2020-11-15 - Midnight Munchies

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

Nope. It's not Ravn. Though it would be apropos if it was. Instead the individual knocking on the door to Seth's place is Vic Grey. She's knocking with her booted foot, because her arms are full with two paper grocery bags from Safeway. In said bags are a glorious array of stoner munchies. There are funyons, Doritos, pizza rolls, ranch dressing (for said pizza rolls), Mt. Dew, Coke, maybe "coke", pretzels, chocolate covered peanuts, and a few other odds and ends.

The blonde is in yoga pants and a tee with her hair loose. It was in a tail earlier, but her scalp started talking to her about how that was pulling on it, so to shut it up she took it down.

Seth's house on Elm looks just like any of the other homes on the street in the way that cookie-cutter homes tend to. A few subtle differences to the outside, but the layout tends to match. However, the interior of the enforcer's house has seen some upgrades since the new owner has moved in. Floors of a dark hardwood or laminate replace the old and faded carpets that one might normally find in one of these fixer-upper type houses. The walls have been patched and painted in a neutral tone. and the interior lighting has been re-wired to use decent LED illumination.

Seth, not expecting anyone to show up at this time of night is not exactly dressed for visitors. Clad in pair of sleep pants and with hands smelling a bit of gun oil, the enforcer pads his way over to the door and opens it to reveal his visitor, a brow arching as he sees the other enforcer with her hands full. Moving to take one of the bags from her, Seth smiles "Well, hello there. What is all this?" Peering into the bag he takes, he chuckles softly, "Got a case of the munchies, Grey? Come on in."

Seth pads his way towards the kitchen, leaving the front door open to let Vic enter in behind him. "Are you here for a waffletaco? Because I can totally make another waffletaco. Those things are like crack."

"I don't have a microwave yet. How can I not have a microwave yet?" Vic exclaims, looking incredibly frustrated. "I wanted pizza rolls, but you can't have pizza rolls without a microwave. And I'm really really hungry. And High. So very high. So I thought if you had a microwave I could share my snacks." She looks wide-eyed and hopeful at that, her stomach growling audibly.

"After pizza rolls, waffle taco, definitely, though I pointed out to Alexander there's already a choco taco thing that's been around for decades."

"Chacotacos are not deep-fried in a beer batter with booze-infused ice cream inside them," explains Seth as he motions for Vic to follow him towards the kitchen. "We want to sell the idea to Easton, for a cut of the profits. We will make bank. Mi microwave, Su microwave. Help yourself anytime, I'll leave you a key," he utters as he points out the device in question hanging above the stove.

Seth sets the bag of snacks down onto the counter and starts to unpack them, placing the sodas into the fridge to chill before pulling out a baking sheet from a drawer under the stove, sliding it along the counter towards Vic. "Let me go put a shirt on and clean up the living room. I was cleaning my pieces. We can go in there and munch on pizza rolls, put on a movie or something."

"Don't go putting a shirt on, on my account," Vic quips. "I can admire the view this way. Though it's probably not a good idea to do that. Hrn. Did I say all that outloud? Goddamn magical weed cloud." She moves into the kitchen to begin preparing pizza rolls and appears to at least know her way around the kitchen. As her mother passed when she was a kid, she had to learn to cook for herself fairly quickly, while dad was at work.

She totally sneaks a few glances at shirtless Seth though. Totally.

Seth lets out a laugh, rolling his shoulder into a shrug as he makes his way back into the kitchen from the hallway, "Yes, yes you did, and I have always been a proponent of ask and you shall receive. I'll at least put the gun away unless you are wanting a peek at that as well.” Seth says as he waggles his brow in a joking manner.

Squeezing behind Vic, Seth makes his way over to the fridge and pulls out a couple of bottles of beer before reaching into some of the cabinets above the counter with some over-exaggerated movements that put on a show for Vic as he grabs some bowls to put the snacks in. ”If you prefer to drink something with a bit more of a kick, I do have a fully stocked bar in the other room. So, any preference as to what you want to watch while we devour convenience stores worth of junk food? I'm open to pretty much anything.”

"I don't think I need to be high off my ass AND drunk. That could be disasterous," Vic points out. She observes the gun show like a tigress watching a snack moving around in the long grass. It takes her a moment to stop zoning out and get the pizza rolls into the oven. She tears open bags to dump stuff into the bowls provided.

She starts pondering what to watch and her eyes glaze over. "So many options. Horror or sci fi or action or mystery or something with lots of explosions...." Yeah, she is indecisive when high, clearly.

"Beer it is then, we will just have to partake in moderation to avoid drunken debauchery," Seth says with a wink as he opens the pair of bottles, grabbing them and a few of the bowls, leading the way into the living room. "If we decide to be disastrous later, we can cross that bridge when we get to it. How about something that registers on all levels like Aliens? Predator? I mean, not so much on the mystery in it but it checks all the other boxes."

As he passes by, Seth reaches out and snags a chip from one of the bowls that Vic is holding, popping it into his mouth and crunching down on it with satisfaction.

Vic snorts. "Would I be over here if I wanted to avoid drunken debauchery? Half the town is already shipping us. Of course they were shipping me with the astronaut too and that never happened, so they could just be terrible shippers." She grunts and loads up her arms with bowls of snacks to carry into his living room area. "Aliens works. I always wanted to be a Colonial Marine and have one of those giant gatling guns like Vasquez."

She sets down all the bowls, and fishes out some chips for herself to munch on, crunch crunch crunch. "We need to set some ground rules."

Seth mirrors the snort in reply, "Yeah, so I have noticed. Alexander, Ravn, and God knows who else. Maybe you have more people pressuring you on your end, I don't know, but those two keep telling me I need to ask you out on a date. I mean, it isn't like I wasn't thinking of it anyway, so maybe I was giving off that vibe, but I didn't think you were interested."

The enforcer shrugs a shoulder and sets the bowls down onto the coffee table in front of the couch before moving over to search through the bookshelf full of DVD's, "Rules? Sure. I was going to start with dinner and drinks and all that shit, but if we are going to skip all that part rules are probably a good idea."

Vic snorts. "One. We can hang out in places and have dinner and shit, but I don't really date. Relationships and I aren't a thing. There's reasons for it, and you know most of them. What we do, we're likely to end up dead and dumped in a construction site somewhere before we hit 45. No point in leaving someone behind like that." She shrugs. "Two. Even if I want this to happen, it might not happen. Before your cousin pulled me out of Portland, some bad shit happened to me. Real bad. Like, wake up screaming in the middle of the night bad. I have scars, physical and mental, and sometimes one or the other will trigger a panic attack. I haven't, you know, in about four years because of it. So if I run screaming, it's not your fault. Understood?" She looks at him with a moment of pure clarity through the stoned haze at that.

The redhead shrugs a shoulder, "Fair enough. I get not being tied down to each other, shit happens. At least the two of us don't need to pussyfoot around each other and lie to each other about this shit we may or may not have to go and do at any given time." Pulling the DVD out of its case, Seth slips the silver disc into the Blu-ray player and wanders over towards the couch, grabbing the remote to turn the wall-mounted TV on. "IF things between us ever did get close to that line, then at least we understand the possibilities without having some weird fucking conversation."

Settling into the couch, Seth starts the movie before grabbing a handful of something crunchy and salty, popping a few into his mouth before he continues, "Two, that is also fair. I'm not intimidated by scars, Vic. We all have them, and I have my own fair share. We will just take things easy, no pressure."

"Yeah, we'd be all Mister and Missus Smith, and have a house full of hidden guns like in cereal boxes and shit. Woe betide any asshole who tried to break in," Vic declares with a chuckle. She sobers quickly though. "I was undercover in with a cartel cell in Portland. They found out I was a cop, and they interrogated me. Their interrogator was Carlos Vargas, THE Carlos Vargas." Notorious serial killer and torturer of the Sinaloa Mexican Cartel. That should say it all. "He kept it mostly to my back, but it was bad, and he signed his work." He brands his victims. She stares directly ahead, at the tv, while reciting all of this.

"Hey, you make that sound like that wouldn't be as cool as shit...and we would have the added bonus of actually working for the same team. No bullshit cross-assassin rivalry going on." Seth says grinning from ear to ear as he takes a sip from his beer. "I'm all for secret gun caches, speaking of..." Seth starts to re-assemble the newly oiled Desert Eagle that was sitting on the coffee table as Vic explains the scars. The movement are precise like this is something he likely could do blindfolded.

Seth's face remains stoic, not a hint of a wince or any other emotion as she explains, only looking over to her once the tale is over with a quick nod. "It's just skin, Vic." the enforcer says in regards to the scars, "At least the outer scars. I'm not as shallow as apparently I seem if you think that is going to concern me at all. Hell, the fact you survived at all is a blessing."

Vic lets out a slow breath. "It's not how it looks that's the issue. Every single one is a horrific memory of how it was put there. And sometimes, when they get touched, I relieve that moment in my head," she admits. "I'm sure I need some kind of therapy for it, but for the moment, all I can do is warn you about it, and tell you if I freak out it's not your fault." She shoves a handful of chips into her mouth, staring at the tv as if demanding the movie start right now so she doesn't have to talk about this shit. Mentally, she's assembling the weapon in her head, as he does it physically. She knows every move by heart as well.

Snaping the slide into place and checking the barrel, Seth flips on the safety and inserts the magazine, sliding the hand-cannon over to the side of the table. The 20th Century Fox logo appears on the screen with the all to familiar drumbeat that signals the movies start as he looks over to Vic with a nod. "Duly noted, I promise I won't take any offense if you freak out if or when things progress to a point that my touching your back becomes an issue." The enforcer takes another sip from his beer, wincing slightly as he bumps his nose with the back of his hand.

"ON a less serious and more self-deprecating note, you know how I have been teaching Darth, your Sith apprentice, how to fight? Lucky bastard got a tag on my nose. I don't know how he did it, but he managed to get a solid hit dead-on like some kind of combat idiot-savant."

"Maybe that would be its own kind of therapy. You could work on touching my back, individual scars, and I can talk through how they got there. And it'll be horrible, but it'll be cleansing too, because I can share the burden, or some other philosophical psychobabble," Vic murmurs.

She then suddenly beams a bright smile at the news of Ravn's combat prowess. "Oh my God, all he needed was to get totally stoned off his ass to become combat savvy?" she asks.

"Apparently. I hear he tagged Alexander with one hit as well. I am going to call that fucker 'One Punch Man'." Seth says with a chuckle as he reaches up and rubs around his nose. "Fucking luckily bastard. I think the weed is making him less in his head. He should be high more often."

Seth smiles, and nods. "Hey, if you want to try that as a form of therapy, I'm game. I'm not a psychologist or anything, but I'm willing to listen and be here for you if you need to rage or cry or whatever."

"I think the weed is making a lot of people less in their head, and the rest of us more in our heads. I think it's also making some of us WAY more talkative, which is probably a bad thing for us, considering our line of work that doesn't involve bars," she points out, in a moment of wisdom. "Shit maybe whatever this is, we'll forget everything after." She blinks. Then she turns to look at him.

"Ok, I'm gonna trust you with it then, Monaghan. Don't fuck me over with it. Promise?" she asks, frowning at the fact she would trust anyone with anything, ever.

"If I fuck you over with it, I would fully expect you to unload a mag into me, Vic. I promise." the enforcer says with a nod. "Hell, I'll even provide you with the gun."

It's a sweet moment, one of sharing, which is immediately dispersed by the DING of the timer. "PIZZA ROLLS!" Vic crows, getting up and running to the kitchen to get the little pockets of lava hot cheese and sauce and the little bowl of ranch to dip them in. Tension breaker!

"Oh good, I'm starving!" Seth says, watching Vic go towards the kitchen from over the couch. "Don't forget some napkins. Those little lava-filled bites squirt everywhere. " Seth turns back around to watch the opening scene of Aliens. This is the extended cut with the family of prospectors that stumble on the old Alien ship from the first movie.