063-064 » no matter how much / part ii (group A)

[villagemod]

WHO: Group A members only.
WHERE: Mathias Township proper
WHEN: Days 063-064
WHAT: Matthias becomes a little larger and a little smaller at the same time.
WARNINGS: (PM this account to have a warning added!)
NOTES: Plotting post over here!

RECOMMENDED ♫ DEADLY AVENGER "Raiju"

DAY 063-064
NO MATTER HOW MUCH
“No matter how much suffering you went through,
you never wanted to let go of those memories.”
— Haruki Murakami
At first, in the calm following the storm, nothing seems amiss. When the residents awake, it is to another glorious morning dawning in the unsettling paradise that is Mathias Township. Indeed, it does seem rather glorious that morning, for there is sunshine in a blue sky that has been cleared of any remnant of the angry storm clouds from the day before. But before long, residents will start to notice signs of something being not quite right.

It should be a familiar sensation to most by now.

It begins as just a feeling, a strange hint of something in the air, a nagging voice at the back of the mind. They can't quite put their finger on it but there is something. Something wrong, something that shouldn't be — which is quite a statement in a town where everything shouldn't be. But then the pieces will begin to come together.

A person has gone who ought to be there. This in itself is not a strange occurrence, for many have vanished and then returned, or not. This time, though, it is one person, and then two and three... A dozen people or more have gone, with no trace of their whereabouts to be found.

No resident is alone, thankfully. There are others who also remain: friends, acquaintances, strangers. Others who are just as trapped in this nightmarish place.

As the hours stretch on and residents begin to venture beyond their self-claimed shelters and move about the town, they will find that their fellow captives are not the only things that have vanished. The Chasm is gone as well, the crack in the earth that once stretched across and cut off the western part of town. There is not even the smallest mark to show where it had once been; it has gone so completely that some might wonder if they had merely imagined it.

---

ABOUT THE NEW LOCATIONS
POPPY COTTAGE This bed and breakfast has a sense of casual elegance with the elusive quality of being both sophisticated and comfortable at the same time. Aside from being covered in dust and grime, of course.

PENHEW HOUSE Perhaps familiar to some in Mathias, this grand house is different from any of the others the residents have entered. It looks... new. Fresh. Clean. The usual thick layers of dust and grime that would be caked onto every visible surface are nowhere in sight; this absence may be a relief for some and unsettling to others. There are certainly other unsettling things to be found in this location.

THE OLD CHURCH Barely more than ruins, the property is marked by a crumbled stone outline that has no roof and only partial walls, nothing left inside besides a broken cobblestone floor.

BANEBERRY HALL From the outside, Baneberry Hall seems like your average rich person's house, but one would be mistaken to assume anything of the sort. Even the baneberries that cover the back lawn leading to the forest treeline are deceptive, for they appear harmless but are fatal to any human foolish enough to eat them.

The building is decaying from within. The rooms have begun to rot, from the parlors and libraries still done up in grand and expensive style to the bedrooms that have locks on the doors and bars on the windows. There are restraints in some of those bedrooms, while others are bereft of sharp objects. In the hall closets, there are identical sets of white pajamas of all sizes, and the offices have locked cabinets (that may be picked) full of a rainbow of sedatives (that will not replenish). The names on doors and in logbook lists are all smudged beyond legibility, and all paperwork has been water-damaged and weathered, leaving no indication of who may have been kept in those bedrooms or why. But within each room, there is an item that may be familiar to one of the residents now wandering its halls. As caked in dust and grime as anything else, each item is placed as if it belongs there, as if it might have been there for years. But it couldn't have been... could it?



ABOUT THE ITEMS FROM HOME
Within the unsettling walls of Baneberry Hall, residents may find OBJECTS that are uncomfortably familiar to them. Each item has one singular memory attached to it that, when touched in any way, will be experienced first hand, as if the person receiving it had lived it themselves. This person will endure all of the associated emotions and psychological reactions to the memory that the memory's owner experienced.

— Items may only be found within Baneberry Hall. These items from home are not all in one room or a specific location but instead are scattered throughout the bedrooms. (Only the items on this list are available to this group.)

— Ownership and possession of the item are important elements to this event. While the item is in possession of someone who is not its owner, it will continue to infect all who touch it with the memory that belonged to its owner. The item will also, before long, begin to make the possessor ill, both physically and emotionally uncomfortable and upset. This only occurs until the item is reunited with its owner, or until it is no longer in someone else's possession. (For example, if Person A finds Person B's teddy bear and carries it with them, they will continue to experience the bear's associated memory until they no longer have it in their possession, whether this means they have left it somewhere or it has been returned to Person B.)

— Recipients of memories will retain those memories even after the event has ended.

— When the owner of an item finds their item or has it returned to them, they will also experience the memory once themselves, having it returned to them as if they had just lived those moments again. The memory is only replayed once in their minds and then the memory effect of the object is gone. After this point, the item can be held by the owner or any others without consequence.

— If a person removes an item from its room in Baneberry Hall but does not remove the item from the property entirely, the item will be mysteriously returned to its original location when no one is looking. This is so that people do not have to keep close track of where items are going in the possible changing of hands, so the original owners can still easily locate the item without having to plan in great detail. Once an item is removed from the property, it will not return to its original location even if it is discarded by the possessor before reaching its original owner. Instances such as this should be planned among all involved parties, including the owner of the item.

— Once an item is removed from the property, please comment below so that information may be updated. Items that are not removed by the end of the event may reappear at a later time, so accurate records are essential.

— Before an item's memory is viewed by someone other than the owner, permission must be granted or requested for that memory to be viewed by another character. Because the experience is an uncomfortable one for the other characters, the viewing of memories not their own should ideally be kept to a small number.

---

CONDITIONS UPDATE

— THE WEATHER conditions remain fairly typical for early fall: warm days and cool nights. It feels almost like spring arriving except that there fewer red and orange leaves on the ground and more of them oddly returning to the trees and slowly fading to green. It's like watching one of those nature documentaries that have a timelapse of the seasons, only it's going in reverse.

— THE FOG has new boundaries.

— Residents may now wander the southern stretch of the forest surrounding Mathias Township — it is possible to leave the paths but potentially unwise to do so.
— The fog has also retreated from the western section of town entirely.
— Access to the northern section of the forest is still blocked beginning a few dozen yards past the treeline; this section of fog will urge residents to stay huddled within the town proper by inducing a physical reaction of panic and fear.

— DISAPPEARANCES AND DEATHS continue! Yennefer, Number Five, and Tony Stark have vanished and Ellie is still missing, though this may be difficult to tell with half the town also seemingly having vanished. Will Graham's body may be found within the ruins of the Old Church; he appears to have been frightened to death. (If someone decides to take care of the body, please report it below. For in-game reasons, this does not need to be coordinated across groups.)

— ALCOHOL supplies have run dry, save for any dregs that have been squirreled away by individual residents. Moonshine can still be acquired by those in desperate need.

---

OOC NOTES

— NEW MAP Thanks so much to Scy for yet another amazing new map of Mathias!

— UPDATES Don't forget to report updates as they come up! Changes to locations (like toppling a few bookshelves in the library), big plots you have coming up that will affect the game (parties, major property destruction, etc), or exciting discoveries that may tie into the game's mythology (even the things provided by the mod) are very helpful to have in one place so relevant page updates can be made. IC events are also helpful to know about in advance so they can be included in the log write-ups.

— MOD STATUS For those who don't know, I run a summer program that is set to start in just 2 weeks. We've only recently been given the green light to go ahead in person, so it's a scramble to get everything pulled together in time. My non-RP life is going to be busy and chaotic for the next while and I am thus asking for your forgiveness and understanding as things continue to be slow, as I cannot guarantee timely mod responses beyond weekends, and even that is not guaranteed.

— NEXT LOG Because of the aforementioned real-life chaos, the next log will be more relaxed and free form with everyone coming back together again and having a few chill days. It would be very much appreciated if some of the more intense investigations could be saved to take place in future logs, as the new locations that are opening up in this log will remain open in the next few at least and there will be plenty of time to explore all their mysteries.

— ITEMS FROM HOME The items from home remaining in Baneberry Hall will not be available past this log, at least not in this form, so if you would like to play with these elements, you should not sleep on this opportunity. More things may show up in the future but, for now, this is the main event.

— DW NOTIFS Back at the beginning of the year, the issue of missing email notifs was discussed in a code push plurk by Mark of the DW admin team. For those who missed it, the gist is that the issue with missing notifs is not going to be fixed anytime soon. The issue is so sporadic that the dev team has concluded the only way to possibly fix it is to redo the notification system entirely. This issue does not extend to DW's internal inbox, so short of checking every thread you're involved in, the DW inbox is the best way to make sure you're not missing things.

— ACTIVITY CHECK Beginning with June's AC (posted at the start of July), all tags that consist of only dialogue will count as 0.5 comments, not just those that occur in an inbox thread. This applies to both AC and AP totals.

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Day 063-064, closed to Parker

[likeknives]

cw: drowning, drowning imagery in gifs, murder, Leverage Season 3 spoilers

A dark beanie covered in dust sits innocuously in a hard-to reach spot in one of the bedrooms in Baneberry Hall. It's hard to find this one, and it's very likely that one will brush their hand against it randomly while searching, rather than plucking it out of the room outright. However, if you are so unfortunate enough to touch it, this memory immediately plays:

It's an indoor pool in a luxury hotel. The atmosphere is tense, though it looks like there's a party going on in the background. Hardison is sitting in an office chair, one hand handcuffed to the chair. Eliot is standing with his arms crossed across his chest. There's an intense feeling of worry coming from Eliot, that betrays his closed-off body language. He's keeping as cool as possible on the outside, but on the inside, he's terrified and tense.

He is focused on two people. Hardison, who he is desperate to keep safe in this dangerous situation, and Damien Moreau. Because of the con, he can only appear to be focused on Damien Moreau.

Damien Moreau, who is pouring a drink casually and walking over to the duo. He wears an expensive-looking blue bathrobe, his dark hair slicked back, and flip-flops. He's clearly just come from the sauna in another room. He points a finger towards Eliot, his voice laced with an accent that places him somewhere from the Balkan peninsula. "You work alone."

There's a flare of fear from Eliot, but he doesn't show it at all on his face.

"Things change," he says quietly. Too quietly.

There's not just fear at Damien Moreau, though. There's something else just as powerful.

Nostalgia. An old affection that he can't quite bury deep enough. He can't be around him, can't be near him, can't let himself remember that he used to care deeply for him. And that terrifies him, too. The fact that if Hardison wasn't here, he might be more open to considering...old patterns. Old friendships.

Things change, and part of him is afraid that he might, somewhere in his heart of hearts where he locked his old life away, wish that they didn't.

Eliot focuses on Moreau when he sits down, like he's a tiger ready to strike. He might as well be, they're in just as much danger.

"Don't take it personally," Moreau says to Hardison. "Takes me awhile to warm up to people." Hardison waves a hand, still fully in his character for the con they're pulling. A woman arrives with champagne on a tray and Eliot shakes his head no.

"He prefers beer," Moreau says, possessively, as if he could sense Eliot's nostalgia. Hardison tries to reach for the champagne but the woman sadly doesn't see him as she walks away. Eliot quietly shoots Hardison a look.

"Is this one of your retrieval jobs, Eliot? Tell me, whose snoopy lunchbox do I have?" Moreau's tone is amused. Condescending.

"It's not a retrieval. I'm escortin' the middleman. I'm contracted to make sure he gets in and out with the offer." Eliot's body language is still closed off, his voice soft, but cold despite Moreau's teasing and warmth. He can't allow himself to show any emotion here. There's a flare of annoyance though. Damien can't respect his new life, clearly.

Hardison clears his throat and speaks with a French accent, still in character. "Pardon. Monsieur. My client has heard of what you're selling and would like to acquire the Ram's Horn."

Moreau smirks. "And your client is...?"

"If you indulge us with the details of the auction, we can make a deal. All will be revealed. I assure you we are working in good faith," Hardison says with a smile.

"I'm sure you are, I'm sure you are. But I don't know you."

Moreau points to Hardison, then pauses, looking up at Eliot. "I do know you. We could talk."

Eliot pauses, never taking his eyes off him, a flare of fear at that. He can't really be alone with Damien. He'd brought Hardison to make sure that didn't happen. "I ain't much on talkin', Moreau."

A disappointed look crosses Moreau's face. "Okay." He puts his drink down. "Let's keep it short." He promptly gets up and kicks Hardison into the pool. Hardison yells, as the chair skids across the pool deck and plunges him into the deep water.

There's a moment of absolute fear and horror and--resignation. He was expecting something like this to happen, he'd hoped, hoped so badly it wouldn't but it did. Of course it did. Damien Moreau was, after all, Damien Moreau. There's disappointment, too, and anger--at himself, for letting it come to this. For not being able to protect Hardison, for being too afraid to tell him that he used to be Damien Moreau's right-hand man. Eliot doesn't move, doesn't budge, knowing what this is. A challenge. A test. He's counting down the seconds, just under his breath. The seconds that Hardison has left to live, how much air he's got.

Damien pauses, crossing his arms. "I'm sure you told your clients, I don't do business with strangers."

"That's why I'm here," Eliot says. "To vouch for 'em."

"Ah, a little vague," says Damien, another challenge in his tone.

"I never told anyone about you," Eliot says, for the first time emotion crossing his face, in his tone. It's almost a growl but not really, and it's also not a lie. There's a strange sort of loyalty there. It's not all borne of fear, either. He never told his crew, even when things were good, even when they weren't going after him. He didn't want this life, his old life, coming back to haunt him when things were good. "I use the same confidentiality with all my clients. However I can say they're overseas. You sell it to the international buyers it leaves US soil immediately. No trace back to you."

Damien shrugs. "I already have international buyers, so it's not an issue." He pauses, pointedly taking the time to reach down and pick up his drink, taking a sip, purposefully running down the clock, every movement, every moment a challenge.

Eliot's jaw twitches, but his face remains impassive. He's still counting down, still thinking of Hardison under the water. Possibly dying. A few more seconds pass and they feel like an eternity.

"What else you got?" Damien asks.

This time, another wave of emotion crosses Eliot's face, realizing what Damien wants here. What he's asking.

It's what he asked of him before, so many times. His old job. What he used to do, what he used to be.

It's so strange how easily he can pick up what Damien's asking even without him saying as much in as many words. It takes him a moment to find his bearings, and he lifts his chin, trying to sound as calm and collected as possible. He feels the opposite of these things. He's been afraid, for so many years, that this moment may come. And now it's here and he's not ready.

"What do you need?"

Damien smiles and he knows he's got him.

"I need you to kill someone for me. For old times' sake." He takes another sip of his drink, ignoring Hardison writhing underwater. "A man named Atherton. I'll send you the details, but I know that you'll do a fine job. Like you always do."

Eliot nods, and it hurts. He remembers a time when he used to do these jobs for Damien like it was nothing. Like he was agreeing to go out and get coffee for him.

"Excellent."

He nods to one of his men and they toss the keys to the handcuffs into the pool, haphazardly aiming towards Hardison, probably not even caring if he managed to grab them or not. Hardison unlocks the cuffs, and swims to the surface, coughing and gasping for air as he exits the pool.

Eliot never lets his eyes off Damien, and neither does the other, ignoring Hardison until he gets out. Eliot gives off an annoyed glance, but it's anything but on the inside. There's relief. So much relief. Hardison tries to collect himself, closing his suit and taking out a soaked handkerchief and wiping off his face. "And what message should I convey to my employer?" Damien just laughs.

"I like this one," he says delightedly. "Glad we could strike a deal. Reminds me of Belgrade."

The memory ends.

Eliot himself is in Baneberry hall at the time, exploring the different rooms. He's doing a pretty methodological search, paying careful attention to the lack of things as much as the things that are here.

He can be found checking the bars on the windows, the strange pajamas in the closets, trying to smash into the locked cabinets, or looking through the ruined paperwork to see if he can make anything out.

He will be spending most of the day here and the next, making it easy to run across him randomly during this time.

[sharker]

Don't ask me that, Parker. Because if you ask me, I'm gonna tell you. So please, don't ask me.

She knows he'd meant it. Both the promise to tell her the truth about what he'd do for Moreau, if she'd asked, and the desperate, for Eliot, plea for her not to do so. To let it remain unsaid.

She hadn't asked what he'd done and she hadn't asked what had happened with him and Hardison and Moreau in that hotel. Hardison had been wet and unhappy and scared, but he'd been alive. They'd both been alive, and they'd gotten what they needed, and at the time, that had been enough. They'd all had so much else to worry about.

Now, when she finds Eliot trying and failing to smash his way into one of the cabinets, she just stands still, studying him for a moment, before she speaks.

"He pushed Hardison in the pool."

Her expression is a strange one, betraying almost nothing of her emotions, as if she's still processing the information. Deciding what it means and what to do with it. But there is a visible spike of delayed fear (it's over now, it didn't happen, he's okay) as she swallows and makes herself continue.

"He almost drowned."

[likeknives]

Eliot stops, mid-cabinet punch, his blood running cold.

He pushed Hardison in the pool.

He almost drowned.

By now he's very familiar with the...memories this place seems to be producing. And unless she just spoke to Hardison most likely in the last five minutes, then Parker may have seen something. Actually seen something.

Please, no. Not this.

Not her.

He turns around, his eyes wide, lowering his hand.

"...Parker?"

[sharker]

She doesn't answer. Instead she moves over to him, fast and fluid, slotting herself in between Eliot and the poor abused cabinet. Squinting down at the lock, she pulls two straightened-out paper clips from her pocket and slides them in, picking the lock in seconds.

She doesn't bother opening the cabinet to see what's inside; opening it isn't the point. Instead she steps backwards to sit heavily on the desk behind her, gripping the edges in both hands and looking up at Eliot.

"He could have died."

[likeknives]

...thanks, Parker.

It doesn't surprise him that she got the thing opened faster than he could blink, he would expect nothing less. And he's much less interested in opening it now because now it feels like his soul is ripped out of him and slapped on the ground for everyone to see. A horrible, awful, rotten thing, and he would deserve nothing less.

Maybe that's what the point of this place was. For him to pay penance.

It takes him a moment to find his voice again.

"Yeah, Parker, he could have."

Guess they're doing this.

omg dw don't eat my ELIOT NOTIFS

[sharker]

She doesn't reply right away, tapping her nails against the desk in a steady rhythm that becomes faster and faster as she thinks. She hadn't just seen what had happened. She'd felt it. And not Hardison's panic as he fought not to drown, not Moreau's self-important cruelty, but Eliot. His fear. His anger. His -

Other things, emotions she can't quite tease out yet. She looks up, fingers stilling as she meets Eliot's eyes.

"If you'd tried to save him, he would have known. He would have killed you both."

It's how it works. The worst part of any con is when one of your own is in trouble and you can't help, can't let it show because it'll give the game away. But this. This.

It was Hardison. He was handcuffed to a chair.

"Did you know he'd make it?"

dw pls we need our notifs

[likeknives]

The tapping of her nails sounds like a countdown to him.

"Yeah, he would have," he says slowly, carefully, not looking away. He has to meet her eyes.

Did you know he'd make it?

"I wasn't gonna let him drown," Eliot says. His voice is calm. Unapologetic. He doesn't need to apologize because there is no apology that he could make. He's not sorry because he'd do it all over again if he had to.

But the moment he entered the pool he had to calculate Hardison getting hurt as a possibility. He knows Moreau better than...maybe anybody else, better than most people.

Bringing Hardison was a calculated risk that was very likely to end up in him having something terrible happening to him and he brought him anyway.

pls dw

[sharker]

Even knowing the outcome, even knowing that Hardison had survived and that he's not in danger anymore, the tightness in her chest still eases a little at Eliot's reassurance. It's what Eliot does. He keeps them safe. He always keeps them safe, even if it doesn't always look that way from the outside.

And they both know about the risks they have to take sometimes. For each other, and for what they do. To stop people like Moreau from hurting anyone else. Hardison might have gotten hurt there, they both might have, but Eliot would never have let him die.

She nods, slowly, the rhythm of her nails tapping the desk slowing until they finally stop. She looks up, and Eliot is looking back at her, his gaze steady and unflinching.

"He was scared, Eliot," she says, her voice small. She doesn't have to have lived the memory from Hardison's perspective to know that. "And so were you."

[likeknives]

She saw it. She knows.

She knows what he felt, somehow this place made that possible and he feels...so many things, all at once and all of them painful.

Relief, maybe? That she somehow had his perspective too, that she could tell what he was feeling.

Horrified that she could tell what he was feeling.

A shiver runs through him and he tries to shove the feeling away.

"I was, Parker."

He's not gonna lie. Never to her.

"I was scared the moment I found out we were goin' after Moreau. I was scared the moment I realized I had to face him again. And when he..."

He pauses, collecting himself.

"And when he kicked Hardison in the pool I was scared for him. What he was goin' through, what I put him through."

[sharker]

She knows he wouldn't lie to her. It's a little scary, sometimes. Knowing that he'll tell her anything she wants to know, if only she asks. Even if they both end up regretting her asking later.

But it's good, too. She can trust him. He'll always be honest with her. She never has to wonder.

She listens intently to everything he says, nodding, trying to understand. Remembering everything she'd felt, he'd felt, during that memory.

"But you had to." Her eyes bore into him, a single tear trailing down her cheek without her realizing. "There was no other way. Right? There was no other way."

[likeknives]

"I had to."

There's a tear and he hates himself that he was the cause of any pain she's experiencing.

"There was no other way."

Was there? He made his calculations, he took a risk, and he wouldn't have risked Hardison's life if he wasn't sure that it was a minimal risk, at that.

Because he couldn't bear to face Damien alone, couldn't allow himself to be subject to his manipulation. His weakness put Hardison in danger.

He doesn't break his gaze, but his voice betrays him. It wavers, just a bit.

"I did what had to be done."

[sharker]

She doesn't know exactly what Eliot's relationship with Moreau had been. She knows he'd done terrible things for him. And now, after feeling what Eliot had felt, staring him down in front of that swimming pool, she understands a little more. Damien Moreau was dangerous. He was dangerous to his enemies, the people who got in his way. The ones he sent people like Eliot after, to threaten and kill.

But he was dangerous to Eliot in a different way. He might not have killed him. But if Eliot had gone in there alone, if he hadn't had Hardison there, to protect, to remind himself of what was important...

Eliot's voice wavers, but Parker's gaze doesn't. She keeps watching him, and when he answers, she nods once, firmly. There was no other way. Not one that meant Eliot coming back to them safe and sound.

"Okay."

She reaches for him, dragging him close, wrapping her arms tight around him and burying her face in his chest without another word.

[likeknives]

Okay she says, and things feel a little more okay.

He blinks, surprised and overcome by the fact that she'd still--she'd still trust him enough to do this, even after she saw all that.

All that he'd done to Hardison.

It takes a moment but he allows himself to put his hand on her back, returning the embrace. It grounds him just as much as having Hardison there in that terrible place--the trust, the understanding. The connection he has with them is beyond him--how could he deserve such a thing? Deserve them?

"Okay."

Thank you, Parker.

[sharker]

She'd had to process it first. Figure out if she was ready to forgive him, after seeing that. After seeing Hardison, under the water far too long, nearly drowning.

But in the end, there hadn't really been a question. They're a team - Team Leverage, but the three of them, especially. There's no one else in the world she trusts as much as she trusts the two of them. And she knows Eliot, understands him on a level she doesn't even really understand Hardison, as much as she loves him. She knows how seriously he takes his self-imposed duty of protecting them. She knows he'd never, ever put them in harm's way unless there was no other way. Knows he'd die before he let anything happen to them.

She hangs on to him for a long time, longer than either of them would normally be comfortable with, before finally, reluctantly letting go. When she does, she just looks at him for a moment, trying to think of what she can say. How she can make things a little better.

There isn't really a question about that either, in the end.

"Can you make me a sandwich?"

[likeknives]

She holds onto him for a long time, too long, but he gets it. He lets go too when she does and then--he wants to laugh and maybe cry a little.

Leave it to Parker to know exactly what to say even in a moment like this.

"Yeah, sure. What kind of sandwich do you want?"

Things are different now, but maybe they're also okay again, too. He wouldn't have been surprised if she needed some time alone, some time away from him. He would accept it all the same. If he lost her and Hardison completely he would...he would deserve that, too.

But she's still here.

And that's everything.

"Or do you want it to be a surprise?"

[sharker]

"A surprise."

She says it confidently. Whatever kind of sandwich Eliot makes for her, she knows it'll taste good. He knows what she likes. He even sometimes knows what she'll like before she does. What new ingredients he can introduce that she'll end up loving. She can always trust him not to try to sneak in anything gross.

But there is one thing. She leans closer, stopping him before he can get too far away.

"A surprise with bacon."

[likeknives]

It's a measure of trust (at the very least in his cooking abilities) and that makes him feel a lot better, too.

Except.

Except it's gonna have to be a bacon-flavored surprise.

That gets a smile, a genuine, official smile. Already he can think of half-a-dozen sandwiches he can make with bacon and what they have on hand.

"Got it. One bacon surprise comin' up."