2019-08-15 - Impressed. But Weirded Out.

The coffee shop is busy enough with tourists and people stopping in for a late night treat. Seated at a table in the back Easton is dressed casually for the night. A backwards Boston Red Sox hat, a soft light gray tee-shirt and his usual jeans and boots. He's not really paying attention to the people around him or the cup of coffee in front of him steadily getting colder. He has a tablet notebook out, and is scrolling through documents with a concerned look on his face. He wanted to get out of the apartment to look through it and somehow didn't feel up to spending more time at the bar right now. And no he doesn't want to think about why he's avoiding his own bar.

Justin turns up in a little bit after getting the text telling him where to show up. He looks fairly casual, himself, in a pair of brown suede shoes, jeans, and a dark green button-down over a white t-shirt. He makes his way into the coffee shop and looks around until he finds where Easton is sitting and pauses by the counter to put in his order before taking up a seat on the opposite side of the table. "Should I have brought my laptop?" he asks with a bit of a smile as he settles back comfortably. "I feel like the slacker at a study session the way you're staring at that screen." Which is funny, because he's usually the one that is working all the time.

Easton totally misses Justin's entrance, his tongue stuck out of the side of his mouth in a show of true concentration. He only notices when Justin actually sits, looking up at him and then back down at the laptop for a second before Justin remarks on it. He lets out a small laugh, "Oh shit." As if just now he's realized that he was the one who asked Justin to come catch up and then is doing work. He folds the screen down and says, "Sorry, getting some shit in order. I don't remember you as the slacker type though." It takes him a second to catch the fact that the statement doesn't line up though.

Finally remembering his coffee Easton picks that up and slides away the notebook. "How've ya been? I kept meaning to get in touch after the other night." To his credit he doesn't trip up over how strange their meeting was in a Dream and then in the middle of the woods, but he's had a good deal of practice with that since coming to town.

Justin laughs when Easton comes up for air and says, "No worries, man. Feel free. We can talk between whatever it is you've got to get done." He doesn't seem bothered at all. "Nah. I'm the workaholic type. Which is why I'm glad you texted, because I hadn't come up for air at all today, and didn't even realize it was getting dark." Then he says, "Been busy. Work. New roommate. Seeing someone new. Reviewing a couple of scripts my mother sent. And of course more work. Not to mention trying to make sense of .. stuff like the other night."

Waving off the offer of keeping up and doing more work Easton says, "Nope, I'm not actually making any progress." A small smirk on his lips, "Besides we haven't talked in years unless you count weird meetings in the middle of the forest after sharing a Dream." He drops that casually before continuing, "Which I don't, by the way." He blinks at the quick catchup, "That was ... extremely concise and precise. I feel like I just received a mission status report." He laughs it off and actually processes it, "But that all sounds good."

Easton gives a conspiratorial look around before asking, "Anyone helping you navigate the weirdness? It's a lot." His hands fidget with the brown paper ring around his coffee cup, probably a sign that he's craving a cigarette.

"What're you working on?" Justin asks, nodding toward the notebook, before smirking a little bit at the mention of the meeting in the woods. "Of course not," he says, and then holds up one finger as his name is called to go grab his cup of coffee and then slides back into his seat. He laughs, "Well that was like.. the table of contents, so you can choose which chapter you're interested in reading first. Unless it all sounds boring, in which case we can move on to what's new with you." He takes a sip from the coffee and settles back in his chair comfortably. "Yeah, a little bit. The guy I'm seeing seems to know a bit about it and shared some stuff with me to help me make some sense of it."

"Stuff for my bar. I'm trying to just figure out some suppliers." Easton hand-waves at it as if it were completely uninteresting.

"Ooh, choose my own adventure conversation, sweet. I was going to ask if your girlfriend was local, so let's consider that a 'You have died' and try again." Yes, it's a bit of stretch on the metaphor, but Easton is more than willing to belabor a joke. "Is he a local? I feel like I'm just getting my feet under me with this stuff.." And then he grimaces a little and adds, "I mean before it keeps getting fucking weirder."

Justin chuckles, "Not a girl this time." He's been unabashedly bi the entire time Easton's known him, so it could have been either one at any given time. "No, he's not local. He's from New York, actually. Met him on the Boardwalk and ended up at your bar, actually. But I guess he's got family that is familiar with this sort of thing due to some of them having some of the same stuff we do but from another place.. anyway.. I asked him to join me at this charity dinner, and shit went all kinds of sideways there, which is when he came out and told me some of what he knew about what was going on." He shakes his head, "I still can't really wrap my head around all of it.. but I'm starting to at least understand some things a little more.. and remember more of the weird things that happened here in the summers that I'd forgotten about."

Easton remembers a bit too late about Justin's flexibility in the romance department. He was always fine with it, far more comfortable with it than some of the other teen boys they ran with. Freaking Chad.

"Interesting. I've been doing my best to figure out from people about all this.." He again looks around, he can't help it. He still feels like he should whisper but he manages to maintain an even tone. "Glimmer, the veil, Dreams with a big d- yeah I need a different phrase for that." He doesn't let that stop him, "But yea. When I came back I remembered a few things. But nothing like what's happened lately. My bar got shot up by ghost cops or like a Dream with cops from the past? It was super fucked."

Freaking Chad had not only issues but entire subscriptions. Justin never gave too much of a shit about Chad's opinion on things, however. He can't help but chuckle a little bit at the mention of the big D. "I don't know, I think the big D works. It certainly feels like getting bent over, but not in a good way." He lifts his cup and takes another sip from it before he says, "Yeah.. I recognize that I can see when people have that Glimmer thing, and feel when they use it. Stefano thinks that I might be able to.. do things.. too, but if I can, I'm not aware of it." His voice is low, certainly not advertising the conversation, but not whispering either. Both brows go up at the mention of ghost cops shooting up his bar. "Wow, no shit? Is the place all shot up?"

"Yea more like in the prison way." Easton readily agrees to the unpleasantness of the Dreams. He quirks an eyebrow and says "Stefano?" Easton's actually a client of Stefano, even if they haven't had a chance to scene about that yet. But he moves past that and adds, "It's funny, people keep saying it's a visual thing. Mine isn't." He only notes that it's weird but doesn't elaborate on how it actually works for him. "Yea, so far everyone I've met can? But I don't know if that's always true."

"No. That's the thing about Dreams, they tend to fade back to normal. Except for people." He adds the last part with a bit of hardness in his eyes. "They don't go back as well."

Justin nods, "The guy I'm seeing, Stefano DiMarco. He's a massage therapist." He says, "Well, I mean, when I look at people I can sense something about them. I don't know as it's like a neon sign floating above their head or anything like that. And what I feel.. when they do things, it's not something I can see. But I'm not really sure how to describe it." He shakes his head and says, "Not everyone I've met can, but a lot of the people I know personally can." He notes that hardness in Easton's eyes and asks with concern, "What happened? Did someone get hurt?" He pauses, "Did you get hurt?"

"Yea he is." Easton agrees oddly to Stefano's profession before explaining, "I'm a client. He helps with my leg." He then thinks for a second before adding, "Great with his hands." As if Justin probably doesn't know that, but Easton manages to not make it sound super dirty. Maybe just like a little dirty. Which is Easton's default setting for the most part.

"For me it's a gut feeling. Like I know something's up with those people." He adds, "And I can. And my girlfriend here, she's a local. Bennie Oakes." He doesn't explicitly say that she has abilities but it's obviously implied by the order of that statement.

He shakes his head a bit and says, "Yea. Multiple customers were shot. Some friends. I was fine, Bennie thank God was fine.. but still. It was the most fucked up in terms of people nearly dying I've seen since combat. And there's fuckall I can do to prevent it."

Justin can't help but flash an amused grin at the mention of Stefano being good with his hands, but only says, "Good. He needs a solid clientele here in town... not at all because I'm hoping he'll stay if he has enough work to keep him here." He takes anoter sip of his coffee then, and nods when Easton mentions his gut feeling, considering that. He turns the name over in his head and says, "Bennie. That name sounds familiar. Have I met her?"

The mention of people getting shot at the bar makes him wince and frown. "Shit. Man, I'm sorry. I'm glad that she's okay. That's scary as shit. At the dinner, these.. shadowy things.. tried to attack us. They got ahold of Hyacinth, but fortunately we were able to get it out of her." Hyacinth Addington. She and Justin had gone out off and on for years during his summers there. But apparently they were off-again this year.

Easton's phone buzzes and he checks it and types back something and apologizes to Justin. "Sorry, this is her. She's a paremedic in town?" He offers that in case it helps Justin remember. Then his eyebrows then raise up from whatever's on his phone and he looks up once at Justin and then back down at his phone with a slow smile rolling up at the edges of his lips. He laughs and says, "Sorry she, uh apparently wanted to remind me how fantastic her tits are. Mind you, I had not forgotten, but always appreciate a reminder." Even if they hadn't known each other as teenagers Easton would probably have shared that, but it probably helped prepare Justin for his over-sharing. "And I'd show you the pic, but uh I'd be a little weirded out if you recognized my girl from her rack alone. Impressed, but weirded out."

Easton tries to shrug off concern about the shooting, "Yea, it worked out okay. No one died." That is a very low bar to pass for okay. An eyebrow quirks up at Justin's tale of the dinner. "Hyacinth." Right. He remembers her now, and shakes his head at having not recognized her at the Apartments the other night, despite the noticeable prosthesis which he of all people should have remembered now. He snaps out of that with, "Yea I've reconnected with Erin a bit.." Likewise a fling of his, though not nearly as serious. And much more ill-fated with lots of rumors swirling that were not very kind to Erin, and mostly started by Easton. "Though pretty sure we left it as she owes me a good couple punches to the face." Boy does she.

"Yeah, I think, I remember her, actually, but I don't think we ever really talked or were formally introduced," Justin says and then laughs a bit. "Hey, it never hurts to be reminded." He lifts his coffee cup and then laughs, before taking a sip. "I'm pretty sure I'd remember if she was someone I'd dated. And not just from a picture of her tits." Then he does take that sip, when the danger of laughing with his mouth full has passed.

"Yeah? How's Erin. I remember her, though I don't think I ever hung out with her, much, either," Justin says, though that could be because he was seeing Hyacinth, and Hyacinth has a way of demanding all possible attention at times. He raises a brow then and asks, "What did you /do/?"

Easton takes one last appreciative look at his phone before sliding that back into his pocket. He shakes his head a bit as if trying to refocus on the conversation at hand. "Erin's.. okay. She just lost her parents. And a cousin. And there's.." How does he even begin to explain the Ghoul. "There's a lot going on with her right now. But she's seeing a buddy of mine and that at least seems to be going well for her?" He chooses not to open the dead serial killer's ghost is murdering her family can of worms. Maybe he'll let Hyacinth explain that?

"Me?" Easton sounds almost confused by the question. "Do you remember what an asshole I was?" He shakes his head and says, "It's all old stuff from when we were kids. I just finally told her the truth about some of the shit I pulled because I was a dumb insecure little boy. She's hardly the only one I screwed over."

He takes a sip of coffee and then looks up at a clock, "Balls, I should be going. But it was great catching up with you. We should all go out sometime. The four of us." He makes a vague circle motion as if Bennie and Stefano were also there to be included in that.