SerafíneThe hosted at 719 Corona Street in Capitol Hill has been going on for the better part of three days and people have come and people have gone and alcohol has been consumed and replenished. Some people have been here and home three nights in a row and a few stalwarts have merely been here, crashing in odd atriums and guest rooms, oversized reading chairs and one might imagine that an endless party would begin to tail off, to shift and change and go strange and wrong but one that begins at Christmas and ends sometime after New Year's with interval flares of Boxing Day and Someone Brought Us Mead day and Who Is that Person in My Bed Day He's Pretty Cute But I Don't Remember Him is materially different from the desperate-to-hold-on-to-the-weekend bullshit that happens at frat houses Sundays after a three-day binge when hey, everything starts to fall apart and you remember you have to go back to the real world.
This is Sera's real world.
So it is hard to say what day it is or night it is or how much booze and pot and molly and yes even cocaine have been consumed on premises in the last ever-how-long but still somehow the house looks great, festooned in Christmas lights strung along its solid bones, wound through its shrubbery, evergreens on the iron gates. The front door is unlocked and there's always someone coming in and going out, a warm blast of sound that varies with the day and hour but includes the peculiarly lovely din of a half-dozen conversations carried out in various stages of inebriation. Sera has essentially hired a cabbie to be on-call for exiting guests so there won't be any driving to go along with the drinking which also means it is hard to get a parking place anywhere close, what with all the vehicles people will have to retrieve once their hangovers let up.
There are fires in every hearth and lights in every room and a changing buffet of goodies set up in the dining room and kitchen and a changing array of drinks at the bar and a changing array of art: on the walls and stacked against the floorboards, stuffed haphazardly on the elegant old shelves, tucked into every niche and nook and cranny. Pictures of Amelia Earhart framed in black and white on the landing leading upstairs and a spiderplant tumbling a solid dozen baby spiderplants down toward the runner on the stairs.
Sera's resonance is everywhere in this place. It belongs to her as thoroughly and wholly as the rectory once belonged to plan. Dee's place but Dee is Sera's, don't you know? Strongest in the kitchen, though. That's where he guests will find her just now if they go looking. Though they may want to avail themselves of the many pleasures of the house first. Pick out one of the wrapped gifts from beneath the Christmas tree in the living room. Argue with three hipster dudes about which Arcade Fire album was the best, and whether they've sold out. Kiss the drunk boy lingering beneath the mistletoe, waiting for magic to strike a seventeenth time. The usual.
Grace[Nightmares!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (2, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
GraceThe word 'Christmas' strikes up a ton of negative connotations in Grace's brain. It's less like people are celebrating a holy day, and more like they are worshiping at the altar of Wal-Mart. Hell, with the tramplings that happen every year, there's even human sacrifice to go along with. A regular feast-day of Mamon.
So maybe that's why the holly and the Christmas lights and yes, even the tree and mistletoe (though they were borrowed from older traditions long enough ago that nobody minds) grate against her.
The word 'Party' strikes up a few negative connotations as well. All those people, a crowd of them? Likely, when we're talking Sera. The woman seems to thrive on people, where Grace does not.
But that would be why she's here, right? To not shy away from people, and learn to be in public again without looking around constantly wondering where the next threat's going to be. Also, because it's Sera's party. And that makes everything cool.
Even Christmas.
So, she's at the door, ringing the bell as though she has to (chances are that this is not the case, but you know...) dressed in jeans and the ubiquitous grey turtleneck that's become her winter attire... nearly every day. On top of that is a black peacoat, but it's open to the chill air.
PanOn any other day this wouldn't be the priest's scene but when Sera came by their shooting lesson several days ago he'd promised he would at least make an appearance. Grace might have said the same thing. They take his truck from the Chantry up to the city. He doesn't drive like someone who isn't comfortable driving in cities but he also has faith in something other than fate.
They would have gotten here half an hour ago but someone ended up waiting for the other person and the other person thought she was waiting for someone and it was just a big misunderstanding. Misunderstandings are usually pretty entertaining in hindsight.
But they make it. It's a Christmas miracle.
Pan has a good-sized rectangular box wrapped in plain brown paper tucked football-like in the crook of his arm when they come in the front door. It jingles. Glass. He comes up the sidewalk behind her and just opens it before anyone can come answer the doorbell.
In they go. The party can start now.
SerafíneSomeone is coming to answer the door but it's not Sera and it's not any of her housemates. It's the boy who has been hanging out beneath the mistletoe. He has a handmade mug of something in hand and neither Grace nor Pan are likely to get close enough to catch even a whiff of the contents but it is probably alcohol. Of some sort.
Inside, warmth everywhere. Coats piled on coats in the foyer, so Grace and Pan can shed their winter coats or keep them tucked over their respective arms, if they prefer. Grace has been here before and Pan as at least seen the front porch, Sera stumbling up the steps in the arms of her housemates and consor and it is rather as Grace remembers it, an old family home full of solid furnishings and a handful of genuine antiques, with the lives of a handful of artsy twenty-something layered over that history like a layer of tulle over a repurposed party dress. Books and knicks and knacks and treasures and taunts in every corner. Downstairs a living room and a front parlor and a formal dining room with a fire layed in each and some sort of Christmas, New Year's, or Yule decoration scheme that varies between "straight out of that twee boutique in Cherry Cheek" and pretty near authentic midcentury modern, authentic enough that you can almost hear the Vince Guaraldi soundtrack to Charlie Brown's Christmas.
Wait, you can hear that from the front parlor, though deeper in the house the vibe is a little less holidy and a little more indie and the music permeates the air, interspaced with the sparkling sounds of conversation. Grace knows to follow the hallway straight through to the kitchen, which is white and bright and big and modern, redone sometime in the past ten years, with wide windows overlooking the winterquiet backyard.
Fewer people here and really fewer people than they might've found at three a.m. last night anywhere but Pan and Grace aren't exactly three a.m. people, are they?
--
They find Sera in the kitchen, sitting up on the granite breakfast bar, legs swinging a cup of something in hand, and it must be warm from the way she holds it, and the scent in the air is cinnamon and ginger, vanilla and figs, is marijuana and rumchata and the spike of cloves. Is the close, humid scent of strangers' bodies and on and on and on.
She's smiling for them, Sera, before they have turned the corner into the kitchen and her eyes are on the door and her hands are cupped around her mug and she's dressed in the most ridiculous get-up imaginable. A skintight green velvet dress belted by a wide black patent leather belt. The bodice is laced all the way down to the navel and would show the most delicious cleavage if Sera were especially well-endowed. As it is she has paired it with a black-leather push-up bra so they are still treated to a view of the most delicious cleavage, the spikes and rivets of the bra counterpoint to the velvet dress - whose cuffs and collars are trimmed in a heavenly soft white rabbit fur.
Oh, smiling Sera opens up her arms (and, honestly, her legs) when she spots them, Pan looming above Grace.
She wants a hug.
Of course she does.
Grace[Perception + Awareness!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
GraceGrace slides her way in, sliding around that guy with the mug who looks a bit leery and more than a bit drunken. But still, she's got this smile plastered on her face at... well, at everybody. "She's really done up the place, huh?" Grace says to Pan. In all likelyhood, Sera had little to do with it, and the decorations just happened. But, you know, it's Sera's place.
She leads the priest into the kitchen, where the press of Sera's raw resonance is strongest. Along the way, she smiles at those she passes, though it's an empty thing. She smiles only because smiling is expected at a party, you see, and she knows none of these people.
But when she enters the kitchen, that smile becomes genuine, it finally manages to reach her eyes. It's not in appreciation for what she's wearing, but for who Sera is. And, because it is Sera, Grace marches up, and steps into her arms, giving her that same, stiff, awkward hug she got the last time, complete with robotic pats on the back. Hugs aren't Grace's thing, but she does at least try.
PanAt least one of them is smiling. The priest stands nearly a foot taller than the woman leading them through the house and the only time he seems anything other than simply present is when Grace comments on the state of the place.
"Yeah," he says in the dubious tone of one who isn't quite sure what he's walked into.
It's just a little light fornication and mild overindulgence. Nothing he hasn't been exposed to before. Wasn't like he came out the womb a priest. Priests start out human and most of them die that way. Humans being flesh and all.
The kitchen is the most logical place to go if one is looking for the party's host. Irony of ironies in his life is that light doesn't do his complexion any favors. Pan looks drawn in fluorescence or caught in the sun's rays. He doesn't look tired or sick. He just looks like he's wearing all the years of his life in his skin.
Pan glances around and gives perfunctory greetings to those who are gathered around Sera. Gets that out of the way while the women hug. He doesn't go to her right away. Just stands there with his coat still on leaning against the archway.
"What'd you do?" he asks. "Lose a fight? Where's the rest of your dress?"
SerafíneSera wraps her arms around Grace and doesn't seem to notice the robotic awkwardness of the Apprentice's hug. Slides her nose through the short riot of Grace's hair and inhales, just feeling the way the world shifts and slides beneath her as Grace comes close. Grace receives a kiss on the temple, and Sera's breath smells like smoke and red wine and cinnamon, while Sera looks over Grace's shoulder at Pan, still in his coat, leaning against the frame of a door.
Mouth still in Grace's hair, Sera smiles and holds Pan's eyes. There's a sort-of-sorrow threaded through the welcome, which is then eclipsed by the edge of a quiet, rather self-aware little smirk.
"The rest of my dress?" Sera tosses back, lifting her mouth at last from Grace's temple, a few locks of Grace's hair clinging to her red lipstick. Letting Grace go. "You're kidding, right? It has been scientifically determined that this dress covers 78% more Sera than any of my usual outfits. Which makes it, when you think about it, quiet nearly modest."
"You guys want a drink? We have Italian sodas for the designated drivers."
GraceA drink might just make the rest of this party easier to deal with. Besides, Pan's driving. "Sure," she says, stands up straighter, pulls her errant hair away from her face.
"She makes a good point, Pan. I mean, it's got sleeves," she says, smiling up at him, like 'no you are not going to win this argument'. The two women will band together, even though nearly every bit of Grace's skin is covered. You might expect her to be on Pan's side, but...
"I think it looks great."
More like, Sera here in her element looks fantastic. Not skeletal. Not nearly as sad and lonely. More like Sera. The fact that she can dress like a sexy elf and throw a party again? Superb.
HawksleyHawksley has not been at Sera's party for three days, five days, however long it's been. Hawksley has been in Denver at nightclubs and libraries and one jaunt out under the stars, then Connecticut and New York and was going to spend the night in Paris but in the middle of the night he was overcome with an ennui one doesn't usually associate with the City of Lights in the middle of a festival of light. He went somewhere warm where people don't really think or care much about Christmas, because it falls in a season where you don't really need to be reminded that the cold and the dark will end because it's never really cold even when it's very dark. He felt better then, because it takes a special talent to feel miserable when lounging on a beach drinking something that tastes of coconut and has an umbrella in it. Hawksley does not have that rare and special talent. He snuck a girl away from the rest of the girls she was having a girls' vacation with and when that was over he thought that he would either leave the resort or stay for a few months, and decided on the former.
He went to London. He is not popular in London. He was less popular at a particular witch's doorstep, but she didn't stick him with a knife or anything, so it went better than it could have.
Hawksley is at Sera's party now, though. He is in the United States, in Denver, and he doesn't know what day it is and isn't interested in finding out. He shows up driven there by a tall, lean man with a neatly trimmed beard. They are not in the 911 but a low, long, car in British racing green. Go get Dee; this is the Jag, even if she wouldn't recognize the 1961 XK-140 as one. Before her time. The rearview mirrors are closer to the headlights than the windshield, the convertible top is in place instead of stored in the trunk, and more wind gets through this top but as Hawksley put it, the green is more festive. So they drive the Jaguar.
Since it's not his usual, no one at the doorway or porch instantly recognizes the Porsche that came and went regularly, often, during Serafine's recovery. Sera will recognize the sense of the man inside as soon as that car takes its sharklike turn into their block. Grace and Pan might, but they aren't as familiar with that soaring, sun-drenched soul. They have never peeled away the mortal layers of his appearance and seen something else entirely. But that feeling of power that looks down on the world rather than inhabiting it, that invincible summer in the midst of winter -- that brings to mind the man, and the man's face looking at you like an eagle might examine... well. Anything at all.
The car slides to a stop, and Hawksley gets out. He is wearing white. White jeans, white belt, white shoes. Accents of gold here and there, sharp contrasts of cloudy grey at the edges of the belt and the stitching of his clothes. He wears a v-necked shirt, and that is white, too. Tailored, of course. He gets out, coatless, and walks to the door as Collins drives elsewhere, parks somewhere, starts unloading the parcels from the trunk.
Of course when Hawksley gets to the door he just walks in. Who wouldn't want him there, after all?
PanNo. He is not going to win this argument. Not if the argument is that more surface area is covered than usual and she looks great. Pan smiles a more genuine smile than the one he gave Sera's friends on the way in here and then he moves in behind Grace to properly greet the Cultist.
He hasn't checked for rogue mistletoe sprigs hung up overhead but he doesn't need to look up. The perks of being tall.
Before he joins her at the counter Pan places the jangling package down on the counter. It is above freezing but he isn't wearing a hat or gloves or anything other than a black peacoat to keep out the cold. Tromping a distance through the cold gave him some color in his cheeks at least.
He hesitates while pondering the logistics of hugging a young woman whose skirt ends less than an inch past her ass. The logistics involve inwardly shrugging before embracing her.
"Happy Christmas," he tells her. "I don't know what Italian soda is but I'll take one."
SerafíneThis is the first party Serafíne has thrown in months. Two and a half months. Grace and Pan do not know this and Hawksley does though he does not know what day it is and therefore cannot take the measure of time down to the decimal point. Most of the other people in the house - all of whom are strangers to Grace and Pan except for a handful who are Sera's housemates or more regular hangers-on - know this in varying ways, with varying levels of precision and intelligence and it is by now rather well known among a certain subset of the hipster/indie/intelligentsia of Sera's particular part of Denver that she probably went away to recover from an accidental overdose. Or a bad trip. Or something to do with drugs.
Now she is fine; more than fine, it seems. Wrapped in green velvet and white rabbit fur, welcoming a constant parade of strangers to her well-decorated home and getting them drunk and stoned and beautifully fucked in really every way imaginable.
Grace is replaced by Pan and Sera hugs him too. Firmly, her arms wrapping around his solid shoulders, her brow tipping forward to meet his. She does not kiss him. Not his temple, not just cheek. Just this brief and solid communion as he the exterior chill dissipates from his skin, against hers, which is flushed and warm with drink.
"I'm glad you came." Sera murmurs to the priest when they are still close. Her voice is quiet and a bit rough with smoke and alcohol and she's been awake for maybe two hours, presentable for less than half that, and her expression goes rather far away and her head cants as if she were listening to a signal being broadcast from the other side of the horizon, which is slowly resolving itself into something more immediate, intelligible.
"Hawksley's here." Sera tells both Grace and Pan with a hum and a private smile as she slips down from the counter at last, landing carelessly on her high-heeled patent leather boots and saunters further into the kitchen to make them drinks. Though she is glancing over her shoulder for the first glimpse she might have of Hawksley. Sunlight drenching the horizon.
"Italian soda's club soda with flavored syrup. Blood orange. Hazelnut. Almond fucking roca," Sera's explaining to Pan and as she gets ahead of them pair of them it is clear that her dress does not come an inch past her ass. It does not even really quite cover her ass. Sera does not care.
"There's gingerbread and egg-nog syrup, too - " a complete fucking stranger interjects, helpfully. Because of course there is.
"Grace, we have mulled wine, cider, mead, beer, red wine, champagne, white wine, punch. Grog. Glog, which is like Grog except someone fucked it up and no one wants to drink it. Any kind of mixed drink you want. Oh, or you could do a Christmas bomb. Celebration ale with a shot of rumchata. Have to drink it quick though 'cos the rumchata gets all clotted and gross if you don't.
"It's delicious, though. Fucking genius. You gotta try it."
GraceDelicious, fucking genius, she's gotta try it... Sounds like the choice has been made, and Grace isn't going to argue. "I'll have the Christmas bomb then. Sounds festive." Heh. Christmas bomb. Blowing up Christmas. Festive, indeed.
And she says Hawksley is here. And that must be the warm brightness filtering in. Like Pan, only... not like Pan at all. The only thing they share is the light.
She sheds her peacoat, draping it on the back of a chair at the kitchen table, which she then slips into -- it's a claiming of space. This here's mine, so shoo.
HawksleyThey know him here. The housemates, and plenty of the hangers-on, the hipsters and hippies alike, the people who know Sera often know of Hawksley or know him. Many, many of them know him as Davie. He has a good word preceding him. The first person he finds inside past the entryway is Dan, and since he isn't sure now if Dan is still with Jer and since he most likely does not care either way, he flicks his eyes at some mistletoe, winks at the lanky musician, and tells someone near the door that Collins is coming in with gifts, open the door for him like this person should know who Collins is and should be obliged to help this Collins person bring in presents.
They will be. Hawksley is rather charming. Also: presents.
He makes his way toward the kitchen after putting thoughts in Dan's head, reaches through a cloud of 3 people to pinch Dee, and finds the knot of Awakened energy both intimately known, briefly known, and sort of familiar. He is smiling when Sera glances back and sees him, and when he sees her, and she's an elf and he's an angel even though neither of them are in church for this, one of the holiest of holy days. If it's Christmas. He is pretty sure they're past Christmas by now.
No matter. She's an elf and he's an angel.
He comes up to her, to them, like he was invited. Never the sort to hang on the fringes and wait to be told they have permission to exist, Hawksley. No: he gets behind Sera and wraps his arms around her waist and very nearly lifts her up an inch or two when he squeezes her, inhaling her scent from scalp to throat, which is rather intimate and rather sensual and an odd thing to do to someone in front of other someones, but this is Sera's place and such things are permitted. Welcomed. Encouraged. He looks at Pan and Grace from across a tiny shoulder clad in bright green.
"Happy Christmas," he tells Grace first, since he's met her more times. He looks at Pan, too, smiling, because last he knew this guy was like half-dead or something and he knows the man is powerful and he knows that he matters to Sera. "Happy Christmas." One for each. None for Sera. Poor Sera.
"I want one," he says to Sera, when Grace says she wants a Christmas bomb. He missed the description. No matter.
PanFor someone who was half-dead or something a few months ago Pan looks alright. At least like he's recovering if he isn't all the way there. He's quite a bit slimmer than he was over the summer but like all of them who went through the hassle of losing so much of it he's packing it back on. Helps that every time he walks into the Chantry kitchen someone shoves a spoon or a plate at him and tells him to try this try that eat Padre eat.
He leaves whatever he brought into the house with him on the counter and turns to watch as Hawksley comes in and swoops up Sera.
"Happy Christmas," he says.
Christmas bombs. The kids want Christmas bombs.
Pan draws the same silent Okay Fuck It conclusion about taking off his jacket as he did about hugging Sera the Elf. Underneath the peacoat he's wearing a suit. The entire thing is black which makes it hard to tell if he's just wearing his usual outfit with a suit jacket on top of it. That's kind of the point. His stupid tie is black too. He doesn't usually wear ties.
He finds a place to stash his coat that someone won't throw up on it and puts his hands into his pockets.
SerafíneGrace is claiming space in the kitchen, her peacoat over the back of the chair, and consents to a Christmas bomb. Which makes Sera smile a Sera-smile in profile over the curve of her shoulder as she continues on. Her eyes are dark, perhaps darker, in the brightness of the white kitchen, with its sleek white cabinets and gray granite and double-oven and chef's stainless steel gas range. While this is going on, Rick is peeling himself away from where he was lounging, shoulder against the edge of the pantry, immersed in one of those complex and very specific discussions about reverb and wax and other hipster things to come over and help Sera navigate the complex specifics of the kitchen. Of course one of the housemates is close by, a more genuine host than Sera. Someone who knows where the extra paper towels and shot glasses can be found, and how to fill the dishwasher and how to make the oven work and while Sera reaching for one of the cabinets to find not glasses but triscuits and spices, Rick is opening another, pulling down the pint glasses, getting the glassware ready for the drinks.
"Pint glasses are up here," Rick is telling Sera, low-voiced, with a huff of bemusement beneath his breath because they've lived here how long and she drinks like a fish with a drinking problem and she still does not know where to find the barware except of course she doesn't know. Someone is always there when she needs them, aren't they?
And he's there now, searching out pint-and-shot glasses for Grace's Christmas bomb and a highball for Pan's Italian soda and he doesn't ask Sera if she wants more mulled wine, just refills it from the heavy pot on the back burner of the gas stove.
Then Hawksley, behind her, wrapping his arms around her and lifting her up from the ground. She leans back into his embrace, her shoulderblades sharp points against his chest. Leans back into that inhale and her arms fold over his at her waist and she just - savors him. Allows the radiant heat of his presence to soak into her elfen bones for a long moment. Breathes him in and says nothing to him at all until he tells her that he wants one, a Christmas bomb. "Then you'll have one."
She has to break away though. There are drinks to be made and a bit of a bustle and cross-talk as she ascertains what sort of syrup Pan wants in his soda, and whether he wants cream, and would he prefer cider, and Rick heads off to the keg to draw three pints of the Celebration while Sera fills the shot glasses with rumchata and sets one down for Grace and one for Hawklsey and one for herself and Pan has his soda before Rick returns with the beers and they are a lovely amber, rich and deep and fragrant, and Sera is giving Grace the instruction more than Hawksley because even though he missed the description, she is one hundred and eleven percent sure that he will know what to do.
Which is: take the shot of rumchata.
Drop it glass and all into the pint of Celebration ale.
Down it all like a bastard, quick as you can.
Oh hey! Like a good hostess, laughing, Sera will demonstrate.
The rumchata hits the beer and immediately starts fizzing and curdling and clotting but drink it fast and it smells like Christmas and is insanely, ridiculously delicious. Leaves behind maybe a milk-like rumchata mustache, at least for someone as enthusiastic as Sera.
When she comes up for air she's swaying pleasantly into Hawksley and beaming at Pan over Grace's head and ready to swoop in if necessary to assist Grace however she can but her eyes are on Pan. At his neck.
She's noticed something.
"Are you wearing a tie? Is it black! Like fucking Johnny Cash."
Hawksley"Rick, you gentleman," Hawksley tells the housemate who does not want to fuck him, grinning.
In the front room, the door is opening and Collins is coming in, carrying parcels wrapped in white and silver with gold bows and everything is metallic and shiny and light-catching and people are very curious who all those gifts are for but they're for everyone, aren't they? And Collins is a black-clad, expressionless, skinny Santa. Surely there's a tree somewhere, and he goes to it, unloading gifts that really, truly are for whoever wants to open them and find the cashmere, the leather, the silver, the gold, the party favors of the privileged. It's terribly gauche and greedy and it makes Hawksley happy.
Hawksley is happy anyway, at least right now. He's giving a quiet noise, something like a snarl, when Sera starts to peel away from him, but it's all play: he lets go of her as easily as he lets go of most things, most people, or at least he pretends to. He wants; he shall have. God help the two of them, for if they really put their minds to it, they could be the most codependent, enabling people on earth. Good thing they each have plenty of other people falling over themselves to be depended on, to enable.
He lifts his shot of rumchata to Grace, taps the glasses together, drops it into his ale, and chugs like a fucking dudebro. Sera's faith is not misplaced.
The pint glass gets thumped down on the counter, rolls of moisture dripping down the side, and Sera sways into him and he smiles, to solid to be swayed but warm enough to sway into yes that's nice all right hello. He sniffs Sera's hair again while she notices Pan's tie. He looks at Pan's tie too. His eyes get wide, excited, ridiculous.
"Do you play the guitar?"
Grace"Woo, Sera, that looks interesting," she says as Sera slides the Christmas bomb in front of her. "Thanks!"
Okay, so this thing is some deep chemistry. Grace is thinking about how it must be the acidity of the ale that makes the cream liqueur clot like that, and she just kind of wants to watch it work its way through its reactions because... Well, it's fun. But Sera downs hers fast, and says it'll turn gross if she doesn't, so...
She lifts her shot of rumchata to Hawksley in return, a little jagged smile there too, and follows their lead. The rumchata goes for a swim, and the ale turns into a chaotic mess of fizz and fuss, which she tries to drink fast.
It tastes like Christmas. Which, in this case, isn't too bad.
It's hard for her to finish the whole thing, cause Grace isn't much of the 'CHUG CHUG CHUG' kind of college student. But she manages.
"Dude," is all she says after it's gone, when the glass drops back down to the table.
PanIs he wearing a tie? Is it black!
Pan looks down without changing his expression like he's only just realized. Would you look at that. He did put on a tie this morning. When he looks back up at her he takes hold of the tie in his unadorned left hand and flaps it. Yes. Good. It's still there.
And then she says it's like fucking Johnny Cash and he laughs that unguarded laugh of his and lifts his eyebrows with the same careless quickness with which he'd lifted the tie.
As to whether he plays the guitar:
"Not often. When I do, people cover their ears and beg me to stop."
SerafíneThere is indeed a tree and beneath the tree are a handful of wrapped presents, nothing like the gleaming ones Collins brings in, full of cashmere, leather, gold. The tree is covered in a mixture of handmade artisan ornaments and handmade family ornaments with pictures of five year olds circa 1971 framed in the belly of origami Santas and it is wrapped in a garland made of brightly colored balls of felted, organic, hand-spun, hand-dyed yarn, strung on undyed fair trade cotton, of course it is, and beneath it go the bright silver and gold boxes ferried by Collins who looks more like Charon than Santa but never-you-mind. Once people begin to figure it out, they will begin opening. There will be a frenzy. It will be lovely.
Rick, called gentleman, gives Hawksley a lofted brow and an ironic smirk and another beer. Everyone who had the Christmas bombs is so treated: to another, clean pint of the Celebration ale, which is local and draught and delicious, too. He does it without show, slides it into their periphery and then kind of retreats, because like most mortals, perhaps more than most mortals, he can sense with a brief inhale just how little he belongs here.
Sera licks away the remnants of her rumchata mustache and takes up her mulled wine again and leans into/against Hawksley and watches Grace go. Beams, this solid, gleaming smile as Grace downs that drink and the smile deepens and Sera leans forward, drapes both hands over Grace's shoulders and bends down to give the crown of Grace's head a solid little kiss, like a saint's blessing. Pulls back and tells Grace, quietly - "You're so gorgeous. That was awesome."
Then lofts her gaze up over the crown of Grace's head, back to Pan. Pan, laughing in front of her. Hawksley solid against her spine.
"I'll teach you," says the sexy elf to the priest. "If you let me do it with something more interesting than Kumbaya."
HawksleyHawksley did reasonably well at college before he was cordially asked not to return. He does very well at parties, though. He has no spouse, no significant other, no parents, no children, no pets, no plants to worry about. Whatever he has, Collins takes care of. If he misses an appointment early one morning it is rescheduled for him. If he runs out of food, more is purchased. He does not get arrested and he does not fret his pretty head about the things that obsess the daily lives of people who are less privileged. He could not be able to comprehend a vow of poverty. He does not really grasp the sort of life that many of Pan's former-current flock have to face.
He wants. So he shall have. That is what he knows, and that is the reality that in part defines his use of the power to adjust the universe. Many magi fret themselves away from hubris. Hawksley is not one. He does not ask himself if he dares disturb the universe. He just disturbs it.
And chugs his goddamn beer like pro in celebration of himself.
--
His little face just lights up. Those sky-colored eyes, sharp and piercing and predatory at their darkest, ethereal and alien at their prettiest. Pan looks like a Latino Johnny Cash and plays the guitar. He is very excited.
"You have to play," he says instantly, even as Pan is saying that people cover their ears. He is reaching for the glass of beer like he knows it's going to be there, and it is, cold and sliding into his hand without his eyes ever going to Rick. Rick probably thinks to himself sometimes that Hawksley is an asshole. Rick probably also feels the same way so many people do around him: that they are lucky to serve, lucky to be near, lucky to be allowed in the corona of his billion-year burning, the eons that he is enthroned in the heavens.
Or if not, at least this is how Hawksley thinks, in part, of people like Rick.
He takes a drink while Sera wipes her mouth, his palm sliding over her belly as she leans away from him, towards Grace. He flicks his eyes at them, the blessing kiss, then back to Pan, pretty illuminating powerful shiny Pan who plays the guitar, and there's a bit of that predatory gleam in his eyes. But that's usually there.
"You seriously have to play. You can even do carols. Sera will sing." Because if he wants it, he shall have it,
isn't that right?
GraceSera is Sera. And she touches and kisses and tells people that they're gorgeous. Grace is used to none of that, and it's always a little uncomfortable when it happens to her. But every time it does, she gets a little more used to it. This is just who Sera is. "I'm gorgeous? For downing ale. Okay," she shrugs, like whatever.
Grace laughs at Pan's little joke at his expense. He plays guitar, and Grace isn't surprised. He looks the type to have at least picked up an instrument at one time or another, and maybe there's a story beyond how he got bored one day behind that. But whatever. He says he doesn't play well.
"Hawksley, honestly, don't make him if he doesn't want to," she says, but it's with a smile, not an admonishment. "You might end up having to beg him to stop."
PanSera is willing and offering to teach him to play the guitar in a manner that will not cause people to wonder if he's testing out a new means of torturing his audience into paying attention. This is no shock to anyone. Of course she would come up with a reason to spend more time with him. Of course she lays it down with a condition.
"I don't know what is Kumbaya," he says.
This could be one of his old-man jokes but his truths have more weight to them than his jokes. That air of his finding himself amusing isn't there.
But he has to play. Hawksley is all excited and not used to people telling him no and Pan doesn't know him well enough to know if he ought to tell him no or not. It's a party. People are supposed to have fun at parties.
He laughs a more subdued laugh when Grace tells Hawksley not to make Pan play if he doesn't want to. Like anybody can make Pan do anything he doesn't want to do. The man intimidates people for a reason and it isn't just because he looks like a Latino Johnny Cash.
"You find a guitar," he says to Hawksley, "I'll play the thing."
Find a guitar. In this house it's more like try to walk into the next room without tripping over a guitar.
Hawksley"Pff," Hawksley scoffs at Grace. "I wouldn't beg. I'd just set the guitar on fire."
He has this in common with Pan, though -- just like the light they both seem to emit without trying -- it's different in tone, in flavor: it's a bit difficult to tell if he's kidding or not. He drinks his beer and the priest tells him to find a guitar, and Hawksley
points to one that is currently sitting in a chair at the dining table. It even has a place setting and a glass of mulled wine (long since cooled) in front of it, and someone put sunglasses on the neck and draped a Christmas scarf around its curves.
Serafíne"Everyone is." Sera is telling Grace, rather quietly but with a sort of alcohol-glossed seriousness to her voice. She has settled back against the Hermetic and is twisting reaching for the wine she set down on the counter with one hand, but the second is still sort of trailing all affection in the short, twisting fringe of hair framing the back of Grace's neck. "Absolutely everyone."
And Sera, who is legitimately, traffic-stoppingly, shows-her-everything without concern or consequence gorgeous means that as entirely as she means anything. She would probably bend over to kiss Grace again in seal of that pronouncement except she has her wine in hand. It is lovely and rich and warm and also cool enough that it won't burn her mouth and the Christmas bomb and Hawksley and also whatever she's had already are warming her bones and making the moments come a but undone before they slipslide together and she loves these moments, when the buzz is first really starting to hit her and the world is all haloed and golden and fine.
This is where she was meant to live, and she hasn't been here for so long.
It feels like coming home.
Sera does not get a chance to educate Pan about Kumbaya because he's agreeing to play if Hawksley finds a guitar. And Sera's tipping her head backwards against his chest and is about to tell Hawksley that there are two in her bedroom when it turns out that there's one at the table.
"Can you play God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen?" Sera's asking Pan, since hey, she's supposed to sing isn't she? "Or the one with all the flalalalalalaing. I like that one too."
GraceGrace laughs at Hawksley then, whether he's joking or not. It doesn't matter. The ale and rumchata hit her like she doesn't actually have that high of an alcohol tolerance, and everything's cool even if it isn't.
"I can see that. Pan playing a flaming guitar. Scowling at you 'cause you made him play and then set it on fire." She's grinning, like she actually wants to see that too.
So, she gets up, and takes Mr. Guitar with the glasses and scarf, and hands it over to Pan, trying to keep the accouterments on because it's more fun that way.
PanWhy go into the bedroom when you can just get the guitar up from the table?
Well that makes things a lot easier. Pan sticks out his lower lip like to say Oh alright and then rights his expression and lets his gaze wander over to the table. Takes in the guitar with its sunglasses and its scarf like it's a shame to have to disrobe it just so he can prove to everyone in the room he can't play worth a damn.
Grace brings it over with everything still clinging on and he snorts.
Can he play God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.
Pan holds the guitar in one inexpert hand while he removes the sunglasses and scarf from its neck. Puts the scarf around his shoulders and figures fuck it, he's not going to impress nobody anyway. Sunglasses go over his eyes.
Try to contain yourselves.
"How you feel about Los Peces en el Río?" he asks as he slings the strap across his shoulders and acts like he's tuning the thing.
[liz talked me into this.
entropy 2 - BEGINNER'S LUCK YO. base diff 5, -1 because he's got all this quintessence he's not using, spending WP because we ain't got time for botches today.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (4, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
HawksleyEveryone is gorgeous. On this, Hawksley mostly agrees with Sera. Grace is beautiful when she is brand new in a bookstore on Broadway and beautiful in the chantry library and beautiful chugging a Christmas Bomb. He thinks her eyes are spectacular, that they look like far-off galaxies and the bits of light that reflect in them must be distant stars supporting life unimaginable to him and the rest of the poor and earth-bound.
Pan is beautiful and dark and intense and like looking into a light that has no source, no heat, not burning core but simply is: the metaphor for that moment of euphoria when one discovers, when one knows what was not known before, when one sees and realizes only then that they were once blind. Pan's presence is reminiscent of the Platonic ideal of an Awakening, and even if he has not thought this through completely himself yet, Hawksley senses it and adores it.
Sera is beautiful. Sera is Beauty. He has other thoughts about that, and he doesn't think to speak of them any more than he thinks to tell Grace what he has always thought of her eyes or Pan what being around him feels like, reminds him of. It might bring them comfort and joy, and Hawksley is great at spending money to give gifts but Hawksley forgets to think of what would actually bring such tidings to these certain poor shepherds.
So he's sort of a shitty angel, whatever his costume.
--
"Deck the Halls," he fills in for Sera, tipping his head down and kissing her cheek and it would be chaste except it's the two of them and it's so obvious that neither of them are chaste about anything.
Grace is imagining Pan playing a flaming guitar. "That would be the most badass thing he could do," he says. He smiles. He doesn't know that he just barely missed a chance to 'go get a guitar' from Sera's bedroom. With Sera. It might have taken a while. He doesn't know so he doesn't mind: Pan is going to play them carols, and Sera is going to sing.
"Come on," he says to Grace, after the guitar has changed hands and after he has let go of Sera to sing. He grabs his beer in one hand and the gorgeous half-drunk computer nerd in the other and drags her over somewhere to sit down
AS PAN PUTS ON THE SCARF AND SUNGLASSES AND MAKES HAWKSLEY'S YEAR.
He looks so happy.
Serafíne"Are you really going to make me sing Los Peces en el Río?" Sera is asking Pan as he starts pretending that he knows how to tune a fucking guitar. And something is happening out there in the living room, the ripple of a rumor is spreading out and opening out, and it has a life of its own, because Pan dresses like Johnny Cash and has disturbed the totemic wine-drinking guitar of the evening and is now wearing all black plus sunglasses and a Christmas scarf, with reindeer including one that is very clearly Rudolph, woven into the pattern.
And Sera is asking Pan that with a bit of petulance and she is asking Pan that is a Spanish that feels, well, quite nearly native, just as natural asPan's choice of carol-that-none-of-the-others in the room are likely to know, so perhaps just Sera and Pan understand what Sera is saying, except Sera's player does not speak Spanish is is too lazy to try Google translate at just this moment.
"It's a kid's song!" And maybe they hear ninos, right? Most people know what ninos are. Sera tips her head upward as Hawksley kisses her cheek and half closes her eyes and half-nuzzles him in response and then they are rearranging themselves, Hawksley and Grace to take the prime seats andSera, shoving the kitchen chairs out of the way so she can perch on the table right in front of Pan, gleaming all-bright up at him and seeing herself reflected in the lenses of his sunglasses and dropping her pleasantly-tipsy gaze to his hands on the frets to get a sense for the tuning and the key and the opening chords and there's no planning, really, is there.
Pan's going to play something.
Sera smiles up at him, and tells him. STILL IN SPANISH, all liquid and redolent, "I'll sing whatever you play."
GraceHawksley grabs Grace and tries to drag her off somewhere, and suddenly she turns a bit chilly. Sera might be able to do something like that, but she doesn't extend that right to Hawksley, and so, tries to worm out of his grasp. Politely. At least, politely for Grace, which may or may not end up being insulting.
"I ah... I have a chair over there," she gestures to her coat-laden, claimed spot. It's like she's planted her flag, right?
But she still follows Hawksley, trying to figure out what to do. Maybe there's a reason he tried to drag her off? And when he sits, she sits beside him. Not touching. Just, there.
Pan[i think he still has to roll the skill he doesn't have even if he got 4 auto successes with the rote.
dex + perf, untz untz untz]
Dice: 2 d10 TN7 (4, 8) ( success x 1 )
PanSo Sera and Pan start bickering at each other in Spanish. Technically she started it but if you really want to split hairs he's the one who countered her suggestion that they knock out a well-known carol with one that only she appears to know.
Es una canción de niños.
He answers her in Spanish. Grace grew up in Arizona. Maybe she recognizes some of the words. Pero. Everybody knows pero. That's dog, right?
"Right, but it's a kid's song I know how to play."
He says, as he's strumming the thing like he has any idea what he's doing. They don't know he can't even carry a tune half the time. All anybody really knows is the room gets a little brighter. It feels a little more intense than it did a minute ago. But the young folks have been doing fucking Christmas bombs and they goaded the old man into playing the guitar.
She'll sing whatever you play.
"Claro," he says, "yo sé."
So he starts playing God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen. And it sounds pretty god damn good. Total beginner's luck.
HawksleyHawksley does not know Spanish. As a result, he just rolls his eyes when they bicker in Spanish, barely even taking notice when Grace wiggles her hand from his grasp and says she has a chair already. She has a chair and he ignores that as well because he's going to go sit in the lower chairs where they can lean back a bit and watch the show. The show that is in another language that he doesn't know, and is annoying to him for reasons not immediately obvious even if the flicker of annoyance is definitely obvious and most likely misconstrued.
They sit. Pan plays. And Grace is being all squirrely all of a sudden so he just leaves that where it is and sits like a kid at storytime for the music.
SerafíneAnd Serafíne the sexy elf in her green velvet rabbit-fur trimmed dress with the lacing down to her navel and the fucking black patent leather belt following the spare curve of her hips (we confess she does not quite fill out it as well as the model in the picture) perches her barely-covered ass on the kitchen table and swings her patent-leather-clad boots beneath her and bickers with Pan in familiar, liquid Spanish and is a bit absorbed in that so does not quite comprehend the frission of tension between Grace and Hawksley as Hawksley drags Grace to spectate and Grace does not want to be dragged and and and -
She tips her head back, canted, listening as he begins. The first chords of this carol are minor that why she's loves it. The bright and sprightly dissonance that soars but is underscored with the inevitable darkness of human existance. The way the notes acknowledge and underscore sorrow, not merely joy.
Sera lets Pan go through verse and chorus once entirely unaccompanied. She's still listening, and as she is her gaze flickers out to touch on Grace and Hawksley and the strange vibe from Grace and the flicker of annoyance from Hawksley which she just - inhales. And then, Sera takes another sip of her wine, and as Pan - who cannot play, beginner's luck - comes around to the verse again, Sera takes up the song. Sings it all, right through the going astray and Satan's power to the tidings of comfort and joy and back again.
Sera feels her heart beating in her chest.
She does not know why.
Really, she never does.
SerafíneCharisma + Performance since Pan was rolling dice. PLUS WP cos the dude with two dice is probably going to outplay her.
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 6, 7, 7, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 7 ) Re-rolls: 1 [WP]
GraceGrace sighs when Hawksley is obviously annoyed. She thinks it's her. Of course she would. But okay, if Hawksley is going to consider her annoying when she doesn't like being dragged around like she's his or something...
But then, Pan brightens even more, and even the people who she's spent a good deal of effort in ignoring notice how the Christmas lights glow, or the room just grows bright, even though there's no warmth in this light. She knows what must be going on.
In her seat next to Hawksley, down where she landed of her own free will, mind you, she says, "So, you gonna set the guitar on fire then?" and smiles at him. If he's annoyed at her, she doesn't care much -- will cover it up with humor.
Pan's not going to run anyone off or have his guitar spontaneously combust at this rate. And Sera...
The only other time Grace has heard Sera sing, it was beautiful, sad, and lovely and magic, driving nightmares away. And now Grace realizes that every time she hears Sera sing, it will bring back that memory. "She's so... perfect..."
PanFor the sake of not drawing too much attention to himself Pan takes the sunglasses off his face between the verse and the chorus. It makes the instrument squawk but even with the scratching of his fingers off the strings it doesn't sound terrible.
So maybe he was actually just joking earlier. Working on his comedic timing or something.
The sunglasses click down onto the table behind him and he stutters his way into the chorus but it doesn't do much of anything to cover his tracks. Grace has been living at the Chantry. She knows his resonance as well as she knows anyone else's by now. It's there all the time. It thrums in the wards and it beats back the darkness that would come in after whatever it is that happened last month that so riled Callisto.
With Sera standing there all euphoric and centripetal it's easier to ignore the fact that he's Working. That he prayed or communed with the guitar or whatever it is he does that lets him do the things he does. If anyone asks he'll just say he'd learned the chords once. That a girl he was sweet on in high school used to play the thing and that was almost thirty years ago but some things stick with you.
He can't remember where he put his keys half the time. He'll spend a good minute or two trying to remember whether he left his jacket slung over a chair or hung it up in the closet before he goes outside to smoke in a few minutes. But oh yeah sure. He remembers the chords now.
Even when he takes his eyes off the strings because his eyes are drawn to the Cultist he doesn't squawk the strings again though. Nothing wanton in his gaze. She's getting to be like a daughter to him.
Like all things do the song ends. Scattered applause or whooping from anyone who was wandering by and thought those in the room needed to hear their opinion. Pan lets the silence rest a few moments before banging out the first several bars of Los Peces en el Río. He's just screwing around. Whether Sera protests or not he slings the strap off his shoulders again and winds the scarf back around its neck and puts it back down in its chair.
Then he pats his pockets like he can't remember where he put his cigarettes.
HawksleyNo one really notices the tension between Hawksley and Grace, including Hawksley. Asked about it later, and he might be, he will have no comprehension of what the hell is being talked about. Hawksley cannot hide that flash of irritation any more than he can tell that Grace instantly assumes IT'S ALL HER FAULT and spins out from there into other conclusions. He is leaning back in his seat, cavorting easily from excitement and anticipation to a lightning strike of annoyance to a sort of starting-to-get-buzzed pleasant warmth spreading from the ale into his chest. There is also the undercurrent of attraction and arousal that comes both with simply being in this house as with that warm beginning of a buzz and isn't so much related to the scandalously short green velvet as something else which would be written all over his face if he understood it.
Only the things that Hawksley does not know he knows are things he can conceal.
He rests his elbow on the dining table to his side, closing his eyes slowly and opening them even slower as Pan plays alone, and then as Sera begins to sing. He hears Grace beside him ask if he's going to set the guitar on fire and he just huffs a small laugh through his nostrils, half-smiling. "Nah," is all he says, so as not to interrupt.
she's so perfect.
That gets an answer, too. Just a small shake of her head, a moment where his attention is more on Sera than on Pan-and-Sera. He looks at her for a while, breathing in and exhaling, and his fair eyebrows tug slightly together, the briefest expression of an ache that is as uncommon to his features as consideration for others. "No she's not," he murmurs, quiet enough that it's like he isn't really talking to Grace at all.
His gaze on Sera is different from Pan's. But it would be.
--
By the time the song winds to its ending, to those last chords, people have gathered. People still carrying half-opened silver-white-gold presents, people with cocktails and just coming in for mulled wine or a snack. One couple that leans in a doorway, and no one is humming because there is something special in the room between and all around the musician-magicians. Some heads are bobbing when they find the beat, and Sera of all people will feel the increase in that magic, the power in captivating the Sleepers, the strength in the dreams that they can't seem to acces on their own.
Pan probably knows that sensation, too.
At the end, there is clapping. There are requests, instantly, for more, for this or that or something else. Hawksley is clapping, too, his mouth a lazy grin, his second beer empty. He calls: "DAN. Hey. Rick. Somebody play something," while Pan is patting his pockets, obviously done performing for these louts. For his part, Hawksley bumps Grace lightly with the outside of his elbow. "I'm switching to wine. You want some?" And if she does he'll tell someone she wants some, because it doesn't occur to him to go get it for her himself, even if he's perfectly fine with ladeling a glass of his own.
SerafíneSera can feel Pan's resonance, assuredly. Sera feels everything, keenly. Sometimes it seems like she is nothing more than a singular, really rather raw, nerve. Tonight though she's lovely, bright and absorbed and shining and a little bit mournful because the song is a little bit mournful and a little bit golden because the song is a little bit golden and she gets rather lost in it even though the myth embedded in the bones of the song is not her myth and the frame around that myth is one that she rejects, wholly and entirely, except when she doesn't.
She tips her head back when she feels the priest's eyes on her rather than the strings, and her blond curls swing freely down the back of her little velvet dress with the motion and she catches the edge of that look, the paternal affection framed in his body and gaze.
Pan does not remember where he put his cigarettes but Sera always remembers where she put hers. Or well: Sera actually often forgets that but her body remembers it, or perhaps her housemates or at least her consor just sort of secrete packs of cloves cigarettes in likely places near the entrances and exits of the house since mostly Sera and her crew do not allow themselves to smoke inside. That might make it a habit rather than an indulgence, an addiction rather than a vice.
Also: it ruins the art and makes your clothes smell.
--
Their part in the performance is done for the nonce but Hawksley knows the names to summon and Dan is among those who has gathered in the hallway and crowded into the kitchen, and he knows Sera's voice as well as and better than any of them and the magic in her body and blood and bones as much as her voice. Can't compete with that but he's a different sort of genius and Hawksley's shouting for someone to play something and this is after all a house of musicians. They haven't played out much recently and it feels good, doesn't it, the possiblity that it opens up. They all need an audience.
--
Sera slips from the table neatly, slides up behind Hawksley as he goes for the mulled wine and nuzzles his shoulder as she reaches for her pack of Djarums-and-lighter kept in a cannister on the granite countertop and asks him, quietly, if he's spending the night. And also, asks him quietly to spend the night, with the same words and the same breath, before she flashes cigarettes-and-lighter to Pan and a smile to Hawksley and Grace and tells all of them that she and Pan are going out back to smoke.
There's a fire in the chiminea. It won't be as cold as you imagine.
--
Dan is starting to re-tune the decorated guitar, going for a drop-d, capoed up and as a sort of antidote to the caroling he's probably going to play the Clash. Merry fucking Christmas. Happy New Year.
Someone hands Sera a half-opened silver-wrapped present and she takes it with her as she heads out back. Someone else drapes a chenille throw around her shoulders. Someone else opens the back door. That's how things work for people like her, in places like this.
That's just how they move.
HawksleyHawksley is standing at the stove and Dan is looping a different guitar over his shoulder and he drinks one full glass of mulled wine where he stands, ladle still in hand before he pours more. He is going to get drunk and possibly stoned while he's here, among other things. He feels Sera coming up to him before he feels her arms around him, and his spine straightens a bit and he glances back over his shoulder at Pan, at Grace, then Dan and then Sera again.
He smiles at her, low and lazy and surprisingly soft for someone whose features are sharp and hungry and inhuman.
And he kisses her temple, and nods her away, and she goes to smoke with Pan.
He looks at Grace. "I'm gonna go get unbelievably fucked up and watch people open presents," he tells her, grinning. It's as much of an invitation to join him as she's going to get, but by golly, it sure promises to be fun.
