Seven hours in surgery had been a short day for Gavan but since it should have been nine he felt exhausted. The first operation had been fine, in and out, no complications, the second, well, the second wasn’t so kind. An hour into the four hour procedure the patient had crashed and died on the table. That was always more exhausting than if he’d been in surgery the entire time.

He’d finished his duties, washed up and changed back into street clothes and still was going to be home early. Which was good because Wally was supposed to be calling for his final answer that night and he needed time to make up his mind. He really, really, wanted to go but he wasn’t sure he could fairly take Val up on his offer. Honestly, he wasn’t sure Val would still honor the offer once he knew everything.

He knocked on the apartment door on the sixth floor and waited.

“It’s open!” Val called from inside.

Gavan opened the door which was as unlocked as promised. A John Mellencamp cd was singing about pink houses and Val was no where to be seen. Little had changed from night to day. A bike leaned against one wall, books had been gathered into neater stacks but there was still a feel of untidiness to the place.

“Val?”

“Yeah, just a second.” He answered from the partially closed bedroom door.

And it was only a second before Val pushed the door all the way open. His hair was wet and his jeans were faded and old. They hung on his hips at an almost obscenely low level, which may have just been an optical illusion since the man hadn’t pulled on his t-shirt yet. As he tugged the red fabric over his head, it gave Gavan a moment to ogle the defined torso that he hadn’t expected to find on such a withdrawn, scholarly man.

He reminded himself that Val was straight and that he really was happy with Wally. “Did I come at a bad time?” Gavan was proud that none of the sudden lust he felt showed in his voice.

“Sorry, went for a bike ride and then got distracted and didn’t get cleaned up until just now.” Val licked nervously at dry lips. “Look Gavan, we need to talk.”

The part of Gavan that had already settled into the idea of a cozy, weekend of happy bliss and good sex felt sudden and sharp disappointment. “Hey, man, it’s okay. We both were a little drunk, I didn’t expect you to mean it.”

“Gavan? Sit down.” He turned the cd player off on his way past.

The serious tone, the steady eyes, made Gavan suddenly feel fourteen and facing down his school’s principle. “Sure. What’s up?” It was the same tone people used before they broke up with him.

Val lowered himself down on the other end of the sofa. “When I got back from my ride this afternoon, Trist was sitting outside my door.”

“I’m sorry, I’ll tell him not to bother you. He doesn’t think sometimes.”

Val waved the words off. “I don’t mind. Look, Gavan, he said some things about my sister that he could only have known from your telling him. I wouldn’t mind normally but, well, it’s not something I even talk about often. I enjoyed last night but I can’t have Trist saying distorted things about my personal life. I just can’t do that.”

Gavan drew a long breath and let it out slowly. He was going to tell Val anyway, so, in for a pinch, in for a pound. “Val, I know you don’t know me very well so I’m going to ask that you hear me out and take what I say at face value.” He studied the unforgiving brown eyes. “Okay?”

Val nodded. “Okay.”

“Trist, he isn’t insane. I mean, he isn’t really schizophrenic.”

“Okay.”

“Christ, you’d think after having this conversation my entire life I’d be better at it.” He sighed and fussed at the sleeve of his shirt. “Our family is Celtic, Gaelic really. Four or five generations ago we were mostly Irish, but now we’re Welsh, that doesn’t really matter to you, never mind. For as long as our family history goes back, every other generation produces a seer.” He held up a hand. “You promised to hear me out.”

“I don’t believe in that mumbo jumbo bullshit.”

“Fine, but just hear me out. Okay?”

Val sighed and nodded. “Sure.”

“Okay. Look, it skips a generation and it skips genders. It usually doesn’t follow linearly down the family line but will branch out, showing up in a great niece or nephew instead of a grand child. You’ve seen Trist’s eyes?”

He nodded.

“Everyone in my family born with the sight has it. Our grandmother has the same eyes, our great, great, great uncle had them, we’ve photos, Trist has them, one of our great nieces will be born with them. It will happen as it’s always happened.”

“That’s just a genetic variation, a recessive reinforced gene.”

“Maybe, yes, but it always shows up with the sight, never without it. With every generation that has a seer, another is born at the same time that doesn’t have the sight but acts like a switch for the one that does. They’re always born nine hours, nine days, nine weeks, or nine months to the moment before the seer is born. I’m nine hours and nine days older than Trist, that’s a double reinforcement. That doesn’t happen. Worse, Trist is a direct line from the last seer, again, very rare. We both are, even more rare.”
“Wait, a moment, just wait.” Val was pretty sure Gavan believed what he was saying.

“Hear me out, please.” Gavan sighed. “I know it sounds crazy. With our Grandmother, her sight is always turned off until her cousin, our great aunt, switches it on. On the rare occasion she’ll have a vision that just arrives and it’s only then that our aunt has to act as an off switch. Trist isn’t like that, he’s never been like that. He’s always on, not just on but wide on. He’s learned a lot of control but some days it overwhelms him, when that happens, I’m the only person other then my aunt that has the ability to shut him down.”

“How?” He asked in spite of himself, the same way he’d ask a delusional person how the government was reading their thoughts. “How do you shut him down?”

“I don’t know, I can feel him. It’s, like…” he searched for words he’d never had to find before. No one had ever asked him about his side of the situation. Trist’s skills always were the more interesting. “It’s like standing near a fire, you can feel the heat on your skin even with your eyes closed. The more out of control he is, the stronger the heat feel and I just focus on the idea of it cooling down and it does. That sounds crazy, I know.”

Val chewed over the information and still found he couldn’t believe. “I don’t think you’re lying but I don’t believe a word you’ve just said.”

“Fine.” Gavan laughed. “I’m not the one that can convince you, I’m not even sure you should be convinced but come on.” He stood up. “Let’s go talk to Trist, ask him anything you want. He might not answer it all but you’ll see how he works.”

“What do you mean, how he works?”

“He isn’t just a psychic or a medium or madman. He’s more and less and well, I don’t think he even understands it half he time. You should ask him directly because I’ve known him since we were infants and I still don’t know what it’s really like for him.” He motioned with his hand. “Come on, what have you got to lose?”

“You said he’d been diagnosed, that he’d been medicated?”

“Often, yes. Look, if someone came to you, hearing voices, seeing things, what would you think? When he gets overloaded, when he’s having a bad day and his mind shorts out, if I’m not there and he winds up out in public, he gets locked up. When he gets locked up they medicate him. It doesn’t work.” His voice was getting angry and he knew it and couldn’t help it, rather then shouting, he started pacing. “At the best, it shuts him down into a zombie. The meds push him into an almost twilight sleep where he doesn’t feel, doesn’t think, doesn’t dream which is the only time the voices and visions stop for him. At the worst, it opens him wide up and doubles or triples the visions but shuts him down so he can’t speak, can’t move. It’ll trap him in his own mind to be tormented.”

“But…”

“Trust me, meds don’t work. Respite care is almost impossible because he freaks most people out. He can be a royal brat at times too because everyone treats him like raving lunatic.”

Things began to fall into place. “People come to him because they think he’s psychic. That‘s what you meant by clients.”

“He is psychic. One of the best in the world.” He stopped pacing. “Now, you’ve heard me out, you think I should be on meds. Come on up to our apartment and judge for yourself.”

Val hesitated.

“Come on, I dare you to prove me wrong. Things would be so much simpler if he was just crazy. You’d be doing me a favor to prove me wrong.”

“Alright.” Val pulled on an old pair of sneakers and stood up. “Alright then.”

In the elevator, Gavan worked up the nerve to ask. “Just, what did Trist say to you?”

“Nothing that matters.”

“I’m sorry. He doesn’t think about how other people will take what he says before he says it.”

“It’s okay, he can’t help it.”

That made Gavan shake his head because he wasn’t always sure just how much of his cousin’s crazy behavior was something he could control if he’d only try. Val seemed unwilling to talk about it so he left it there and left the taller man in silence.

The door to the apartment opened smoothly for him and he tossed his coat over the hall closet doorknob before dropping his keys on the counter. “Trist?”

“Busy, leave me alone!” Trist called back from one of the bedrooms.

“Get your scrawny ass out here now, or so help me I will drag you out here!” Gavan shouted even though he was more tired than angry.

“Shit, Gav, now who’s panties are in a bunch?” Trist shouted back but the rustling from behind one of the bedroom doors made it clear the other man was on his way.

“Don’t even try to play innocent with me.”

“Look, I’m sorry, but they wouldn’t shut up. I was going crazy, just tell him I’m whacko and don’t worry about…” Trist’s voice died when he saw Val hovering behind his cousin. Rather than being embarrassed, Trist grinned. “Opps.” His eyes raked over their guest and had a chance to really see the man for the first time, unclouded. It was a pleasant sight.

“Get out here, Trist.” Gavan tried to stay stern.

Trist shrugged, his shoulders staying a little hunched up and he shuffled out into the living room. His feet were bare and too skinny ankles poked out from under his baggy cotton pants. “Look, can we skip the lecture and just go to the part where I genuflect and say I’m sorry?”

Gavan glanced from Trist, slinking like a whipped dog out into the living room, dressed to make himself look the most pitiful possible, and Val who stood silent and tense beside him. “Just come here.”

Trist sighed deeply but he moved closer to the pair and briefly locked eyes with Val. “I’m sorry, I do stupid things. I didn’t mean to upset you.” He dropped his eyes. “Don’t take my stupidity out on Gavan, okay? I’ll leave you be.” As the words died he cocked his head to the side and his eyes narrowed. “This isn’t about that. You told him and he thinks you’re as crazy as I am.” His smile came back. “Well, I won’t be your trained monkey today. I’m tired and trying to settle down.”

“Trist.” Gavan’s voice softened up. “Come on, Val’s a good guy. He lives two stories below us and he’s willing to check in on you this weekend so I can go away with Wally.”

“Wally is such a stupid name.”

Gavan closed his eyes and stayed calm. He was never sure when Trist was just being stubborn and bratty and when he was teasing. “Which is better? Having him know the truth or thinking you’re crazy?”

“He already thinks I’m crazy and he’s not going to baby sit me.”

Val shook his head. “That’s not true, I haven’t made my mind up yet and does it matter what I think about you?”

“Please, why would you want to? You barely know Gav, and I’m not exactly a field of daises.”

“I like a challenge and well, I’ve nothing better to do this weekend.”

“Trist, he wants answers, for me, okay? If for no other reason, for me?”

The smile broke on Trist’s face. “Fuck! Well, Valentine York, let me introduce to you Gavan Maddocks, my personal travel agent to all guilt trips.” He paced a moment before stopping to run a hand across his hair. “Sit down boys, I’m not going to pull punches here.”

Gavan motioned to a pair of stools that were tucked under the kitchen counter top. He waited until Val settled down uneasily on one of them before taking his own. Trist paced around for a moment before he started chewing on a fingernail that didn’t exist.

“What’s going on?” Val asked softly, suddenly feeling like he should whisper.

“Just wait. I promise you though, I’ve told him nothing about you, not even what your full name is.”

“No.” Trist shook his head. “No, I’m not doing that, no.” He sighed and rubbed at his temple but his pacing stopped. “Okay, look, Val, your parents are dead. I don’t know how, something claustrophobic. Dirty too, I don’t know. You weren’t a teenager yet, they sent you to live with your bachelor uncle. He read a lot, tons of books. I think he was a teacher. He’s dead too, ah, late teens, you weren’t an adult yet but it wasn’t like your parents. It was sudden, heart attack I think.”

At the first, Val was startled but his shock quickly dissolved into cynical skepticism. “How do you know any of that?”

Trist shook his head. “I just do, darling. Freaky huh?”

“Not really, it’s all things anyone could find out about me if they wanted to and you’ve had all afternoon.” He refused to buy into the story. It was impossible and Occam’s Razor was how he shaved his reality.

“But I didn’t look it up.”

“I don’t know that.”

Trist sighed loudly and stalked across the room. He stopped with his legs almost touching Val’s knees before leaning forward and putting a hand on the counter behind the stubborn man. “Fine.” He whispered out. “You want something that no one knows? I know all about you and Matt Poff. All about it.” His voice took on a honey tone of teasing.

Val refused to be startled. The words were cryptic and vague and he wasn’t one to back down to anything. “So? He was my roommate in college. Who doesn’t have some secret they share only with their room mate? You’ve proven nothing.”

Trist closed his eyes and drew a slow breath, the smile that teased his lips was languid. When his eyes opened again they slid from Val’s too close, closed off expression to Gavan’s confused. He could lean in and whisper the hidden secret but he wasn’t feeling very kind at the moment.

“Really? Does everyone blow their roommate in college? I wonder what his cheerleader girlfriend, or your girlfriend for that matter, would have thought if they’d known? Captain of the basketball team and all that he was, respectable dean’s list student that you were, neither of you could afford to be fags. Oh, wait, you didn’t think of yourself as gay did you? That was too messy, too unsocial, too unacceptable. I wonder what your sweet little fiancée would think if she knew the real reason why you’re such a frigid bitch with her?” Trist’s words were a mocking caress and his crazy ringed eyes were filled with amused laughter.

Val couldn’t breath. His heart had stopped, frozen at the words that came so easily out of the skinny, mocking man. No one, and Val knew that for a fact, no one knew about his room mate. He’d never even told Violet and he’d kept nothing else from his sister.

The three men sat for long second frozen. “Val?” Gavan asked gently in the silence.

Val stood and pushed Trist away from him, pushed him and his bold speaking of the truth physically away and stumbled a few feet away. “You can’t know that!”

Trist caught his balance and still was smiling but it was less malicious now. “But I do. You even liked him being taller than you. I know, I can see it, want me to tell you more? I know what he used to call you, the only pet name anyone’s ever given you. He loved you, did you know that? He loved you more than life and it’s not your fault that he got killed.”

Val’s feet refused to work and he stumbled and fell hard to the soft carpeting. The fibers scrapped his hands, providing a sharp point of pain to focus on but it wasn’t enough to kick his brain back into a functioning mode. “You can’t know any of this.” He heard himself whispering out.

No longer caught in manic pacing or random gestures, Trist crossed to where Val was sprawled on the floor and knelt beside him. “But I do know, so maybe Gavan isn’t crazy and maybe I have a good reason for being nutso?” He studied the confused and lost man before stroking a hand across the uneasy face. “You poor dear, everyone you’ve ever cared about has died on you.” He brushed soft brown hair back. “I’m sorry, I never know when to stop and I do stupid things.”

Gavan had stayed out of the way until Trist looked up to him for help. It was only then that he rose and moved to kneel on Val’s other side. “Don’t worry, Trist may never know when to shut up about what he sees to the person it’s about, but he’s never one to blab secrets to other people.”

Val shook his head. “I’m not gay! Matt and I, we, it’s just…” his eyes darted between the two cousins. “Oh, God.”

“It doesn’t matter if you are or aren’t.” A life time around Trist had dampened Gavan’s shock at his cousin’s skills but he always tried to be understanding of other people’s reactions. “What matters is if you believe me now?”

Val stared hard into those odd eyes, the black so harsh and stark and the gentle ring of clear green but even his logical mind could find no other answer. “I know Matt never told anyone.”

“He never did.” Trist sighed. “Gav? Still have some beer tucked away or did you finish it?”

“God, I could use a beer.” Val agreed and slowly started to get himself back onto his feet.

“Got a couple left, want a glass?”

“No need.” His heart was starting to beat again at a more normal pattern but he still felt a little like he’d been clubbed over the back of the head. He accepted the cold bottle from Gavan and downed a few swigs. “Well,” he managed to get himself back onto one of the stools. “That isn’t something one comes across everyday.”

Gavan passed another open bottle to Trist but his cousin waved it off. “Happens all the time around here.” He tried to laugh it off with Val but he didn’t know the man well enough to judge him. “Trist is annoying that way.”

“Hey! You asked, the pair of you pushed, I was happy and content now everything’s all stirred up again.” Trist mocked but he was smiling wickedly. “I’m going to go shower. You two bond and all that shit, leave Val my care instructions for the weekend and when you order Chinese, I want something spicy.” He waved as he floated back into his bedroom.

“How does he know?”

Gavan shrugged and lowered himself down next to Val. “About what? Your college days? This weekend or ordering food in?”

“Any of it.”

“God only knows. You okay?”
“Not really.” What Trist had said to him that afternoon suddenly came back. “How often is he right?”

“He’s always right, he might not understand what he’s seeing or hearing and he might not be able to get the idea out clearly but the message is never faulty. Was he right about this weekend?” He didn’t want to get is hopes up.

“I want to know more about how he does that.” Val said over the lip of his beer bottle.

Trist’s door opened and he stuck his head out. “Oh, hey, Val, look, Gavan really could use the weekend away from my absurdity, and he’s really good to me most days, when he’s not beating me for misbehaving. If you do us this favor and keep an eye on me so he can relax and get his brains fucked out, I promise to be a good little choir boy and behave. I’ll answer any questions you have and do whatever little lab rat tricks you want. Okay?” He grinned and glanced between the two. “Cool, it’s a deal!”

Val’s mouth worked but no sound came out.

“Don’t think too hard about it.” Gavan patted his friend’s shoulder. “I’m going to call in dinner, what is it you want?”

“What?”

“Chinese, what do you want?”

“But, isn’t that a self fulfilling prophecy?”

Gavan dug the menu with the phone number on it from a drawer. “Dude, trust me, don’t think to deeply about it. I never know if he actually saw it or if he’s just hungry for Chinese. So, what will you have?”

The mundane question refused to make sense and Val just shook his head, not caring about something as simple as food.