[perc + aware!]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 7, 7, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 5 )
SerafíneHe rises before the sun does. Every fucking day. Even this close to midsummer where it seems like the sky has been cracked open and sunlight has been pouring down through the edges. The sun will rise soon, though, there's that pre-dawn glow around the edges of the sky, and the house finches and robins and sparrows that roost gray and brown through the urban neighborhood have been singing for hours, but the streetlights are still on and the yard outside his windows is dark.
The neighborhood is waking up. The nursery school is already open or close to it and sleepy parishioners are hurrying their kids over. No reason to expect anyone to knock on his door at this hour or walk in unless there's some sort of emergency.
He's in the shower for one of his five minute showers when the front door opens. The sound of the running water drowns out the noise of his guest this morning, but he doesn't need his physical senses to know how just wandered into his house : she is visceral and she is enthralling, the rich immediacy of it, and she is sufficiently under her own power that she has not crashed into anything yet, at least: nothing loud enough to shatter the silence of an early morning in the barrio, where the world's still waking up.
And if his sense of his surroundings at just this moment is any indication, she is down the hall. Probably in the kitchen.
Fr. EcheverríaOne of these days he is going to start locking his front door because something he isn't going to expect or know how to deal with is going to come through it. In the meantime he has gone so long without locking the door that there isn't any point starting now.
Rosa told him once or twice he shouldn't leave the door unlocked and he told her once why he doesn't like to lock the door and so she let it be. It isn't Rosa come in through the door at five o'clock in the morning. Even though she knows the door is unlocked Rosa always knocks.
But Rosa would not announce her presence in a quiet spiritual way. Under the din of the shower rushing he can feel her and over the din of the shower rushing comes his voice. He doesn't ever raise his voice out of hot emotion and there is no heat in it now as he shouts to make himself heard.
Doesn't have to shout too loud. He's a big man.
"¡Serafíne! ¡Que onda!"
Fr. Echeverría[That should be "qué," not "que." Proper grammar, Padre, seriously.]
Serafíne"¡Impresionante!" Her own shout back is shot through with laughter. Head thrown back, long hair swinging down her spine, breathing to feel herself breathe, as children and madmen and drunks sometimes do, to celebrate their fucking connection with the brilliant fucking world that gives them these moments of clarity and wholeness in the shitty little kitchen and an old Spanish-colonial style house in the barrio while water rushes through old pipes in the wall and the earth is opening up and there's a sky and in it are stars an hey, she has hands attached to her arms.
She's hoarse and raw and exhausted but fucking lit and therefore lit up and that fervor, that fire underscores the return exclamation, heard through walls and water. "¡Te traje el desayuno!"
Fr. Echeverría"¿En serio?"
And the stars still shine despite the permanent dayglow inside the place like he never stops Working. He rises before the sun does and he puts the drunk and the distressed to bed before he thinks about going himself and this place is a haven even for those who do not believe. Maybe he never does stop Working.
A mug of half-drunk herbal tea sits on the kitchen table next to a book he was reading before he got in the shower. It's in Latin. Motherfucker speaks Latin.
"¡Hace las cinco de la mañana, chica! ¿Duermes nunca?"
The shower squawks off.
Serafíne"DA." - is her answer to his first question, all interrupting and interrupted. DA like she speaks any languages other than drunk-girl mediocre Spanglish and drunk-girl Anglais.
Soon as the shower squawks off he can hear her too. Walking around on his fucking linoleum in her fucking heels, which clatter like whoa with every step she takes. Unpacking her bounty from a heavy brown paper bag and yanking open all the drawers in the kitchen searching searching searching for silverware like the fucking knives are HIDING from her and tittering about it with the gossiping spoons.
Picks up the mug of herbal tea and sniffs it and puts it down. Leans close-close-closer to the book squinting at it in the middle of a fucking drunken twirl then slams-it-shut. What the hell are those words?
"'Course I sleep I was out though and we had an impromptu gig last night at this place on Sante Fe and then there was this chick, I was so going to get laid but it was like last call at the afterhours place and then I thought I wanna see Pan instead and then I thought hey I bet he's up and then I was like I'm going to bring him breakfast so that - "
Here the wild train of thoughts comes to a crashing half-halt, mid-sentence. The room's spinning beautifully and she does not precisely remember what she was saying or even to whom she was speaking except: she can feel Pan all around her. His energy hums in the bones of the place and stretches her spine luxuriously, all bathed in light.
Pan, for his part, can smell the gin and weed and cigarettes as soon as the steam starts clearing out of the bathroom.
Eggs too, maybe. Beneath all the remnants of her night out.
SerafíneTime 2: Divining the next five minutes to try to figure out what she was saying before. Difficulty 5 -2 (merit)
Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (1, 7) ( success x 1 )
SerafíneExtending: +1 dif -1 (focus)
Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (6, 6) ( success x 2 )
Fr. EcheverríaAnd in all the time she's clattering and rambling and crashing around the kitchen he's toweling himself off and getting himself put together so when he comes out the bathroom he doesn't look like he would make an appropriate substitute for the chick at the place on Sante Fe.
He still comes out the bathroom with his hair all wet and uncombed and his face fresh from the razor and he's got water climbing down his neck because he doesn't exactly blowdry his mane before he leaves the house. Must not be planning on doing anything too High today because he's wearing the jeans-and-work shirt combination instead of the slacks-and-work shirt one.
Comes into the kitchen and pops open the takeout container to examine the contents before he does anything else.
"You smell like you had a good time," he says, and goes for a piece of bacon or whatever she brought with her first.
SerafíneIt's true. This isn't her usual sort of break-in. She's glassy-eyed and stinks of gin and weed and she's clearly at the tailend of a long night, the sort that leaves her looking both fucking glowing and wrecked. The more formal sort of evening one imagines since she's wearing a ... call it a dress. It is black, and so fucking short it looks like it should be illegal to wear it in public, shoving off a good nine-tenths of her long, lean thighs, the supple, muscular curve of them. Sketched over the thoroughly transparent fabric are strategically placed, artfully arranged squiggly lines, with the cartoonish immediacy of a modern print. There's something dark and non-transparent at her hips, either a panel on the dress or the world's tiniest slip or just her fucking black lingerie is the best goddamned guess though she's not wearing a bra. Just relying on the squiggles for modesty.
No fishnets last night / this morning. Just long bare legs and black, open-toed heels. Her hair is pulled back haphazardly and there's lipstick smeared on her mouth and her throat and her collar and she's beaming at him when he walks into the kitchen.
Mouths those fucking words with him right along as he says them. 'Cos she knew he was gonna say them.
She has managed to sort-of set a place for him at the table. A small bread plate atop his book and four forks arrayed in a sunbolt pattern around the plate-and-book and take out containers and there's bacon, there for him to eat and by the time he walks out all casual she's pushing away from the counter and just beaming at him and inhaling his shower-steam and horrible soap and pulling out a chair for him and urging him fucking physically to sit down at the crazy place she set and those heels of hers are even higher than normal since she's within, oh, four inches of him though she's wobbling like a newborn colt on them, leaning into him and slipping her hands into his damp hair.
"You need a fucking haircut," fondly, this. She's already trying to push him into the chair if he doesn't sit when she pulls it out for him. "You should let me do it."
She knew she was gonna say that too.
All slurred and susurrant. Don't take her up on that offer now, Pan, please.
"Oh, I did have a good time. I am having a good time right the fuck now too."
Fr. Echeverría"Good," he says to her proclamation of having and still having a good time and he's patient like he knows this as all things has to end eventually.
Like it would be real easy to explain to Rosa if she showed up right now what the zorra who's barely wearing more than a bastardized piece of hosiery is doing pressed up against him fingers buried in his hair. Like there's any explanation other than she's having a good time.
And he doesn't pay her any more mind than he would if it were his daughter who had been out partying all night and came home all you need a fucking haircut. They ain't exactly known each other long enough to be thinking of each other in that blood-permanent way but when you go through your whole life with everybody calling you father that'll change the way your brain works. He doesn't even respond to her body up against his other than heaving a god help me sigh and letting her sit him down and futz with his hair more.
"Tomorrow," he says and picks up a fork to try and eat even if she persists in draping herself over him. "I ain't letting you nowhere near me with scissors right now."
Serafíne"To-morrow," oh, she echoes him as if that were a pledge or a promise or perhaps nearly as likely given the singe of her resonance in the air all around them, perhaps she's just pressing her view of the future forward, letting all the strands of possibility hum through her body as she hums against him, one hand on his shoulder, the other in his hand, curling through the damp strands as she gauges just how long and shaggy the priest's hair has become.
Oh, then she laughs. Bends over and drops the bridge of her nose on the crown of his skull, his hair all damp and dark and white too, smoke and sweat and alcohol on her skin filling up his senses. Her smile is a crawl against his scalp, her laughter a physical thing, humming through his body. She turns her head to rest her cheek atop his head for a moment instead, breathing in his immanence, his illumination.
"Maybe not tomorrow either." Like a confession this, her cheek slowly sliding down his head until her mouth finds and hovers just above the curve of his ear. "I'm gonna get fucked up then too."
Fr. EcheverríaThe heat of her hand on his shoulder and the weight of the other in his hair keeps his spine immobile and he doesn't move his head anymore once she's rested her face in the damp mess he calls hair. Gets the fork and the food it carries from the styrofoam container to his mouth without jostling either of them.
Reverent when he's still like this, like this is something worth enjoying even if it seems like he's just bearing it. This is a man who started thinking towards the end that none of them were going to come out Leah's ordeal alive, so he chews slow and grateful like even this greasy comedown manna is welcome after almost not walking away from something that could have been prophecy instead of possibility.
Then her voice humming in his ear. He takes a swallow of tepid tea so he doesn't answer her with his mouth full, turns very-slightly so he can catch her in his periphery.
"Well," he says, "it's good to have goals."
SerafíneWhat he gets in his periphery is her profile. Hair pulled back and loosely secured so that it is piled on her head. her eyes half-closed, the long slanting glance down at him, the dark, transparent material of her dress revealing more than it conceals of her lean body, though he sees it now in distorted and strange pieces: the forward curl of her right shoulder, covered in those squiggles, the sharp whiteness of her teeth. She's slipping her mouth down to kiss the top curve of his ear or - something, she doesn't remember and there were a half-dozen possibilities in that self-same moment, more - when he turns his head back, reverent and quiet and chewing carefully and enjoying this grace the way he enjoys the grace of everyday granted him after his own personal darkness: there's something to be fucking said for life, isn't there? However it unfolds.
Instead of his ear, though, his temple. He turns to catch her profile and her mouth slips down that scant half-inch just lingers there, where his pulse can just be felt beneath his skin, over the bone.
It's been four or five days since Annie left with Leah and Leah left then a note and he wasn't sure all of them or any of them were going to survive and here they are, reverent in the rectory kitchen, which Serafíne has invaded drunk and happy because she wanted to see him. Not because she was having a bad trip or in fucking fear of her fucking life or her fucking soup.
He tells her it's good to have goals and she laughs again. Uses the leverage of her hand on his shoulder to start lifting herself up, but not before she murmurs thoughtful into his skin, " - maybe I'll get laid too."
Goals indeed.
Then she's more-or-less upright and no longer sprawled all over him but: lo, instead she comes to stand by his side then hops up on the kitchen table just exactly beside his place there. Swinging her long bare legs over the kitchen floor.
Admonishing him, "Don't just eat the bacon - " when she sees him with the container full of bacon open. Searching with a deliberate drunking precision through the takeout until she finds her prize! and is delighted by it, slashing him one of her ferocious grins. So fucking full of life as she tries five times to open it and finally succeeds and pulls out a round yellow piece of food-without-definition that she seems intent on feeding him. With her fucking bare hands.
"Here have some egg." (Uh, it smells like pineapple, and that container looks like FRUIT CUP, but whatever, drunk girl.)
Fr. EcheverríaBy the time she makes it around to the table and has boosted herself up beside the book and the plate and the lightning-bolt forks Pan's eyebrows have decided they want to stay furrowed and raised, his eyes amused and wary at once.
He knows he shouldn't be laughing on the inside at this because she's gone so far off the path of redemption that it would take a miracle of messianic proportions for her to get right again but on the inside he's laughing anyway.
Here have some egg.
"Why, thank you."
He stands and takes the fruit cup from her and brings it with him to the fridge. Knocks back the juice and then the little pieces of fruit in one-two-three shots and opens up the fridge as he chews, leaves the fruit cup sitting on the counter empty. Gets out a bottle of water. Closes the door with his hip. Doesn't lob it to her because he knows there ain't a chance in Hell she's catching it. Walks it back over to her and holds out the bottle of water like she ought to know the drill by now.
SerafíneSo there she is, still sitting nearly primly on his table now, surrounded by the take out from the all night diner and the fruit cup and other assorted extras from the bodega at the corner of seventh and vine, where the little zorra spilled out of the cab she got from where-the-fuck ever to here to fill a bag with sundries she chose at random and in a drunken haze.
Primly: knees together, her shoulders straight, her glassy eyes forward and steady, that hazy wavey-ness to her posture, though, as if she were a marionette given a few extra inches of slack, drifting in sweeping but distinct lines from the vertical. Hands tucked to either side of her bare thighs, fingers curved over the edge of the table, watching him, watching him, watching him as he eats bacon and takes the fruitcup and heads to the fridge and she's just fucking -
watching him, this half-smile on her face, biting the curve of her lower lip, head lolling just aslant now as she reaches up thoughtlessly to try to yank the elastic bands holding her hair up out of the twisted mass.
Watching as he walks back across the kitchen and holds the water bottle out to her.
She takes it. Smiles up at him, and takes the bottle like she knows the fucking routine but instead of the fucking routine what she does is: continue to reach for him, and try to pull him in to her for a tight hug. If he'll let her. She hasn't gotten up from the table, not yet, and her knees part here to make room for his body if he allows her to pull him closer and the water bottle is a bright shiver, fridge-cold against the back of his neck but of all the goddamned things she has done tonight: this one, right here, is the most chaste and the most pure.
"You're so awesome," low-voiced, a drunken whisper against his senses. " - you know that, right? I keep thinking about them," and the tone of her voice, the sweetness, the way her arms tighten in that moment around his neck tells him that Them must be Annie and Leah and no one else. " - where they are. What the sky looks like. We found her because of you."
Then and only then does she release him. Slip (staggering) to her feet, holding onto that fucking water bottle.
"I hope you liked your breakfast." Raising the bottle like a toast, or as a prelude to fare-thee-well.
Fr. Echeverría[PAUSE]
Fr. EcheverríaAnd he's never been to Texas. He listened to Annie talk about it brief but bitter like the fact she had to leave in the first place was cause enough for disillusionment and to have to leave it to bury her brother and bring back the girl responsible for her burying her brother. The wondering if the girl will live to see next spring isn't much to wonder at at all. If Annie was going to kill her she would have done it by now.
He hasn't stood between a woman's legs since he was younger than the woman in question and he doesn't hesitate out of fear for temptation but out of a sense of propriety. The woman in question being drunk as she is. But he lets her hug him all the same anyway. It isn't innocence if you've already sinned the sin before but he's had the sin struck out of him.
Wouldn't mean anything to anyone walking in right now but no one else is awake right now and anyone else would knock.
He hugs her like he would hug a daughter, pats her back all yeah yeah that's nice cariña and lets her go after she's said what she wants to say. Helps her get to her feet and keeps a hand on her shoulder like to guide her but she's aiming towards the door and not a piece of furniture and he's aiming towards the couch and not the door.
"I did," he says. "Good night, Sera."
Serafíne"Wait. Wait wait wait." Doesn't notice his hesitation, no matter the source, not Sera, not tonight. Doesn't care whether he hugs her like a daughter or anything else, and may not notice since they're close and she can feel like shivering all around her and her body is singing with good-feeling to match that sense of illumination he sheds like sunlit rain.
She's beaming, this great big and somehow private smile, all bright as he tells her that yes, he enjoyed his breakfast, his bacon and FRUIT CUP and uninvited morning visitor and something in the sweeping curve of her cheek is, well. Sweet and shy and shyly pleased.
All her movement is in stuttersteps, half-focused, out of focus. Jerky at the endranges of movement where she makes this decisions about which way to go, like now. WAIT WAIT WAIT and she's searching through the litter of her purchases and still holding onto her water bottle and divining by fucking degrees the coiled weight of her clutch's little silver chain, pulling it out with a quick, triumphant motion and tucking the chain across her body so that the little clutch swings against her right hip.
"Good night, Pan."
Does not seem inclined to say anything more until they're past the threshold of the kitchen door and he's steering her toward the couch and she's pulling in the other direction like a reluctant and balking mule.
Finally, she just lolls her head back at him, glassy-eyed and motherfucking content with the way she feels right now. It's so goddamned glorious.
"Oh hey. Was it a boy or a girl?" Then, a drunken sidesweep of her head, wobbly as she reaches to pat at something on him. Forearm? Thigh? Spare tire? They all run together for her right now.
"Don't worry," all reassuring, her tone. "I'm good. Gonna walk home. It's a beautiful morning."
Fr. EcheverríaHe isn't going to force her. In nothing does he force others. Her will is smaller than his and yet in strength he has shown a willingness to concede defeat. Fists against his back would not fell him but he stepped back from a truck when she loosed them anyway, tiny arrows notched into an easily-snapped bow, because he does not want to hurt her.
He does not want harm to befall her either but tiny strength does not mean helplessness. Half the time he walks away from the initiates knowing they will not grow if he does not let them.
When he goes into the nursery school the children old enough to stumble on uncoordinated feet without instantly falling onto bruised knees recognize him. The older ones, the ones in kindergarten, they like to yell PADREEE loud as when they see him. They'll yell padre loud as when he goes over there today to see how things are getting on.
And she wants to know if Amanda's baby was a boy or a girl and he smiles even with the bullshit come along with that situation. A hand on his gut removes the hand on her shoulder.
"Her name's Luciana Victoria," he says. "Never seen a baby with that much hair before."
Serafíne"Luciana. Victoria." Sera repeats the names with a sort of quiet, drunken reverence. The way the priest may well repeat them when it comes time to baptize the baby in the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit, the mysteries of the trinity, amen. Washing away the first sin that accrues to humankind by virtue merely of the fact of being born on this physical plain. Eve's sorrow, and Adam's too. "I like 'em both."
But Serafíne does not believe in sin, and simply smiles around the words, pulling her hand back and crossing her arms above her waist, a little bit awkward for the question. There are things people say with news of babies, ways to talk about them that she doesn't know or understand. So what she says is, "That's cool."
Her shoulders curl forward, awkward either with the subject or perhaps suddenly, acutely aware that she was just patting a fucking priest on his fucking gut and dawn's starting to rise up beyond those big, old-fashioned windows that frame in the house.
"I'm glad they're both okay." The words all slurred and reconstituted in her mouth, her head drifting in a sort of reluctant half-orbit as if it were too big for her neck right now.
She straightens then and turns around, headed for the front door. The first step is a stumble that near-about breaks either her heel or her ankle but there's this way she steadies herself, finds her drunken center-of-balance, hands spread cautiously and flat in front of her, then pulls herself more swayingly upright.
Fr. EcheverríaHesitation at the threshold of a different breed than the hesitation before the embrace. Innate sense of responsibility reared up even in the face of someone so loudly irresponsible as the young woman who keeps finding her way here, drawn like a moth to a flame because she feels awe in his presence. A different sort of awe than the awe felt by his people but awe all the same.
He could let her find her own way home but for the echoes of a conversation in the kitchen after a bad trip not enough nights past for him to let her forget it.
"Let me drive you back, at least," he says as he opens the door. Keys jangle as he picks them up off the small table by the door. "Don't know how you walk in those things. Lucky you ain't broke nothing yet."
Serafíne"I did break something, once."
The curlicues and swirls stitched onto the dress do not cover the back, except for a small area over her hips and ass. So her back is back, visible through the thoroughly transparent black fabric - spine straight, the articulations of her vertebrae sharp against her skin.
"I don't remember what it was."
--
But she's steadier then, stepping back as he opens the front door, reaching up to hold onto the frame as it swings open. The jangle of keys draws her eyes aslant and she tips her head upward by way of acknowledgment.
She'll accept the ride.
"You sure I won't make you late for something?"
Fr. EcheverríaOnce and only once has he offered up the advice that if her past keeps coming up on her that she would be better served facing it. Nothing to be done for it if she won't but she prefers to keep moving. With her back to it she doesn't have to think about the things she can't remember.
He doesn't force her to do that either. It's not his place. But he hears this more than once - I don't remember - and he says nothing but she could feel the weight of his gaze on her if she weren't so lit.
Not so lit that time as a construct and a constraint means nothing to her either.
"Nah," he says. "If you're close enough to walk you're close enough I can drop you off. Just have meetings today anyway."
A pause to lock the door behind him and then he leads her across the abandoned street to the parking lot where the truck sits among the cars of the women working at the daycare center. Lights on in the smaller of the two buildings but no noise yet.
SerafíneDid she feel the weight of those green eyes on her in that moment? No: just the cool night air and the scent of the street, warm and ashen and damp with approaching dawn. Just the hum of his presence even out here on the still shadowed street, the edges of the sky just illuminated, the first rays of the sun still bound either by the horizon or the city's skyline. Just the heat and presence of his broad frame as he leads her across the street and she sways or sashays oh-so-precisely in his shadow and at his side. The stumbling clip of her drunken gait a counterpoint to his own, heavy and broader, the retort of the heels of his cowboy boots on the asphalt.
Midway across the street and she takes his arm to steady herself, tucks her narrow frame against his in that same way she has, neat and prim and certain, even if her execution of the move is... less than upright with the drinks she has consumed.
Once they get to the car she lets him go and circles to the passenger's side, balancing herself with a hand (or uhm, two hands) on the frame of the truck. Climbing in a miracle of scrabbling and thank god the daycare rushhour is still an hour away, because his faithful should not have to see a creature like that climbing into their rector's truck. Even if they see variations on the theme everyday in the neighborhood.
She'll pull her seatbelt home when prompted, but then just. Sits, fiddling a bit with her bag on its chain, assuming he knows the way.
Fr. EcheverríaDew coats the truck's windows and she can feel the lingering chill of the passed night on the metal. Soot overtop the dew. Red paint gone gray-black with the fires burning out on the plains though the nights are cold anyway. The fires don't stop just because the temperature plummets. So long as they have oxygen and things to chew up the fires will burn forever.
He does not burn like fire when he gets into the truck. It rocks with the addition of his weight and the ignition ding ding ding dings because he lingers with the door open, smoker's cough wracking him for a moment before he hauls his other leg in and closes the door behind him, turns on the engine and pops the hand brake.
The cilia of the lungs succumb to paralysis in longterm smokers but after a sufficient amount of time without soot they start to work again. It causes the morning lung-clearing in men like him. No pathology or cause for fear. It's just a sign he oughtn't smoke so much. He puts on his sunglasses for the fact that they're driving into the dawn and turns the radio all the way off instead of letting the hiss of half-silenced air taunt them.
So they start to drive and he listens to her directions though he feels for the way, takes God's directions more than he takes hers. Lets the truck idle outside the house and looks at it. Eyebrows lift over the tops of his frames but he says nothing.
"Alright, chiqui," he says. "This is your stop."
SerafíneThe house is farther than he might have assumed given her determination to walk home from the rectory. More than five miles, maybe close to six or eight. The neighborhood is a nice one, nicer than barrio surrounding the church and rectory, wealthier than one might expect given her commitment to her particular sense of style: thrift-store-meets-sid-vicious-meets-Chanel-knockoffs.
Mature trees line the streets here, spreading out in a complex array, shading the sidewalks and front walks. The houses here are brick and flagstone, one or two storeys each, well-tended and attractive and historic, most restored in good style. A handful have been fully overhauled and broken down into condos or duplexes, but at least seventy-five percent of the neighborhood consists of single-family homes. The sort belonging not to the working or middle class, but the upper middle class. Still: they are city homes. Modest yards, with well-tended gardens and high garden walls.
Pan relies on God's direction, which is best. Her own are haphazard and drifting, and he's likely to hear more about her roommates - Rick and Dahlia and Dan - and the fact that this house was Dahlia's from a relative, and that she lets them live there rent-free, and maybe given her state of inebriation more about the neighborhood, the neighbors, the parties they've had there already, the cabana bed on the back patio and the frog statue she bought from this-one-guy in North Carolina who did statues of eagles out of wooden stumps with his chainsaw. Eagles and bears mostly until she asked for the fucking frog, but he made the fucking frog too. Did Pan think the frog should be inside or outside? Sera wanted it on the dining room table but Rick hated it and Dee was still half hung up on him and made at Sera anyway after the long absences with Leah and if Pan gets the impression that Sera loves Dan loads and likes Dee lots and has slept with both of them, well. He wouldn't be wrong.
But he knows how she is, this kiddo in the designer dress that is nothing more than a bastardized piece of hosiery and six inch heels (to be fair: one inch platforms and five inch heels).
The truck is idling on the street and Sera's leaning away from Pan, her temple against the glass on the passenger's side, not really entirely with it anymore but swaying in time with the pings of the engine when he says kiddo and she sweeps him this look that hums with banked energy.
Then sits up. Looks down at the armrest, a frow etched between her brows as she tries to remember which piece opens things and which other pieces do not. She is moving in slow motion and it takes her three tries to find the door latch and when she does she pushes it twice before pulling it open and then tries to climb out of the passenger's seat without undoing her seatbelt.
--
While all this is going on, the front door swings open. A tall, bearded guy Pan may remember as a member of her band steps out onto the porch and shades his eyes, peering out against the glare of the street light, through the murk of the morning soot-and-shadow, then jogs down the front steps in his bare feet.
Comes running up to the truck in time to catch the passenger's door as she finally gets it open and reaches across her to undo the seatbelt. Dan is nearly Pan's height, but considerably less broad, all hipster chic except he is also at the end of a long ight, his tight plaid shirt untucked, his hair mussed.
"Christ, Sera." An apologetic look up at the priest as Dan takes Sera into his arms, mostly supporting her because she can no longer really stand. "I've been texting you for hours what the fuck. We have a fucking deal."
Then, cradling her with one arm, reaching to shut the passenger's door in the other, Dan flashes a glance at Pan. "Thanks, man. Sorry if she's been too much trouble."
- and slams the door shut behind them.
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