2020-10-05 - So, hey

The weekend after Easton's return has been unusual to say the least. He's been mostly couch bound resting his leg and crutching around the bare minimum that he can. Bennie's been upstairs in a mind-zap coma or something. Easton has kept his distance for a large variety of reasons but eventually he can hear that she's up and about and so it's time to face the music. Or at least figure out what song is playing. Or something. He leaves his newly mojo'ed back to life prosthetic where it is, to keep letting his stump heal, and crutches his way to the stairs. He gamely hops them, leaving Bennie no doubt about the fact that he's coming up. He reaches the top and takes a quick breath, not because he's winded, but to steady himself. He crutches into the master bedroom and calls out, "Bennie? You up?" Not that there is anyone else he expects or isn't well aware that she is, but what else do you say? 'Honey I'm home?' feels a little too trite.

After a few long days and nights, it's time for Bennie to emerge from her cocoon. The shock hit her hard, and had it not been for the calming influence of Ruiz, she would not be the beautiful butterfly she is now. A beautiful butterfly with hair in a messy nest on top of her head, wearing on of her handmade nightgowns layered over a pair of mid-calve leggings. Okay, so maybe a moth. But not one of those pretty lunar moths. The annoying brown kind that flicker around lightbulbs to their own crispy demise.

She shuffles out of the bathroom (where that beautiful perfect tub has been filled with 'projects' instead of becoming her safe haven), knuckles rubbing into her eye to clear away the last vestiges of blissed out nothingness. "Heeeey, you're up." She gives him a sleepy smile. "I swear I was coming down." Eventually, "You didn't have to maneuver all the way up here."

Easton's wardrobe lately has consisted of old tee-shirts, pre-GH ones from the Marines and even college days with actual words or prints on them as opposed to his usual uniform of solid color monochromatic ones. The one has on now is a Rogue Fitness shirt with a flag on the shoulder in bright blue, a big departure for him, with a pair of gray shorts. He can't help but grin back at her sleepy smile. "I've never been a fan of waiting for the action to come to me." He almost said fighting but caught himself at the last minute. He of course means in battle, but doesn't even want to raise the possibility. Not after last night with De La Vega. He wants to blurt out a thousand questions, info dump a million things, do all sorts of things that don't involve any words, and yet all that comes out is, "How are you feeling?"

"Action, hmm?" Bennie's smile tilts ruefully as she pads over and lays a hand on his cheek. Fingernails scritch in that old familiar way, but there is a warmth there as if she can't help but try to ease his discomfort. Even if she can't fix his mental woes, at least she can take away some of his aches and pains on seeing that telltale bruise and swelling from a recent broken nose, but doesn't seem that surprised to find him a bit battered after hearing (and hiding from) that kerfluffle downstairs with Ruiz. "I'm fine. Still can't believe this is real." She turns to kiss the tip of his nose, exercising the biggest amount of self restraint ever. "But what is real is that you're dehydrated. Why don't you lay down and I'll hook you up to some fluids?"

Pushing his face against her hand as she reaches up to feel his stubbly beard (most of his survivalist beard was too gnarly to want to save) Easton closes his eyes and just lets himself feel that moment. It was something he had to try hard to block out, one of a thousand little things between them that he couldn't let himself dwell on in order to just keep going. But now he lets himself lean into it, even as he feels the telltale warmth of glimmer. But there's no immediate relief of the bullet wound, his nose doesn't mend itself back to normal. And though he has plenty of questions about that, it's hardly his most pressing concern. "Okay" He accepts that she's fine but then she's talking about hooking him up to fluids and he shakes his head, "That can wait. Bennie I-" he looks at her intently, searching her face for any sign of what kind of answers he's about to get. He crutches closer to her, wanting there to be zero distance, the complete and utter lack of personal space that so defined them before.

"I don't know where to start."

And for a moment, she lets him. Lets him draw near, lets them feel the closeness of each other's presence. Lets their breath mingle and their heartbeats attempt to align. Her face turns into the crook of his neck, temple resting on his shoulder and arms snaking around him as if trying to remember how the shape of them comes together. But then? There is a swat to his butt. "You're going to start by laying in bed. And letting me get your fluids up. If you're going to fight with everyone that comes to check on you, you're darn well going to win, Easton Charles Marshall. Except me. You're not going to win with me. So. Bed!"

Her smell comes rushing back, filling in the gaps of memory and pushing away any fear that this is all some terrible tease. He is on crutches still but lets his hands roam down her sides as she comes closer. There is just the softest mutter of her name before getting slapped back into reality. "ey!" He starts to protest but then it's clear that maybe she wasn't as out of it as he had thought when she brings up him fighting visitors, "I didn't even punch Alexander! And De La La started it." Yes, /he started it/ that's a good way to sound like a mature adult. He sighs at her, defeated and narrows his eyes, considering taking off his shirt but decides that might open up a can he can't undo. And so he crutches to the bed and says, "Fine. But can I at least ask some questions?"

"Uh-huh, suuure." Bennie responds in a sing-song voice as she ushers him over to the bed, taking away his crutches when he's sitting on the edge of it and the colorful bohemian quilt that replaced the unicolor one from the apartment, leaning them up against a nightstand that has clean lines and looks an industrial metal and wood combination. He might not have been here, but she still set up the place as a comfortable meld of their tastes instead of just thrifting everything or pulling it from junk piles as if it were just her home. "E...you can ask me whatever you want and I have about a zillion things to tell you, but at your pace okay?"

"Okay" Easton is still taking in the house, all the familiar and unfamiliar bits that he's not sure if he's forgetting or if they're new. But again, not terribly important considering what he has to ask. He looks at her, watching her and very seriously asks, "Can I have a drink? That's hydrating right?" Because jokes make things easier. And he has to work up the nerve to ask, "Bennie, are you seein' anyone? And I don't just mean fuckin, but if I'm screwing something up or you've found someone, you don't.. you don't owe me. I was gone." Because that's what's keeping him up first and foremost is that people are avoiding telling him because who knows what can happen in six months.

And for a moment, Bennie guilty or at least mildly sheepish but it turns out not because of the question, but for the fact she's pulling open the bedside drawer and fishing out a plastic flask-sized bottle of tequila and handing it over. Fingers gently tilt up the man's chin so that their gazes connect. "I'm not seeing anyone. There was a chance of someone new coming into that part of my life, yes, I was finally opening myself up to the possibility again. But if you think for one second my heart didn't remember exactly who it belongs to when the Veil spit you out in the bar again..."

The fact that there is tequila in the bedside table causes a 'waaaiiiit' look to pass over Easton's face for just a moment before he brushes that thought aside. Asked and answered. He smiles as she lifts his chin up, and doesn't seem phased at all at the talk of someone in her life. "Good. I mean, about you opening up. I know it's fuckin' morbid but you can't wait around if the veil sucks me back in." Ugh, it's hard to not think like that but at this point Easton is nearly obsessed with the fact that he has so little control over it. It decided to take him. It decided to release him. There was no agency on his part in any of it and that sucks balls. "And as tempting as the rotting zombie corpses, murder versions of my friends and vampire plants were, surprisingly I didn't exactly have any heart opening moments myself." He takes a sip of the tequila, a more moderate one than if it were other spirits, which is probably for the best.

"I would have mourned you until the day I died, it's as simple as that. The hardest part was coming to terms with the fact that I could do that, and still live a life in the mean time." Morbid is right, and talking about it is uncomfortable. Thankfully Bennie has a task to deal with and she's pulling her EMT kit of pilfered supplies and grabbing what she needs to set him up on a rapid infusion. One bag of saline and a yellow one of various vitamins they lovingly refer to as a 'banana bag', which no doubt the couple has used before when it came to hangovers. Taking a wire hanger out of the closet, she snaps off the cardboard piece used for pants, and after a few bends, hangs it on the headboard and turns the ends into hooks for the bags of fluid.

"His name is Ravn, he works for you now, and if you fire him because of this, I will inflict the chin wobble and ugly cry on you, the wrath of which has no comparison to the horrors you endured Over There, just so we're clear."

"I know." Easton says it, knowing full well what it is to miss someone that completely and still move on. It's life, it keeps going.

Easton blinks and wasn't actually expecting details but doesn't seem put out by it. "Why the fuck would I fire him? Having good taste?" He raises his eyebrows and gives her a look up and down before saying, "I'm pretty sure I can handle not acting like a jack-ass." He thinks about that for a second before adding, "I mean probably. It'll probably be fine." He did just shoot Geoff and break his nose on Ruiz's chin and has done pretty terrible things to lots of people so maybe he shouldn't be so sure about his ability to be cool about this?

"Did you..? I mean.. it's not any of business, and I swear I won't be a jealous dick about any of this." But he really wants to know, even if he is probably better off not knowing details.

Bennie straightens his arm out without so much as asking for his permission, but she's used to doing this stuff in the back of a moving rig on critical patients, so there isn't even a warning about a 'small pinch' when she finds a vein and inserts the IV stint, hooking the tubing up and starting the drip as she just continues the conversation. "No. This wasn't some break up I needed to get out of my system, or some itch I was looking to scratch." The needle tip gets tossed into an empty water glass on the bedside table. Which is sitting on a coaster. "It's just been me and some double A batteries." Her smile flickers ruefully, "Not that the thought didn't cross my mind about ordering a pizza." And her task done she scrambles onto the bed and crawls around him, "You've got about forty five minutes of being my captive audience now." And her arms ring his shoulders from behind, tilting sharply to wrestle him down to the mattress so she can curl up to his side.

Easton is a willing patient, who is used to having little say over medical treatments from the military. And being too blitzed to care. But now just rolls with it and barely a flicker of a scowl crosses his face when the needle enters. He doesn't look relieved at the news that she's been going it solo in the time he's been gone. Everyone knows he'd go a different, far sluttier path in the wake of dealing with a loss. But he's not surprised either. Bennie was hardly living it up in that way before they got together. "Aww, doctor pizza boy." is all he has to say about her thoughts of 'ordering a pizza boy', he doesn't even remember where the doctor part came in but that is Tor's name now. He acks as she wrestles him down to the bed, "So.. we're okay?" Is he? Are they? Is that what this means? Ugh. Even if she doesn't answer though at least he can curl up with her on the bed. He slides an arm under her to pull her even closer, trying to squeeze out any space between them. He turns his head towards her and thinks about saying more, but decides to just have this.

There is a little shiver through Bennie's frame as he draws her up next to his side tight as can be, like her body is being reminded of how bereft she's been for over four long months without this sort of physical contact that she thrives off of. For a moment it might be enough to fully break apart the pieces she's been trying to hold together for so long, even her voice quakes with the intensity of the threat. "I was picking out your gravestone, Easton. I have a thousand drafts of letters to your family and Jenny. I don't have to do any of that now. You have no idea how 'okay' we are."

He knew some of what she would have gone through, but hearing those details, things he hadn't yet gotten around to even considering beyond just the soul shaking sense of loss. He breathes out a sigh of relief though at the end and lets his head rest back on the pillow. This finally feels real. Not like the weird limbo state of the last few days, but like things are actually going to not just suddenly twist and shift into another nightmare scenario. Too much reality shifting is bad for the brain meats and Easton's got a solid case of that. "Okay, I hope it at least had an eagle firing an AR-15 on it." The gravestone that is. Because as much as he shouldn't joke about things, it's also exactly what he does in these scenarios. At the mention of family and Jenny, Easton looks pained. Not on his account though, but on account of something he knows that he never got to say. He needs to tell her, but not yet, he's strong but not strong enough to risk not getting to enjoy being this close at least once.

"Are you kidding me right now?" Bennie lifts her head enough to rest it on the heel of her hand, propping up so she can see his face instead of just his profile. "There was going to be two eagles, thank you very much." Her smile is brighter than it has any right to be, but she's laying next to Easton, in their bed, with her leg thrown over his hips. Like it should be. Like it always should have been. Her hand cups his face again, thumb trying to stroke away that pained look. "Eleanor and August got married, has anyone said yet? And the Asylum is gone...so, so much to tell you. I'm sorry I even wasted one day waiting for my brain to be able to process that you're here."

For a second she catches him off guard, like he's not sure what she's asking if he's kidding about. But then she's joking about two eagles and there comes that smile. His eyebrows tick up just a touch as he takes it in, that smile that knocks him the hell out every time. He lets her get through some of the news she has to tell him, reacting with "really" and "wow", but too distracted by her hands on his face and her smile and the fact that she's actually there. Finally he just shakes his head and says, "Oakes, if you don't shut up and kiss me, I'm gonna lose it. Like ugly lose it. Flippin tables, shooting hot ex-cons, the whole nine yards." He doesn't wait for her to kiss him though, he pulls her close and kisses her. The way he has had to avoid thinking about a million times a day just to get through. The way he wanted to in the restroom of that pizza place that burned down. The way it should be done.

Well that does it. No more tiptoeing around, or walking around eggshells. The moment he tells her to shut up, her face looks flooded with relief, perhaps worried for a moment all his questions weren't because he wanted to know if she had an out, but because he wanted one. That he had changed so much over there, he didn't want to go back to what they were. Dispelled like a puff of smoke the moment that kiss is sealed and her body melts down to his with a light laugh. It doesn't stay sweet and innocent for long though, too much behind behind the dam to prevent a flood.

As she leans up to peel off her nightgown, she calls, "Gunner, Guard!" And down below their faithful dog clambers to go lay in front of the door. Because No Way is Bennie chancing any more interruptions from good natured well-wishers.