2020-08-07 - Taking A Break

The movie falling through was ultimately not so surprising, but it was still a bitter disappointment. Dahlia had silently resigned herself to the fact the acting thing just wasn't going to happen and she was probably going to be stuck in this stupid town forever. But, that wasn't so bad she guessed - all her people were here. Plenty of time was spent split between the mansion and the smaller home. Now that Dahlia was back on her feet again and healthier, she'd been working on her little Etsy store selling small handmade crafts and the like. She was taking a small step back from working her other jobs to try and focus on this avenue more exclusively. She liked the freedom and the creativity and not working herself ragged so she had more time to spend with her boys.

The nicer weather brought more work in for Declan so he was out on jobs. As such, Dahlia had decided to work on her projects over at the Bayside place so she could pester Justin occasionally while they worked. She was taking a break now, walking out of her craft room and over to his office, giving a light knock on the open door and grinning a bit. "How's your stuff comin' along?"

The movie falling through couldn't be helped. Trying to film in Gray Harbor had been an unmitigated disaster, and Justin's mother had apologized profusely when the whole production finally pulled out and shuttered the project. She consoled them by telling them it wasn't the first project she'd worked on that had fallen through and promised that next time she'd find something better, something that would film elsewhere. Or perhaps she'd find someone else to take on the story and they'd try again. And then she and Justin's father had returned to L.A.

Justin had gone back to focusing entirely on Lucidwave and had thrown himself back into programming quite a bit. With losing Easton, the only friend he's had as long as Dahlia, into the Dream, as far as he could tell, and the movie falling through, he'd been a little bit more quiet, a little bit more focused on work, and had spent less time out being social and more time at home. That didn't mean that he didn't spend time with Dahlia and Declan. He did. But just not as many others.

He glances up when she comes over into the office. Caleb lounges lazily near his feet, half-asleep, nose half off of his doggie bed which is gradually growing too small for him as he gets bigger. Justin smiles a little bit and asks "What time is it?" before answering, "It's going alright. I've just been trying to figure out how to make this whole subroutine go faster so that there's less lag time. It's not noticable right now but under high load it's going to cause problems.." then he trails off, realizing that he's kind of rambling. "Sorry."

Dahlia quietly steps over to the doggie bed, bending down to give Caleb a few scritches. Probably the only pet she actually was fond of. "Oh I dunno, gettin' close to late lunch time. I realized I hadn't eaten anything since early today. Figured you haven't either." She gives him a smile. "So I was gonna drag you downstairs for a bit and order something for delivery."

Dahlia straightens and chuckles as he rambled, running a hand through his hair affectionately. "Nothing to be sorry for. " She peers at the mess of windows and code on the screen. None of it making any sense to her. Then looked back to him. "So, how bout it. Food break time? What're you in the mood for?"

"You know me so well," Justin says with a chuckle when she makes her way over and mentions not having eaten and supposing that he hadn't either. He grins over at her and Caleb. Caleb yawns and licks at her hand and gives a little whuff. But he is entirely too lazy to get up, and so he just lets his head rest back down. Justin pulls himself up out of his chair and he shuts everything down and locks it up. "Time for me to stop for now." While he does forget about eating and stopping, he is pretty good about doing so when reminded. He turns to her, smiling at the hand that runs through his hair. He leans down and presses a kiss to her lips, brief and soft, and then says, "Chinese?"

"Just for now." Dahlia confirms with a bit of a grin. The kiss is returned as she slips her hand into his. "Chinese sounds great. But you do the ordering. You know if I do I'm just gonna want to order the whole menu and only eat like one thing." She laughed, starting to lead him out of the room and back downstairs. "I think...Dumplings and Lo Mein sound good." She eyed the liquor cabinet briefly once they were at the bottom landing. "Is it too early to drink something?" Though, she doesn't stop at the liquor cabinet for now. Instead going directly into the kitchen to grab some water first.

"Yep," Justin says with a laugh. "Because you have eyes way bigger than your stomach," he says as he lets her take his hand and he follows her out of the office, calling Caleb out and locking it behind him and setting the security for it as he always does when he closes it up for the afternoon. "Dumplings and lo mein do sound good," he agrees though when they pass the liquor cabinet he says, "If you eat a real person sized dinner you can have a drink with me afterward." He flashes her a grin, waiting to see what her reaction is before he follows her to the kitchen, pulling out his phone and dragging over the takeout menu to place an order.

Dahlia looks over her shoulder at Justin, eyeing him for a moment as if considering the offer and feigned an exasperated sight. "Fineee I will eat all my food like a good adult and then we can have a drink. That's fair enough." She agreed, grinning a bit to him. She grabs a bottle of water and one for him too. "Oh and extra of the dumpling sauce stuff." Dahlia adds in a semi-hushed voice so as to not interrupt the ordering.

"Because the dumpling sauce stuff is the best sauce stuff," Justin says with a grin over at her as he waits for the phone to ring. When the restaurant picks up he orders two orders of dumplings, some lo mein, some spring rolls, egg rolls, and some pepper steak and then extra dumpling sauce. Once that's done, he hangs up the phone and takes the bottle of water that she handed over to him opening it up and taking a swig.

"Definitely the best." Two thumbs up at the order he put in. Much more responsible than what hers would have been. She comes back around to his side, setting her bottle down and wrapping an arm around Justin again as she snuggled up to him some. "Thank you for ordering. What do you propose we do while we wait? Think there's anything good on TV?"

Justin wraps both arms around her after setting his own bottle down and looks down at her with a grin, "We could put something on TV if you want. I'm sure there's something. Probably hundreds of somethings. Thousands even, with Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and everything else we've got on there. Just a matter of whether we want to watch any of it." He just looks at her for a while and his smile fades just a little bit, and he's probably not even aware of it, but all he can think about is how close they came to losing her, and how scary that was, and how relieved he is that she looks so much healthier now.

"Sounds like too many somethings." Dahlia laughed, smiling up at him. "We'll surf through it and see if anything catches the eye. She notices the faded smile and her free hand comes up to rest on his cheek. Thumb stroking lightly. "What's on your mind?" She asked softly. She knew that she had put him and Declan through the ringer with her near fatality and then slow recovery. She didn't vocalize it often anymore but she felt guilty about the whole thing even if there was nothing else that could be done. There was no way she could have chosen either of them. The arm that's still around his waist gives him another squeeze.

"I'm just glad that you're okay," Justin admits when he realizes that she must have seen that shift in his expression. "I love you, you know." He rests his head against her forehead for a moment, and squeezes her a little bit more tightly. He doesn't talk about it often, either, and he knows she feels guilty -- which he doesn't want her to feel. He would have made the same choice if their positions were reversed. And he's expressed that to her before. So he just smiles and says, "I'm just glad you're back." Back to closer to her old self again. "Come on, let's channel surf til the food gets here," he says gently, trying to break the hitch he'd put in the mood.

"I know. And I love you." Lingering close to him for those few extra moments. She summons up a smile again. "Me too." She leans up on tiptoes to steal another kiss from him and nodded. "I really am getting better. Every day. I'll be back to 100 before you know." She gives him one more squeeze. "Alright. Channel surfing it is. Hopefully we can find something good." She mused, releasing him so she could retrieve her water and head back in to the living room. "Should we start with regular TV or some of the fancy stuff?"

"Why have the fancy stuff if you're going to just browse regular TV?" Justin asks with a little grin as they head over to the couch. He takes his water bottle with him and sets it down on the little table next to the couch before settling onto it and holding out a hand for Dahlia to join him. Then, he grabs the remote and pulls up Netflix to start randomly scrolling through movie titles and genres, trying to decide if anything looks appealing. "In the mood for anything in particular?" he asks.

Dahlia takes his hand, opting to settle in his lap as he pulls up Netflix. "Hmm." Dahlia idly runs her fingers through his hair as she peers over the selections. "Something funny. I heard that one Adam Sandler mover is good...Murder Mystery? I dunno. Something entertaining."

Justin draws Dahlia down into his lap when she decides to settle there and wraps his arm around her, drawing her in close. There's something reassuring about her presence, her closeness, the warmth of settling in there on the couch together as they have before. He turns his head and kisses her shoulder when she runs her fingers through his hair, then his attention shifts back toward the TV and says, "Sure, we can watch that one. I don't think I've seen it. I haven't seen a lot of Adam Sandler movies," he admits. Then he does a search and finds it, pulling it up and getting it started.

"I haven't seen many either but he's got some good ones." Dahlia leans her head gently against his as they snuggle. She quiet as the movie starts. Like him, just enjoying the closeness and how easily they fit together, how the whole dynamic with the three of them fit like neat puzzle pieces. She giggled here and there at a few of the scenes before tilting her head to press a light kiss to his cheek. "Not too bad so far." She murmured, looking back towards the movie.