2020-09-14 - A Different Kind of Booty Call

Cris doesn't drive the most subtle of cars, in fact it made him a target at least once already since coming to Gray Harbor, but that doesn't stop him from cruising by Bax's house in his dark blue Ford Fairlane, taking the entire tour of Huckleberry and then back out again, on the eye out for anyone suspiciously lingering about the property or staked out in a vehicle nearby. At the trailer, he did a sweep of the lot and checked the windows and doors for any forced entry before reaching for his phone to text Sparrow that he was going to pick her up so they could go in and get her BFF's belongings out.

Now back with her, he parks once more near the clubhouse. It'll make for a longer trip to haul things to his trunk, but all the better to make it look like no one is home. "You ready, Paji?"

Subtlety isn't Sparrow's strong suit either. If it were, she might've changed out of the magenta-and-rainbow Pinkie Pie tee shirt she's been wearing all day. But nope, it's that very noticeable tee, jeans and sneaks. And purple hair. Stealthy this pair is not. Skilled? Possibly. Sexy? Definitely. That's gotta count for something. On the ride over, she's caught Cris up, explained that the baddies with guns, both of an unspecified quantity, were harrassing some guy named Hammy who was crashing at the trailer, demanding that he tell them where Greg is. Greg's out of town. Daisy has been forewarned. Hammy's whereabouts are currently unknown. Bax is cuddled up with his boyfriend, taking a desperately needed nap.

"Priorities are his charger for his hearing aids, some clothes with semi-respectable pocket placement and... well. I'll know the rest when I see it." Keepsakes, art. Drugs. But yeah. "Ready." And so out she goes with a smile.

Sparrow knocks. Sure, she's got Bax's key, just in case, but still. If Hammy's still here, she doesn't want to just come crashing in, another stranger just barging into his temporary home. When there's no answer, she frowns faintly and heads in, unlocking the door if necessary. It's usually not when she comes by, but then... Bax is usually home. "Little worried about what happened to their houseguest. Did he bail? Did they take him? Is he hiding in the bathtub?" At a higher volume, she calls, "Anybody hiding in the bathtub!?" Just in case. A quick scan of the place as she swings her apparently empty backpack off her shoulder shows no sign of surprise--this is familiar clutter--but neither does it seem there's anything of immediate interest to her in the communal space. And so, "I'mma head back," comes with a point down the narrow hall toward Bax's room where she's gonna start stuffing her backpack--and the two reusable grocery sacks she brought rolled up therein--with some essentials. Maybe even pants with poor pocket placement. She can sort through them later. Now that she's here, she's not exactly in a pick through things slowly sorta mood.

Cristobal doesn't enter the house so brazenly, rather he's cautious with his hand straying to the Walther holstered openly on his hip. He lets Sparrow call for the housemate as his eyes wander, giving her a brief nod despite the fact he'd like to sweep the inside as well first. Then he's sure to lock the door behind him. "Just. Scream if someone jumps out and tries to kill you. I'm going to search the rest of the house." Pulling a trash bag out of his back pocket, he hands it her way. "Just in case you need luggage." And off he goes. Searching the farthest point of the trailer and working his way back towards what is presumably Bax's room.

Sparrow is pretty sure she knows what Vyv would think she should use that trashbag for, that thought crossing over her features with a potentially inappropriate grin when she catches it. This is serious business, Phil! No time for taking delight in deals struck with the BFF's boyfriend! She chirps a, "Thanks," on her way back. After a follow-up of, "No murderers in here!" she gets to work. Charger first, flagged as most essential. Then the party box, though not until after she's given its current contents a quick peek. Tee shirts, jeans, underwear. Not all of which is pulled from the clean pile. He might be on his own in regards to socks. She snags tokens and trinkets, like the skateboarding Rainbow Dash figurine she got him a few years ago and the cheap pair of sunglasses they shoplifted together even though one of the lenses has since been replaced with mismatched plastic, their current utility questionable at best. Art supplies, sketches, a couple things that look like potential projects... If it's small enough to fit in one of the bags? She tries to snag it, but there's likely to be a lot of stuff left behind in the clutter.

"I know that look..." Cristobal sing-songs back at Sparrow, even if he might not know exactly what that particular one was about when he handed her the bag. By the time he makes it to Bax's room, he looks a little more relaxed, even sinking against the doorframe with his shoulder as he watches her flit around the room and choose the items that might not have any significance to him but clearly they mean something to the pair. "I can see why the two of you get along." This said as he's eyeing the artwork. "Don't forget to hit the bathroom, unless he already has grooming stuff at your place. Toothbrush, wank lotion, deodorant...Isn't this the boyfriend that already lives with you, or...shit." He has to admit he's always had a bad handle on anyone else she's been dating, it was clearly never even on his radar when they were together.

"Fuck," Sparrow breathes at the reminder about toiletries, a just-as-quiet, "Yeah," following soon thereafter. When he asks after exactly where Bax falls in the constellation of her relationships, she pauses, grocery sack in hand, and turns to face him. Frowning. "That was AJ." Past tense. "He's been enrolled in a program out-of-town for a while now. Since summer." Which is to say that she's never been really great about keeping Cris up to date on her other lovers and what they're up to. She doesn't specify what exactly her current relationship status is with the former roommate. Instead, she explains, "He and Bax and I all went to school together. Bax is the BFF. Kinda sometimes a thing, sometimes not. I dunno. We never really got hung up on the are-we-aren't-we stuff. We are what we are. And boyfriend's never been the word. But he was crashing at my place for a few weeks in February, so." Maybe his description still qualifies.

Was she thinking about saying something else? It sure looks like it, the way she just stands there, staring. But her gaze isn't exactly steady, dipping down Cristobal's form before skirting off to the side. And more purposefully searching the room for distraction, for the next thing she ought to shove in a bag. Oh, look! Trucks for his board. Does his board need new trucks? Who knows! Better snag 'em. "I've been, uh. Pretty nearly monogamous myself lately. Not including..." Well, friends with benefits. Like Bax. Those don't count, right? There's a good chance she's never gonna quite get that just one thing quite right. "How're things with you and yours?"

There is a smirk from Cris as Sparrow cusses about toiletries, "Bet'cher glad you brought me along now, to think of the guy angle. So...shoes, underwear..." He basically thinks of what he'd grab in a hurry, brought out of his mental list when he snaps his fingers. "AJ, that's it. Man, I thought if you'd go solo, it'd be for the live in, but I guess that's not the case?" His brow knits together in the middle and lifts with the question. Then, "Dante and I are good. We're not...perfect, but then again that's sort of what you get when you buy into the full Cruz package. So what was with that look, right there? You driving away on me again?"

Shoes! Right. How could Sparrow forget shoes? Which reminds her to snag some socks. And the the little mushroom! Aww! He still has the mushroom! She makes a cute little sound as she tucks that in one of her backpack pockets before snagging Bax's back-up sneakers. The ones for when he loses the ones he's wearing. Which happens more often than one might think possible. There's a quiet, "Yeah," for the comment about the live-in no longer living in that speaks to a whole volume of thoughts on the subject, but she keeps her focus on finishing up in the bedroom for the moment. Which, after a look around, means she climbs onto the bed to close the hatch above it, protecting against rain and rodents.

It's not until she hops back down and considers Cris in the doorway that she's gonna need to go through in just a moment that she answers his questions, starting with, "I'm just being good. Keeping certain thoughts... and my hands. To myself." She even lifts them, palms out, in a gesture of surrender to demonstrate. As those hands move to collect a couple of the bags and hand them off to Cris, she adds, "And I'm glad I brought you cuz I feel safe around you, which. Really? That's what I wish you understood while you were busy pushing me away. Not that I'm capable on my own. But that I feel safer with you than without." With a little shrug, she adds, "Still," to make clear that this hasn't changed just cuz they're not seeing each other anymore. "And I'm not going solo for anyone. He hasn't asked. I don't think he will. Just..." She makes a face. "Guess you kinda know when you find what fits, right?"

As she snags her backpack, she upnods his direction--or, more likely, toward the hall. "Bathroom next." But she's gonna wait until he moves aside. Cuz touching might not be a great idea.

Not touching? Doesn't really seem an option, because Cris is ringing her shoulders with one arm and hauling her up tight to kiss the top of her purple dyed hair. But, with the majority of their hands occupied by Grant's belongings, it can remain innocent, right? "Right." He agrees about finding what fits, the word rumbled quietly before he finally does step aside to make way for her to lead on on their hunt for the elusive Something About Mary hair gel - I mean, how else does Grant get his hair to stick up like that? - but damn straight he punctuates the move of locale with an attempted slap on the ass.

Sparrow hesitates to let herself be drawn in, but then sinks right on once she gives up the fight. Her cheek nuzzles at his shoulder as she breathes him in. Her own scent is faded, the day's perfume reduced down to a lingering note of white musk and a hint of implacable spice. And maybe potatoes? And mountain fresh kitchen cleaner? It's been a day, alright? Knuckles brush his flank, though it's hard to gauge if that contact was meant to push away or pull closer given the timing, how that brief contact breaks as he steps aside. A smile rises before she opens her eyes, brave face put on one piece at a time. Which makes it more obvious than she might like, but whatcha gonna do.

The smack lands, resulting in a squawk which might've been heard three trailers over if the hatch was still open. Along with the giggled cry of, "Fucker!" as she playfully swings the trashbag back at him. Sorting through the bathroom proves a little more difficult; there are at least three guys in residence, and it's hard to pick out which bits are Bax's. Except all the stuff for colored hair. And anything that smells like him. Yeah, she's smelling a lot of things. Well, a few things. None of this seems irreplaceable. They've got spare toothbrushes at home. "Pretty sure that's everything," comes with a zip of her backpack. "Also pretty sure Bax would be totally okay with us banging in his bed." But she's joking. Probably. See that cheesy brow-waggle. That's not meant seriously, right? The, "Ready to get out of here?" that follows surely clarifies.

Cris once more takes on a lazy stance, his bag burden slung over his shoulder as he watches Sparrow move around the bathroom with slightly lidded eyes. But the impossibly blue colored irises are watching sharply, tracking her in every bottle she raises for an experimental sniff or thing she selects to get packed away. He only seems to straighten up and snap out of it when she zips up the bag. And then she's getting a finger pointed at her. "No. Bad Sparrow. One of us needs to have self restraint and we both know that's not me." As evidenced by the fact that he reaches back to give the flat of his fist a little bump into the medicine cabinet to pop it back open Fonzy style, fingering out a baggie of coke he apparently spied. "Forgot this."

Sparrow's eyes go all wide with wholly imagined innocence. It fades pretty quickly when he reaches past her, like she thinks he might be reaching for her. Was that amusement? Hope? Reprimand? Whatever flicker of emotion that was, it's gone when the cabinet swings open again. When the baggie comes out, she reaches to pluck it from his fingers. Theoretically. It wouldn't be difficult to tug it out of reach before she gets there. Either way, she goes back in for the glass jar of similar powder against which it had been laying as she mutters, "Figured it might be rude to just take all the party favors, but." Well, if they're in for a penny, might as well go in for a pound, right? Pinnacle of restraint right here. The backpack gets set on the sink so she can open up a pocket that lays at the small of her back. Is there already a baggie of something else in there? Yes. Along with what looks to be a few brightly colored zipties. It's hard to get a good look while she's tucking the cocaine in with them. It takes some effort to zip it back up again, and it's not gonna be comfy pressing against her back, but it's at least secure there. Brows pitch upward as if to ask if she's missed anything else. Or maybe if he's sure he doesn't wanna be bad. Way easier to tease about that when she's confident they both won't.

"Their couch surfer will just have to fend for himself for any other pharmaceuticals." Cris says as he starts moving again, but this time he's just invading her personal space as drawn by an invisible force, like a string that's linked between them and being wound tighter. Even his breathing seems heightened, drawn and released from lungs faster than it was a moment ago. Maybe it was the sight of the coke so casually stuffed in her bag like that, or the confines of the small trailer bathroom with both their crammed into the same air space. "Do you know where they stashed any other drugs? If we secure them, it won't stop them from breaking in and trashing the place to look for them, but it will keep them from taking the goods. It'll be a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation, but they'd be hard pressed to thoroughly toss a trailer in Huckleberry without the neighbors taking notice. They tend to protect their own around here." This said as he attempts to scissor a lock of her bright hair between two fingers and pull it lightly through his knuckles.

Hands. Sparrow has two of them. See how she holds them off to the sides to demonstrate their quantity. And, almost certainly, their distance from the body suddenly within very close proximity to her own. The body she would very much like to touch. The body she knows damned well she should not touch if she also wants to be good. Which she does. Very much so. For multiple reasons. Most of which she even remembers right now! Even as those fingers catch on her hair, encouraging her head to tilt just so. Did she hear a word Cris said? It's really hard to tell. Seconds tick past where her most notable reaction, beyond the NOT TOUCHING hands, is her quickened breathing. And her gaze. Which is miraculously not set on his lips. Aha! That kinda-nowhere focus indicates thought, consideration given to the questions at hand.

"Yeah," marks the moment she relaxes, one hand falling back to her side while the other nudges at Cris' midsection to urge him out of the way. "Fuck. Yeah." Of course, the furrow of her brows says she's still wrestling memories, but no reason she can't start the search while still picking through details. "I mean. I was kinda. Way melty when I saw it, but. I mean. Given where the utilities are and the, uh. Mmm." She looks toward the living room. No. Past. To the master suite. Thattaway. "Yeah."

There is a bit of a wicked grin on Cris' lips as Sparrow pushes away from him and vacates the bathroom that is only managing to get smaller by the minute. He gives a deep inhale as if smelling her hair as she passes, or trying to rein himself back as well. "Yeah, you ever remember him going for a wall panel or a floor board? These trailers are pretty flimsy, so likely if someplace has been fortified against moisture and the like, that's where the stash is going to be." He tries to shift gears from the brain in his pants to the one on his shoulders, "Granted most of the muling I dealt with was in vehicles or in people back in El Paso."

"Floor, yeah." It helps to focus on this, having a problem to solve. Searching for the massive stash of drugs possibly hidden somewhere in the trailer helps keep Sparrow's brain from considering all the obscenely fun things the two of them could be doing in that tiny bathroom right now. The partially filled trashbag rustles as she crosses the trailer to the master suite. Greg's room. Where she starts kicking up the rug, nudging over the corner of his bed, revealing a hatch that lays completely flush with the floor. It takes a few seconds of fussing with it to get the handle to come up and the hatch to open, but the effort proves worth it. Inside, bricks of white and green line up neatly side by side. It... might be more than she was expecting given how she stares instead of just, ya know, transporting them into the trashbag. A quiet mutter of, "...the fuck's he keep his acid..?" is probably not the appropriate response, but there it is. A girl can dream.

"Probably in the cookie jar. C'mon babe, I don't like lingering." And not just because the sexual tension is getting to the point where it might need a chainsaw to sever them from it, but because this place was already shaken down once, and he'd rather they not be there - or rather she not be here - were it to happen again. "Just shove it in the bag and I'll make sure it gets to where it needs to go." Which seems to indicate he's not just going to hand the lot over to Bax and leave the pair of them sitting ducks but more to the point he's making it known that he knows where it needs to go.

With a snort of laughter, Sparrow chirps, "You might be right," in regards to the cookie jar comment. Even as she stoops down to follow the subsequent instructions. "Pretty sure the only time I've ever seen that kitchen in use was when Bax melted a sauce pan to a burner." Chances of more refreshments hiding in the kitchen is actually pretty high. She's maybe half-way through emptying the cubby hole when she asks, casually as she can manage, "You aren't fucking my friend's friend over, right?" without looking up from her work. She's hurrying!

Cristobal lets his own bag roll off his shoulder and fall to the floor with a thud in case she needs extra packing room. "No. More like I'm saving his ass from the people who are going to be real fucking pissed he up and bounced leaving his stash to be guarded by an unknowing third party, thus subjecting said third party to an armed robbery attempt, and roughly exposing a loss of...I'd say eight thousand." He sort of head wobbles. "Give or take. That's not something Greg could just bounce back from and your BFF doesn't need to take that kind of residual heat from it. Nor do you. So if these gun toting assholes come sniffing around your place next, I'm going to find them and have a real nice heart to heart. about how it'd be in their best interest to keep their intestines on the inside."

Sparrow's movements still toward the end of his answer, though only for a second. Then she's back to shoving drugs into the trashbag. There should be enough room in there. Mind, she's gonna look like she's robbing the place for how damned full it'll be when they head back out to his car, but at least she's a familiar face around these parts. "I do trust you," she assures, in case her question had made it seem otherwise. "I just know that Greg means a lot to Bax. And it'd kinda crush him if his choices, even if indirectly, lead to bad shit coming down on him. But I get what you're saying. Greg's choices. And your know-how." It might not be explicity, but that marks her agreement with his plan. As she closes the hatch and ties the bag up, she asks, "Any chance you could. I dunno. Check in on us a couple times a day? I know Mac's got cameras up. Motion sensor. Not that anyone's supposed to know she's there, alright? You don't know she's there." He gets a pointed, pleading look. Yeah, she fucked up letting that slip. But she trusts him. "Just..." Seeing all the drugs, the quantity, has her a little shook up. It is not entirely insignificant. But it is all packed up now, rug kicked back into place, bed dragged back over. "You think it's safe for Bax to text Hammy?"

"Pajarillo, if I could convince all parties involved to move the lot of you into Dante's apartment right now, I would. No more of this backward ass notion I was doing you any favors by keeping my distance. I'm going to be stuck on your ass like dried flaky...you know, I'm just going to stop the metaphor there, before I start thinking any more about your ass." He holds out his hand for the bag, not so much as to take possession of it - it's all going into his car after all - but to tote the load for her. "But yes. I'll check on you and your house often. And if I can't, I'll make sure someone I trust can do it." As to Mac? "Didn't hear a thing." As he's glancing around the room to make sure there's no neon signs that say 'more drugs stashed here', he suggests back to her. "Get him a prepaid phone you don't mind tossing after."

"You can think about my ass all you want," Sparrow counters as she hands the bag over without hesitation. Hell, maybe with some effort. It is definitely heavier than it had been a few minutes ago. "Pretty sure I'mma think about you thinking about my ass when I get home." Funny how distraction works. Now, it's way easier to think about all those things they shouldn't be doing than the large quantity of drugs she just handed over and the possibility of gun-toting assholes figuring out where anyone or anything is. The sex she's not getting is a way safer avenue of thought at the moment. Which might be why she blows a kiss at Cris as she walks past heading back out into the kitchen to idly rifle through a cabinet or two in the vain hope of finding a sheet of LSD. Just a few seconds, really. Fruitless seconds, but not a big risk. "I think that's everything. If he needs anything else from here, we can head over, like. Next week or something." Days. Theoretically. Nevermind that the place will be burnt to a crisp within a matter of hours. Returning eventually is the plan. Along with a run to the store to grab a prepaid phone and any essentials she might've missed. For now, though, seems they've done all there is to do in this brief, pre-arson window.