s had quite enough for the moment.
Unconsciousness, it transpires, is an excellent way of avoiding having to work it all out. He can’t imagine why he didn’t think of it before, except that he knows Xephos, and Xephos is one of those people only to happy to tease the people he knows about their reactions to things.
---
When he wakes up, he feels rather silly. It doesn’t look like his place, for one thing- it’s probably wherever Xephos is staying at the moment- and it’s also rather quiet. He should have realised that Xephos could be quiet, although since Xephos seems to be exploding with noise and energy every time Dahy sees him, he can’t say how he would have formed a different opinion.
He thinks for a moment that maybe Xephos has just taken all his energy and explosive sound into another room, but when he turns his head to the side he can see Xephos there, talking to someone. He’s not sure who it is- he’s looking straight at them, and even though he thinks he’s over most of whatever it is the tablets caused, he can’t make out this person. From the sound he’s getting from them, he guesses that they’re someone very colourful- he or she gives Dahy the impression of bells of various sizes, from bells you’d wear on fingers and toes to bells not much larger than the dinner bell, chiming irregularly, though once they must all have been in time and together.
Dahy swings his legs over to sit on the edge of the bed, ready to get up and go over, but the other two are rising, the person he can’t make out to leave and Xephos to come over and rest a hand against Dahy’s forehead, checking his temperature.
After reassuring himself that Dahy is mostly all right for the moment, Xephos takes a step back and looks at Dahy. “All right,” he says, and to Dahy the tone is still tinged faintly solid brown, with faint streaks of a paler brown, “what was all that about? She said,” he adds, tilting his head towards the door, “that it wasn’t something she dealt with.”
Dahy doesn’t see any point in not telling him, and so relates the tale behind him being taken to the psychiatrist, and What Happened After. Xephos nods at parts, says he doesn’t think builders think buildings talk either, as a general rule, and at the end takes a deep breath.
“Dahy, we’ve talked about you and having mortal roommates before,” he says sadly. “I mean, I know now why you asked me to see if there was somewhere the ghosts could go, but honestly, Dahy. It’s not doing you much good, even if it helps save on rent.” An idea seems to strike him, and he grins. “Why not room with me? You know I’d be happy to have you, anytime.”
“Happy to ruin what’s left of my sanity,” Dahy replies, but with a slight smile; if anything drives him over that edge, he doubts it’ll be Xephos. He would have gone mad before now, if that were the case. He takes the glass of water Xephos offers, and drinks. Putting it on the bedside table, he adds, “It’s more trouble than it’s worth to try to take care of you, anyway.”
“Aw, I think I’ve sharpened up pretty well,” Xephos says, but he doesn’t seem to mind. “Just think about it more, okay?”
Dahy shrugs. “I suppose.”
He’ll move out after a while, anyway. Brendan has some truly dreadful musical tastes.
And on a LJ note, adult content marker. *facepalm* Familiarity with rating system sounding good now.