2019-09-23 - If You've Got It, Haunt It

Very late evening doesn't seem too late for Carver to do an aid run to the suites. It's not like he really works on normal time frames anyway. Despite the weather, he's thrown his coat on, expecting rain and not wanting to be caught out hauling Sutton's sizable bag when it inevitably happens.

He also seems to be in absolutely the best of moods, shoes falling heavy across the hardwood floor of his living area after a last-ditch idea that just maybe that he should grab his keys. An idea that actually came with a full body sigh and a muttered "Oh, for fuck's sake." Pulling out a smoke, he runs the checklist. Bag: Right there, waiting to be scooped up on the way out the door. Keys: Got. St. Mich-

"Double-fuck."

A few moments later, cigarette tucked behind his ear, he's reaching his arm through the bathroom door to yoink the other thing she asked for from the shelf, shutting off the light as he moves through the main bedroom and turning the prize over in his hands with a curious little look and a slightly triumphant "Gotcha, mate."

Rolling the medallion over in his hand, Carver meets the surprise voice from behind him with...

Well. It's utter apathy. He blinks a couple of times, sure, but other than that his only real response is to stretch out his back some, mutter some muffled sound of complaint at either the voice or the soft click that rolls low in his back, and slowly swivel on the balls of his feet, crossing at the ankles to turn and face the source. "Huh." His lips purse up, and he holds out his hand. They're far enough apart that the medallion hangs from a single finger at roughly an equal distance between the two of them, and Alistair Carver's dark eyes glance from one to the other in a few swift movements. "This was yours, then?" It's a guess. It's an educated guess, but a guess all the same. He says it with all the certainty in the world, though.

"And It's not pawing. If I was pawing, her bag would be strewn all over my hallway. I'm bringing her shit she asked for, because I figure you two think very much alike and she didn't see it either." If Elias thinks Carver sounds a little petulant and jealous, he's absolutely completely right.

"One'll stick eventually, mate. For better or worse." Carver replies, wrapping the band he last saw Sutton wearing around her neck over his wrist for a couple of loops, then slipping that cast silver underneath to have it fit snug and secure. Like he's done that plenty of times before with similar objects, if Elias would care to think about it for a few moments. If he's not too busy getting his punches in while he can or dealing with the utter contempt that Carver just-so-happens to show by walking straight on through him to close the ajar door to the guest bedroom before turning back for the stairs.

"She paying you a lick of attention yet, brother hers, or are you still lingering on the outskirts like a forlorn puppy?"

"Mifepristone?" Carver let the puppy jibe go, because Elias isn't exactly wrong, but he can't let that sentence go unfinished. She'd said the name, as well as one other, the night she showed up with two bags and a baseball bat. The night she told him about goblins in her apartment building. The night he'd actually tried to cook a fritatta that they never finished.

His hand works at the band around his wrist as he steps down the stairway, forgoing the front door and Sutton-The-Sister's bag for the couch, plucking the cigarette from behind his ear as he falls backwards over the arm, hooking his knees before he impacts into those soft cushions, hunting down a lighter once he's stopped bouncing by a matter of degrees. The ghost is watched, sure. But it's an impassive curiosity more than anything else. He's not a surprise. He's not a shock. He's just a truth. And while there are plenty truths that could demolish Carver, the fact there's a ghost in his house, chewing him out? That will never be one of them.

"Mate, she fakes it. I get that. 'Game recognizes game' or whatever it is the kids say." He inhales like it might be his last, and the cloud of smoke is nigh oppressive. "I've offered her a place. Good or ill. Somewhere, despite the bullshit that is my life, that I've put a lot of work in to making sure trouble doesn't follow me home. Or her. She doesn't even know about the basement. But I can't go and fucking drag her by the ear, sit her down, and tell her to stay." He sounds about as blooded as Eli for a moment, sending another cloud up after a moment to breathe and remotely chill.

"I'm not gonna slash his tires." He adds after a moment's thought, watching the ghost with a raising brow. As if he would stoop so low.

"I'll zip-tie a harmonica to the intake manifold." Why piss someone off intensely for minutes when you can drive them slowly insane over weeks?

Carver's head tilts up at the question, nodding towards the hatch past the kitchen that leads on down into that combination of library, study and store. If he's feeling any level of threat from the non-corporeal sibling, he's doing a good job of burying it somewhere down deep. Just a little past the bourbon, next to the fact he could be looking after a dog, and buried underneath the fact his own ghost found out she could die. Maybe. His fingers work the cigarette, plucking it from his mouth to rest it, upturned, on his thigh. "Go look yourself if you want. It's where the weird shit is kept." That word absolutely comes with waggled fingers. Because of course it does.

"What exactly do you want me to do here, Elias? Check up on her from time to time?"

"Then we have something in common, mate." Carver meets obvious with obvious. He doesn't like himself either.

Hauling himself up from the couch, pausing for a moment to flick the ash from the edge of his cigarette and in to the ashtray, the Brit throws the ghost a glance askew, running along a thin line of stubble that trails his jaw with the back of his hand. "I deal with giant birds, hungry creatures, ashen-faced corpses that forget they're supposed to be dead and crying women with more limbs than they rightly need."

You know what? Carver has pride. It's a sin, sure, and one he normally vetoes for just outright smugness, but standing there, looking at the ghost? His posture straightens. The slouch he forever carries in his back slips away. His hands hook loose into the pockets of his coat after popping that cigarette to the corner of his mouth. "I'll keep an eye on her, help with this weird shit where I can, and when I die, it'll be alone and broken like I rightfully deserve."

The cloud of smoke passes through the ghost when he exhales. It almost looked for a second like he might try and blow it away, but no.

"Tequila filled fuck fests and pregnancy and the like, though? I ain't used to a fetus that isn't about 8 feet tall and trying to eat me, so on that part, I'm out."

When Elias' hand goes up, Carver waggles a brow. It's a universal sign that crosses international boundaries. You could parachute into the middle of New Guinea, come across one of the numerous uncontested peoples believed to still be there, get asked in a foreign language what on earth happened, make that brow waggle, and they'd immediately understand it as 'You wouldn't believe me if I told you.'

"You really don't. You should have seen the mother." That's all he willing to elaborate, moving through to the kitchen to pull out a bottle. Of beer. Not root. The cap's popped off of the corner of a counter in a way that totally got a stare from the real estate agent trying to sell him the place when he did exactly the same thing, and about a quarter of the contents are missing when he makes his way back into the living room. "Be a bastard, mostly. What did you do to deserve yours?"

Carver stands there for a good moment, alternating between beer and smoke until one's stubbed out in the ashtray and the other is left to hang loose by the neck from barely grasping fingers. "Trade you."

It comes without explanation for a good while, bringing up that beer to sip from as those dark eyes watch the ghost. "I can make it a little less fragile. Usually save that shit for myself, because, y'know-" Shrug. "-selfish prick. I'll keep an eye on her, shield her where I can. You tell me the why's and how's of your untimely demise. 'Cause something hasn't sat right with me about that since she told the story, and while you're protective by nature, it takes something special for..." The hand holding the beer comes out to indicate Elias as a whole. "This."

"Have one, then." Carver is almost dismissive about the whole 'He'll look after her anyway' thing, waving the ghost off with his hand and making a beeline for the door, to finally, finally scoop up Live!Sutton's bag. "You're wearing a shirt. You've still got your badge on. You're the most casual, non-whiny ghost I've ever met, so I figure there's probably a pack in your back pocket. Will it or something. Power of intent is a pretty strong deal for you guys."

Hauling the strap over his shoulder with, honestly, a bit of a grunt, he shifts the weight of it some before finding a spot where it's not likely to start aching in about five minutes, hand moving to touch the door handle.

"My road to hell was paved with good intentions, mate. They never mention in that pithy little saying how the sidewalk is littered with the corpses of those you love. C'mon. Let's get you back to your twin, and I'll tell you all about how my best friend died."

He pulls open the door.