2020-02-04 - Drunk Phantoms

The Winslow trailer has been in the Huckleberry Park since it opened with a Winslow of some ilk living inside it. But Lilith Winslow will not be living in it, and Hank Winslow died this past summer at the Hanging Bridge, therefore, she's preparing it for rental. It's been a gradual process, even with glimmer cheats, but she has the place repaired, cleaned, and refurbished with most of the old furniture tossed out in the main areas. The two bedrooms are still as they were, though, as she's been working her way back to where the more personal belongings are. She intends to do Hank's bedroom last, so today, she's working on restoring and cleaning the hall bathroom and her old bedroom, which is still largely how she left it when she skipped town at eighteen, after high school.

The winter day is cold and gray and there's three vehicles parked outside, much fancier vehicles than the driveway used to see. Byron and Tobin have been wrangled into cleaning her bedroom out with her, not so much for the manual labor part, but for moral support as she depersonalizes the space and decides how much to actually keep and store or piece out to them, where appropriate. She's made hot chocolate spiked with Bailey's for them to sip from brick-red vintage mugs she brought with the bottle, cocoa packs, and tiny marshmallows, and it's nice and warming twice over with the smooth, hot sweetness and booze spiking.

Despite the personal finality of the task, Lilith's own spirits are somewhat high, even though she's taken with quiet, reflective spells here and there while pulling out things to look at, toss, or pack. The room is a bit like a time capsule of moody teenage girl and all the finds that come with it, a mix of her eclectic and artsy tastes and dark edges intermingled with sheer girlishness. For instance, her closet has a lot of black and her sheets are dark, her posters have dark fairies and raven art, but there's stuffed animals, a throw blanket with leaves and foxes, decorated boxes for pictures, a vanity with makeup, stickers on the mirror, and colored glass bottle decorations, etc.

"So. Since everything is either getting tossed or stored in a box, anything we find that you have an interest in taking is all yours. Except my old underwear, I guess, that'd be weird. I think there's literally a pair in there with skulls on them, but we all need a young and tacky phase to get it out of our system, right?"

Tobin has been quiet for the past month or so, even moreso than usual. He'd been all but absent during the holidays and barely out and about since New Year's. With the boat tours closed for the season, he's been mostly a hermit and what he's been doing with that time is anyone's guess. But when Lilith had asked them to come out and help with the trailer -- he was there, because Tobin was always there whenever anyone needed anything, willing to help.

"I don't think I had a young and tacky phase," Tobin says, raising a brow when she mentions her old underwear. "At least not a skull boxers phase, anyway." But there's a little tick of a smile on his lips as he sips his cocoa and helps by moving the "to keep" and "to toss" stuff out of the room as it accumulates so that there's more room within it to go through stuff as they unearth more.

Just wandering the interior of the Winslow's trailer brings back fond memories for Byron. The last time he was here, he was unable to fully appreciate the memories associated with this place. His mind was full of greed and treachery back then, when he rummaged through the place in search for anything that would lead him to the cursed ring, which he now knows is the Lover's Jewel. He remembers that much, even if some of it was a blur due to the corruption.

As usual, he's dressed casually for the task at hand, wearing a gray sweatshirt, probably with another layer beneath it, dark jeans and black boots. He still has his knit cap on because unlike a typical home, a trailer isn't usually heated very well come winter. That said, his gloves are removed and tucked into a pocket of the black leather jacket that he wears for further warmth. In fact, it's the spiked coffee that's heating up his hands now. "I'd say my young and tacky phase ended..." He pretends to think hard on this, "Maybe when I was nine or ten? I remember having Batman and Teenage Mutant Turtle underwear then."

He's bright smiles for the weather, seemingly in a good mood, though there are moments of quiet thoughtfulness in his eyes as if something that he'd laid eyes on had just stirred up a memory and not in the way that mentalist's do. Lilith's room was very familiar to him. Not only from the time he may have spent there as a child, though she changed some if out in the years where she ghosted him. But he was here just months prior, during his hunt for the ring. His eyes immediately fall to a space beneath her bed where he'd found a camping spike that had led him on this chase to the stone bridge that one fateful evening.

"Hm. Might have had a bad haircut phase, that counts enough." Lilith comments to Tobin while lifting her mug up to blow into and sip from, the side of her mouth twitching with threat of smile, then after the sip, she gestures toward Byron with the mug, "But that age doesn't count because we just wore what people gave us to wear. And I sure wore some things that were ill-fit or awful from those stupid church donation boxes Hank used to bring home and call 'school shopping'. But at least I had help with Tobin's mom putting me in cute here and there. And she taught me how to cuff pants right when they were boy jeans I ended up with." She casts a real smile that isn't held back this time for Tobin before turning it onto Byron, "Besides, I thought your Batman sweater was hot shit back in the day."

The brunette woman steps in striped angora boot socks toward the closet, navigating between the bags and boxes designated as junk or trash or storage. Settling down in her skinny jeans and layered amethyst and rose clinging henley shirts, hair in a ponytail and fresh faced, she's definitely added color to her wardrobe compared to all the black left inside from the teenage years and laid off the eyeliner. But the room still clearly feels 'home' to her, despite all the bitching and moaning she used to do about that home, and there's a booth-made picture strip on the vanity mirror with Byron and her about twelve, eyes crossed and tongues out in some, laughing and smiling in capture in the rest. Tucked in a corner of the same mirror, there's a picture from a poloroid camera of the three of them here in the room at age eight, outside in summer clothes in Tobin's backyard that his mother probably borrowed Lily's cherished old camera to take for them.

A glance at that picture seems to be what's spurred her to the closet to dig once seated with mug set aside, "All the old poloroids and other pictures are in a box I put back here with yearbooks. I don't feel overly compelled to keep the yearbooks, but we could put them in your office or closet, Byron. You don't have your old ones, I assume. But I know I put a bunch of weird little toys and things in here with the pictures." When Lilith opens the decorated and doodled on box, there's stuff alright, and the first thing she finds is a pink glittery bouncy ball she pulls out to show to Tobin with a grin, "You gave me this from a vending machine in the Safeway the first time your mom kept me overnight because Hank had to overnight in jail when we were like seven. And I cried when it bounced into guttering from the cement like two months later. How I still have it, no clue. I think I hid it after that, scared to play with it and lose it again."

She looks at Byron here with a tick of her chin, watching the ball bounce on the floor back into her palm before she tosses it at Tobin, "He spider-manned up and got it and almost fell getting back down. Anyway, look..." She starts to piece out photo results between them all at various ages and birthday parties posed, some of them obviously the picture results of kids playing with the camera and playing amateur photographers.

Tobin glances upward, as though he could see his somewhat shaggy hair falling around his face by doing so, and smirks just a little bit. "Is it a phase if it's a permanent life choice?" he asks. He gives a faint smile to Lilith when she mentions how his mom helped out. His own clothes had been rather unremarkable as a kid. His mom never bought him anything "cool" or "trendy" but then, he was always dressed decently, if inexpensively. Even when his father was around, they didn't have a lot of money. He grins over at Byron though and says, "You did have that cool watch, too."

His own clothes haven't changed much over the years. Most of them consist of several pairs of the same jeans and a vast collection of t-shirts that are mixed and matched with various long sleeved button down shirts. Athletic socks or black socks go with boots or athletic shoes depending on the day. It's not that he doesn't own some dressier clothes, just that working on the boats rarely calls for them.

He takes another sip from his mug and looks at the pictures, the little smile on his lips growing just a bit. There had been a lot of fun times as kids, back before all the real worries started. He glances over when Lilith produces the ball. "I remember. I still have the green sparkly one that I got for me. It's in a box in my room," likely a similar boxed filled with trinkets and photos of his own. When she tosses it in his direction he catches it, turning it over in his fingers. He jumps just a little at the sound of something falling, and glances over his shoulder, but assumes something just fell in the bathroom and goes back to looking at the pictures.

Byron's had a few bad haircuts in his day, mostly when he was younger and his father insisted that he cut his hair short. It's only after Stephen Thorne died that he began to really grow his hair out. Taking quiet sips from his cup, he'll wander the small space, picking up a few things here and there, especially those that he recognizes from back in the day. "Maybe I should wear my Batman Tee more often, see if you still think it's hot." He says with his voice laced with humor when his gaze lifts to peer across the way and over the frame of a picture to view Lilith. The picture in question is one with just the two of them, Lilith and Byron, dated around the time they were maybe eleven. Despite their family lives, they seemed happy. Or happy enough.

The mention of the yearbooks among other things draws his interest, making Byron set the picture frame back down, for now, to take a look at what's to be found inside that box. Lilith was right, he had no yearbooks or anything of that sort. Most things from his childhood were disposed of already, by his mother. "I don't think I want to even see what I looked like in those yearbooks." He jokes with a laugh, "But yeah, we can stick them into my office or hell, the bookcase in the living room. Though some nosy guest might find them there, so the office it is. Locked away in some filing cabinet."

The story of the small rubber ball sure brings back memories. Hell everything in this place brings back memories and while this isn't his home to do anything with and knowing full well the life Lilith had here, there is some regret inside of him of her just giving the place up. Not permanently, but the interior will be completely different once a new tenant moves in.

The sudden sound heard in the bathroom, while it gets his attention, Tobin's already on the move to investigate. It's probably nothing. "You didn't bring Smog here earlier, did you?" He's sure she didn't, but it would be just like a cat to start knocking things down.

"Fair point." Lilith tells Tobin after the toss, her smile widening when he confesses to having the green bouncy and glittery counterpart still, himself, "You do? Gosh, we should take out stock in bouncy ball vending machines, honestly. I think kids could legitimately use them as a form of pure bartering currency, the way we cherish those things." Then after the clatter and passout of pictures and yearbooks in reachable view, she reacts to the clatter with a drink from the mug again and a tiny shake of her head, "No cat. I think that just means I've left the cleaner soaking so long, the grime is coming loose and is no longer binding things in place. Which is good. I think. Until I find out there's no caulking in the tile left anywhere beneath all that."

Then, pushing up, she steps over some things in her socked feet and pats her hand against Byron's stomach in passing, play bartering a deal of her own, "Tell you what. I'll get you one tiny Batman shirt to crop up and show your abs, you wear that, I'll wear the skull panties, it'll be fantastic. Hang on, going to go scrub and rinse this in the bathroom, keep looking through stuff or pack up what you want to start on. Clothes are all donation and the hangers are those cheap wire ones so I don't even want to take those. Yearbooks can go in the not-storage-keep-box. And if I die of cleaning fume inhalation while in there, I love you both."

Then she's off to do the shower scrubbing thing she prepped for, right around the corner of the hall in the bathroom, doors left open so she can kind of hear conversation. Inside the variety of pictures, there's also things like cool smooth rocks or shells from the beach in town, an unused fake tattoo of a lily flower from vending machine, a glossy black feather, etc. The kinds of things kids just keep and don't have the heart to throw away for whatever reason.

"I mean, I think it's hot," Tobin tells Byron with a little amused grin. "But that's just me." He plucks up some of the photographs and looks them over, one after the other, and then stacks them neatly and sets them back within the box. Among the little things that are stored there, he finds one of those decoder dial things that you could use to write secret messages. "Hey, I remember these. We used to leave notes in code with these." He sets it, too, back into the box. He's not too interested in the yearbooks, but then, he has his own set at home to peruse if he wants to. He then grins over at Lilith and says, "As I recall, we did use them to barter with -- those and marbles from time to time."

"Don't die!" he shouts to her as she heads off down the hall to go attend to the bathroom. In the meantime, he begins to put stuff into the donation pile, gathering some of the stray clothes here and there and folding them a bit before setting them into the big box marked to go for donations. The thumping draws his attention again and he frowns slightly, one brow rising slightly. "Do you feel that?" he asks Byron. "I don't think we're alone.." meaning the three of them, obviously.

"If the cat's not here, who's watching it?" Byron just has to ask. Not that Smog is a handful, but it's still a cat and there's a lot of things for it to destroy the way felines do in both her shop and his apartment and he knows that the thing isn't at his place.

When both Tobin and Lilith comment on the hotness of wearing a Batman T-shirt is, this wide, slightly embarrassed grin spreads across Byron's lips from ear to ear. The pats in passing given at his midsection just has him shaking his head before her offer comes out. "By fantastic, I think you mean ridiculous." He's not afraid to state plainly even if he's all smiles. His eyes then lower to her view her hips and rear when she moves along, probably imagining her in those skull panties. Or anything or nothing at all. "We'll see about that."

After another drink of hard coffee, he finally sets the mug down to get to work, gathering up all of the yearbooks since he's sure that they are coming back to his place, among other other items like photographs. Though Tobin's bringing up the decoder has him hovering around near the person he's had the longest friendship with. "Those were always fun. Made us feel like we were in our own special club-- but in actuality, other kids had similar decoders."

It's at that moment that he senses the room getting colder. This was an old trailer and before a new tenant arrived, it would need to go through some repair, so he almost dismisses this fact. That is until Tobin mentions their not being alone. "What do you mean we're not alone?"

Lilith is scrubbing away with water going off and on once she's in the bathroom. At some point, her socks come off with toss into the hallway for reclaiming later so she can actually barefoot stand in there to get in the mildew's business from reach standing inside the tub. And while working, she calls out of the door, "I gave him... a trial run alone in the loft now that he's more... settled. I guess we'll see how that goes!"

Then, oblivious to what they're talking about there in close quarters, or any thumps now that she's scrubbing, she calls out with humor lacing her voice, "You tell Tobin how we ended up with a cat?"

"There is absolutely nothing wrong with ridiculous," Tobin points out as he continues to gather things and put them in their appointed containers. Mercifully, he does not find any of Lilith's old underwear in his foray through the drawers of a nearby bureau. His own mug had been polished off and sits on top of the bureau where he set it while digging around through the drawers.

"I mean.. I can sense.. someone else .. here." He pauses and straightens and looks around, a slight frown touching the edges of his lips. "Not you, me, or Lilith, and definitely not a cat."

"I'm glad that its being cooperative." Is all that Byron has to say about the cat behaving. "And no, I did not." He is then quick to say, eyes looking over at Tobin just as Byron starts to fill a box with yearbooks, standing them up rather than laying them flat. "We got ourselves a cat straight out of the alley. I think I got some pictures of it to show on my phone." Just like any good cat owner... "It's an interesting one. Looks like a pissed off stuffed animal version of a cat."

At something Tobin says, Byron will toss in, "You wear it then. No one'll be disappointed." It's all in good spirits.

Speaking of...

Hearing the rustling going on in the closet, he slowly turns to face it. "Why wouldn't it be a cat? Or a raccoon?" Without even thinking, he tries to sort out whether the thing in the closet is a living being, trying to gauge its emotions or tap at its mind as he slowly makes his approach after ridding himself of yearbooks.

Lilith might hear something akin to Byron telling Tobin about the cat, or is just assuming he's at least telling him something to the effect while in the bathroom, oblivious to other issue at hand in the bedroom. The pair of men can hear her bumping and scrubbing around in there with elbow grease and the shower wall definitely doesn't back up to the closet now that she's making enough noise to compare.

"Byron calls him Smog like... the air soot because he's kind of pale ash. But I call him Smaug like... the dragon because his eyes are... well, you'll see."

Then there's more scrubbing. If she's going to detail the turns that has the pair of them with an alley cat now, it's not at the moment, maybe thankfully. Byron isn't in a position to be blushing at the moment, anyway, shifting his focus as he is.

"Wait, what am I wearing?" Tobin asks, having been distracted by that weird nagging feeling that there is someone else there and having lost the thread of the conversation. When Byron goes over toward the closet to check out what might be inside, he hangs back, watching a little bit curiously, not sure exactly what might be in the closet. "Uh huh," Tobin calls out to Lilith, but his attention is mostly on the closet.

They were in a tiny trailer, who could be hiding in a closet as small as Lilith's? Byron's expecting to see some sort of animal either jump out at him or scamper on past once he makes his presence known. With that in mind, and the sudden chill of the atmosphere, though he still believes it's just a draft coming in from a crack in the wall somewhere, he takes cautiously tense steps.

There's no emotions that he can pick out, which should make him discount this idea that something's actually here. Even Veil creatures and Dream things had a mind which he could sense and manipulate.

The conversation that he'd just been in earlier is mostly forgotten for the time. Something strange was afoot. And then the form of Hank Winslow appears before them, looking the way he did back on the Hanging Bridge. The suddenness of the man's appearance gives Byron a quick start, but he's able to steel himself enough even if he takes a single step back.

This had to be a Dream, but he would've sensed this thing if he were a Dream thing. This makes him incredibly uneasy as he stares incredulously at the man. "Hank," Even as a kid, both he and Lilith would address her father by his first name, "What are you.. What are you doing here?"

Lilith doesn't see or know what's going on from inside the bathroom where the water has come on at length again with some sloshing, then a witless laughing little squeak as the shower accidentally turns on to briefly spray and off again while she scrubs at the metal plate that holds the lever, "Son of a... ohmygod this water takes forever to heat up and I just sprayed myself in the face, I'm brilliant. I think I should invest in blonde hair dye, that was stupid." Half of what she's saying is kind of a mumbled echo anyway, though, and definitely not priority now for the two men. Nor is what comes next with call out blahblah while she rinses the tile.

"Mmhmm, this caulking is dead. Damn. I don't want to draw the dark shadows cheating to caulk a tub because I don't want to go to the hardware store."

There's a pause as if she's considering the shortcut as an afterthought, but then she assures with, "... I'm not going to. I'll buy caulk."

Another pause, "That sounded wrong aloud."

Oblivious as hell, clearly.

Tobin isn't really paying attention to what Lilith is saying in the other room. He's staring at the man hanging in the closet with his mouth open for several long moments caught between being stunned that they're not in a Dream, and yet there's a .. ghost.. right there in the room? Finally what /does/ come out of his mouth is, "Sure, if you consider figuring out what's behind the furniture an adventure." He then echoes Byron's question. "What.. /are/ you doing here?" He can't seem to decide how to feel about this turn of events. And so he continues to just stand there, one hand half in the drawer without actually taking anything out to put it in a box, staring at the ghost in the closet.

Byron's used to Lilith's chatty-ness and usually he'd be more engaged by right now just seeing what very well could be Hank Wnslow's ghost has him in a state of disbelief, shock, perhaps even annoyance. No, he's not happy to see Lilith's dead father here. When Hank makes that joke about something he'd heard Lilith say, Byron's brow quirks, looking at the man with some annoyance, "I have no idea what you're talking about." It's firm and unfriendly.

There's no laughter at his jokes, faked or not and when he's told to fetch the guy this or that, he waves his hand towards the kitchen in regards to the drink, "Go help yourself." To the request for a cigarette though, he reaches into his jacket pocket to pull out a pack that he'll sometimes carry though he's not a regular smoker himself. Tapping out a cigarette, he hands this off to Winslow, those unfriendly eyes still taking in this apparition.

No answer is given when the man mentions marriage and how they'd invite Lilith's deadbeat father to this or that. Rather, he says nothing at all until the last part, when he answers their question. "What do you mean stuck? Stuck here in this damn trailer?" He even takes a step forward, looking as if he might grab Hank by the collar in an aggressive move. His words come out menacingly quiet. Maybe he's trying to hide the fact that Hank's here from Lilith. At least for now.

Oh god, the sound of the neck unsnapping has Tobin turning a vague shade of green. Then when he continues to adjust his head, making more crunching noises, that green becomes a particularly virulent shade and Tobin actually has to take a couple of deep breaths. Man, that's fucking awful. He has nothing to say to much of what Hank Winslow has to say, except for the very end.

"Hey Lilith?" he calls out down the hall, leaning out the bedroom door. "Uh, what part of your dad did you stuff in a magic box? And where are you keeping it, by any chance?" Because /that's/ not a weird question to randomly shout down the hall.

"No, I didn't put the cat in my magic box. Dork. I like your modern solutions, though." Okay, Lilith thinks they're still talking about the cat out there somehow while distracted and running water and giving the tile a final shine and scrub with detail work and flushing of the rotted out and eaten caulking between tiles and the tub. Also Tobin probably has no idea she has an ACTUAL MAGIC BOX to be hearing that all funny and think he's joking about pet control. It's that shower echo thing where you can hear someone in there talking fine but they suck at hearing you, no doubt.

Then she goes a little pensive with tone of voice, "But Itzhak is supposed to look at it and tell me how it's made or something. I'm not sure how that works or what he means, do you, Byron? Also Tobin, did you hear his shop got all messed up by... mmhm. Them. Apparently it looks like an abstract painting with angles all off and I'm morbidly fascinated to go see."

Tobin pinches the bridge of his nose, both at Lilith misunderstanding him, and Hank's head-wobbling shenanigans. He tries not to look at him. That doesn't stop the /sounds/ from reaching him, though. Fortunately, he manages to maintain control of himself. Instead of shouting to Lilith again, though, he listens to what Hank has to say, then looks between him and Byron. "What makes you think we know how to exorcise you? We're not the ghost busters. I'm a tour guide. He's an apartment building owner." Who did help put away Billy the Ghoul, after all, but that is not entering into Tobin's argument at the moment.

He takes a deep breath and then lets it out slowly, looking over at Byron, as though wondering if he has any insight as to what they should do about Hank. Tobin'd mostly avoided Hank in life, spending time with Lilith when he wasn't around, so he had little experience with the man in life.

There's this tension in Byron's frame when Tobin calls out to Lilith, but he keeps eye contact with Hank as if saying 'Don't fuck this up'. For the time, he falls silent, not saying a damn word to allow Lilith this time to speak all without attracting suspicion. When it's clear that she misinterprets or mishears the question, he's quick to state, probably around the same time that Hank does. "It's buried in Gohl's casket." Byron was there for that.

However, to ease Lilith's mind, he'll respond to her during their own conversation with the deceased Winslow, "I don't know. Must be something a TK'er can do. I can't say I'm well-versed with their Talent-set."

His tone lowers now that he's no longer shouting to the other room, "So that's why you showed your face? You want to be exorcised?" This isn't the first ghost that he'd interacted with. Carver's friend or sister, whoever she was, was his first. But there's no kindness to his tone when he speaks to Hank.

Turning to Tobin, Byron then states, "Minerva Kosimar, the goth chick is into the occult. She helped bring Gohl down." Resettling his gaze on the elder, dead Winslow, he asks, "Who else you got there? Do ghosts see other ghosts?" It's such a random question. "Anyway, we'll speak to Kosimar. See if she can release you and set you free to go wherever a soul like yours goes to."

"Wow. It feels nice and cold in here, I got hot doing that. Needs to dry overnight before I can caulk it properly, so I wanted to get it done, I promise I wasn't trying to stick you all with the work." Then she pauses to look between the pair by the closet while fanning at her face and juggling the towel with her other hand, "... why are you throwing cigarettes on the floor? That's not how they work."

"Oh, right, her," Tobin says, remembering the one meeting that he went to of the Paranormal Society. "Well, if she can fix him, then I guess that's cool." It seems perfectly fine with him to leave exorcising Hank's ghost up to someone with more occult knowledge than he. Glimmer? The Veil? Those are his purview. Ghosts are definitely not. And he seems even more relieved when Hank and his janky neck disappear entirely, leaving them alone in the room again. He rubs at his face a little with both hands, just in time for Lilith to come around the corner. He doesn't try to answer the question about the cigarettes, though. Instead, he just sits down on the edge of the bed with a little bit of a whoosh of air.

At this moment, Byron decides to give off this unfriendly vibe whether Hank deserved it or not. But he watched how Hank was when Lilith was growing up, so much of how he thought about the man came from those moments. What he'd witnessed as a child. He had a lot to get off his chest, things that he never had the chance to say-- things that Lilith never had the chance to say to her father before his death.

However, for now, he stills his tongue even if he doesn't ease up on the antagonism. At least in appearance. "Don't worry about Lilith. We'll look out for her." He'll give Hank that much if it helps. Though when the older Winslow mentions that he can't find her, Byron falls silent.

And then he is gone once Lilith makes her appearance, watching as the unlit cigarette falls to the ground. A look is shared with Tobin, something along the lines of 'We'll talk about this later'. But Lilith is here and Byron is crouched down to snatch the cigarette from off the floor. "It fell." He'll leave it at that!

From his crouched position, he gives her this easy smile, "You're looking rather wet." His tone is playful as he rises. "I was thinking we could all take a little break, though by the looks of it, you got far more accomplished that what we did here."

"Honestly, I just wanted the company more than the help, once we get undistracted by poking through memories here and there, it'll all move pretty fast. Do you guys want to get out of here and go get some food and air? Need caulk anyway while I'm out, maybe if I dry things well enough, I won't have to come back in the morning to do it and can sneak it in at the end of the day." Lilith suggests with no real thought to the idea that Byron dropped a cigarette, easily brushed off with enough of an explanation and the distraction of his smile and suggestion for a break. Looping her arms around his waist all mist and errant spray dampened, she eyes Tobin while saying, "And I will spare poor Tobin what I want to say about being rather wet."

Leaning her cheek in against Byron's sweater while standing there hugging, jeans rolled up too above her bare feet, she puts on the squeeze hard while switching to a more genuine tone. Then she starts to release gradually to come brush a hand through Tobin's hair afterwards, "Seriously, though, this could be a rough day if I had to do it alone. It's weird to think of other people living here and clearing out everything I used to know. Thank you. After I put myself back together, we'll go energize with calories before really getting to business."

Then, while trailing out to get her socks and boots and general presentation re-settled for a meal and no doubt reminiscing time out over a table, she flashes a grin over her shoulder, "And let's take one of the old mix CDs I burned, there's a stack of those in the vanity drawer. I'll let you guys pick and whatever comes over the speakers, we're subject to. Choose wisely or you'll end up with boy bands."

Tobin catches that look from Byron and just nods a little bit. He looks a little bit tired, and some of the good mood that the walk down memory lane provided seems to have worn off. He rubs a bit at his face and then says, "Hey, I got some stuff done." He did. Some. Before Hank had made his appearance, anyway. He pulls himself up from where he'd sat down just in time for Lilith to come brush her hand through his hair. He gives her a little smirk and says, "Oh, don't hold back on my account." He gives her a little one-armed hug around the shoulders, dampness and all. Then he nods. "Alright, food, and then we'll get back into it." He goes over to the vanity to pull out the stack of CD's and flip through them, immediately discarding a couple back into the drawer before Byron even gets a chance to go through them, himself. He finally chooses three that meet with his apparently his level of acceptability as far as music goes. Then he hands those over to Byron to choose from. "Choose wisely," he intones, in a voice that sounds not unlike a dungeon master from a video game.

Even though Lilith is getting his sweater damp, Byron doesn't seem to mind, slipping an arm around her in turn when she settles in close. The cigarette is already put away, tucked into some random pocket. He'll slip it back into the actual pack later. Initially, he simply watches Lilith to make sure that she hadn't witnessed anything regarding her father. It seems that she had no clue that Hank visited them. That much was a relief.

Caulk

That's what Hank was talking about. "I've got caulk you could use." This is all said with a straight face, his chin lifted, eyes settled on her before he breaks out into this ghost of a smile. "Food sounds great actually." Just before Lilith fully pulls away, he leans in close to brush his lips against her slightly still damp hair.

Then there's Tobin rummaging through the CDs before Byron gets a chance to look at them. When he's handed several that his friend had chosen, he sifts through them, reading the names of some of the songs listed, finding one that he used to like back in the day. "I hope that I'm not making you regret giving me this decision." Yeah, it's Coldplay. Viva La Vida.

As they all file out of the door, humming the tune to that particular song, he pauses to turn and look at the space where Hank Winslow once stood. "Now the Old King is Dead. Long Live the King."