2020-02-08 - Girls Night In

It isn't long until after visiting Alexander in the hospital that Isabella has returned to 13 Elm to check on one Bennie Oakes, bringing several things that are absolutely essential for a night in - a couple of two liter bottles of ginger ale, a host of romantic comedies from the local Red Box, a tub of freshly popped kettle corn and a small basket full of bath essentials for Bennie, if not just so she can associate the bathtub as a place to take warm, decadent bubbly soaks instead of a place to count out pills. That, and winters are hard - given that she spends her career drenched in saltwater, if there's anything the young archaeologist is particularly fastidious about, it's skincare.

"Benz?" she calls out, hauling her hoard through the door and setting it down before closing it. She sheds her outer layers and hangs them up neatly. She might be living with Alexander now, but she is very cognizant about the fact that this is his space, and he's very serious about keeping things in proper places. "I've got supplies, and your ginger ale."

It takes a few minutes after she's heralded for Bennie to emerge from the bedroom she's been allotted for her trials and tribulations of detox. She'd feel completely guilty about ousting the couple from the only actual bedroom that serves as such, but the privacy it affords right now (and the confinement when necessary) is so very precious she can't muster honest argument about why she should be the one to camp out in the elaborate tenting system in the living room.

She comes from the hallway, shuffling like an overmedicated mental patient, the imagery helped by the fact that she's in an overlarge pair of sweats that were loaned to her once again by Alexander because the blonde declared all fabrics she owned were irritating and threatened to burn them in a fit in the kitchen sink. Such has gone her week.

"Hi." She mutters a lame greeting as she flops into one corner of the couch and pulls up her legs, dragging down the hem of the sweatshirt until it's over her knees, creating a Bennie Bundle. "How's Alexander?"

"He's..." Isabella hesitates, running through the gamut of replies that range from zero to a hundred on the local Insanity Scale, briefly pondering whether she ought to just tell her the truth - that Alexander was in the hospital because he got in a bar fight, and it somehow pushed him into a worrisome level of power that left patients in Addington Memorial screaming for their parents as they're introduced to their worst nightmares while he was unconscious. But considering the other woman's present state, she decides to go with, "...exhausted, and aching, but resting. He's honestly more worried about you than he is about himself." All absolutely truthful.

She brings the plastic bags to the kitchen, putting a few cubes of ice in a couple of glasses before returning to Bennie and handing her one full of crisp ginger ale; she has water for herself. "I brought movies," she says, setting the DVDs on the coffee table. "In case you need the distraction. Have you had anything yet today in terms of food? I can heat up some soup."

Bennie lifts both her hands to accept the glass, not confident in the ability of just a single one to hold it, drawing it to her chest like a child with a cup of cocoa they're afraid to spill. "I have a nurse friend that texts me, it used to be just so I would know how the people I brought in off the rig were fairing, but now it's also to alert me when friends show up in the ER. In increasingly frightening numbers. She said he was agitated." Her face screws up, trying to process thought. "No, rather...the whole place was agitated? Like a Full Moon night to the nth degree. I checked in on him, but didn't want to...press beyond assurances that he wasn't dead. And I'm horribly self centered right now." She musters a bit of a smile, a wobbly thing not near her normal level of sunshine. "How about we distract each other. Sounds like you need it too, and I promised to sit on you so you wouldn't work and actually get some rest."

Bennie's description puts an exhausted expression on Isabella's face as she eases next to the attractive blonde, and flashes her a reassuring smile. "It should be fine now," she tells her, and that, too, is truthful. "I had to intervene, he's getting some actual sleep. I'll...let him tell you about it, if he wants, but he'll be okay." Tremors start to ripple over her fingers in remembrance, reliving the dive of the pieces of her into the roiling oil slick of his most nefarious nightmares in an effort to get to the heart of him, cutting herself with all of his jagged edges because she is ill-equipped to reach him in a way that the likes of August, Itzhak and even Bennie and Byron could muster easily in comparison.

"Anyway, distracting each other sounds great. What can I do to distract you? We can use the elaborate musical set up in Alexander's bedroom and crank it up, have a private dance party, but fair warning? I'm not the best dancer in the world." That does not stop her, however, from wholeheartedly making a fool of herself in spite of this. A grin blossoms on her lips. "Or you can sit on me. I promise I won't bite hard." She waggles her brows playfully at Bennie at that.

Bennie dares to shift her hold on her glass to just one hand so she can offer the free one to Isabella, her skin slightly chilly and clammy from the perspiration from the tumbler of ginger ale she has yet to dare sip from lest her stomach protest. "If only we could get absolutely plastered and just pretend the real world doesn't exist for a while." But. Such things are not conducive to a detox/rehab. Bennie's even avoiding aspirin in her attempt to get clean. "When I'm clean and you're back from England, we'll have to get positively pots'd, I'll take the honorary role for Easton."

The offered hand is taken without hesitation, Isabella's grin lingering. "Yeah, well, far be it for me to influence questionable behavior in a very sensitive time," she tells her. Chilly and clammy the other woman's skin might be, she gives her fingers a warm squeeze. "Depending on what happens in England, I'm pretty sure I'll be up for getting absolutely destroyed either way." Green-and-gold eyes search the blonde's profile. "How are the two of you doing?" she asks. "You and E. Have you talked to him at all since you started staying here?"

"We've texted. Checked in on one another. We both know it's for the best that we be apart right now otherwise I'm pretty sure we'd just enable each other or mask the issue with sex. Lots of glorious sex. Have I mentioned how much I miss the sex? But this is something I needed to do, and needed to do now even though Easton I just barely got together. But Christmas was just too...close of a call." Bennie's nose wrinkles up briefly at the thought. But she shoves that emotion down with a flippant, "Have I mentioned how much I miss the sex?" She gives a sigh and curls closer to Isabella, to fill the void with personal contact. "So when you become a Doctor are you going to get married and start spitting out little genius babies?"

"We can talk about it if you would like - what happened at Christmas." Isabella pauses. "But we can also talk about all the sex you're missing." She lets out a small laugh, setting aside her glass so she can open her arms when the blonde comes closer to her. "It's nice, you know. Even if the two of you are apart right now. The way the two talk about one another, and basically unable to keep your hands off one another. How it's like gravity where you can't help but get sucked in no matter how difficult it is, or how mad you are. Not many people find that."

She isn't particularly demonstrative physically when it comes to affection, but she makes a special exception for those who seek it out from her actively, unable to turn these affectionate tokens away; understandable, when one has lived a largely transient life across countries and continents. This is the first time she has had in a long time where she has found herself with a 'home base', teeming with lives she gives a damn about.

She wraps her arms around Bennie and squeezes warmly and slowly, if she allows, leans back against the couch with the blonde in her arms, eyes staring up at the ceiling. "I'm honestly not sure," she tells her quietly. "Alexander doesn't want me to stay here and I have some thinking to do once I get my doctorate." She speaks of it as if it isn't even a question that she'd be awarded it, nevermind that Oxford is a challenging institution to start and that it holds the distinction of being the number-one program in the world for her field. She has never shared Alexander's propensity for humility. "But I know Alexander's always wanted to get married, wanted to have children. I think some part of him might have given up on those dreams after everything he's gone through." After a heartbeat, she continues, "I never had them. Thinking I would get married or have kids someday. I always thought I'd just be out there. I've tasted the life...I don't regret any of it, but now that I'm on an entirely different sort of adventure, looking back on it, it's...it felt..."

Lonely, is what she means to say, but the word traps at the back of her throat.

"What about the two of you?" she asks. "I mean, is that in the cards? Marriage, children? From what I'm seeing, you and E are just as endgame as Lilith and Ronnie."

"I went to a dark place." Is all Bennie says of Christmas and the duration Easton and her were effectively broken up, she thought for good this time. But, "Gravity. That's exactly it. I never feel quite whole when I'm not around him. Like there is some thread unravelled between us when we're apart, but it's always there, connecting us, and I'm never satisfied until we're reeled back in. Now I'm just determined to make sure that my half of the equation is solid as it can be. I want to be a better Bennie for me as much as for us. But it's hard. I lose all reason when I'm with him. We're determined to live apart until we get our shit together, but then I see him and I want to throw all that out the window."

She gives a little shrug in Isabella's embrace. "Married, yes, but neither of us ever had that urge for children." She tilts her head slightly so she can look at Isabella, "Ronnie, huh?" She's never heard Byron called that, but no doubt she'll needle him about it later. "Once Alexander learns to trust himself again, those feelings will come back. And I can't think of anyone better suited to be his better half for better or for worse."

"It's hard," Isabella affirms quietly. "Being away from the other half of you." Simple words, and those that she doesn't feel up to clarifying at the moment, but the ache is present in her tone. Bennie would get the impression, however, that she isn't talking about Alexander. "Plus, I mean...all the sex that you're not having." She sneaks her a sidelong wink, though the teasing glimpse of levity fades in lieu of a more serious, "The two of you'll get there, Bennie. I know it. I mean, the last time I talked to E, he's cranky as all hell not being able to drink anything stronger than a beer. But he's determined to be a better Easton Marshall, too - for himself and for the both of you."

Confirmation about the wedding bells quirks a faint grin on her lips. "I figured - I'm invited, right?" She nudges Bennie playfully at that. "Not everyone's made for children. I don't know if I am, but I never had the urge. Honestly, it makes me feel less weird to hear someone else say that. Erin definitely wants them, though, I don't think she cares if she ever gets a man so long as she has a child." The sidelong glance has her laughing softly. "And yeah. Ronnie. I've called him that since we were kids." She falls quiet, brows stitching together in an effort to put thoughts into words, and whenever she thinks she's ready: "I don't know if he'll ever learn how to trust himself again, but I'm at the very least determined to prove to him that he could trust me." After a moment, she looks over at the blonde. "Is it weird to tell you that it doesn't matter, to me? Whether I have a ring, whether he asks me, or I ask him, whether there's a piece of paper filed in City Hall with his name and mine on it? That it's enough that I know he's mine and he knows I'm his, and I'll be satisfied so long as he never forgets that for as long as he lives, or I live?"

She closes her eyes. "I think he'd be terrified if anyone asked him. Happy, but terrified."

Bennie seems to try to consider Isabella's words, her tone, when it comes to missing halves, but it just makes her head ache and so she ruefully rubs her temple. "All the no seeeex." Bennie laments with a backwards thunk of her head against the couch. "I swear the man was built for it, with those abs. I just hope when all this is said and done, I still have the same energy I did before. Or I'll just have to drink a lot of caffeine to get the same high." Her head lulls over to look at Isabella again, one of her legs looping over the brunette's. "No child needs Easton and my genes. To be blessed with a double addictive personality? Not to mention everything else I've got mucking up my pool."

Further talk about wedding bells make a little color appear in Bennie's cheeks that have started to show a hint of weight loss from her stint here at Alexander's. "That's still...not necessarily on the horizon, but guaranteed invitation pending we don't just elope like he and Geoff did if it does happen. It's not weird though, no not need those things. I'd be happy with Easton just the same. But if there /are/ rings and paper and signatures? Then I'm a death 'til you part kinda gal. So. Yeah. That's not what's best for Easton right now."

"I was going to ask about them, but I think considering just how much the two of you do it, I think I've discovered the secret as to how you can make waffles with those things," Isabella says out loud with a laugh. "I mean all that lower-extremity workout, all the crunching and the twisting." Dark brows raise towards her hairline before they waggle. "I'm pretty sure you'll find a way to get it up once it gets going. Plus...there's always..." She reaches over to touch Bennie's temple with a finger. "Trust me, there are ways to cheat." A long silence, before she coughs - while she doesn't color, she's suddenly very interested in the far wall. "I mean, you're from the healing aspect, yeah? There's all sorts of ways you can dig up the energy, if that's the worry."

As for future Oakes-Marshall rugrats? "Maybe. But they'll be really attractive hot messes though. Just like their parents. Still, I don't think...I mean, it's not entirely biological. In the end, upbringing has something to do with it too, but if it's not for you, it's not for you, and if your doctors ever give you the eye about deciding the other way, you can fire them and get a new one." She rolls her eyes skywards. "I've had a couple of British OB-GYNs who got judgy immediately when I told them I wasn't certain about having children. One of them even had the gall to tell me that she didn't believe a woman should go through her life without experiencing childbirth. Could you believe that? Excuse you too, lady."

The guaranteed invitation brightens her grouchy expression at being judged by other medical professionals. "Alright, I'll hold you to that. But yeah, I figured that about you." She tangles her leg against her own. "I don't know if we have too much in common, but in that, we're the same. Not the sort to settle for less than what we want."

Bennie gives a smile that looks a little wishy washy on her face, "Yeah, I'm sure I'm worrying about nothing. The boy only has to look at me and crook his eyebrow and I'm ready to go. Though I tend to pounce him before he even has a chance to. My libido around him is cranked up to eleven, I swear. Pretty sure that's why our date nights usually rarely include leaving the apartment."

"You know what you should have told Doctor Cooter Crawler? Some purses are just too pretty to put your shit in and haul it around. Tell her your womb is a Louis Vitton and you don't want to diminish it's value by putting miles on it. Okay. Bad analogy." Bennie admits before taking a sip of her ginger ale and leaning to set it down so she can snuggle up with Isabella all the more.

"I was so irrationally mad when Easton said he married Geoff. And it has nothing to do with their bromance. It's just that someone got that piece of him before I did. Even if it was just drunken tomfoolery that's not legally binding in any sense of the word."

"There's absolutely nothing wrong with staying in for date nights," Isabella remarks. "I mean, those excursions are largely to spend time with one another anyway, that way you can do that without having to deal with waiters and anyone else dealing with customer service in the way." A quirked grin. "And nothing wrong with making the first move either when it comes to that, even if it does get you called an exhibitionist once in a while."

The designer purse analogy gets a bright little laugh. "I don't know, all of that sounds pretty spot on. I've been pretty protective about my...purse...over the years. Maybe I am treating it like a Louis Vuitton. Says something about how what I lack in technique, I make up for with enthusiasm, but apparently Alexander likes that I'm picky. Easy for him to say, though, Mister 'I Spent My Twenties Banging Everything With Two Legs All At Once.'" The last a quiet grumble, but a good-natured one.

The last, though, wipes the smile off her face. "I get it." She does. "That stuff, it doesn't matter if it wasn't legitimate. I would have lost my absolute shit, really. But that's easy for me to say and do, because I'm stupidly, irrationally jealous. So if it makes you feel any better? I hear you there, and honestly I don't think we'd be the only ones who'd feel that way either."

"He's a military man. There will always be a part of him that I can't fulfill. I get that now. The male camaraderie, the family, that tight knit closeness he's been able to find with Geoff in some part. I'm not jealous of it, but a part of me does envy it. But I've come to accept it, embrace it. Even encourage it now, even if he's not...completely onboard with my plan but I figure we'll be a happier, healthier couple if he doesn't try to hide it anymore. It's not something he has to lie about anymore to me. That's what's important." Bennie says all this with her head tucked against Isabella's shoulder, addressing the vacancy of space instead of the woman by her side. She snaps out of it though, offering back a smile with a tilt up of her face.

"It's so funny to think of Alexander having sex. Not in a bad way! He's just so against physical contact I can't imagine part of him not flailing every time you go in for a kiss but it seems you've gotten past that if you're well on your way to exhibitionism. Close Easton and I've gotten to that is the office at the bar." She makes a wibble wobble of her head. "And the back of my rig."

"It's encouraging that he's not onboard with it, isn't it?" Isabella wonders curiously. "Not really a huge expert on how the dating and relationships thing happens, these days, but if he isn't, doesn't that mean, ultimately, that he's putting what he has with you first? Sex is important in a relationship, but it's not the be-all, end-all." A tactile creature, the sort of person who experiences the world with all of her five senses, fingers absently drift over Bennie's hair, watching light play over the strands and transform them into spun gold.

"It was a little strange, too, at first," she adds with a hint of a grin. "But he has some very good reasons why he's like that. He wasn't always, though. I think everyone in our venn diagram of friends and acquaintances knows about his stint with a sex cult in college, and he was actually....well. He wouldn't think so, but he was ridiculously popular in his twenties. Apparently around ten people tried to pursue relationships with him before, but couldn't handle his quirks. And he can be very frustrating. When we first started dating, he...I had to wait for him to make the first move all the time. Could you imagine someone like me having to sit on her hands? It was torture." A quirked, absent smile as her eyes find the ceiling. "Worth it, though, when he finally kissed me."

The last two? She laughs and gives Bennie a squeeze. "Sounds like fun. We've not gotten that far. I don't have access to a rig, which, bad girl, by the way, doing it on company time." A teasing wink to her companion. "But there was a lookout point by Firefly Forest over Thanksgiving. I made an offhand joke about it, and he took it as a suggestion."

"Don't think I don't appreciate it. I just don't want him to grow to resent me because he feels like he always has to repress apart of himself just to be with me. Y'know?" Bennie is all too happy to be pet and have attention doted on her, much the same way as Isabella when it comes to tactility. It's part of why she and Easton can't keep their hands off another, seeking comfort in simple physical touch.

"You know, I heard rumors about Alexander and the cult thing, but I don't think I've ever had anyone confirm it, much less him. I get the draw to him, even now, it's part of what makes us such good friends like you and Easton. His quirks are what makes him decidedly Alexander, and if those other suitors couldn't handle it? It's completely their loss. Which why I'm so happy he's found you, someone who will fight with him because they're also fighting for him."

"It wasn't always on company time...but, y'know. Certainly company property. But hey, c'mon. You drive around with a mobile bed, things are bound to happen. Just if you ever see it parked behind TIBS and my partner is inside having lunch? Just ignore the rocking coming from the boom-boom-bulance." She gives a little laugh, this conversation, this time spent talking to Isabella, doing wonders for the feeling of isolation that comes with detox. "So wait, was this look out point thing in a car, or just in mother nature. Either way, HOT."

"That's perfectly understandable, too," Isabella reassures Bennie. "Resentment is definitely a thing that needs to be exorcised before it festers and...honestly? When it starts getting that way, I think it should be his responsibility to come up to you and address it, not rely on you to preempt it before it happens, or if it happens. I mean, we're all psychic on some level, but I've yet to actually come across someone who can predict the future, or read minds without the other person knowing." She must find the pleased noises from her companion encouraging, because it only makes her stroke her fingers through her hair more.

There's another laugh, though it's low and quiet. "Oh, it's real - the sex cult. Alexander's the most honest person I know, and something like that is so outrageous that it has to be true. And yeah, I know it, Isolde knows it, you know it, I'm sure a few of our other friends know it, but he would never see himself that way no matter how much reality attempts to convince him of the fact. I don't think he ever will see himself as a person worth being with, and he does have his reasons for viewing himself that way, but I keep hoping that maybe if more and more people tell him that enough, he'll start to believe it, or cut himself a break. He can be stubborn, too, which I'm sure you've noticed."

What Bennie calls the rig? That draws out a brighter laugh out of her, tilting her head back. "Damn it, I wish I had the excuse to actually use that!" she exclaims. "Boom-boom-bulance. It's so good." Mischief lights up her eyes, angled to Bennie. "In the Jeep, too cold in the Forest to chance it outside, but we had to wipe down the windows after so I could see enough to drive home. He was pretty excited about it, told me that he hasn't done it in a car in years, it was adorable."

"I'm not saying I'm going to set up a boy-booty call for the man, I'm just letting him know, that if that becomes the case, that it's not off the table and open for discussion." Bennie lets the matter drift off, content with how the conversation went with Easton and where the matter stands now.

Her fingers start to idly pluck at the side seam of Isabella's pants, thinking further on the matter with Alexander, but it seems his opinion of himself just draws a sad line between her eyebrows so she wanders away from that topic as well. "Told you, you were good for him. Even the little things like Jeep sex. So! You said you brought movies. I vote we stick in a chick flick, make some popcorn and heckle the characters when they make dumb mistakes that inevitably result in happy cheesy endings that leave us both teary eyed babies. You in?"

"I want to be," Isabella tells Bennie quietly. Good for him. Whether she actually is, however, are doubts that she is presently not up to address.

Instead, she tickles the blonde and shifts so she could sit them both up and reach for the DVDs. "So I brought all the classics from the John Hughes hall of fame." She lifts both Sixteen Candles and Pretty in Pink up. "Followed by some of the more modern favorites." Bridget Jones' Diary, Clueless, Sweet Home Alabama and others. "We seriously can't have a night like this without something from Miss Austen." She holds up Pride and Prejudice. "And last, but not the least, and I know it's past Christmas, but..." Of course she's going to bring up Love Actually.

"Which one first?"