2019-08-06 - Meeting the Roommate

Time alone in the apartment. This isn't weird. Nope. Not at all.

This is fine. Everything is fine.

Maybe Bennie should have picked up an extra shift at the diner, or swung by the library to pick up some more books. Maybe she'll get around to finally unpacking the trash bag full of her clothes and slot them into the dresser and closet where he's made room for her. Anything to keep her from spending time alone in an apartment that's still rather foreign to her and fretting over whether or not Easton makes it back.

Oh god, what if he doesn't make it back.

Booze, this definitely calls for booze and if it's one thing that Easton has in excess, it's booze. And guns, apparently, as Bennie finds a pistol behind the tequila. Still shaking her head about it as she adds orange juice to her glass of clear alcohol, she spies something off about the wooden American flag hanging on the wall. Has it always had that gap there? Did she screw it up while dusting?

Going to investigate, Bennie slides her fingernail into the gap and wiggles, popping open the secret compartment.

Nope. More guns.

Startled, Bennie whips around and thunks back against the wall, the liquid in her glass sloshing dangerously against the side with a clatter of ice cubes. If he immediately had any follow up words for her brain meats, it's unlikely Bennie would hear them over the thud of her heart in her ears. Her blue eyes round out to saucers as she takes in the sight of Tom. Easton said he existed, but a part of her was holding onto that thin thread of denial and it just got severed.

At least she doesn't hurl her drink at him. Because that would be alcohol abuse.

"Um...hi?"

Bennie gives a numb sort of nod as he talks, but then is holding up her finger to silently ask him to hold on a second. The reason for the pause is she's lifting the lazy version of a tequila sunrise to her lips and gulping. And gulping. And gulping until the glass is empty except for the ice cubes that slide around the bottom as she lowers it.

"Thought I was gonna pee myself there for a second. Hi Tom." She greets a little breathlessly, but manages a smile, even if it's a little wobbly at the edges. "Sorry, I've, uh. Never met a ghost before."

"So we're just going to..." Bennie makes a little motion to indicate the living room as Tom plops down on the couch. "...yeah, okay." This is normal. Just chillin' with her boyfriends dead best friend. Totally normal. She gives him the 'just wait' finger again and goes back in the kitchen for a refresher of her drink.

"Not that It's not a pleasure to meet you, because it totally is, don't get me wrong, but um...why. Now?" She asks in stilted words, like she's still having trouble wrapping her brain around this. Her hand must be trembling slightly, because there is juddering of the bottle against the rim of the glass as she pours the tequila, not even bothering with the orange juice this time around. "I mean, I guess it's better than when Easton and I are in the middle of naked aerobics, or if I were in the shower or something..."

Bennie purses her lips in thought, running the rim of her glass over her lower lip as she glances out the door to the balcony. "Huh." She finally intones lightly and with a tiny shrug she comes back into the living room, trying to unilaterally just ACCEPT that this is happening and embrace it.

The blonde flops down on the floor in front of the couch, folding her legs beneath her so she's more or less on her knees and resting down on her calves. Her very full glass of straight tequila gets clunked down on the coffee table and she looks at Tom with a serious lowering of her eyebrows over her eyes that's almost ruined by the twitch of her lips in a temptation to smile. "Twenty questions, are you you ready?" Ready or not, here they come. "What was Easton like in the marines. When did you first show up after...you know. Before you died, would you have banged me, or is this a post death attraction. Do you watch us have sex. Have you and Easton ever made out. Did he always drink this much and should I be worried. Do you think he actually loves me or was just freaking out about the veil." She takes a breath.

Bennie's nose scrunches up when he starts the line of 'maybes'. She hasn't quite reached twenty questions yet, but in light of him taking the easy way out of the last half dozen, she doesn't pursue the rest. "You realize that's not exactly a ringing endorsement, right?" A rise and fall of her shoulders in a shrug. "I don't want to push. We're both new to this whole relationship thing," Because Bennie clearly doesn't know he was engaged. "And I don't want to scare him off. He already seems torn about the decision to ask me to move in, so I'm treading carefully and wanted an outside, third party, ghost best friend point of view. I mean, hey. If I'm going to question my sanity about being able to see you and your existence, I might as well take advantage of the situation too."

"Well, you're a ghost." Bennie says pragmatically, "It's hard for you to give him a smack upside the head now when he's acting like an idiot." She says simply of their relationship now, dismissing things like Easton likely questioning the motivation for his erstwhile bestie hanging around in the afterlife and the implications that has, considering Gray Harbor.

Her fingers curl a blond sliver of hair over her ear, following it to the end and fanning out strands to examine them for split ends. It gives her eyes a direction instead of looking meeting ghostly eyes. "Katherine, huh." But despite her inquisitive mind, it's not a thread she's brave enough to follow right now. "I know leaving the military can't have been easy on him, no matter the terms. But he's staunchly against sympathy, I find it hard to empathize having nothing similar to compare it to, so....I think we tend to just gloss over it. Focus on what's easy and happy. So I'm just as much to blame."

Her eyes flick up as she confesses. "So I love his mess. It fits with my broken pieces."

"Hey! That's something!" Bennie pipes up about the bottle, dropping her pursuit for split ends as she gets excited for Tom in some small way that he's has found that connection to the living world.

But her mood quickly sombers as she follows his glance to the glass of tequila, her finger touching the rim and following the curve. She's a tactile creature, which might explains some of her lack of physical boundaries with people. "See, that's where everyone gets it wrong. I've just had more practice at hiding it." A shrug, dismissing it just like that with a reappearance of her smile. "But they say practice makes perfect, right!"

The door opens.

And there stands Easton, all five foot seven inches of him covered in something so deeply wretched smelling that the waves of stench are nearly visible. He looks a bit shell-shocked but uninjured.

"Please. Please don't touch me. I need to shower. A million times." Realizing that he sounds a little grouchy for someone who just technically accomplished their mission without any casualties or damage he adds, "But we're all okay!"

Awkwardly shuffling towards the bathroom it finally dawns on him that Tom is there on the couch apparently talking to Bennie. He can't hide the smile that curls at the edges of his mouth, despite the horrible smell and various fluids that cover him. He actually stops for a minute to look at the two with an odd almost wistful look before nodding.

"I hope you at least told her about the time we lost all our money and clothes in Japan." Because if they've been talking the best he can hope for is that Tom went straight for some of the worst stories he knows.

"You see, the thing is..." Confessing to a ghost seems easier than having conversations with living breathing people, but Bennie's words are cut off when the door opens and that wave of stench hits her.

Her mouth opens and her tongue lulls out, one eye twitching as she makes a gagging sound, "I'm so glad..ugh..you're...erk..." She grimaces and swallows. "Okay. GUH. Did you crawl through a sewer of the dead? Wait. Don't answer that." She's popping to her feet and heading to the kitchen. Where the air is clearer. "While that is a story we didn't touch on, that is absolutely going to be our next conversation."

She's stayed here often enough, and been here long enough, to have come off some pretty rough shifts from the ambulance, and thus has surreptitiously stocked a few essentials when it comes cleaning up after her job. She's arming herself with a gallon of white vinegar, steals the box of baking soda from the fridge and juggles a few lemons that Easton uses in their drinks.

Stripping off all his clothes, but not letting them drop to the ground Easton makes his way first to the guest bathroom where he dumps all of the clothes and shoes into the tub. He turns on the shower and hopes that it rinses at least the first layer of awful off of things. His guns are set on the sink and will need to be thoroughly cleaned later. He is doing an admirable job of not vomiting as he does all of this, finally making his way out naked into the common area to head towards his own bathroom.

Tom who blessedly can't smell anything yells, "Woo! Shake it!" at Easton as he makes his way between bathrooms. And yes, despite the fact that he's covered in bits of his rotting dead uncle, Easton lets out a rueful chuckle and stops to shake his ass ever so slightly before heading for the showers.

Tom apparently curious gets up off the couch and heads for the guest bathroom to see what all the goop was about. It finally dawns on him as he gets an upclose look at all the clothes and the guns exactly what he's looking at. For once he's glad that he can't smell anything and he stands outside the door shaking his head at Bennie, "I would not recommend coming in here."

Meanwhile in the master, the shower kicks in and some very easily identified vomiting noises can be heard as Easton tries to wash all of the bits off of him. Tom of course can't help but comment, "I wouldn't recommend going in there either." with a chipper smile.

Pausing where she's digging through her bag, she glances up at the transition from one bathroom to another and the resulting shimmy from Tom's prompting. "Hell yeah! That'd be sexy if it weren't for...is that brain matter?" There is a little shudder from the blonde as Easton disappears and Tom goes to scope out the situation and returns to report.

Bennie "Oh please." Bennie actually eye rolls at the ghost as her thumb smears mentholatum beneath her nostrils and tosses the tiny tub back into her gigantic purse. "Nothing can be worse than the dead hoarder incident of last August." She's then scooping up her arsenal and marching after Easton. Despite her resolution, she's still making little horking noises as she enters the master bathroom with Easton and sets the vinegar and baking soda on the lip of the tub and then hops up on the sink to score the lemon with his razor.

Bennie's encouragement to him shaking it receives a wink over his shoulder and a further laugh when she clarifies what stops it from being all that sexy. "Fair enough."

The large shower in the master bathroom is a classy all granite panel tile affair with large glass surround on two sides. Easton is currently standing in the middle of it, still wearing his prosthesis that he would normally remove to shower, but considering how filthy it is? It's just easier even if it means more work getting it cleaned and dried later. He doesn't even realize Bennie's entered the shower. He is too busy focusing on things like keeping his mouth shut while washing little bits of body parts out of his hair, which is thankfully short. Once he can no longer feel anything there he steps out of the stream of water to grab some body wash for the first of many, many, many rinses.

He stops though when he sees Bennie in the room cutting lemons? He looks at the vinegar and baking soda on the sink and then back at her and opens the door of the shower to ask, "Do I want to know what you're planning?" No, he's never heard of using common household products to clean things, he's hardly the most domestic of males.

Tom enters the bathroom and casually says, "So what's the plan for the dead guy soup in the other tub?"

Easton groans and looks like that phrase might be enough to make him hurl again but he manages just barely to hold his composure and sink back into the hot water where he can't quite smell it as badly, even if it fills the bathroom and indeed most of the apartment with the miasma of rotting dead guy.

Bennie glances up with a little smirk as she rolls the lemon on the counter beneath the weight of her palm to break up the pulp and thus release the juices. "I'm making sure that I can kiss you without wanting to vomit." She says cheerfully enough, "All of this shit combined will do a better job than Head and Shoulders." Or whatever it is he uses, she's never really looked at his products.

Not really caring if she gets wet, she stands in the opening into the stall of the shower. "Hold out your hands." She instructs Easton, where she'll fill the cup of his palms with baking soda and squeeze on the lemon if he'll obey. "And rinse with the vinegar. You'll smell like a salad dressing, but it's better than the alternative." That is warring with the minty smell beneath her nostrils. "You're not hurt anywhere are you?"

"I'll take care of it." She comments to Tom over her shoulder. Afterall, it's the least she can do, she wasn't the one that went through the veil.

"That is a very good goal. Because I don't know if my frail male ego could handle you tossin' your cookies when I kiss you."

He's an Irish Spring kind of guy, thank you very much but he doesn't feel the need to defend the honor of his bath products. He does as he's told and looks a little dubious as she fills his hands with baking soda and lemon, but he rubs it on his face and just about everywhere he can possibly imagine and reach. He takes the bottle of vinegar and coughs a bit as it fizzes up and hopefully carries away as much of the slime as it can.

Tom doesn't seem content with that answer though and heads back into the bathroom and shuts the door. Wait, what? The door definitely shuts after him. And Easton stops mid scrubbing. He looks in Bennie in confusion and then opens the door again to ask, "What.. the ... fuck?" He doesn't care that he's dripping wet, or covered in various kitchen products, he carefully dries his feet on the mat before going to investigate something. Yes, it's important enough to interrupt the scrubbing, but at least he doesn't have any visible bits left on him. He walks into the bathroom and there's Tom concentrating very hard as a scrub brush works across various pieces of clothing in the air above the tub. All powered by Easton's glimmer.

Easton just stands there, wet, naked and still covered in a good deal of baking soda watching. Transfixed.

"Huh."

Bennie could help by washing Easton's hair for him, or getting the tricky parts in the middle of his back, but she seems content to lean there and smirk, helpfully pointing out with an interjecting, "You missed a spot!"

When you strip it down and set aside the paranormal and disturbing bits such as a ghost roommate and a boyfriend covered in gore, it's an almost domestic scene and it's something Bennie settles into with a content little sigh so much so that she doesn't even seem to recognize that there is anything amiss with a closing door until Easton draws her attention to it by stepping out of the shower and going to investigate.

She stands over his shoulder, head tilted to the side. "He...he can do that?"

Standing there dripping wet and very confused Easton answers Bennie's question with one of his own. "I think I am? Or.. we both are?"

Tom for his part doesn't seem to confused or unhappy about this, he's grinning and goes to say something but his voice cuts out. That gets a mild furrowed brow but it doesn't seem to stop him from being able to use Easton's glimmer to scrub the clothes.

Easton looks at Tom, looks at the clothes and then back at Bennie and says, "Our lives are very fucking wierd." It's not a complaint per say, but it's said with a lot of emphasis. He heads back for the shower asking, "Too much to ask for you to wash my back?"

Of course Tom manages to have enough voice to offer, "Of course Easy!" But he makes no move to do so, only laughs to himself as he continues to work on something. It's the first task he's been able to accomplish since he's existed in this state and the fact that it's gross and not at all glorious doesn't seem to phase him one bit.

"You're a peach, Tom!" Bennie declares, because if he's happy with his new found ability and is using it to save her from sticking her hands in dead man soup? More power to him. She would have shouldered the chore dutifully as a helpful girlfriend but there was no way she was going to be able to smile her way through that one.

She turns after Easton, giving his ass a playful pinch as he heads back to his own decontamination shower. "Only if you tell me about Japan..." She says in a sing song voice, bouncing after him on her tip toes.

Easton's ass, complete with ill advised Property of the USMC 'stamp' tattoo clenches at the pinch as he laughs his way back to the shower.

"So, Banks and I decided to use our two days leave to see just how many Japanese businessmen we could get to go drinking with us..."

The story is long and epic and good for telling while you wash bits of your rotting zombie uncle down the shower drain.