[Night]

-----

Oliver was getting nowhere fast with this case. He had been awake all last night, as well as the one before, trying to figure out just what could be going on. None of his texts lent any sort of help. There wasn't exactly a lot of precedent for things that seemed like a spiritual haunting but just somehow weren't. After all, it wasn't as though he could just type a few key phrases in an internet browser and search the web. Really. He'd tried. All that came up were a bunch of myspace pages with glittery font sparkling at the top. He flipped another page, the tome sending up a small puff of dust that made his nose itch. Perhaps he had been asking a bit much, in trying to find something that was an actual case that was worthy of his attention.

A knock on the door signaled Jay's return from the supermarket. The bespeckled man wandered in, holding two cups of coffee up triumphantly. He set one on the bedside table, and offered the other to his brother. Oliver accepted it gladly, cradling the cup between his hands and inhaling the scent of fresh brewed caffeine. "I don't understand it, Jay. There's nothing about this in any of the books." He frowned, lines creasing between his eyebrows.

[Night]

"If anyone can figure it out, I know you can, Oli." Jay gifted him with a smile, settling himself heavily on the bed beside his brother. A silence grew between them while the priest returned to his researching, stretching on until Jay spoke quietly.

"Are you sure this is something that the church can.. you know... help with?" He asked, hesitant. He knew that his brother was a firm believer, but he honestly couldn't say the same for himself. Not for sure. He was more than willing to believe in things of an otherworldly or supernatural nature, but Gods, heaven, hell... it was all just so much to take in. It was so much scarier to face the possibility of there being something more than it was to just believe there wasn't.

[Night]

Oliver made a noncommittal noise, caught up in his reading. At the end of the paragraph, he sighed, rubbing at his eyes and straightening. "I'm really not sure." He admitted finally. "There's just nothing about it anywhere, you know? How am I supposed to help if I don't even know what I'm up against?" He sounded defeated, and more than a little frustrated. From his pocket, he produced a rosary, curling it around his fingers and clicking the beads together.

Jay nodded slowly, leaning himself back against the headboard and observing quietly as Oliver touched each of the beads in turn. With a start, he realized that Oli was praying. It was strange to him, how his brother so blindly turned to his faith in times like this.

Another few minutes, and Oliver was peaking his eyes open once more. He sighed yet against, leaning his head forward on his arms.

[Night]

"I think that's the first time I've ever seen you pray." Jay admitted, pulling at a stray string on the bedspread. It was never not going to be weird, thinking of his brother as some kind of holy being sanctioned by the church. When he looked at him, he only saw... well. His brother. The same nerdy kid that had grown up with him, playing action figures and pushing him down. The same one who snuck a bottle of vodka from their parents liquor cabinet and sat with him on the roof of the house, passing it back and forth until Jay had fallen off the roof and broken his arm. The same one that was grounded for months from the aforementioned incident. Oliver had never been this calm, collected individual before he got ordained. Jay... really wasn't sure how he felt about it, even now, six years later.

[Night]

Oliver hummed, tracing over the beads and then the cross as they lay his palm. "Normally I don't... well. Not like that, anyway." He said finally. "I think the Gods are always listening, you know? I don't think you have to be sitting in church or bowing your head for them to hear you."

Jay frowned. "What, so like, they're listening while you sing in the car?" Oliver laughed, loud and sudden, a sharp burst of noise that had Jay grinning in turn.

"Oh yeah, totally. You don't think the Gods get down with some eighties hair bands like everyone else?" He joked, nudging his elbow into Jay's knee. He laughed a bit longer, his high reedy laugh that always made Jay make fun of him when they were kids. He was still smiling when he continued. "But no. Really! I think that you just gotta talk to them."

[Night]

Jay tried to imagine himself just talking out loud to empty air. He just could wrap his head around why anyone would think that would actually get them anywhere. Now that he was looking back, though, he could remember times where he had walked in on Oliver doing just that.

"Do they ever answer you?" He didn't say it to be rude. He was just... genuinely curious. He had never known someone as spiritual as his brother, and certainly no one that he felt as though he could interrogate about their faith. Oliver, though... Oliver just ate it up, ever eager to talk about the things that interested him. Like this, apparently.

"Sometimes." He allowed, turning over another page in the massive book that was laying across the bed. "Just not always in the way that you would expect. " The statement seemed to lay suspended in the air between them, and Jay rolled it over in his mind a few times.

He wasn't sure he could ever believe so completely as Oliver seemed to, but he was willing to accept that the idea of it was nice. Always someone there to talk to. Always someone listening. Though he thought he might prefer someone that was actually going to give some solid input.

[Night]

-----

The address that he had written down on the business card after his call to Mr. Benton had led him to what appeared to be an empty lot. Lero frowned down at his own hand writing, glaring a hole through the card. He was beginning to question if he had written it down correctly when the old man wandered up to greet him.

"Sorry for the unusual meeting place. I just remembered that you said you didn't have a vehicle?" He waited for Lero to nod before continuing. "And I figured that here was as good a place as any." Lero wondered, absently, why this guy even needed him to run his packages for him when he was going to have to get out to meet him here regardless. Couldn't he just drop them off if he was already out?

He didn't feel right asking, though. Especially when he was presented with a handful of keystones and the promise that he would get the rest if 'his associates' received the package without incident. Lero grasped the brown paper-wrapped box in one arm, trying to work the cash into his pocket with his free hand. The address was sprawled in spindly handwriting on the top of the box, so at least he knew he wasn't going to have to worry if it was his own fault if it went to the wrong place, he supposed.

[Night]

It was a simple enough process. He brought the box up onto the porch of the house and left it in front of the door to be collected by whoever lived there. Again, the old man could have just done it himself and spared a bit of expense. Whatever kept food on Lero's table, though, he was more than willing to do. He let his thoughts roam as he made his way back across town to their meeting place, letting them land where they will. He kept coming back to a stock of brilliant white hair and a pile of scarves. He knew that Jay was hiding something from him on purpose, though he couldn't for the life of him put his finger on it. What was so special about his brother that he felt he couldn't even tell his best friend?

Mr. Benton wasn't at the lot when he arrived back. Lero settled himself on the hard concrete of the curb, playing games on his phone while he waited. How was the dude supposed to know when he was finished, anyway?

[Night]

When the sun met the tops of the buildings and began to sink beneath them, Lero got to his feet and cursed. Of course this was all a big scam. Well. Maybe not entirely a scam. After all, he had gotten at least half of his money up front. Whatever. He would just have to take a weekend job or something. Honest work, as Brian would call it.

When he arrived back at the apartment, there was a stark white envelope taped to the wood of the door. He creased his eyebrows, working it free of the adhesive and opening it. A pile of keystones, equal or larger than the one he was originally presented with, fell into his hands. It was certainly a pleasant surprise. He grinned to himself, lifting the door and working it around to the best of his ability given his small stature until he was able to get inside. He pushed the end table back up against it, ignoring that he had never given the old man his address to begin with in favor of basking in the glory of being able to get the damned door fixed sometime in the near future. He would deliver as many sketchy boxes as the dude needed him to if it meant he was secure in his home.

[Done, for now]

[Night]

Things were only looking up. Each morning, he found a box stuffed into his mail box with a note attached with the given address and half the payment. The majority of the time he could walk there, but every so often he would hail a cab. He'd drop the box in front of whatever building came up - most of the time a dilapidated looking house - and then he would flag down the nearest taxi or get on the bus to go to work.

Work was as awful as ever, but somehow Lero was beginning to not mind the dreadful wedding parties and first time parents quite so much as he used to. He came home sometime a week later to a fixed door and enough in his pocket to manage take out food. If he kept up his regular deliveries, he may even be able to replace his television before the month was out. It was nice to not be on a losing streak - he should have known that everything would have to come to a head eventually.

Jay was waiting by the door when he arrived to work the next morning, returning Lero's lazy grin with a look of suspicion. "What's got you in so good of a mood lately? I thought the world was ending last Monday, but you haven't stopped making that stupid face all week. What's up?"

[Wild Pet Found]