Who: Brian
Where: His house
When: Morning, fairly early

Though it might've been unusual for him, Brian woke before Domino-- he also rose before Domino, too. First off, bad dreams made it so that he didn't want to sleep much longer than he had to-- if he didn't know better he'd think those were Torziel's fault, little brat. He'd probably love to give his willworker nightmares about killing people and his father being a right bastard, if not actually evil. Problem was, he did know better. Nothing he knew about familiars suggested they could send people dreams.

The other part was that he had stuff to do, if he was gonna be up so early, anyway. Part of Brian's determination to get his damn short circuiting back under control included getting back into a routine. Something normal and mundane to help keep him settled. Now that he had a set schedule at the diner all settled, and he had things sorted with the bulk of his friends-- there were a few he'd apparently lost in the shuffle, but as shitty as that was, at least he knew where he stood with them-- and he was at least relatively secure in the fact that he had a boyfriend who was there to stay for a while, he was at least on his way to that. So if getting up early was going to happen, he wanted it to be the regular thing, at least until he could be sure it wouldn't be happening again.

Another part was active study. For the past couple months he'd been lax on that, not studying or practicing beyond the habitual things, or really stretching himself. It made sense to him that if he were actively putting his will to use, in a structured setting, it would be less likely to go flying out of control all the time, at the drop of a hat. Get himself back in the habit of control, and control would be more likely to become habit. It'd worked in the past, to some extent.

Such was the plan, anyway. So far he'd been doing okay, but he'd not had too many huge, emotional upsets in the past few days, either. The nightmares didn't really count-- or so he told himself-- since apparently he hadn't actually projected his will on anything when he was asleep since that first one. Nothing else had come of them but a little stress and a lot of hard thinking-- one of those thinks resulting in this very plan. Maybe getting himself under control would help those, too.

So, thought it wasn't his wont, Brian had been getting up early-- since he didn't really have much choice-- and spending the first part of the day on his "second" job. Today was no different, once he slid free of Domino and got dressed again. He got a few things out of the way, like making a phone call and checking in on Marlowe and grabbing a quick bite to eat, and headed into the backyard to get to work. At least it wasn't quite so wet today.

Ever since his little breakthrough with the displacement, the teleporting "spell", little things had been coming easier. Habitual things were all but effortless, and things that required actual willpower required little more than a thought, now. So maybe, he figured, something new that he'd only dabbled in before would be easier, too. It was more interesting than practicing the same-old, same-old over and over. After scanning through his notes, running himself through a set of basic warm-ups-- all of which pretty much he could do without thought or backlash, by now-- he set his attention on the next thing he'd decided to focus on: the thus-far ignored realm of "spirit energy".

The first thing on the agenda was not only supposed to be fairly hard for a beginner, according to his dad's notes, but also the single step required for everything else: getting some kind of window into the spirit plane, so he could see ghosts, or whatever they were. Still, Brian wasn't exactly a beginner, and he'd had the list of realms and their functions drilled into him for a good portion of his life, so he wasn't too concerned. His notes were perfectly clear, he knew what he wanted, and he was sure he could do it, so it should be simple enough. When Brian worked with space and energy, he knew where the edges of those things were, how to feel for them. You needed to find the fabric of space before you could bend it. Now the goal was to reach beyond it.

The job was harder than it sounded. By the time he finally got it, Brian's head hurt from focusing so hard, his eyes burned a little from trying to see something that his usual realm of space told him wasn't there to see, and his fingers ached oddly-- he had no idea why that one was happening, but sometimes weird things happened when you tried something new with reality. It was over an hour later, Torziel had come to join him and chase things in the yard only he could see-- taunting him by chasing the very spirits he was trying to see? Brian didn't know, but the idea helped spur him to keep going-- and Domino would probably be up soon. Hell, so would Marlowe. He was seriously considering giving up himself, and going to go join Domino as he was waking.

Except then he finally found the edge in that fabric of space, a tear or a snag he could finally grab onto. By then, however, he was so off-balance by that when he grabbed, he really grabbed. Instead of a "window" he could look through to see the spirit world, a small hole he could open and shut at will, the whole veil vanished, and everywhere he looked was spirit world, a sheen of gray overlaid his one with a faint double-vision sort of quality-- just like the "spell" had called for to keep the two realms apart in one's vision.

And there were definitely spirits in it. Oh, hell, yes there were. Two walked through the backyard fence together even as he watched, and there was another sitting under a tree up the hill behind his house-- the first two looking relatively normal but for their grayish tinge and slight remove from "real" ground, but the third apparently oblivious to the silvery blood coursing down her face from empty eye sockets. Brian stared at the one Torziel had been chasing, a teenage boy with dark brown hair, a mangled arm, and a mouth open in silent laugher.

Even better: he could see, but not hear. There was nothing more coming from their direction than an unintelligible, distracting buzz, like a distant conversation.

So he could see spirits now, just like he'd wanted. Great. Now he just had to figure out how to turn it off.