2020-05-21 - Waffles

The opening night went wonderfully except for that elevator of ghost fish. And Easton and Bennie managed to rally to make appearances at the after party in the private suite. But after that things become a blur which is why for once Easton doesn't get up at some insanely early hour. He wakes, feels the shudder of pain that is his body not being ready for the day and goes back to sleep. Somewhere closer to eight he manages to rouse himself from slumber and survey the room. The red sparkly dress from the after party is currently pretending to be a lampshade, his prosthetic leg is apparently reading the bible in an arm chair and the fact that there is an entire slot machine sitting at the foot of the bed is going to require some explaining to someone at some point.

But the most important thing is that Drunk Easton or possibly Drunk Bennie or maybe both are wise and very, very kind to have pre-ordered breakfast. The light tapping on the door is what actually awoke Easton, who is still laying face down on the bed, his head at the foot of the bed facing the slot machine. He lifts up his head and checks to make sure Bennie is still there before glimmering open the door. The staff member has a game face to rival the best at the poker tables downstairs as they drop off the cart and beat a hasty exit. Now with the smell of waffles, eggs, bacon and coffee permeating the air Easton finds the strength to slowly roll to the side and start to get himself together. Even in his dimmed state though he can sense that every article of clothing that belongs to him has been splayed around the room in what surely must have been some strategic game of finding how many surfaces his clothes could span.

So for now, his legs and a pair of boxer briefs will have to do, at least until after coffee.

"Please tell me that's coffee." Comes Bennie's voice, muffled, because her face is still smooshed into a pillowcase that wears more of her makeup from last night then what's currently on her face in a charming smear when she sits up in bed, bleary eyed. "Why is there a..." Her finger points at the slot machine. "Never mind." Any explanation they can remember will likely hurt her pounding head. They remembered to preorder breakfast but forgot Advil and water before passing out? Typical.

She slips from between the sheets, padding with an impish giggle at her naked streaking towards the closet to pull out a complimentary robe and thread her arms into it and tie it around her waist. "Ooh. Oh, this is like a cloud! Don't get me used to this lifestyle, Easton Marshall, before I end up on Real Wives of Gray Harbor pulling some girl's weave out for stealing my chocolate chip cookie recipe for the bake sale." She pools herself into one of the plush chairs near the cart, making gimme gimme hands for a cup of joe.

"If it's not I might have to murder someone in the kitchen, and that's probably not the best way to start off this endeavor." Probably not. Thankfully it is in fact coffee that he fixes for them, hers with milk and sugar and his just black. He snags a piece of bacon and just holds the coffee and breakfast meat in his hands as if just holding on to them were enough to give him the strength to overcome the effects of last night. At the crack about the Real Housewives, Easton shakes his head, "Don't get use to it toots. This is the life I left, and I know it might not look it but I had very, very good reasons for it." Yes, it's hard to see past the beautiful trappings, particularly when it's all new, but Easton's not feeling nostalgic at all for the lap of luxury.

"The money from this goes right back to the Marshall Trust. Well, and once it pays me back for a little tiny thing like Eddie Money's chit that he's been holding over your head and making you give every single cent you've ever earned towards." Easton munches the bacon happily as he lets that little bit of information out. There wasn't time last night between the parties and the friends and the whiskey and the vigorous tour of the hotel suite. But he waits for it to sink before nodding, "Seriously. Not a shot fired, and this whole thing ends."

"I'm quite happy with our quaint little life and being a bartender's girlfriend. But if one of these robes happened to make it home...? I wouldn't complain." Bennie grins merrily over the rim of her coffee, taking a life giving sip before she nearly spits it out. "Whoa, whoa wait." Suddenly this New Information has the haze of overindulging last night whisked away in so many words. "Back that Marshall train up a minute." Bennie is suddenly thankful for the mug of coffee that warms her hands, too bad it's feeling a little bit like a potential projectile at the moment. "You're paying him /off/?" Her legs uncross and she shifts forward in her chair.

"Good, because that's what I came here to do, and I'm pretty damn fond of that life." He makes no comment about the robe. That is something he can handle. Taking a big sip of his coffee he looks askance when Bennie suddenly looks like she might want to hurt him or throw something at him. "Bennie." He looks at her with a frown, "What did you think..?" He's confused here obviously. "I offered him a couple thousand dollars, and made it clear that was all the money he would ever see out of the deal." Okay, it's a little more than a couple, but that's not the point. "This way, no one dies, we don't break any laws and you don't have to deal with this shit anymore. I get that he deserves to get the shit kicked out of him and spend the rest of his life drinking through a straw, believe me, but.. this is a good thing."

If he somehow managed to wrangle a Flaming Sevens game up here so she could play bedside one armed bandit with a one legged one, surely a robe isn't outside his purview. But matters of fluffy robes that feel like cloud hugs will have to wait, distracted as Bennie is now with this new topic of conversation. "It's not like I wanted any of that, breaking laws...hurting people. I guess I just thought that there'd me some...magical solution that solved all. I get that it can't be that way, I know. But I didn't..." The blonde is up in a flurry of terry cloth, setting aside her coffee cup and pawing her hair out of her face as she leans over her hobo bag purse, shuffling things aside until she comes up with that spiraled journal. "How much. How much did you promise them?"

"I get to move things with my mind but near as I can tell that doesn't make all our problems go poof." And boy would there lives be boring if it did. Easton looks at her curiously as she starts scrambling around. The journal causes him to get a wary look on his face. "You realize I didn't offer to pay this guy off just so I could start leaning on you and harassing you, right?" He points at the notebook and says, "That's all over." Okay, not quite over but soon. "No more worrying about owing people, no more Frank fucking with your head.. seriously." He's thought a lot about what that might mean to her. Granted he realizes he probably should have thought a little bit more about easing her into those thoughts. He's not good at it to say the least.

"I figured it out," Bennie sits down on the floor, curling her legs up underneath the tent of the robe, "My head." She makes a little twirling gesture next to her temple with the tip of the pen she's nudged out of the spiral's loops. "I get headaches, awful headaches, when someone tinkers around in my brain meats without me letting them in. Frank didn't need to push those pills on me. I was doing it all on my own. All he need to do was just take a glance, and I'd get a headache, and get the wise idea to dose myself up to chase it away."

She glances up, blue eyes brilliant but steady. "So how much was it?" Is she neatly ignoring that he's saying about debt? Yes, yes she is.

"Oh. Well I guess I won't be trying to send you mental nudes without letting you know first..." Easton cracks about it before thinking about it for a second and saying, "Though my mental nudes would probably be of you? So that's a little weird." And now he's down a mental rabbit hole now but blinks a few times and comes back to it.

"How much?" He looks at her and then at the notebook and then back up and says, "Ten thousand. Started higher but he was an idiot and kept talking so I kept dropping."

"I think it's different, with you? I don't know I can't explain it better than that. Maybe because I let you in before, or," Those blue eyes blink owlishly at Easton for a moment, even as he says the figure. "Because I trust you." Speaking the words a little crisper so they have the proper conveyance of 'don't think I didn't notice that lie, Lying McLie Face' without calling him out on it directly. "Ten thousand, you say?" Her pen poised just in case he'd like to change his answer.

"It's because of my abs, isn't it?" Easton asks of why Bennie might be okay with him mentally contact her. The part about trusting him just gets him to smile broader. "Yup." Now, that she's going to subtly let him know that she knows he's laying, he's going to let her know, subtly that he's fine with that. He looks down at the notebook and says, "I'm going ask this once, and I want you to really think about the answer. Do you think there is anyway in hell that I am going to let you try and pay me back for this? And I mean, really, really think about it Oakes." He sets his coffee cup down, and picks up another slice of bacon without breaking eye contact and then chomping into it.

Bennie's budding smile is sucked against her teeth to try and pinch it back at that yup, and so Easton's name gets written on the top of a page with the number 10K written beneath it. And then underlined. Twice. With a sharp jab and scrape of her pen. "Since when do you let me do anything, Easton Marshall? Because I will pay you back. Even if you don't know it. In kisses, in extra tips for your waitresses...dropping nickels into your casino's slot machines. Because in the end, I'm not going to owe anyone, even you. And I need you to be okay with that. But...why did they agree to dropping my dead father's debt from three hundred thousand to a measely...ten."

"Because sometimes you allow me to do nice things for you. And one of the nice things I would like to do for you is stop you from living a life that is defined by owing people fucking money. Including me." He looks at her, the hardness in his face softening, "Especially me." He sighs and says, "Bennie, if you want to do all those things because they make you happy, or to show gratitude or because it's fucking Tuesday and you feel like it, then I would love it. I just hate the thought of you spending another goddam minute worrying about what some number in that fucking thing says." He points at the notebook as if it is somehow the cause of all of this.

But there is a moment when she mentions her dad that he stops and repeats almost inaudibly, "dead." And he stops and just looks at her, watching her. And he knows he's going to have to tell her something. He can't lie about this. Not forever, and the longer it goes... He says, "I love you. You know that right?"

Bennie's eyes drop to the journal. How many numbers has she written in this little book, down the to the dime of what she's had to borrow for groceries, or pay out with babysitting or toiling doubles at the diner after barely a wink of sleep. Most of the pages are crossed out, debts cleared through the years made easier when she finally got certified as an EMT, and started making real money with real benefits. Only her father's debt remains with B.G. written at the top several pages of bookkeeping and now the brand new page she's penned for Easton.

Silently, Bennie closes the cover, running her fingers over the embossed happy image of flowers on the front that's far too cheery for the contents. "I know." She says quietly.

This was supposed to be a celebration, and happy and he can't stop yelling at her which is probably not super helpful in making those things happen. And the last thing she looks like doing is celebrating and he sighs, "Benz, I know. I know this is big and it's been such a huge part of who you are, but this is it. We're going to close that part off and start something new, and amazing and not burdened down with all of those things." The question of if 'those things' includes her not-so-dead dad rings in his mind but he doesn't have time to deal with that yet. One thing at a time. "So please. Let's burn that, or frame it or turn it into the saddest novel since Stone Fox. But seriously, new life. New possibilities." He wants to blurt one of those options out, but it really doesn't seem like the right time.

"Okay." Bennie says, sotto voce, before her eyes come up from the journal her hands curl around so tightly as if she's afraid to let go. She lost the book once (when Easton had given it to Bailey, unbeknownst to her) and it caused a near panic attack. But she nods, a firm decisiveness to it. "Okay." And then she's pressing her feet into the lush carpet beneath her to propel back standing, with purpose. "Let's do this. Uh." She whips around and eyes the ice bucket they must have had champagne in last night and swoops it up before she changes her mind. The watery contents are poured down the drain of the wet bar - this is a really swanky suite - and the book clunks down into the metal vessel.

She steps back, hands flicking out to the side repeatedly in that overly agitated gesture she makes before one palm juts out and FOOM! A tight and tidy little fireball erupts from her hand and hits the ice bucket like she just shot a perfect goal.

Okay, so maybe he didn't mean RIGHT here RIGHT now.

"Okay" Easton echoes back, with calm resolve.

"Okay?" That calmness sounds a little more confused when she pushes up to her feet and grabs the ice bucket. He barely gets an "uh.." out before she's throwing a fireball at it in the sink.

"Okay." Easton says with convivial assurance. If that's what she wants to do, then burn baby burn.

But her throwing fireballs is probably not the best time to talk about her father. Or much else serious.

"I'm going to start eating these waffles now..? Unless you have anything else you wanted to burn while you were at it?" He stands and makes a plate from the cart before taking a plate to the couch with his cup of coffee in the other hand. "And I really hope the .." He eyes the smoke detector and decides to be safe and lifts a pillow up off the bed and pins it to the ceiling for now. He looks back at the burning and then smoldering notebook. "It'll take a while to sink in."

Bennie's hands cover her face, tenting over nose and mouth as her eyes fly wide, as if unbelieving that she just did THAT. Not just destroying the book, but setting it on fire so neatly and with such vehemence, it's nearly ash by the time he pins the pillow over the smoke detector. She swivels between looking at Easton, back to the ice bucket and back to Easton, that same deer in a headlights look until she breaks into a fit of laughter that seems half parts deliriously relieved and half parts mortified before she's breaking into a run to tackle him on the couch, breakfast plate or no.

Waffles be damned.

Easton sets down the plate and watches her, tries to read what that deer in the headlights look is all about with slightly furrowed brows of concern. But then he sees the resolve in her eyes and he tries to get the coffee cup out of his hand and make ready for a tackle. He is mostly successful but there is some breakfast related casualties as he's tackled back into the couch grinning. He doesn't try to stop her, or brace himself, he just rolls back with it happily.

Now riddled with an armful of Bennie, she starts peppering kisses randomly around his face. Nose, forehead, cheeks: no place is safe from the exuberant press of her lips. "It's over. It's really over?" She sits up, straddling his lap. "It's over!" You don't really realize how much of a crushing weight something can be until it's lifted and you can breathe again. Her hands splay on his cheeks, fingers curling it little scritches of affection. "Thank you, Easton. Really."

"It is." Easton agrees amidst the kissing, which he's not doing much to stop any of that kissing or her fingers. He laughs as she declares it loudly and he just nods, watching her soak it in, having only an inkling of what that kind of life change might mean. But there's also something else in his eyes, some withdrawn part that is still trying to figure out what the hell to do about her not so dead dad. But he doesn't know if that's even true, right? Technically. He rubs his face against her hands and says, "And take your time figuring out what that means too. If you want to take a leave from one of your jobs or maybe think about going back to school or.. " He tries to smoothly slide that option in. The one he hasn't stopped thinking about since learning about Judd's motivation for joining the military. It's felt like his duty to carry that on, to make it possible for her if she wanted it, the way Judd wanted to, ever since that Dream. But he doesn't want to say that outloud, it's too fraught with dead brothers and regrets and possible pressure. So he tries to slide it in, but he's not great at subtle.

And boy does that sink in. Bennie slumps in her perch with a, "Wow. I don't even...know where to begin." You know what will help her think? She leans over and snags a piece of bacon off his plate, snicking the end off with her teeth as she even tries to comprehend what this means now. She could quit the diner! No, she loves that place. But certainly cut down on her hours! She could spend more time with Easton! But he's now doubled up on his own work load with the casino. All these thoughts play over her face in grand dramatic effect of Tragedy and Comedy masks.

"Maybe just first? Waffles."