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"Sharks," Walter is saying, "Definitely sharks. Obviously sharks." He's not building model rail-lines out of chocolate wafers anymore, frowning at the chalkboard like he's not really happy with his answer, and would prefer to switch sides, but can't come up with anything in defense of piranhas.
"Piranha can completely strip a cow of flesh in six seconds," Leo offers.
Walter isn't impressed, and shrugs. "Eh," he says, "Freshwater fish," a little derisively, like that's somehow relevant to the comparison. Maybe he thinks Leo's just picking sides based on his dislike of the sea. It's the kind of logic that might make sense to Walter, since there's no reason like or dislike of bodies of water shouldn't extend to their resident fish.
"We should talk about your brother," Ike interrupts from behind the bar, even though she'd started the conversation.
"Shark don't need a posse," Walter goes on, "They're lone hunters of the sea."
Leo doesn't need to turn to know that Ike is giving him a hard, pointed look. The one she gives him when Walter does something extra Walter-like. The one Leo knows means he needs a psychologist or a neurologist or for god's sake, Leo, he has -brain damage- and she'd never say it in front of Walter in quite that way, but Walter catches the look and instead of going on with sharks, says, "Are you psychoanalyzing me? Don't psychoanalyze me."
"She's not psychoanalyzing you."
"Where would I even start?" Ike mutters, but it's aimed at Leo and not Walter and after a second she goes back to making herself busy fixing margaritas and Walter drops everything in favor of cocktail invention, offering,
"Ends of the Tequila," as a name, doing a jazz hands finger wiggle to underline how great an idea that is.
"Where the worm is," Leo says.
"That makes it sound like we're down to our last barrel," Ike objects.
"Sharks," Walter says, "There's no hockey team named after piranhas, Leo."
-----
The noise coming from the kitchen could be Walter up at off hours--not an unusual thing--and clattering around, or Walter sleepwalking and clattering around, which is also not a new thing. There's not that much risk of Walter getting himself into trouble either way. Mostly he just wanders around, stomping and making noise before either bumping into something hard enough to wake himself up, or ending up back in bed. Still, it's impossible to go back to sleep while Walter's acting out his dream life in the kitchen, of all places.
Just in case this is the time he decides to turn on the stove.
Leo heaves himself out of bed and down the stairs, intentionally making noise. Walter's benign cheerfulness isn't really something that can be counted on when he's technically unconscious. "Walter?"
Walter doesn't answer, but he's awake. Building what looks like a prehistoric diorama on the counter, but at least not hunting humvees and IEDs in his sleep. Leo doesn't bother telling him to go back to bed and instead puts some coffee on.
"I'm not going," Walter says, once the machine starts burbling. He's straightening what looks like a Lego palm tree, then bending it back down.
"Going where? The Jurassic period?"
"Holland."
Leo looks at the palm tree again. It's possible it's supposed to be a windmill.
"He's your brother," Leo points out, getting a mug. Walter gives him a look but doesn't get started on caffeinated versus decaffeinated or government plots to control the populace through coffee addiction. Which is fine, because it's just too damn early for it.
"I don't speak Dutch."
"You could learn Dutch."
"I don't like cheese."
"America has cheese."
"They're six feet below sea level."
The machine gurgles. Leo shuts it off and pours. Takes a sip. "S'pose I can't argue with that one."
Walter looks away from his project. Offers, "Do you want eggs? I can make eggs," then gets to it before Leo can answer. Breaking out the butter and a spatula and is frowning into the pan watching it heat before he repeats, "I'm not going."
"Then don't."
"I'm not."
"Good."
There's silence as Walter breaks eggs directly into the pan. Somehow, his scrambled eggs still come out fine. Fluffy and perfectly done and this time looks like it's no exception because Walter looks pleased with how the contents of the pan are going and fist bumps a tiny, plastic T-Rex with his pinkie.
-----
After surgeons vs. dentists comes down on the side of dentists--smile aesthetics -and- health, Leo--they, or rather Walter, gets a job finding someone's inspiration. Which ends up being his 'muse', which ends up being his ex-girlfriend.
Which ends up being the kid they had together, or she had after leaving him--it's unclear, and Walter doesn't care about those kinds of specifics--and that she had put up for adoption, which ends in the ethical dilemma of upturning a kid's life, versus letting Walter implode.
They also get an official looking letter detailing Langston's intention to get a court order if he has to.
"He can't do that," Leo assures both Ike and Walter, even though he sort of suspects that Ike might suspect that that might be the best for Walter. To live with someone who's interested in getting Walter help instead of helping Walter.
Ike doesn't look happy about it though, but all she says is, "He's family."
We're family, Leo doesn't say, because he knows they aren't. Not in the way that will give them a legal edge.
"I'm not going to Holland," Walter scoffs, unworried, flipping the dark lenses of his glasses up and down as he considers the stained glass behind the bar. "They don't even have--" It takes him a second to come up with something, then finishes, "gators."
"Gators." Leo repeats.
"They're practically a Florida icon. Like oranges. Are we going to turn this kid in?"
-----
"Technically," Ike says, "You already found the kid."
Walter huffs impatiently and explains, again, indicating a small area with his palms facing each other. "We have to get the kid," he tells her, patiently, "To the father," and moves his hands about four inches to the right, then repeats, gestures and all, "Thing. Client."
"Please don't abduct anybody," Ike says, "This isn't like an argument over dog custody."
"He's not not found," Leo points out, "Right?"
Walter tilts his head to consider that. Not so much the logic, which even Walter would have to admit is sound, but whether or not that cools his finding compulsion at all. "Okay," he agrees, after a second. Easy and Walter-cheerful.
"I'm serious, Walter."
"Okay." Walter doesn't sound serious, but it's not that Walter doesn't understand consequences. Walter just doesn't worry about consequences.
The problem is, that sometimes those come to the same result.
-----
"Holland could be very nice," Ike muses, floating the suggestion.
"Versus Germany?" Walter asks, then immediately launches into, "Autobahn, Oktoberfest, castles," and tilts his chair onto its back legs to consider. "I guess there's probably Dutch castles."
"Versus," Ike starts, then gestures vaguely, sort of half throwing up a hand, "Oh, I don't know--"
"Being committed by my father?"
"That didn't happen," Leo reminds him, from where he's catching a breeze by the rail, absently skimming a newspaper that Walter's stolen the sports page out of and Ike's discombobulated the rest of the way. "And Langston's not your father."
"Well he's acting like it," Walter says.
"Don't sulk," Leo says, fixing a folded-the-wrong-way-page, and tucking it back in where it belongs. "You're too tall to sulk."
"Rembrandt," Ike comes up with, belatedly, "Rembrandt’s from Holland."
"I found a Rembrandt once." Walter always seems happy when he talks about things he's found. Finding is easily the main focus of Walter's life, and there's starting to be an accumulation of things Walter's located--for no reason--out in the shed. Old soldier dolls and recording equipment. Doll houses. Baseball cards. Leo's sure there's a purpose, because the items appear and disappear back into hiding while Walter's working things out in his head, when he's on the hunt for other things. Ike's not sure it's not just a compulsion--the keeping a lesser cousin to the finding, but still related. Walter's paranoia certainly extends to being protective of his collection. Or parts of it, anyway.
"You know dear old Dad's putting him up to it," Walter says, getting back on topic, "Because he couldn't get me put away himself."
Leo's not sure how much of that is Walter being genuinely injured, and how much of it is Walter's paranoia. Even Walter had to admit that there's times when he's out of control, or close to it. The longer a search takes, the less willing Walter becomes to be patient, to be careful, to explain his thought processes, to listen to reason, to eat, to sleep, to stop, even for a minute.
To anyone watching it, it's more than a little alarming.
"You had your brain blown up," Leo points out, "It's not strange that he's worried."
"He wasn't worried enough to come help spring me," Walter points out in return, then flips his shades down and back up again before adding, "That was you."
If it hadn't been for Walter, he'd the one who'd have needed springing. Returning the favor--keeping Walter from obssesively finding, one thing after another, until he runs himself into the ground, and back into threat of institutionalization; keeping Walter free--is more than fair.
"He just doesn't understand your finding thing," is what he tells Walter. And, "Stop taking the sports page. Why can't you just read it here? Or at least bring it back."
"It has to do with ambiance," Walter says, "I don't get that baseball feeling up here." That doesn't answer the question of where the other half of his newspaper is, but Leo drops it and folds the thing up before tossing it to the table.
"As long as you don't do anything to put yourself or other people in danger," he says, before Walter can offer to find yesterday's score and end up finding trouble, "there's nothing he can do."
-----
Which is, of course, Walter's cue to bring the father to the kid instead of the kid to the father and if it satisfies whatever parameter his brain has decided on for found, it also gets him and their client picked up for acting like stalkers.
"This is not helping, Walter," Leo tells him sternly, as if tone ever influenced Walter, "This is not helping."
"Well," Walter says, as if Leo had never spoken, "Mission complete." He has his feet up on the plastic bucket chairs of the police station hallway, pleased and relaxed and unconcerned. Either his mind's incapable of registering anxiety over things that aren't conspiracy and compulsive suspicion related, or he's confident in Leo's ability to divert any fallout.
"Walter. You can't run around at night, hiding in bushes outside--"
"We weren't running," Walter corrects, and, "He just wanted to see the kid."
Yelling at Walter won't undo anything, or prevent anything or have any effect at all. "Okay. Mission complete," Leo gives in, "Just try not to decide to find anything else for a while. Or, if you don't want your brother to believe that you're running around climbing the walls, at least let's try to keep it low key."
-----
Walter finds a necklace, a wedding ring and a lost rare stamp for three different clients, in quick succession.
"I always find what I'm looking for," he declares, when he triumphantly hands over the last, wrapped safely in a folded up envelope that's been riding along, not-so-safely, in Walter's pocket up until that moment.
"It's a gift," Leo puts in, as Walter shrugs modestly. Smiling like losing pieces of his brain is an achievement to be proud of.
-----
"How big is the African safari going to get?" Ike asks, surveying the kitchen and what Leo'd been thinking of as Jurassic Park.
"There's limited counter space," is Walter's distracted response.
"Limited space," Leo agrees, making a there-you-go gesture with one hand. Ike doesn't look amused. "Man's gotta have a hobby," he adds, "Think of it like a model train."
Walter snaps his fingers and turns to point at Leo like the idea is genius. Says, "What would I do without you?" as he starts to rearrange things to make space.
"Walk everywhere," Leo says, "probably."
-----
Langston has a list of all the times Walter's been arrested or almost arrested. Looking at it from that angle, Leo has to admit that the whole thing looks a little bad. A little out of control.
It's not that easy to explain why it's not like that.
Or at least, not exactly like that.
-----
What he can explain is that Walter has a job--officially helping tend the bar. Unofficially, the other thing--which proves that he's functional and contributing to society and what the hell would Langston do with him in Holland?
"At least he won't sleepwalk into a lagoon, and be--I don't know. Eaten by alligators." Langston returns, over the phone. Sounding agitated and loud. "Or break into houses, or get lost hitchhiking or stowing away on trains, or--"
"He wasn't lost," Leo says.
"I don't get lost," Walter pipes up, from across the bar, sounding like he thinks that should be obvious, then gestures at the phone with a finger, indicating Leo should pass it on.
"He doesn't get lost," Leo obliges.
"Oh right. The finding thing."
"Is real. It's real." He doesn't push it, though. It's not important, at the moment, for Langston to believe that Walter's convoluted thought processes actually do result in him unfailingly finding whatever he's set his sights on finding. It's mostly important for him to believe the other part of it. The compulsion part and the drive part and the part where putting Walter someplace where he can't search for and find whatever he's latched on to can only result in pushing Walter back to the brink that nearly ended up with him locked away the first time.
"I can help him," Langston says, maybe thinking about how much the ramshackle bar can possibly make, to go towards specialists or medical bills. Of the honor jar that Leo's instituted because when Walter wants to go, he's going to, whether or not Leo follows and Walter comes first. Walter's worth more than the price of a drink or six any day.
"So can we," Leo says.
-----
Helping Walter sometimes means telling him that anything he finds illegally entering a home won't count as evidence, and might in fact count as evidence against him, for trespassing.
And sometimes it means giving him a boost so he can get up on someone's roof to eavesdrop on their neighbors.
It doesn't mean taking him to doctors he doesn't want, or putting him on medication he doesn't want, or anything else that Walter doesn't want to do.
And possibly--possibly--Leo's objectivity is being clouded by the fact that Walter's gift saved him, but he doesn't think so. If Walter changes his mind about treatment, about whether seeing the threads is worth it--that's up to Walter.
"He's a little odd," Leo admits to Ike, later, "But he's not a maniac."
"He's kind of a maniac," Ike says, but fondly.
Which is true, but he's not the sort of maniac who's a danger to anyone, most of the time. He's more the sort of maniac who's filling Leo's shed with garden gnomes and antique cameras and determinedly excavating his yard, but with mathematical precision and accompanying architectural plans.
-----
"You're not going to find a door for that," Leo tells Walter, out in the yard, watching him make minute corrections to his drawing, frowning over it like some kind of big kid. Walter looks up from under his plastic green visor, a little affronted.
"Leo," he says, like Leo should know better.
"You're like a paranoid squirrel. Nobody wants your hoard of golf balls."
"Funny. That's not all I have." he drops his voice to say it, like someone might be listening in, "I've been finding stuff for a while, you know."
"I know. My shed knows. Where are the tools that used to be in there?"
"Still in there." Walter stops. Thinks. Adds, "Or under the sink. Or Ike borrowed them for something about helicopters. And the wrenches are in your car. And the drill is behind the bar, under the shelf thing, from when we installed that new spigot. And--"
"Okay."
"The shovel's over there." Walter points with his pencil.
"I said 'okay'."
"Good. Because it's all still here."
"Or with Ike."
"Yup."
There's chalk lines over the stones that cover the yard, keeping back the Florida plant life that was potential cover for Florida wildlife. Some of it is probably indicating the floor plan of whatever Walter's building, and parts of it are probably just obscuring Walter's floor plan, to hide it from observers. Some of it might be part of something else. Possibly part of the same equation as the to-Walter-scale disjointed landscape expanding across the kitchen.
"You don't have to stay," Leo says, tracing where one line breaks away, cutting off at ninety degree angles, into a jag of increasingly shorted length, leading to a bucket for no reason that Leo can see. "If you want to live with your brother, we'll manage."
Ike has the chopper and he can go back to law. If he wanted to. If he had to. But his heart is with the Ends of the Earth, and it would probably turn a better profit if he were able to man the counter full time. Even without Walter's finding fee to cover the difference.
"Eh," Walter shrugs, like the whole thing is just an annoyance. Like when it's his turn to clean the sinks in the bar. "I'm in the middle of something."
"You're too busy to talk about your brother?" Leo demands, "Who's worried about you? What are you doing anyway?"
Walter waves a hand at his hole in the ground, like it's obvious what he's doing.
"Walter," Leo starts, not-quite gently, then leaves it.
-----
Langston, it turns out, is pretty much spending his time being a failed musician. Or at least, a failed-at-becoming-a-rockstar musician. He doesn't have any place for Walter to stow his found items or to dig out a bunker or whatever it is he's up to outside.
He probably doesn't have time for Walter, or the kind of quiet, out of the way locale where Walter's behavior won't alarm or draw interest from the neighbors. Leo's not sure he really has any idea what Walter being Walter entails, entirely.
He definitely has no idea about the finding, other than Walter likes to find things, which sounds, Leo has to admit, harmless and maybe even cute. As obsessive compulsions go. Even Walter will trespass, steal, and lie to find things doesn't sound so bad, but Langston hasn't seen Walter trespassing, stealing and lying to find things, or had to deal with him when that didn't go as smoothly as Walter, in his no-foresight Walter way, had thought they would.
And as much as Langston might want to take care of Walter, he's a man with a life that he can't just drop on short notice to aid and abet Walter's quests, while Leo--mis-designation of his bar aside--might actually be living at the end of the world.
Or whatever is left of it, now that his family's gone.
-----
Sandwich versus burger goes in favor of sandwiches. "Burgers," Walter explains, "are a subset of sandwich, and therefore lower in the taxonomy table."
"What about a breadless burger?" Leo challenges, pulling a couple of beers for a customer.
"That's not a burger. That's meatloaf. Or a big, flattened meatball. It's too deconstructed to count. A brick is not a wall, Leo. A hinge is not a door." Walter gives him a meaningful look, tilting his head in the way that he does when he thinks he makes perfect sense and no one is keeping up.
Leo is sure that Walter makes sense to Walter all of the time, and to other people only sporadically, so the look isn't an unfamiliar one.
But even if the leaps of logic that lead Walter to finding are beyond Leo, hashing out the intricacies of burger construction is still well within his ability and he fixes Walter with the steady look that can sometimes convince him that it really is a bad idea to jimmy open someone's car door.
Walter holds his hands up in surrender, but insists, "It's not nachos if it's just cheese and salsa. That's all I'm saying."
-----
As alarming as Leo is sure their father's descriptions of Walter's more frantic behavior had been--and maybe still are, since it sounds like Langston is in much more regular contact with the man than Walter--Leo's sure that Walter's off-kilter projects might be at least as disconcerting, if not with the same immediate intensity.
Whatever Walter's building in the yard, and whatever Jurassic Park is supposed to symbolize actually, they have the hallmark of disturbed obsession, at least to anyone not used to Walter and who might be more set to see the abnormality of his behavior than the brilliance it leads to.
-----
"I see the brilliance it leads to," Ike protests, "I also see a grown man who spent two days looking for a pith helmet so he can be properly attired to dig a hole in the yard."
"Walter likes to be prepared," Leo tells her, even though that's not actually true. Walter's preparations are most of the time somewhat nonexistent, even if he will now and then decide on the necessity of inane protective gear.
"Walter thinks satellites are watching him plant turnips," Ike returns, "Or whatever it is he's doing out there. He's trying to be incognito for the sky-eyes and you know it."
Leo shrugs. Whatever Walter's been digging up, he's not harming anyone doing it, and he's not being totally unbalanced while he does it either. If the model park spreading out in the kitchen is the extent of Walter's thought process making itself known, then at least it's contained to the Ends of the Earth and unlikely to end up involving the police.
And Walter doesn't seem frantic or frighteningly focused as he considers the knee-deep hole he's standing in, arm resting on the handle of the shovel. He's making slow progress in the Florida heat, but he seems pretty happy with how it's going.
"You want Walter to enjoy things?" Leo asks, and nods to indicate Walter as he cheerfully kicks at one side of his hole with his boot, maybe loosening a rock, then wipes his face with the back of a hand. Grins when he catches them watching.
"Maybe he missed his calling," Ike says, "All this time, he could have been panning for gold."
"Watch it," Leo says, "Don't give him any ideas."
-----
In the end, trying to keep jobs from Walter is a failure because Walter finds himself a finding job. It seems like a total accident, except that Leo knows better by now. The finding compulsion can be directed, somewhat, but not stopped or even effectively paused. So there's not much he can do about it outside of giving Walter an exasperated look that he knows Walter will barely even register before deciding on who he needs to talk to about what so he can start building a finding model out of saucers and creamer boxes and swizzle sticks.
It's not as rambling as the one still cluttering up the kitchen counters, but it also leads--as these things tend to, more than Leo likes or thinks is reasonable--to Walter getting shot at and shooting back, which Leo would be in favor of in comparison to the alternative, but which isn't reassuring action from a man who's relatively recently only just avoided psychiatric incarceration.
Walter might not be mentally incompetent, but it's hard to argue that he's not a danger to himself or others when he doesn't seem to process what's just gone down beyond found it satisfaction.
"You really don't need to get yourself killed over a necklace," Leo tells him.
"It was the safe combination in the locket," Walter corrects, like that matters. Like that's at all the problem here. "Of the necklace."
"Walter," Leo starts, knows Walter's not really listening, and starts over with more emphasis, "Walter. They're going to decide that you're not safe on your own." Or running around, free to get into firefights over vintage jewelry.
Walter isn't bothered, "Nah," he says, and leans back in his chair, tilting it. Leo's seen way too much of the insides of interrogation rooms lately. "This happens all the time."
People who Walter's found things for pulling strings for him all the time is more the case, but those favors could dry up, and probably will dry up if he doesn't reel it in. Or at least, if he doesn't reel in the gun slinging. Maybe the breaking and entering.
"You're lucky you're going home today," Leo tells him, with as much no-nonsense gravity as he can muster. Which is a lot, at the moment, and if Walter doesn't register threat beyond the immediate, or take warnings seriously, Leo being genuinely angry at him instead of at a situation actually sinks in.
Walter tips his balance back towards the table, bringing the chair thunking back to all four feet. "Sorry."
"You should be sorry."
"I just said--"
"Well you should."
"I just did."
"Good."
-----
Langston's not so easily mollified. Walter doesn't speak to their father--won't contact him, or pick up calls or answer email, or respond in any way at all--so there's more than a little misinformation going around, and Leo's not really sure if that's in Walter's favor or against it, but Langston obviously feels like he has to be the middleman.
Or a middleman, anyway, because Walter won't talk to him either. Not about Holland, anyway.
"But middle schoolers might appreciate your music," Walter encourages over the phone, but in a way that might be Walter being an intentional ass as easily as it might be Walter being out-of-sync or unconsciously blunt. That he's annoyed is pretty obvious, but it's not in the wired, shit-hitting-the-fan way, because Walter doesn't do nerves, or fear, or worry. He sounds more like he'd rather be getting back to his maybe-goldmine and Langston's cutting into his schedule.
He sounds the way Leo does when people talk over his favorite song on the jukebox, and that's about it. He also hangs up at the end of his patience instead of the end of the conversation.
"He's your brother," Leo tells him, without looking up from the glasses he's wiping--just to give them that extra bit of polish that is Ends of the Earth service.
"He's sending me a ticket," Walter says, like he's surprised that Langston might want to try to remove him from a situation where he's getting himself into shoot-outs. "He doesn't have to send me a ticket. I can get my own ticket."
"Never seen a man so offended at being offered a vacation," Leo says.
-----
For all that Walter doesn't worry about things, his sleepwalking increases enough that Leo decides it's a good idea to lock the door to the pier, just in case. Diving into after Walter in the middle of the night isn't his idea of a good time, and Walter's a big enough guy to make it difficult if not deadly.
Walter's an oddball, but it's not like he's out of it. He knows as much as Leo does that Langston will probably see his finding as a thing that needs to be controlled, or stopped. That Walter might need to be kept a closer eye on, or even contained somehow, to keep him from unpredictable, dangerous behaviour, and the end result of that can only be what it was before, when his family was operating on the assumption that Walter was delusional from brain damage.
A Walter kept from finding is a Walter who won't last long. At least, won't last and come out whole.
-----
Walter doesn't edit or add to the kitchen diorama, but he spends a long time considering it. His hole in the yard is arm-pit deep and protected by a tarp, but that project seems to have ground to a halt too, which is more than a little odd because Walter's searches don't grind to halts.
It's worrisome enough that Leo gets himself in contact with Langston to cut a deal.
"This doesn't work out," he says, with as much weight as he muster, like he's trying to tell Walter no it is -really- illegal for you to take that, "you call me. You know I'll--" do whatever it takes, "try to help."
"Yeah. Help him find things." Langston doesn't sound angry, or bitter. He sounds tired. Possibly, he's been worrying about his kid brother since Walter up and enlisted. He'd probably thought Walter being discharged would be the end of it. That brain damage at least meant Walter not finding himself on the wrong side of a bullet, but Walter is nothing if not resourceful. A little head trauma and mental illness wasn't likely to stop him from getting into trouble, and still isn't.
And a little geographic displacement isn't going to stop him from finding things that need finding. From deciding things need finding. Walter attracts chaos and danger about as efficiently as he does lost items. If Langston thinks Walter's obsession is coming from Leo, is being pushed by Leo, is being supported by Leo in any capacity other than damage control and defense of Walter's choices, he's about to have a wake-up call.
"Promise me you won't try to lock him up," Leo says, "if he gets on the trail of something and you can't deal with it." He's pretty sure doing that would kill Walter, or break Walter's mind, or something awful and probably permanent.
"I--that's not what I want."
"It better not be."
There's a very Walter-like beat of silence before Langston says, "It's not." That also sounds a lot like Walter, the note of quiet indignity in it, and he's not sure why, but it makes Leo feel a little better about the whole thing.
"There's a place for him here," Leo goes on, "If Walter's thing kicks up, remember that." There's another silence, like Langston is about to argue, so Leo cuts him off, adding, "He doesn't want treatment. You know he doesn't want treatment."
There's silence again before Langston says, like he's admitting to something, "No. I know." Maybe it's what their father is expecting from him. That he fix Walter. Maybe that's what the guilty undertone is about.
"I know you're Walter's family," Leo tells him, "But Walter's mine. He's the family I've got left."
-----
The bar is quiet, after that, without Walter, but Langston gets dragged all over Amsterdam, after trying to show Walter around ends in Walter sniffing around after something-or-other. Not even by request from someone needing help, but just because Walter's latched onto something and once Walter's latched on, that's pretty much it.
"He'll find whatever he's looking for," is Leo's advice. "He always does. Just keep him out of trouble."
"I didn't--" Langston starts, then goes with, "I had no idea."
About the finding, or about Walter not being an actual raving lunatic, or a combination of those, Leo doesn't ask. He hears Langston swallow.
"How can you--How is your bar still standing? He--" Langston's voice drops to a whisper, "What's with the Hummels?"
"Walter finds things. Some of it needs to be found, some of it just gets found."
The silence is frustrated. Then Langston asks, "He doesn't stop does he? It's not just the--doing jobs. It's--He just keeps going."
"You can steer it. Kind of." But that's about it. Langston's not equipped to deal with it. Not in any way.
"Langston," Leo starts, but Langston knows what he's going to say, because he snaps,
"No. He's my brother. He already thinks I abandoned him once."
Leo doesn't chase that down. Instead he says, "You're not abandoning him. You'd know where he is. You could come if you needed to. If he needed you to."
"Yeah."
"It's not as far as it sounds," Leo says.
-----
It's still far. There's nothing he can do when Walter gets it into his head to cross international borders in hot pursuit of someone's personal documents, lost years ago.
"It's like he just got sucked into this guy's sob story," Langston rants, "He just got this look in his and--Okay." He takes a breath. "Okay, I believe you about the--the thing. But how do I find Walter?"
Leo doesn't comment on how quickly Langston's lost control of Walter. Lost Walter.
"You hope he finds what he's looking for," Leo says, "In one piece. He'll come back when he's done."
"Yeah. Alright. Oh, god." Langston sounds tired and strained and he has a real people job on top of trying to ride herd on his brother. "This is--I can see why Dad couldn't handle it. I can--he could be dead right now. He could be lying dead in a gutter in--I don't know. Anywhere in Europe."
Or further, Leo doesn't point out. He does say, again, "Stopping him will kill him."
"Okay. Okay, but--"
"And treatment would kill him in a different way. And he doesn't want it. You have to respect the man's decision."
"But--What can I--? He could be burning down France right now. Or being shot at in France. Or breaking into the Louvre, who the hell knows."
There's a long silence, then Langston lets his breath out and says, sounding shaky and defeated, "If you hear from him--?"
"I'll let you know."
"Good. Great. I--" There's silence again, and then Langston admits, "So, he's crazy. I mean, crazy, but--You know, I kind of like this Walter."
He sounds guilty about it. Like he's abandoning his old, serious, quiet brother. Not getting him back the way he was meant to. Maybe like he was letting that brother down, or his father down, and normally Leo would err on the side of keeping families together, but in this case, he'd really prefer to keep Walter together.
"I like Walter too," he agrees.
"I mean, he laughs at my jokes now," Langston says, and, a little awkwardly, "He laughs."
-----
Whatever Walter'd been braining out in the kitchen, Leo leaves his trees and dinosaurs and gingerbread house shaped Christmas ornaments alone, even though Ike makes gentle fun of him for it.
"Who knows what this is about?" Leo says, waving his sandwich vaguely at the mess, "You think I want to be responsible for Walter losing his marbles because I tidied the kitchen?"
He's worried, a little bit, that Walter's left it at all. That he hasn't chased this thread down to its conclusion.
"Wanna go see what's in his mud pit?" Ike asks.
"If there was anything to see, Walter'd have had it by now."
Still, when Ike leaves, he goes to peer under the tarp. There is, as expected, nothing in the hole but some loose rocks and his shovel, holding up the center of the tarp like the center post of an umbrella.
When he calls Walter, to ask what's supposed to be down there, just in case it's important, just in case it's a search in progress, there's no answer.
-----
There's no answer or anything that might count as a response until three days later when Leo wakes up to the sound of someone stomping around on the porch and rattling the door. At first he thinks it's Ike, but it's still dark out. There's soft tweeting coming from outside, though, so it's at least the early morning.
Still not a time Ike's likely to be up and active, but also not the optimal time for a break-in.
He doesn't have a gun, but he does have a baseball bat. Usually it's for actual baseball--or pared down variants of baseball, anyway--but it'll have to do and he's big enough that it's an adequate weapon as long whoever's downstairs doesn't open with shooting.
The downside of being a big guy is that the creaky stairs are even creakier under his weight. Sneaking isn't really his thing, Leo decides, sidling down the hall with his back to the wall, heading for the sound of the intruder thumping and banging into things in the dark. He can make out the man's outline as he slips into the bar area, just a shape in the dark, alarmingly close.
He's got the bat up and ready to swing, when the sense of familiarity hits.
Leo lets the bat loose to avoid braining the guy, letting it fly out of his grip to hit something across the room before falling and rolling across the floor.
"Walter? What the--Why are you--? What the hell Walter?"
"Hey."
"Don't say 'hey'. Did you tell Langston you left? Does he know you left?"
"He'll figure it out." Walter shrugs, then smiles, easy-going and unbothered. "He had to try."
"That's--Walter, he's going to think you drowned in a canal."
"What?" Walter scoffs, making a face, "Nah. I'm a great swimmer. Langston knows I'm a great swimmer. And I left him a note."
He could have opened with that, but Leo doesn't bother pointing it out. Instead, he shoves the bat at Walter and grabs his free hand to wrap it around the handle. "Here. I'm going back to bed. If your brother calls, pick up."
Walter agrees with an easy, "Okay," then heads towards the kitchen as Leo heads back upstairs, to deal with all this later. When he comes back down, in the more civilized hours of the morning, Jurassic Park's been cleared off the counters and Walter's outside, whistling as he paces out an area of the yard, consulting his now-familiar sketch as he does it.
"You looking for something out there?" Leo calls from the window, leaning out over the rail. There's a breeze blowing in from the water, with a tang of salt and rain.
"Nope." Walter calls back.
"What about the counter jungle? In the kitchen?"
"Oh. That was something else."
Walter's already back to whatever he's doing, eyeballing the ground and then his paper and then the boundaries of the water, the bar wall, where the property line might be, if Leo'd remembered correctly.
"I guess you found it." It's not really a question, and Walter only grins in answer. Leo leaves him to his self-satisfaction to go to make some coffee.
-----
"I'm not crazy, Langston," Walter says into the phone, picking up like Leo had told him to, but only entering into the conversation after verifying Langston's identity through obscure security questions. "Or, you know. But I'm fine."
Walter's not fine, and Langston doesn't really believe it, but Walter is functional, in Florida and at the Ends of the Earth and Langston has too much left in the real world to go that far for him.
Even as much as he might want to.
-----
"Anyway," Walter tells Ike, when she shows up to find him mixing cocktail prototypes, "I found some things. I found Langston. Sort of. And kind of by accident. Maybe." He hands her lemons and a cutting board. "Anyway, I had things to do here."
"Does it have anything to do with that hole in the yard?"
Walter narrows his eyes at her. Hisses, "Shh," and points meaningfully at the ceiling.
-----
Langston extracts a promise from Leo to keep an eye on Walter, to call him if Walter gets worse or weirder or changes his mind about treatment, and from Walter to be careful and to try to take safe jobs.
Walter agrees, easily, as he does, but by the end of the week, there's a woman sitting at the bar, turning her glass of water around and around with one hand as she talks. "I need you to find me a kidney," Leo hears her sum up.
"No, Walter," Leo says, low. He knows Walter hears him.
"Any kidney?" Walter asks, with too much interest, "Or a specific one?"