2019-06-21 - Out with the Wash

There's times in life where naked just needs to happen and this evening happens to be one of those times. Luckily, it's not because they're bloody and in need of immediate clothes cutting and triage or anything, but what was in that sewer during this big storm was not natural or okay and it ends with them walking epitomes of filth in a way neither of them have been filthy before. It seeps into the nose and very pores despite the rain still lashing outside to give chilly spatter rinse, but there's not near enough pressure behind the mass droplets to get the goop off.

There's still rushing water to struggle through, but already, once they're under the eaves of the shop outside the doorway, Lilith is stripping down in the dark outside and leaving her clothes in a heap on the pavement, uncaring if they're stolen or washed away. Honestly, if it wasn't so wet, she'd probably set them on fire anyway, but whatever is -on- them, she's trying desperately not to track it in and through the shop. Once she's down to wet and dirty bra and panties that were once a pretty vivid violet that's all soaked through with wet and muck now, she steps briefly into some of the rushing water with her bare feet to give them a little rinse, then gets indoors, breathing hard.

Mentally catching up wasn't an issue she was dealing with while reflex stripping out of that nasty slimy clothing. But now it is. And she's starting to rant to Byron, "How come... almost every time we get around each other... something real screwy happens?" There's literally no answer for that question, but she clearly thinks it's a load of shit and they're somehow triggering it given the track history. Hell, yesterday, they weren't even near each other and they're about no doubt confirm they got pulled into screwy together anyway, so it may be a fair assessment. "I have a robe for you. Just... get out of that stuff."

With what the heavy rains doesn't wash away, Byron knows that he needs to get rid of. For a long moment he stands out in the dark, evening skies with nary a light on due to the power outage. He feels the comfort of rain splashing against his face, even if it does little to clean him of the sticky muck. It's definitely a good start. He's also not an entirely shy or modest man, so just as Lilith is stripping down in the rain, he does the same. The first thing he actually reaches for, as is habit, is that far too expensive watch on his wrist. Damn. He might need to see about getting that looked after. But once that's removed and set somewhere drier than the rain, it's far more easy to peel off his muck coated shirt, which he tosses onto Lilith's pile of clothes.

His heavy black boots are kicked off, followed by his socks. The slice on his calf if more evident once his jeans are removed, though it looked far worse, when all you could see was that growing bloody red bloom soaking through that denim. The bruising at his midsection, the one that Liiith had tended to earlier, is mostly gone. This leaves him in his boxers. But at least his skin, most of it now anyway, is no longer being clung to by damp, sewage drenched fabric. Hell, if his watch was damaged, he had his phone on him this entire time. He stops to check if the screen is cracked as he drops his jeans unceremoniously onto the pile.

"I have this terrible feeling that once the showers on all that we'll be covered in is even more muck. It's Elm Street!" He'll says with a vacant laugh. Looks like the phone, at least, can take a licking. He sets this somewhere safe within the shop alongside his watch. "I don't have an answer to that." He starts. "This time around Tobin wasn't here, so it does't happen when the three of us are together and... it's not something he was pulled into."

Lilith doesn't have any trinkets on to check on, her phone is still right where it was in the loft apartment upstairs. But she does take a moment to eye Byron's expensive watch put aside as the first thing he goes for, which makes her lips twitch a little bit. Pawn shops tend to specialize in jewelry and watches as collateral and a there's half-naked fixer of unnatural mettle standing here, it'll be fine. She starts toward the door to close it and lock up proper before picking her way a bit gingerly while dripping to the back office and staircase, "No. We're going to go upstairs and stand under hot water and make things normal. That's what's going to happen. Bring the watch. I can fix it."

It doesn't sound optional. And she's saying it firmly, as if she wants the gas water heater and pipes and the air itself to hear her on the way. The second they're upstairs, she gets a flashlight from the coat closet next to the front entry, then goes into the bathroom with beckon to Byron and turns on the water to check with narrow of her eyes in brief suspicion. She may have been real clear about the way she wants things to go from here on this evening, but that doesn't mean it's going to happen. Thankfully, it seems fine and she hits the shower on spray before leaning to set the flashlight upright with glow cascade bouncing from the ceiling to make dim light, "We'll both get in and get the bulk off like this, then I'll get out and let you have some time with the soap before swap out."

She puts a leg over the edge of the tub to stand under the spray before it's even warm, going to work the muck out of her hair in advance of stripping down to wash proper, "... how hurt are you?" She's got some general scuffs and bruising from all the tussle, fall, and initial power behind a goo hit to the chest, but really, she's fine enough and her voice goes from all that firm this-is-what's-happening control to momentary hesitance. It's a bobble of being afraid to ask, because suddenly she remembers Byron taking the hit he did and she realizes... he's better off than he should be, limp aside. Immediately, she's beckoning with her hands falling out of her wet hair, shower curtain and underwear left in respective places for the time being, "C'mere. It's easier to check when I touch."

Her interest in his watch makes Byron lift a brow, especially with the rest of the mess that they'll need to clean up. "I probably should let it dry out a little first, but you'd know better than I do." In fact, he knows what sort of items tend to be brought into a place like this. So he reaches for his watch. Heck, he grabs his phone too. After the power was cut, he needed to check back at the apartments every so often to ensure that the generators were working. Then up those stairs he goes on careful steps.

As uncomfortable as wearing heavily soaked boxers is, especially if you've spent quite a time down in the sewers, Byron leaves his own out of politeness more than modesty. That said, he really can't wait to get a little warmed up, for one, and to rid himself of anything gross that's still sticking to his form and in his not-so perfectly styled hair. Just as with Lilith, his eyes inspect the spray of water once the shower is turned on. It looked safe. It wasn't brown nor did it smell like a sewer. That would be them.

With the watch carefully set down off to the side and as it could be full of vile sludge, he doesn't put it on any of the clean towels, Byron joins Lilith in the tub for the initial rinse off. His hair is short, so it's relatively easy to wash, but he does his best to ensure that he gets /everything/ out of there, though allows Lily this time to do her thing first. She had longer hair! "It hurts when I stand, when I walk. I had something caught up in there, but it fell out." A thought crossed his mind moments after his leg was punctured and this he voices now, "I'm just hoping that with what we went through, it doesn't become infected with all of that bacteria."

Lilith is probably doing the same thing as Byron as far as politeness > modesty goes in their case, because while comfort and familiarity is a thing that has largely snapped back into place, she's trying to avoid making accidental weird beyond the initial oh-god-get-it-off. But it's dark, everything is soggy and uncomfortable and smells, and now Byron's talking about bacteria which she can practically feel pooling at her feet from the remaining clothing, whether it's rational or not. And she just wants everything to be kicked back on normalcy track so they can settle in with drinks and process once the stench is gone.

"Naked alert, sorry, can't do anymore of the smell while trying to get clean, and now I don't like your boxers or my bra near your leg and I'm about to take care of it during a wash. So let's just get it over with. I need to be able to concentrate to..." After putting her hand out on Byron's upper arm to help balance on getting in with injured leg, that's all it really takes for her to sense his level of 'okay enough' so she takes a moment to strip down naked so the underwear can be wet-tossed over the tub edge into a far corner. Then she soaps her hair so it's not dribbling whatever leftover rinse icks she didn't get while waiting for him to do the same and holds her breath while dropping down with a bar of soap into kneel for his leg.

"I don't understand why you're not more hurt. You... went down there for a moment." She pauses, "Was it a real man that you saw in the sewers or just... a something?"

Byron is also taller than Lilith, so he'll let her rinse off first, or else whatever he rinses off will drip onto her! It just feels soooo good to get some of that grime out of his hair and off his face. He really has this urge to gargle with an entire bottle of Listerine later, but booze will probably have to suffice. He runs his hands over wet skin, trying to brush off some of the gross.

The naked alert is sounded and Thorne does the polite thing, more or less, diverting his eyes as best he can. Well, for the most part anyway. It's dark in here and he can see dark shadows playing over her figure where the flashlight doesn't shine. If he does look, he's not obvious about it. It's also his turn to undress and he doesn't have much to shed and if I'm being honest, it feels GOOD to get sewer soaked boxers off of you! Now there's no barriers between himself and the hopefully, scalding hot water, because that's what he feels he needs right now to burn that shit off his skin.

It is sort of weird when Lilith drops down to observe his still bleeding led after he'd gotten rid of his boxers, though he turns to the side, giving more of a view of the back than the front as that's where the injury is on his calf. "Did you see those things?" He asks, "They were just made of crap and everything nasty found in a sewer. This." He gestures to the bleeding leg, "Must have been something they collected within themselves. Like shrapnel strangely. And I saw someone. I think it was a man. I caught a glimpse of this figure turning a corner in the direction of Downtown. Was it a real man?..." A pause and a frown, "I'm not sure."

"If it was a real man, it might be... a future problem. Or still a problem as we speak. But at least it's not -our- problem right now." Lilith might have been perfectly matter of fact and trying to beat the rest of the evening into efficiency and recovery with her spoken strip down, wash, and mend up planning. But she reeeeally didn't think through that kneel there positioning to do just that with the two of them naked grown ups now. It doesn't really help matters that both of them look photoshopped while skin-glossed and wet in low light and she takes a played off moment as he turns to close her eyes and pretend like she's concentrating on exactly what she's down there doing. Plus he turns, so that helps. But hopefully he's good and distracted and not nosing through her head at the moment.

After listening pensively to Byron's reply, her eyes re-open and she carefully and thoroughly washes his leg wounding even though technically she can probably purge any lingering trace of bacteria on that odd molecular and internal level she's about to set her powers to operate at. Because she's not a doctor and she's using the soap as a focus, in a sense. Everything moves from washing to warmth that spreads through musculature as the wound accelerates closure with her hand passing slowly to aid with rinse. Then quietly, out of nowhere, she makes a noise of surprised delight like she's figured something out. Rising, she can't really play down her loveliness like she usually does with dry wit or casual dress or pullback. When she's standing again, it's a movement that's gliding confidence and she's practically glowing with pride, seeming to entirely forget they're naked.

Whatever just clicked inside her, though, she's holding and she presses a hand to his lower back to let him know she's done before having two runs with the soap brisk and thorough over her own body so she can pass the whole run of the shower to him after a rinse, "I have a robe in my closet that I kept because it supposedly belonged to Hugh Hefner and Hank bought it. It's probably a stolen department store lie, but it's nice and it's been dry cleaned. I have a pack of toothbrushes too, I'll lay one out. Just stay here and decompress. I'll manage candles and everything and put your watch in some rice for a bit so it's dry to work on. Come out when you're done."

There's only the smallest hint of awkwardness felt during this situation, but despite having known little Lily as a kid and having had a crush on her back then, they were both adults here now. And she was treating him. So he tries his best not to say or do anything to make the whole ordeal worse than what it is. He does observe every so often, watching her through the darkness as she inspects his leg and the places her hands on it to both cleanse and heal. It felt just as one would expect being healed by magic to feel, a little weird. This wound wasn't anything worse than he'd experienced before, so even if there's this jolt of pain to the cleansing or whatnot, all that she'll get is a tensing of his muscle there.

"It makes me wonder who this Bill is." He continues to ponder aloud on this topic that they now speak of. "I think that's what he said. Bill. Though he's either really a heavy smoker or he's a frog, but the figure I saw in the shadows was definitely human." His gaze follows when she rises to stand and he even flexes his calf a little to test it out. "I still think it's pretty amazing that you can do something like that."

He'll bask in the steam of the shower, the warm water against his skin and just playing witness to this bathing nymph. That's strangely the first thought that came to mind. He falls mostly quiet and contemplative, but when he's passed the soap, he lathers that baby up, wanting to make sure that he gets. He keeps up the conversation as he bathes, letting out a laugh when told of this Hugh Hefner robe. "As amusing as that would be if it were real and for as long as your dad's been in this business, there's no way in hell that he'd ever get his hands on something like that. Him or anyone in this town for that matter." There's this lift of one shoulder in a half-hearted-shower shrug, "Then again anything's possible."

Now that he's alone in the shower, he leans his head back to take a mouthful of water once his hair seems perfectly cleaned. Gargling a few with that, he spits it out into the tub. Once done, the water is shut off and he steps out to get toweled off. "Not sure if you have a washer and dryer here. Might need to do some hand washing of clothes. Unless you expect me to drive home wearing just the robe." He turns slightly to the direction that she wandered off to, a crack of a grin on his lips. "Speaking of driving." This adds more to his problems. "I might need to run out and check on the car. Hope none of that shit got into it and moreso that it hasn't been flooded."

"... I think it's pretty amazing too. It's easier when I care. It backdoors the fear and makes everything a non-option. And you're not a stranger. I know how you're supposed to be aligned. Which sounds strange, but it's... probably not so different from the way I might feel familiar as a signature, mentally, to you, in a dark room if you were unable to see me. I can feel your signature structurally. Strange, I know. But it helps." Lilith explains thoughtfully to Byron as she gets out and wraps her hair and body in a towel. She leaves Byron with a wet and fond little smile in the darkened glow of the bathroom for him to get that good double wash in too.

While moving around to set up toothbrush, robe, and actual candles and doing the watch duty, she speaks between all the maneuvering in and out, "And yes, I have a washer and dryer. And this storm seems like it's going to give us time to handle all that. But you know... speaking of touch and senses, I suppose you could just -check- if the robe belonged to Hugh. But it seems like effort for what's totally uncertified nonsense. I think Hank just wanted to wear it around the trailer park because someone else brought in a carved pipe and I ruined his dreams."

Eventually, she gets into her own white plush bathrobe and puts on water to percolate coffee for slow drip in the carafe as an option, but she also gets out a bottle of Gray Goose and tumbler glasses with ice in preparation as the other option. Because she knows which one she's actually going for, "So let's rewind. Yesterday, the UPS guy I had come in for package pickup couldn't find me in the shop and was sitting behind the case keeping shop safe when I came out of the office." She pauses, "... did you slip somewhere too?"

PS: That Hefner robe is a blue-black soft and luxurious men's affair. Also it's totally stolen if he bothers to check. From Bloomingdale's.

"You know how I'm supposed to be aligned?" Is Byron's first question only once the water is turned off and his hair and the rest of him is dripping clean water all over the place rather than sewer sludge. "Anatomically?" He asks, before following up with, "I mean, your knowledge of the human body or do you really get a more familiar sense when it's your friends?" Though in his mind that seems weird, but hey, he doesn't have these powers and has no idea how they work. Though when she sort of answers his question, he nods, "And you didn't think to get into nursing or becoming a doctor? Because having an ability like that really would be a great help." He reaches for a towel to dry off, "Even if you've got some explaining to do on how you healed someone. That is.. unless you only use your powers to determine the location, cause of injury and go about healing them as normal." He has so many ideas i his head.

Only when he's mostly dry, look it's hard to get 100% dry alright, does Byron reach for the robe, brushing a thumb over it's plush fabric. It's simple enough to find the tag of the store or company that made and/or sold the robe, but what his powers can do is to tell a deeper story than that. Sure, he's curious, and he's certain that this bathrobe has many a tantalizing story to be told. The fact that it's a men's robe keeps him from wanting to investigate further. At least not without a drink.

So slipping the luxurious thing on and cinching the tie belt closed, he moves to take a seat without stumbling too much in the dark. Thank goodness for candles. He also looks eager for that Vodka. When Lilith starts them off on this topic that she wanted to bring up earlier, it does confirm his suspicions that this wasn't just a normal dream. Not one that he had alone. "I was in the middle of a business call when..." He'd explained the story once before, "When I found myself at Tobin's place."

"Your cigarettes were in your pocket, weren't they? Damn. Some days they just go with a hard drink..." Lilith makes a bit of a face after she takes the first sip of vodka and literally swishes her mouth with it, even though she had her good run at the sink with a toothbrush just like Byron somewhere in all that. In fact, that might be why she's making the face because that first drink with toothpaste residual probably sucks even with it being top shelf selection brand. But sometimes you just need to burn your mouth out to really kill a bad taste and she hands him an overpoured glass to do the same while settling down.

Running fingers through her wet hair to tousle it into absent motion with free hand, she angles herself with legs curled and partial turn to regard Byron for a moment while thinking how to reply, "Yes and no. It's a different kind of anatomy sensing. I'll try to explain some day, but it is easier with you and Tobin, yes. And doing what I just did with you... it gave me an idea on how to practice and maybe work out some of the fear. But... yes. Yes."

Lilith is distracted and really focused on what Byron has just confirmed, her features taking a turn for deeply pensive, "So we don't even need to be near each other for that to happen simultaneously. I should have asked immediately to confirm, but I was rattled and I..." She tilts her head and smiles a little while looking down into her drink before a level sip, "Told you I could take care of myself. But then it kept nagging me. It gave me an idea about something I discussed with Tobin at his place last week... about trying to find his mother."

"Actually," Byron says, rising from his seat to wander over to where he'd left the leather jacket he'd worn over his outfit today. During his time in the pawn shop, he'd removed it before watching Lilith get swept away by a wave and muck and all hell broke loose. "Got it." He says, carrying over both the pack of cigs and his lighter. Tapping one out, he stands before Lilith, extending an arm to hand it over as it's held lightly between two fingers. He'll then lean over to light it once she takes his offering.

Dropping back down into the seat he'd chose originally, he grabs a cigarette for himself, lighting that one up too. "You know, I had reservations about using my powers tonight. I'm glad that my.. recklessness didn't electrocute us all. I'm still trying to figure out how everything works." Leaning back comfortably, he takes a deep inhale of smoke, before the same out, his chin lifted slightly. "The dream at Tobin's place was weird because we weren't ourselves. I mean, we were, but we hand the mindset of children. That's never happen--" He starts to say, but he remembers, no , he knows otherwise. He's had a few dreams where he was a child. And those were absent any friends to help him. He blinks once, looking interested in what Lilith's about to say when she speaks of Mrs. G. "What kind of idea?"

Lilith lit every single candle in the room without a lighter but she lets Byron light the cigarette manually because listen, it's about the gesture. There's nothing more movie scene than a man lighting a smoke for a woman and he's suave and polished enough to do it the right way with flair and eye contact to boot. She playfully bats her lashes at him with briefly humored and grateful interlude for a couple of heartbeats while drawing in the smoke and pluming it with exhale that's much akin to a gust of stress relief. While she may not be a smoker that he's ever seen, she's apparently accustomed to doing it and gets what she's supposed to get out of it. She's probably one of those stress or social drinking-companion smokers that never really has their own pack.

Quietly half-laughing with resignation as much as mild dry humor, she suddenly tells Byron, "I tried to immolate sewer-slime in a flooded tunnel as my first reflex. Reckless or not, at least you stopped to think about it. I just went plain aggressive stupid trying to set -wet- on fire. On the plus side, if terrible weird things keep happening, we'll be fumbled into professionals in no time."

After another drink and drag from the smoke, Lilith lays her damp, washed head of hair and cheek to rest against the back of the sofa while angled to look at Byron still, "I told Tobin I'd help him find his mother. There has to be a way to enter these situations in a controlled way, we just don't know how. But someone does. He pointed out we don't know where to look to even -try- that. There's uncountable dream situations..." She wets her lips and leans up a little to reach an indented coaster that's now serving as makeshift ashtray, venturing, "But what if we -know- where to look now? What if that dream gives us a pathway? And what if we took that pathway together to -face- that moment instead of hiding from it, as adults, with powers?"

Byron doesn't normally smoke either though he carries a pack and lighter around. He's definitely a stress smoker, so after all the shit they went through today, literally, this was just a time to kick back and relax with a stress smoke and a glass of vodka. If he did come off as all debonair when he lit her cigarette, however, he was all debonair in some bathrobe.

"But did that dream give us a pathway?" He has to ask, brow quirked, the glass of vodka replacing the cigarette at his lips as he takes in a deep drink. "Because I sure as hell don't. For one, we were dragged to a place from different locations. We had /no/ control over that. That's nothing that any of us--" He then pauses, eyes looking to Lilith, "Was it you who dragged us into that dream? I have no idea how any of that works. But in most situations /someone/ drags us into a dream. Especially if we're in a group. On the boat? At the theater? I wonder who called us together this time." When he says this this time, he means the dream of Tobin's House not... whatever just happened today, if that were a dream or not. Who knows!

"I was working! And thinking about vintage Pez dispensers I've seen online of all things. Felix reminded me of how easy it is to take a dirt nap, and I kind of want Andre to like me because of that. So I really don't think I did anything to trigger it." Lilith immediately gets almost bulldog defensive when he looks at her speculatively after the drink to ask if she did it. She's not -that- crazy! Also she might be reassuring herself, too. After a tiny shake of her head, she sighs some and drains the drink before going for a smaller splash of refill.

"It's all strawman theory, isn't it? And every time we -say- these things aloud, they sound twice as ridiculous. That's the problem with all of this. I asked someone if they thought it was possible based on their own experiences... if they believed someone could be alive in a dream and trapped somewhere. And they concluded it may well be possible. For all we know, we were pulled there together in that moment because she's calling us from somewhere. Or it could have been Tobin lost in his own moment, and we were made a part of it. I don't know."

Stubbing out the smoke, she tells Byron, "Maybe that man in the sewers pulled us into that awful earlier, which is why I was so curious if it was a -real- man from here. It's not something I'm wanting to leap into. But I'd like to learn our options. There has to be someone or some kind of documentation on... gosh. All of this. We just don't know who to ask or where to look."

"That leaves Tobin and Geoff." Byron says, mentally noting that both he and Lilith were working at the time of this dream. "I didn't have the time to ask them. In fact, I took the rest of yesterday afternoon off because of it all." Despite the true reasoning behind this, he says this in a casual, almost dismissive tone. "It's a good thing that there was an honest and helpful UPS guy around. I was talking about an event that I had playing in my mind to one of my clients and investors. Had to explain that I had a sudden emergency come up, since when I'd disappeared, it didn't drop the call immediately. Leaving him bewildered on the other line."

"This, this dream that we had. I didn't like it one bit. It's far more ominous an experience when you're seeing things through a child's eyes." Byron says, his own gaze directed to Lilith now. "Our panic, our emotions... just the way that we perceived the world. Sometimes it makes me think, what if we'd died in that dream? As children?" Here, he pauses to yawn openly, though belatedly he lifts a hand to cover over his mouth when he's almost already done. "Then again, there's always a good possibility of us dying in any of these dreams. Or so I think."

When research and things of that nature is brought up, Byron doesn't want to think about it, but he admits, "Alexander Clayton," He'll usually use the man's full name if he's not calling Mister Clayton, because he doesn't consider him close enough to be a friend or familiar, "came to me one day because he was looking for Baxter graves and it had me researching that family. Whether there are any in town. If they'd change their names... if they had anything to do with the darkness that shrouds over the town now. That said," His voice rises, "That doesn't leave out the Addington's as well and I'd inquired a bit about the family as their own dark history is tied to the Baxters. I have someone looking into the Baxters as we speak, but so far, I haven't heard anything about it. Whether learning this will help open up our knowledge about what exactly happened in this town before, who knows." Taking another sip from his glass he then says, "There's always the library."

"We're... definitely endangered when it happens and I do not doubt for a second the way I came out of the theater coated in so much blood... that these unreal bursts of reality might spit us out dead or just keep us. But yes. As children, there's more helplessness and I..." Suddenly Lilith looks at Byron in the middle of confessing her own discomfort and fear about the general nature of their ability to keep living through these dreams, the unreal and likewise too real moments. She's taken a turn out of calm, theoretical reflection into dead serious stare of sober realization at him. Whatever she's realizing, though, she doesn't much say. She just drains the rest of her drink and curls up more to put fatigue and vodka-weighted head and cheek in against his arm with rest instead of the couch cushion.

Watching a candle flicker on the tabletop, she listens to the bit on Alexander before twitching up a bit of a smile despite herself, "He's surprisingly considerate. Maybe he doesn't have autism. He drove me home from the bar the other night in my car because I drank a lot. He even buckled me in. Even walked me up here and made sure I locked the door before he left." She pauses, "But that's actually... huh. Interesting. As you say though, who knows." She goes into thick quiet there for a time, then turns her face a little to nudge her nose at his arm with nuzzle, "We should just leave all this for the rest of the night before it swamps us. There's only so much we can process before the wall hits. Need to go get your clothes and put them to wash too."

Apparently she's going to do that in a minute, though, because her body is already shifting to settle sideways in gradual lean to lay her head at one of his legs at lap rest, rubbing a hand at his knee in slow comfort, "There was more than one monster in the dream for you, wasn't there?" She doesn't need or expect an answer. Lilith just needs Byron to know suddenly she understands something as an adult with the proper ammo that she didn't understand with the perception of a child.

Air puffs her lips there at rest like that, her eyes watching her fingers at his knee with the slow contact and comfort of familiar touch. "Five minute vodka timeout. Then we're going to get your clothes and go to bed."

They had some great times as children and he's had fond memories of it all. But there were also darker memories and the more that Byron thought back on the dream of Tobin's house when they were children, just that sense of fear starts to creep in back into his consciousness. Lilith was right. It felt far too real. That glass lifted to his lips, he practically drains the contents within in one final intake, feeling that much needed burn in his mouth and down his throat to wash the grossness of the sewers away. It is, however, the potency of the alcohol itself that help calm his frayed nerves.

"Clayton being considerate means nothing." Byron is quick to say, but in truth, aside from Alexander's weirdness and his bringing up of uncomfortable topics, Thorne doesn't really have too much against the guy. "He's thoughtful though. I got a message from when we were in the shower. He asked if I was dead. Was glad that I wasn't. That's sweet of him." His tone is laced heavy with a bit of wry. "I-- told him that the other one, the town's coroner, Faust went looking for him. I guess she didn't find him down in the sewers, so... yeah. He might be looking for her as we speak."

When she mentions the filthy clothes, Byron murmurs, "We might need them to be rinsed and possibly soaked over night or until the power comes back on if you we're going to have them washed." A pause, "Unless you're planning on washing them by hand, then if so.. wear gloves." He's kidding there. Well, about letting her hand wash /his/ clothes. And then she returns his mind back to the dream, where they were children again. He really wishes he hadn't polished off that vodka now, but a refill is definitely in order.

There's this distant look in his eyes as he stares out into space, but really, he's just thinking. "It had its moments." He'll say to the question in a far too calm tone. There's even a little humor found there. His gaze then refocuses and he turns to her. Rather than following up on that statement, he carefully shifts so as not to interrupt her leaning too much, reaching over for the bottle to refill both of their glasses. Once resettled, he does open with, "It just goes to show that I was never as brave as you all thought I was." But in that situation, Lilith was bravest of them all.

"I'm taking barbecue tongs and a laundry basket to pick them up and carry them because I'm dramatic. Then bathtub until the power comes on. Even if it's early morning when it happens, the washer and dryer takes an hour tops because they're new and shiny models. I can have nice, impressive appliances too, you know." Lilith turns her face to bite briefly against Byron's leg with the words, then lapses back into silence to just lay like that for a time, reaching for her glass to occasionally pick up her head and drink while nursing the refill in hand.

Lilith and Byron never really always needed to fill the air with words. There were plenty of times when they were kids just laying around watching TV or rainfall or other kids playing with nothing to say at all and it was comfortable like that. Sometimes it was just necessary, those quiet moments where they were just children without the words or ways to express their hardships and family dysfunctions. Sometimes it was just enough not to be alone when things kind of sucked.

But eventually, she pushes up and drains her glass to put it down and prepare for actual movement. She's feeling the vodka in full and it's thick in her movement as she reaches in brief to adjust some of Byron's air-dried hair into something like the way he styles it when he's all buttoned and suit-tied up, "Being brave isn't what most people think it is. Bravery happens because of fear. And when you do what you have to do, whatever that thing is, despite it all... that's brave. C'mon. You'll be carrying me if we do another."

After pressing a vodka soaked kiss at Byron's robed shoulder with her hand dropping from hair, she starts to rise up.