2019-12-18 - Drunkily Ever After

Upon leaving Addington House, a bit of extra booze was acquired, and then the trip was made over to Easton's place. Once there, Justin says, "I didn't know you knew Vivian. Did you know she and I grew up together in L.A.? I knew she was in town because of Thorne but didn't expect to run into her tonight." He laughs, "Her mom is my mother's lawyer." He shakes his head, "This place is like some kind of weird black hole. I'm beginning to wonder who else I know is going to turn up here."

Walking in the door to the very well kept, modern (some might say a little sterile) apartment, Easton unstraps his holsters and puts away the various firearms on his person as they chat. "Yea, she used to live in the building actually." He grabs glasses and starts pouring liberal amounts of booze for the two of them. He huhs, "Yea, I got a feeling this place has some sort of hoodoo magnet siren call." He takes a sip and admits, "Vivian was also my therapist.. briefly." The last word spoken more to his glass of whiskey than to Justin, but he continues on, " But she somehow met my uncle and hence we started going on field trips to the other side together to figure out what kind of terrible things were going on over there that needed stopping."

Justin follows suit, though he only has the one firearm on him, which is set aside once inside, to be reclaimed when he departs. He accepts the glass and lifts it in Easton's direction. "Wouldn't surprise me," he agrees easily enough. Then he raises a brow briefly, "Was she? I've never seen her in a professional capacity." Then he nods when Easton explains about their field trips to the other side. "I've never been over there.. voluntarily, until today. I've experienced a couple of strange Dreams, but nothing quite as uh.. special.. as tonight's adventure. Much less torture, though more things trying to kill us, the first time." He takes a sip from his glass of whiskey. "So you're, what? A Veil hopping vigilante now?"

Despite the fact that the flask hasn't been that far from him all night Easton still relishes that first drink. "Yea.. but now we're more like friends so that's a little weird?" He considers that for a second before amending, "Or at least adventure buddies." He thinks a little more about the key and where it lead them and says, "That was weird. I've only gone over on purpose once or twice and it was not like that. This felt more like when you get lost." He hehs and says, "Or get stuck in a Dream. Like there's the dark mirror version of Gray Harbor over there, and then there's Dreams where you get attacked by Loonie Tunes or zombie Easter Bunnies or whatever."

"Ha! No." Easton shakes his head at the talk of being a vigilante now. He makes his way over to the couch, one of the only comfortable places to sit in the apartment. "It all started with some girl's sister being held in the asylum where my uncle worked. I couldn't stand the thought of someone being held in a place like that."

Justin wanders over toward the couch and plops down on the other side, stretching his legs out in front of him and taking another swallow from his glass, letting it warm his insides and smooth the edge off after that bizarre encounter. "I was underwater during one, but could breathe, which was pretty strange, but the whole thing was more like an adventure than the others.. the one where we went back in time to the Addington boat house and the one at the charity dinner." He shakes his head slightly. "So did you get the girl's sister out?"

In the living area, in place of where a coffee table should be is a large cardboard box apparently for an enormous dog crate. The box has plenty of ring marks and splotches from spilled drinks on it. Easton sits on the far end of the couch and pulls his left leg up, stretching it with a wince. He raises his eyebrows and says, "Breathing underwater sounds kind of awesome actually." The one back in time at the Addington House was less so. He hehs at the question. "Actually? The girl disappeared. The inmates may have escaped? Based on some rando showing up at the Paranormal Society meeting? And this whole thing got put on hold due to an escaped serial killer ghost murdering half the Addingtons." Okay, not half but a lot of them. And Carrs and other families too.

He takes a drink and adds, "And fucking up my life in new and exciting ways I could never have predicted." He means Gohl, but the ambiguity also works well.

"The breathing underwater part was actually pretty cool. And we got to ride around on turtles and dolphins and things, which was also pretty cool, all things considered. If they were all like that, I could see how people could get lost in them," Justin says with a little bit of a grin as he lets his head rest back and studies the ceiling. "But they're not." Then he glances over toward Easton and frowns, "No shit, huh? So, is the chick still looking for her sister? The one that disappeared? I heard about the serial killer, obviously, because of Hyacinth." The fact that they didn't actually /need/ to break into the Addington House because Hyacinth would probably have just let them in is not something that Justin bothers to mention. The breaking in was sort of part of the nostalgia of it. "Sounds crazy. Admittedly, I've only witnessed some of it, myself, but.. I started learning that I could do some things that I never knew I could do before, and figuring out /how/ to do that has been.. a weird experience." Not that the rest of it hasn't.

"That sounds like a great regular dream actually." Easton grins at the thought, just having a normal fun experience for once would be nice. "I did end up in a dungeons and dwarves one a bit back." Nope, not what's it's called. "I got to shoot people with arrows. That was fun." You know, riding dolphins, shooting people, fun dreams! He sighs and shakes his head, "I don't know. I never met her, she was just a friend of a friend and then one day she wasn't there. I'm assuming it's stupid veil shit, but who knows? Maybe just life." Maybe. He 'ooohs' at the talk of Hyacinth, "Right. Of course."

"Yea well careful how much you use any abilities. One of the last Dreams I ended up in was a bunch of us getting fricassed because we'd used our gifts too much. Bennie got burnt up real bad. Thankfully there were healers there and then back here to get her back on her feet, but it was... it was awful."

Bringing up Bennie causes him to go quiet again and get really interested in staring at his drink.

Justin grins and says, "Sounds like being inside of one of our games," meaning Lucidwave, the video game company that he runs. "Running around, shooting people with arrows, dwarves and dungeons and stuff like that." He nods when Easton explains about the vanishing woman and says, "Yeah. Maybe." It's not like he has any better explanation for all of the insanity, himself.

"That's what Stefano said.. that using them draws unwanted attention if you do it too much, but I'm not sure how you're supposed to figure out what you can do, or learn if you don't use it at all," Justin says and then raises both brows at the mention of getting burned. "Wow, shit. Glad you guys are.." he was about to say okay, but okay really isn't the right word. "Healed up." He reaches over and gives Easton's shoulder a brief squeeze at the mention of Bennie. He then takes another swallow of his drink before topping both of their glasses off.

"Which are great by the way when I can't sleep and I need something to distract myself with. Though I swear to god that Isles of Garamini is fuckin' impossible." Referencing some obscure part of one of the worlds in one of the games does show at least that he does really play them, even if he's not all that great. It's not that hard.

"Yea, well I didn't really listen when others told me that." He makes a half shrug and says, "But it turns out I can do more than just move things. I can find lost things and I can make a light and even open doors into the other side." Those are all things he never would have found out without practicing so he can't really tell people not to do it. "And honestly they were mostly pissed about the healing. Turns out they want us to only use our gifts to hurt things. Either people here or things there, it doesn't seem to matter?"

"I play them sometimes when I get stuck on a bit of code or need to work through an idea in my head," Justin grins. "The nice thing about working on all the infrastructure is that all the actual quests and stuff are usually new to me when I get to play them. That's all someone else's work." Let's him still enjoy his creations, even after spending years on them.

"I heard that they feed off of all the negative emotions people have.. fear, anger, revenge, that sort of thing. Kind of makes sense, I guess, that they wouldn't be big supporters of hope and healing and the warm fuzzies." He rubs a little bit at his face and then says, "I can do a little of various things. I'm not particularly strong with any of it, and I can't make any lights or open doors, but I can heal a little, and sense emotions, find things, move things around, and I can read impressions off of objects, which was a bit of a surprise the first couple of times that happened." He smiles faintly.

"Yea well tell whoever wrote those quests that I said they're a dick." Easton laughs a little at the thought of Justin actually doing that before taking another drink.

"You know the warm fuzzies thing is also something people can do right? I can sometimes do it, give someone a sense of calm or happiness or just.." he trails off. It's not something he's great at and he only was able to do it a few times for Bennie when she was freaking out. Easton's eyebrows go up when Justin lists all the things he can do. Mentally he can't help but sort them and order them into buckets, assigning them to people like him and Itzhak or Geoff and Bennie or Alexander and Thorne. It's not a perfect system, but with other people's help they're figuring out what it all means. "What about plants? I just met someone who could manipulate plants... that one was new to me."

Justin laughs, "I'll let him know. He'll probably laugh. You're not the first." He nods, "Yeah, I can do that, give people the warm fuzzies, or the creeping shivers, or you know, whatever. And share images in their minds. Sometimes unintentionally." He smiles a bit faintly and rubs at the back of his neck. "I'm still getting a hang of controlling it all the time." When Easton asks about plants he nods and says, "I can make them grow a little faster, or make them sick. I figured that out not too long ago. But everything I can do, it's kind of.. a milder version I guess of what more sparkly glimmery people can do. Stefano said some folks were more specialized at particular things and could do them really well, and some, like him, and I guess I.. are more generalists? We can do a little bit of a lot of things, but nothing like, miraculous with anything? If that's how it works." He's still not entirely sure on that front, but his mentors are limited in that respect.

"Yea. Cause he's a dick." Easton laughs thankful for a light hearted respite from all the heaviness of this town and the particular life he now leads in it. He again looks thoughtfully at Justin when he talks about the variety of emotional states he can inflict. Easton just shrugs and says, "I don't know that I've tried? I mean honestly I didn't realize reading people's emotional states was something I could do until someone flat out told me." How they knew? Just another mystery of the town.

"Yea well I'm a telekinetic, first and foremost. And I'm pretty sure the finding and the doors go along with that based on a buddy of mine, Itzhak. Tall lanky tatted mechanic in town? Good dude." He shrugs at the rest of it though, "Not sure how the other stuff shakes out. I haven't met too many generalists here. Usually it's heavy on one of those three big things."

"He /is/ a dick," Justin agrees with a laugh and takes another sip from his glass. "But you need a few dicks on a team. Helps to keep stuff from getting too easy."

"The whole emotion thing was one of the first things I figured out I could do, that I was sensing how other people were feeling. That's kind of how I figured out all of it.. I realized I was sensing things that I'd never really noticed before, ever since I got back into town and decided to settle here. The longer the time went on.. the more stuff I started to notice." He nods when Easton says he's a telekinetic, "There does seem to be kind of three rough groupings of things. I can kind of sense how strong people are in various things, and whether they are similar to the kinds of things that I can do. How I can tell that? Don't ask me, but I was practicing with Stefano and Dahlia one night, when we were talking about it." He looks thoughtful then says, "Yeah, I've seen Itzhak around, I'm pretty sure."

Really laughing now Easton spills a little of his drink on himself and has to set it down on the boxtable and wipe at his shirt. He agrees, "Yea, a team always needs a good mix."

Easton smirks at the difference between Justin and himself in that it was one of the first things the other man noticed. "It's funny cause as kids I had no idea what that feeling was. The fact that other people stood out? All I knew was that there was something. And it only really happened here. I think that might be why I came back." He picks the drink back up and then drains the rest.

"Course back then I thought I was just a horny kid being attracted to anyone and couldn't sort out one from the other." With a wry laugh he adds, "Except you. You were always way too damn pretty for my taste."

"I don't think I even noticed it as kids," Justin considers. "Maybe I did and I forgot? But when I think about it, I remember some strange stuff happened but not a lot about it, to be honest. But then I was pretty wrapped up in all my own bullshit when I was a kid, anyway. Noticing what was going on with other people didn't really come until later." He folds his hands on his stomach, cradling his glass there and considering it thoughtfully.

Then he laughs and says, "Back then we /were/ horny kids. I mean, we were kids. That's kind of how that works around that age." Though then he glances over and studies Easton, both brows raising and he half-laughs, "Oh is that it? I was too pretty for you? I'm not sure if I should take that as a compliment or an insult." He shakes his head, grinning and then finishes off his drink.

As for why Easton did notice at kids he just shrugs. "Yea, I mean as kids it was confusing and different and not something I could have put a finger on. But now that I'm back I can remember a lot more of what I was trying to sort out."

Agreeing that all kids fit that description Easton laughs, "Fair. That's difficult enough to navigate without glimmer added in." The studying look just gets smile as if he expected it. "Uh, both. Definitely. And I didn't were, you still are." He stands to go refill glasses again. "Granted I didn't have any conversations about boys with you back then. I'm still not great at the talking bit." Easton rarely shuts up and is always ridiculously loud but as many people have told him, he tends to not actually tell the people in his life important bits.

"Yeah, being back has definitely brought up a lot of old memories, some of them weird, but some of them good, too," Justin muses as he toys with the glass between his hands, slowly turning it around and around. "I mean, that's why I came back, after all. Memories of those summers, the people here, the crazy adventures. L.A. just got really claustrophobic after a while..." He starts to say more about it then shakes his head ruefully at himself, "Not going to whine about my poor little rich boy life in L.A. It was fine. It was great, even, but it wasn't what I wanted."

"I'm sure some of it happened back then, too, I just don't remember it if it did," Justin admits, raising his glass and holding it out to Easton so that it can be refilled, laughing a little bit. "Fair, enough. Fine. It's probably good that you didn't. I'm not sure my tender heart could have taken the rejection." There's a difference between being loud and talking a lot.. and actually saying things, and Justin can certainly understand that. "Not that you couldn't have, you know. I'm fantastic at the talking bit," he teases just a little bit.

"Believe me, if anyone can bear with someone talking about their poor little rich white boy problems, it's this guy. I get it. Money and that life doesn't mean shit when you're miserable." He should know, "I ran away from all that to join the Marines. In some ways it worked. Not so much in others."

Easton returns with the two refilled glasses and hands him one over the back of the couch before coming back to retake his place. He laughs, "It would have been a trainwreck as kids. Sorting that shit out took me a lot of time." He says as if he has any of his shit sorted out. "Yea, I prefer to punch and fuck my way through my problems." He grins and adds, "Not that it's actually working. I'm just not a quitter."

Letting that bawdy facade drop for just a moment he adds, "But I appreciate the offer J."

And then he's back to taking a big gulp of the whiskey.

"More than anything, I just wanted some fucking privacy. Fame is great and all, but then everybody thinks they have a right to know all of your business, and to have an opinion about all of your business. That's what I love about this town, even people who know who I am don't give a shit. They're like, 'Yeah, the Cooper kid, the one who ran into the side of the ice cream tuck on his bike that one summer..' and that's.. nice, really." He considers then for a moment and says, "I'm doing a film. They're going to start shooting in the Spring in Seattle. My mother's over the moon. But it's bringing that life awful close to home again. Every other day I've got mixed feelings about it."

He accepts the refilled glass, reaching back to take it and then taking another swallow from the glass. "Yeah, probably," Justin agrees, "Not that we weren't already trainwrecks. Remember that time we passed out on the pier and I rolled off into the lake, and the only reason my dumb ass didn't drown was because it was only like two feet of water? I still don't think I've had a hangover that bad since."

He chuckles a little then and says, "Hey, commitment is something. Even if it's commitment to a bad plan." He lifts his glass and takes another swig from it, his head tipping to one side and then the other for a moment before he says, "I usually talk about mine, until I've bored even myself to tears, and then kind of.. let them go." Then he smiles, a genuine smile and says "You know you're like.. probably my oldest friend, right? You and Dahlia. I met you both the same year, here."

Oh the irony of Justin wanting privacy and Easton feeling like everyone is suddenly up in his business. He smirks and says, "Well let me give you a tip. Don't cheat on your significant other here. Cause small town gossip is a biiitch." He's at least smiling when he says it, even if he's none too thrilled at the reality of it. The news about a movie causes him to raise his eyebrows as if impressed before adding, "See? Yer too fuckin' pretty. Like hollywood rom com pretty."

The thought of how much Bennie would love a romantic comedy starring Justin just gets him to shake his head.

"Oh goodness. The number of cars in town I probably ruined by throwing up in has to be in the double digits. At least." Though he does add about the dock, "You making out with the lake will always be one of my treasured memories though."

Consider he all but set fire to his old life and ran like hell while it burned, twice, Easton smiles at the talk of being his oldest friend. "Same. It's not like I have a lot of close boarding school chums. And most people from that old set would just make me want to punch them in the mouth, repeatedly." It's a similar sentiment, if not said quite as sweetly as Justin put it.

"To old friends"

Raising his glass in a toast is more Easton's style anyway.

"I'd have to be able to keep one long enough to cheat," Justin says with a wry smile and a shake of his head. "My luck in that department is ... I guess about what you'd expect for Hollywood," he laughs suddenly, because it's sad but true, lifting his glass to that. "I don't even have to do anything at all. I'm apparently not relationship material." He lifts a finger though and says, "It's a suspense flick, not a rom com. I'm playing a cop." He smirks at Easton, "A pretty cop."

"Listen, that lake was totally wet for me," he says, deadpan. It's a terrible joke, yet he delivers it with all the seriousness he can manage, until his expression cracks and he raises his glass up in a toast, "To not being one of the people you want to punch in the mouth.. repeatedly. It'd ruin my pretty face." And then he drinks. "What about the marines? You got any military buddies?"

"Relationship advice is closed. Sleeping around with ill advised people though? I am a fount of wisdom." Easton shakes his head and says, "Aw, poor pretty Hollywood." laughing at getting to mock him, gently for his relationship woes. "And fuck off with you're not relationship material. You're sweet, far too pretty, as we've established and wealthy. You are the center of the venn diagram of boyfriend material." With a mischievous grin he adds, "For someone else."

Easton groans at the joke about the lake but does at least appreciate the deadpan delivery. He raises his glass to the toast and drinks to it as well.

The question about military buddies elicits a sigh. "Well.. let's see. My dead best friend used to haunt me. Until I sacrificed his ghost to seal up the dead serial killer. One of my NCOs showed up to town in a wheelchair and I just kicked him out of my bar for calling a girl a dyke. And the suicide count on my former unit seems to go up every god damn day." He takes a drink and then asks wryly, "How's that for talking?" He shakes his head and sighs, "Sorry. That's.. it's hard. Everyone's got shit and it's different as an officer. I can't ever lean on them." It's not something he necessarily expects Justin to understand fully, but he tries to explain why what should be a natural support network doesn't quite work out that way in practice.

"Yeah, I require no additional assistance with sleeping around with ill-advised people," Justin laughs. "I'm good enough at finding that all on my own." He rolls his eyes then a little and says, "I'm not hitting on you, Easton. Don't worry."

"Because you lead them, and even if you're not still out there, they still look at you that way -- as an officer?" Justin asks after listening. "It's not the same, as being part of a group that were all the same rank." He might not be able to understand it fully, but it's clear that all joking is aside, and that he is actually genuinely trying to be there. "Hey, that was pretty good for talking. Though.. at some point, when I'm less tipsy.. we need to go back and revisit this whole serial killer thing." But not now, because now he's got a very solid buzz on and he doesn't think he's quite ready for that conversation.

"I'm not worried J." He laughs and says "But I've recently fucked over a friendship with that and I'm not looking to repeat that particular mistake. I really can't afford to screw up too many more."

Easton agrees quietly that Justin understands the gist of what he's saying. "Yea. That." And then stands. "Yea, I'm going to call it a night I think. If you want to crash the guest bedroom's all setup. But I should hit the hay before I start drunk texting Bennie or.. anyone else." The thought causes him to shake his head in shame as it obviously wouldn't be the first time, but he cheerfully adds, "Except Geoff. He'll never escape my drunken texts."