2020-02-08 - Flexing

There have been text messages sporadically back and forth over the last few days. Some are just dumb jokes, but there starts to be a thread of more serious topics about figuring out what they can do.

The day finally comes and at Easton's request they meet at a trail head before dark. Easton is dressed in a pair of camouflage pants, a black down jacket and a woolen knit hat. He's leaning against the jeep smoking a cigarette with a nervous energy that is possibly apparent even to Itzhak. He looks better than he has been, no dark circles under his eyes at least. And for once his jeep isn't packed to the gills with guns. It does have a cooler of beer though.

Itzhak made a hesitant overture, too, about how he could make the whole LGBT thing up to Easton. He's still not sure he did anything wrong, but Marshall was pissed off. So some kind of smoothing ruffled feathers is in order, because Itzhak really does like him. Also, he might want him to let him do it again.

Anyway he pulls his big, glittery orange pickup to the trailhead and swings on out. Big black peacoat, knit cap, and a scarf with a violin knitted on it. Heavy cold-weather pants, and of course he's always wearing those sleek, badass looking steel-toe workboots. He's brought a canvas drawstring bag and his violin case.

"How's by yas," he calls, cheerfully enough, tromping over to Easton.

A big plume of smoke escapes Easton's lips in a long drawn out exhale when the truck pulls in. He waits until Itzhak approaches to push himself up off the jeep and offer a handshake into hug greeting.

"Good good. How you doin'?" His Boston-ish New Englander accent growing just a touch thicker whenever he talks with Itzhak.

He breaks the hug to grab the cooler from the back, popping the top on a beer first and taking a drink as if he'd been waiting a long time for it. He had. But rules and rules and he's good at following them, and he set the rule that he wasn't drinking alone. Now he's no longer alone, so he's drinking.

"If I hear one word about me drinking tonight by the way I'm breaking that ridiculous beak of a nose." The threat is said with a grin as he offers Itzhak a beer of his own before they head off into the woods.

Itzhak gladly hugs Easton, thwapping him on his broad muscular back. Sure Itzhak is like a yard taller than him, but let's not let that stand in the way of a good bro hug! "Uhh, kinda awful, to be real honest." He catches the beer can, and elaborately mimes zipping his lip. "Ain't gonna hear anything from me." Haha, like THAT ever happens. He takes a swig, following Easton. He's not exactly a woodsy guy, but he does okay for a city slicker.

Easton pulls back from the hug to give him a curious head tilt. "Why awful, one of your harem left you?" Yes, Easton has now learned about his multiple girlfriends, so Itzhak can look forward to many, many jokes about that.

it's not a yard! It's a mere 6", just a half foot ... but it may as well be a hard for the difference in makes in the two men's heights.

Easton is hardly outdoorsy by any sense of the word, but he has been shooting in the woods and inadvertently hiking once or twice since coming to Gray Harbor. And despite the fact that he is in fact trying to pace himself the beer is gone before they even reach the clearing. Hey, at least they have one target to start with now.

Caught by surprise by that one, Itzhak snorts. "Harem. Please." Also he turns a little red. "Nah. Everything with them is fine. Mostly fine. Except, well, anyway, it's my garage." He's not so hasty with the beer, but nor is he slow with it. When they reach the clearing, he sets bag and violin case down, opens the bag, and pulls out a stack of clay pigeons, of all things. A couple few stacks of them, actually. More than would fit in the bag. And then he pulls out a couple of folded camping chairs.

"Uh-huh. I see you, collecting hottness of all genders."

Easton sets down the cooler and all he does is draw another beer out of it. One is just a good start and it's going to take at least two or three for him to even start to relax. There's still a good amount of tension in his movement, even if he's trying to keep his side of the conversation light and jocular.

"Your garage? What about it?" He seems confused, knowing Itzhak almost entirely in a personal sense he's never so much as seen where he works. But that gets lost when Itzhak starts pulling more things out of the bag.

"You glorious Jewish stick-legged bastard." He says with a mix of awe and annoyance. "I knew it. That's a thing!" It's the first time Easton's seen it and it's only recently been something that's moving about the edges of his mind. A sense of space beyond and being able to make use of it, only he's not been able to figure out how. But watching Itzhak pull more things out it makes sense.

That one sure turns Itzhak bright red. His mouth twists, trying not to smile. "Listen, ya jerk." Joik. Then shrugs, not going anywhere with the joik thing, it was just to sass Easton apparently. "Garage's ferkakt. All tilted off its frikkin' axis. They came by and gave it a good kick. Not a right angle in the place no mores."

He's kinda eyeing him as he pulls things out of the bag. Easy doesn't seem so easy. Seems tense. But then he outright laughs as Easton compliments him in best Marine fashion. "It's a thing, all right. Used it to get along in prison, you know? Hide contraband, steal it too. Steal anything." Maybe he's bragging a little.

Taking a moment to savor a cold sip of beer Easton pointedly ignores the jerk comment to give Itzhak a crooked smile. But the comments about the garage bring back an intense concentrated and severe look, Marine face basically. He shakes his head and says, "That sucks." With a pang of guilt he realizes part of why it sucks is because they could do that to his bar at any point in time as well. Just because. But this is about Itzhak and he commiserates as best he can.

Easton is not quite done admiring this latest parlor trick though, "You dirty ass con smuggling son of a bitch." He closes his eyes for a moment, as if wanting to concentrate on the unseen bit of what Itzhak is doing. The feeling. The bending of the proper rules of space so that objects can move in impossible ways.

"How does that work? You can put something where it shouldn't fit right?" That's the sense he's had. The weird compulsion that was starting to feel a little bit like mania, urging him to do the impossible.

Itzhak laughs again, tosses his head back and sings.

The sailors and the pilots
the soldiers and the law
the payoffs and the ripoffs
and the things nobody saw...

"You bet ya sweet abs you can, tateleh." To Easton's second sight, Itzhak has always blazed like a bonfire, flaming in more ways than one. His glimmer doesn't just glimmer. It's as strong as a searchlight. Picking up the folded canvas camp chair, he shoves it feet-first back in the bag to demonstrate. Easton can watch the way the chair bends as if refracted by water.

"You fucking lightweight. You've had one beer and you're already signing?" Easton grins, knowing that it likely doesn't even take that but it's fun to treat Itz like most of the guys he knows. Guys who usually start singing somewhere around round eight and don't sound nearly as good.

Glimmer is different for everyone and though some see light, or hear music for Easton is far more visceral. It's the feeling of making a gut decision, and when it comes to people the stronger the glimmer the stronger that sensation. In some ways Easton's let it draw him to people. For a long time he thought he had mistaken it as a warning. He might have been mistaken about the mistake part of that equation though.

Easton looks at the bag and says, "Can I take it out? I don't.." He looks at the bag unsure. He can't feel the chair anymore, which is a horrible hole in what he knows to be true. Like a blindspot in his awareness of all the objects around him.

"Since when do I need to drink to sing?" Itzhak says, flashing Easton a sly half-smile. "Yeah. Go ahead." He holds the bag's mouth open towards Easton. Terribly, there's nothing to really see in there. Just darkness. A black hole, maybe. But to Easton's sixth-or-seventh sense, the chair is in there. "Don't let it scare you," Itzhak adds. "Space works for us."

"Scared?" Easton looks at Itzhak with an expression that is clearly please even without a word. He cracks, "Just worried you got some hot latino cop in there ready to kick my ass. I just want to be prepared, that's all."

He reaches into the bag hesitantly, giving it a threatening look without meaning to, as if he's telling this bag that if it fucks with him, he will end it. But not out loud, because that would be crazy.

And with some concentration he's able to grasp the chair. His eyebrows slowly creep up as he draws out the sword.. er chair. He pulls it al the way out, triumphantly but then lets go and it gets sucked back in.

"Well... shit." He laughs and takes a drink of beer. "But that's a damn start Rosencratz!"

"Hell yeah, ya the righteous fuckin' King of England now." Itzhak grins with savage delight. "Nah, I keep my hot Latino cop elsewhere." There go the eyebrows, waggling saucily at Easton. "Jesus, you're strong now," he adds, sounding genuinely impressed. "Almost as strong as me. ...Almost." He tosses the bag to the ground--it sags as if empty. "Throw one a them pigeons," he tells Easton, and holds his left hand out palm-down. A pebble springs up from the forest floor to his hand.

"Good to know, don't need to get my hand bit tonight." Easton laughs about the possibilty of a bag holding Ruiz somewhere.

The comments about his strength get Easton to shrug but with a small smile of satisfaction. The rest though, Easton grins and says, "Yea, I get I'll never be queen fairy. That's just fine by me hoss."

At the command though a clay pigeon immediately lifts up and with a slight furrow of the brow it pulls back and gets launched into the air.

"Hah! I'm the queen fairy in this town." Grinning, Itzhak jogs the pebble gently in his hand a time or two, watching Easton. The flare of glimmer comes to him as a strong trumpet hit (Easton's just a brass kinda guy to him) and he snaps his eyes to the clay pigeon lifting off. Rearing back, he flings that pebble, and it sails too far, too fast, curving midair to hit the pigeon and shatter it. Itzhak whoops. "YEAH! Fuck yeah, baby, that's what I'm talkin' about. Your turn." He reaches down, flips a clay disk up off the stack and wings it into the sky. Although he does these things by throwing them, it's his paranormal strength that makes them go.

Finishing off another beer, Easton tosses that to the cooler and laughs when Itzhak's clay pigeon explodes. "Noice!" He calls out and lets himself feel each of those shards fall.

The pigeon taking off gets Easton to track it, instinctively by sight but really via his other senses. And with a whirl around him a small stone picks up off the earth and is sent sailing after it. Feeling both the speed of the pigeon and the stone Easton wills the impact into being. The shower of clay bits rains down on the foliage and Easton grins.

With a smile, three clay pigeons lift up off the ground and swirl around Easton. It's something he instinctively does when picking multiple items up, as if feeling their resistance against his gravitational like pull helps him to get a feel for them. "Let's see it Queen Mab." ANd with that he sends them off in three different directions, two high but one speeding through the woods, it's path a seemingly impossible threading of the trees.

Itzhak actually grunts when Easton's projectile shatters his pigeon into dust. That's a sound like he either got slugged or maybe like he's being bent over. "God damn, Easy, ya turning me on here. That was hot." He glances at him, eyebrows up, expression alight--and when Easton brings up three pigeons and flings them on an impossible course, Itzhak laughs. He ducks to grab up rocks, straightens and throws them. And then he sings, lifting his voice to the forest and the flying disks.

Well I'm runnin' down the road tryin' to loosen my load
I've got seven women on my mind

The pebbles split off from each other, hunting down the pigeons.

Four that wanna own me

SMASH! There goes one.

Two that wanna stone me

CRASH! There goes number two.

--one says she's a friend of mine...

The third rock whirls through space, tracking down that last tricky pigeon, maneuvering like a falcon, until it smashes right through and the disk shatters.

"A little rock chuckin' is all it takes?" Easton grins and then laughs, popping another beer, "Well too damned bad. Bennie and I are back together and I ain't fuckin' that shit up. Especially not for your lanky, blue-balling ass no matter how good a big spoon you make." He laughs but nearly chugs the beer, only giving Itzhak some mild side eye when he starts to singing.

But the collision courses are felt, and the pops cause his grin to only split wider. Like hits to a body outside his own he can feel each one. And much like a good punch, there's something to be enjoyed in it.

"Be sure to tell Javi that when it comes to shooting in the woods, I think you're more fun." No, Easton would never actually call Ruiz Javi to his face, but it certainly makes him laugh to say it now.

"I wouldn't let ya fuck it up, ya goddamn munchkin." Itzhak whaps Easton on the shoulder. "Even though you're a real cozy little spoon." His power is running high and his friendly smack has the tension of a ton of lead propped up by a toothpick. The strength of the man is intense, like the eyes of a hungry big predator staring from concealment. A lion, maybe, bellied down in tall brown grass. "And I ain't fuckin' anything up with de la Vega, so we're all on the same page here."

He plucks another beer for himself, the can simply flying to his hand like he thinks he's a fucking Jedi, and then just doubles over laughing at Easton's late statement there. "...I WILL tell him!"

Finishing off the beer and taking a seat in one of the chairs Easton lights up a cigarette and lets his head hang back over the back of the camp chair. He lets his eyes roam the darkening skies as if looking for something up there, in reality gauging how tightly wound he still is. It takes him a minute to catchup to the munchkin line and he says, "Oh shove it ya fuckin' size queen. You'd have an I only date guys above six feet dating profile, wouldn't ya, if ya had any damn standards." That is not what that phrase means, but it's fun to spin it that way.

"Good." Easton agrees about his lack of plans to screw things up. "People need some fuckin' happiness in this town, or at least some happy fucking."

Taking another beer, knowing damn well that he's not stopping and it's only because he purposefully didn't bring any that he hasn't switched to whiskey, Easton pops that one too.

"I have standards all right. I only blueball the hottest guys." Itzhak, smirking like an asshole, downs a slug of beer. He doesn't sit, restless, long fingers of one hand rapping out a beat against his skinny thigh. His gray hazel eyes flick to Easton, who's putting the beer away like a champ. But Itzhak promised he wouldn't say anything about it. Fine. He's not saying anything about it. Except like the Jewish queen he is, he can say plenty with a single glance. It's the eyebrows. He doesn't need to talk when he's got those eyebrows.

"I wanna do somethin'," he says, looking away. "Some of us are tryin' to chart the local stuff on the Other Side. And I wanna go further. Way further."

"Still don't understand how you have greater than one girlfriend." Easton shakes his head and drinks some more beer. The chatty Jewish eyebrow are summarily flipped off with an equally expressive WASPY middle finger, but he can't quite suppress the smile that crinkles just the corners of his eyes.

"I'm in." Easton barely even waits to hear what the idea is before he agrees to it. "The more we know about what's over on the other side, the better off we are."

"Shit, man. Neither do I." Itzhak sounds amused, though. "And there's more girls want a piece a me, too. And guys. Don't fuckin' ask me. I don't know. Just a too tall, too skinny violin dork with a nose that's way too big." He tips his head in acknowledgement at Easton's in. "Always good to have a United States Marine on my side. You. Me. Isabella. Couple other people to cover the rest of the field, maybe Roen and de la Vega."

"Yea well the hottest blond I've ever seen is apparently into my short ass, so who knows?" The fairer sex may be mysterious but Easton doesn't comment on the men. Those, less so.

"That works for me." He eyes the cooler and says, "You got about t minus three beers before you're carrying my fuzzy ass out of here. So either we should head back or maybe you can practice shoving drunk marines into bags for later like a super fucked up grab bag of men."