"If you wanted to see me shit my pants, you could have just given me a fat glass of milk."

Even after all this time, Chu-e could still read Victoria Beckett like a book. At least with shit like this.

Still, he took an offered gummy work and bit the little bastards head off.

"Tor, you really think me and Gav got cherries to pop?" He side eyes Cillian Quinn for a moment, brow raised. A bit of a teasing grin on his face. "Didn't you hear about what happened in the training room?"

A pool of shadow stuck under his feet. The only ghost he liked- and his protection for the day if anything unsightly happened.

You just never knew with fucking ghosts.

(For all his bravado, he was really dreading this.)

Eris Halla

Gavin, who didn't have two fucks to rub together when it came to ghosts, is mostly here for the entertainment value of seeing Chu-e Choi spooked by potential specters. It's also a good excuse to hang out with Victoria Beckett again.

He looks positively unashamed with Chu-e's teasing, shooting a grin in response.

"If you haven't, Tori, you don't want to know."

The door's open as they come upon the building.

Gavin doesn't watch horror movies, doesn't really watch many movies at all, but he's pretty sure this would be the kind of cliche that means they're going to have a bad time. He doesn't hesitate to cross the threshold.

His Rotom phone stirs to life with a click of his tongue, its flashlight cutting a path through the gloom.

"Ugh, this place is swimming in dust."

Little particles float in the light's beam, disgusting him.

As it turned out, however long Eris Halla had been there, she wouldn't have to wait much longer.

Huffing, in that teasing kind of playful way, Chu-e pushed forward in a false act of bravado, shouldering past Victoria Beckett and Cillian Quinn. He made sure to give them both a butt bump as he did, just for the extra sass of it all.

"I can handle whatever is thrown at me!" 'I'm a war criminal' is almost tacked on at the end, but he leaves that out, not wanting to draw the party down with their fucked up pasts.

Either way, he would take a few swift steps forward, throwing open the door and stepping into the first room he saw without looking.

As it turned out, it was the one that Eris had trapped.

He stopped short, confidence gone, his already pale skin losing what little color it had.

Then the ceiling began to drip something black that smelled like fetid death.

And Chu-e let out a shriek that would put any busty blond in a slasher to shame.

Poor Victoria Beckett is mercifully spared further teasing from Gavin; he doesn't want to make her any more uncomfortable than she already is.

If only his lungs could be spared from the thickness of dust in the air. Gavin finds himself coughing against a closed fist as their movement disturbs the rundown place and aggravates his smoker's lungs.

He offers a silent thumbs-up to the idea of Chu-e Choi taking point and isn't disappointed by the decision when, two seconds into his brave stride into the unknown, the other underboss lets out a shriek that echoes through the dingy warehouse like a budget horror flick.

"Nice lungs," Gavin calls out, his voice thready thanks to his coughing fit.

His nose wrinkles at the stench when he walks into the room afterward, directing the beam of his flashlight toward the drippy ceiling and making a face of disgust.

"That's foul. What the hell have they been using this place for?"

A shaky groan of some mix of fear and embarrassment. He raised his hands and half hid his face, fighting down the urge to scream again. Not from fear this time but frustration. Not both Victoria Beckett AND Cillian Quinn would know how to make him piss his pants. This was too powerful. They both had the dark knowledge to make him shit his pants, too, if they wanted to use his lactose intolerance against him.

"Gavin, I'll show you what my fuckin' lungs can do, man. And then Tor will have to live with knowing what I've done." Which felt like a good threat. An innuendo one.

Then he icy fingers brushing on his neck, making him yelp again and jerk away.

"Who touched me?!"

Eris Halla

"Well don't threaten me with a good time," Gavin drawls as he steps into the next room, aiming his phone's flashlight across silhouettes splashed in red.

He's impressed by the handiwork, opening his mouth to make some smart-ass comment when Chu-e Choi's yelp sees him swing his flashlight beam back to his friend.

"What are you on about?" He stops short of rolling his eyes. "There's nothing—"

But then he feels it, too.

A cold touch on his shoulder that sees him whirl around to confront — nothing.

"I felt that." He scowls. "Ghosts, probably."

But his jovial, teasing nature has shifted to one of suspicion. Not because of the ghosts, but because of who might've put them here. Ghosts didn't set up elaborate marionettes. With narrowed eyes, he sweeps the room as if expecting company.