Sup, Denver
Fr. EcheverríaHe leaves the door unlocked in case something happens in the middle of the night. Lost key mated with his dead of a heart attack. One has to be prepared for things like that. The nursery school teachers, assistants, they would know enough to open the door and stop if they thought something was wrong.
Asleep for hours means he isn't disoriented when the front door opens but time is lost to him and he lacks the normal person's response to sudden awakening. No panic or paralysis. Oh: it's after midnight. The door's open. Someone's inside. Where the fuck. Oh.
This is why he keeps a baseball bat in the bedroom of the rectory. Hasn't played baseball since ninth grade. Didn't finish high school. Could still split someone's scalp with it.
The door opens. Someone's singing in the living room. Doesn't dawn on him until after he's slipped out the bed and picked up the bat and gone prowling lightless through the living room that he recognizes the tune or the voice or the fucked-uppedness of it. Goes to the front door to check make sure it's closed and nobody else is lurking around outside before he goes into the kitchen where he hears something drop. He's 6'2" and Christ knows how many pounds and doesn't move quietly.
A floorboard creaks before he appears a silhouette in the archway between the kitchen and entryway.
SerafíneThe only light in the room is the light shed by the fridge. A triangular swath out over the old linoleum. There's something rolling around on the kitchen floor - a jar of mustard, maybe, in a parabolic arc down through the concave curve of an old soft spot in the subfloor and it is followed by something else. An apple, perfect and round and green from the crisp, rolling in an eccentric slide and -
"Where the fuck - is my kim chi - " it's the sound of his tread in the hallway, the sudden intrusion of his looming shadow, his silohuette etched into the darkness. The walls are breathing in the room, the darkness aswirl, but the walls in here aren't moving yet and she can tell the difference between here and there still.
The singing - which is haphazard and occasional - stops right there and the fridge door just yaws open as she lets it go. Dan's skinnier and Rick's shorter and Dee has fucking boobs and Sera, in her fucking heels - the real thing tonight, not her boots or platforms - and her goddamned party dress - is clunking and clomping through Pan's kitchen trying to be stealthy, poised between fucking flying at the stranger in her hallway and trying to sneak out onto through some other exit.
Fr. EcheverríaHe's not remotely dressed. No one has died or threatened to die or given birth or ended up back in the hospital or given any indication they're going to crash at the rectory this evening so the hulking priest is wearing basketball shorts and a t-shirt. His hair is a mess and his feet are bare. His arms are bare.
He still looks like he could fuck her up even without anything to do it with.
When he speaks his voice is rough from being dead-the-fuck-asleep a moment ago.
"Oye," he says, "this is a private residence. You're at Thirteen Ten West Flor--" Then it dawns on him who's rooting around in the kitchen. Sets down the bat so it topples onto the floor out of sight and holds up both his hands like to say just kidding I'm not really armed. "Shit. Hey. Sera. Hey hey hey. Tranquila."
SerafíneThere's a slider from the kitchen to the back patio where she goes to smoke. Sera knows that about her house. Her house. Dee's house. Dahlia's house. So: there's a sliding glass door that should be behind her right now but someone's gone and hidden it or maybe it just keeps moving out of her view. Maybe he's fucking hiding it from her. To try to -
She turns her head sharply aslant when he starts in that rough fucking voice, a stranger with a baseball bat and great shadowed bulk and the kitchen, the space she's allowed to have in the kitchen between the breathing walls is getting smaller.
By the time he says her name, by the time he sets down the bat so it topples and falls over and is saying - shit. Hey. Sera. - she doesn't believe his voice anymore.
"GET. OUT." She advances on him with a drunken sway, holding a bottle of (very. expensive.) Scotch in front of her like a weapon. Like a fucking sword. Even fucked up, her body remembers the forms. "ALL OF YOU."
There's just one of him. Maybe she's more than just a bit drunk.
Fr. Echeverría"Sera."
Calm still but it's late and he's slightly scrambled and he can't remember what she calls him on the regular because she's called him Padre and she's called him Francisco and she's called him Pan and he doesn't know her well enough to know what she would recognize out of all of them in the state she's in.
He doesn't get out, him or any of him, but he doesn't panic or run at her either. Doesn't matter to her in the state she's in. He's blocking her way out and he isn't afraid of her and if she hit him with the bottle he or all of them would probably go down without a fight. His stupid voice stays calm and nonjudgmental even when she's waving the full-ass bottle of scotch at him.
"I'm sorry, chica, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you. This your place? Huh? Where you at right now?"
Serafíne"Just - " she's breathing heavily now; her heart's beating faster, spiked with adrenaline. There's speed in her system from the LSD and the room is spinning and the light that spills in behind him is like an arc-welder, all flame. As quickly as she turned that bottle into some semblance of a weapon she turns it back into a bottle, with a mere shift of her grip on the neck of it. " - just stay back - "
And she's edging closer to him, the kitchen dark behind her. The suggestion of her face, dark make up ringing her eyes, lipstick smeared across her mouth. The world's smallest dress, and thigh-high fishnets and visible garters holding them up. But now she's not looking at him anymore, but behind her. At the shadows of the kitchen, which lean and yaw as the fridge door swings lazily further.
"It's - it's supposed to be - " But everything's wrong, like some dark space ate the garden and is pouring in after her and she turns around then, backing up as if the shadows in the kitchen were advancing on her. " - what the fuck?"
It's when she bumps into something. Him maybe, or the edge of the door frame, or some fucking holy family portrait on the wall while she's backing up that she explodes into motion. Charging him like she's some fucking linebacker opening up a lane for a running back. Or like she's a fucked up girl for whom the shadows are hungry and changed and dangerous and she needs to get out of there. Now.
Fr. Echeverría- just stay back -
"Okay," he says. "It's okay."
It isn't him she bumps into because Him has his hands out far enough she can see them but not far enough she's gonna think his arms are wings or tendrils or some other unholy inhuman appendage and each step she takes towards him has him taking a bigger one back away from her. Maybe she doesn't bump into anything at all. Just thinks she does. The wall leaps out at her or something.
She leaps out at him.
Problem is she charges him like she's a linebacker and he actually is big enough to be a linebacker. She's half his size and all she's got going for her is she's high on Christ knows what and he hasn't even had a cup of coffee since she was a baby, only lights a cigarette to fuel an effect and even then it's the act of lighting it that does it not the effect of dragging off of it. One of those high on life motherfuckers and she needs to get out of there but he needs her to not go tearing ass down the street and get her ass hit by a car so he wraps her up in a goddamn bear hug.
"Sera, stop," he says. "Sera. Tranquila, woman, I ain't gonna hurt you."
SerafíneMaybe it was nothing. Maybe the fucking mustard rolling around on the worn linoleum startled her. Maybe some spiderweb memory of some dark place and some dark thing cross-fired with this dark place and this dark thing and there's John Brogan out there somewhere and he smiled at her, and the shadows at the walls and moonlight and replaced them with darkness and then there's the restraints they'd use, sometimes.
Pan wraps her in a bearhug to keep her from running out into the street like she's being pursued by the hounds of hell, and he's twice her size. She's wriggly-as-fuck but she weighs maybe 110 pounds soaking wet. That's if you count the make-up and the chains and the heavy leather boots and tonight she's wearing no more than the world's smallest dress and a half-dozen necklaces and her ubiquitous fishnets and shoes that must be doing some sort of permanent damage to her feet, so she's nearly his height (by which we mean: he only has four inches or so on her) but nowhere near his size, and he grabs her around the waist and wraps his arms around her upper arms and pulls her back into the bulk of her body and speaks like that, repeating her name, repeating his promise that he's not gonna hurt her while her spine's rigid against his chest, and even so he has to struggle to hold onto her for that first thirty seconds because she's fucking fighting him hard, beating the flat of her palms on his forearm, dropping the Scotch (whoops) to try to get better traction to peel his solid arms away from her body and then hey she remembers that she's fucking magic and -
- recognizes him, too. Just before she tries to pull the fucked up threads of her Very Bad Trip together and scare the fuck out of him.
She doesn't struggling all at once but she does stop. Says, " - Pan?" almost experimentally to the darkness behind her.
Fr. EcheverríaAnd he doesn't know beyond what she told him last week - she can't sleep without someone else there - that John Brogan got inside her head like he did. Isn't any way he would be able to know something like that. The priest was five-foot-five once but that was back when he was like twelve and it's different going through your whole life being five-foot-five and a woman.
Can sit in on all the NA meetings in the world and put himself between a Fallen and a girl young enough to be his daughter all he wants and let her fall asleep on his chest every night for the rest of his stupid life but that don't mean he's going to know what kind of fear Sera feels like someone like John Brogan looks at her.
He gives up negotiating after a couple of seconds because he loses his wind and has to concentrate on holding her arms still and he ends up with his back against a wall and by the time she starts to crackle the air around them with her magick and comes back to herself and says his name his heart is hammering against her spine and he's not winded but he's not breathing too easy neither.
"Hey," he says like she knocked on the door and he opened it and this is how they're talking now, not like he's got her pinned against him in the dark. "Can I let you go now?"
SerafíneHer hair's all tangled around them; she smells like alcohol and something sweeter. He can't smell the LSD on her because she took it long ago, but the sweetness is the fucking orange juice on her breath. He can't smell the LSD on her breath, but if he could see her eyes right now, he'd read it there. The pupils hugely dilated, nearly devouring her irises, spreading sparks and tailings and tracers around the room. In the struggle she's kicked off her fucking shoes, so now that she's not using her legs as leverage to struggle free of his grip there's just her toes touching. She lost her bottle somewhere along the way but it didn't shatter as it dropped to the floor, probably because she's so goddamned short. Not enough time to build up momentum.
He asks if he can let her go now, and she tips her head back into his chest chest and then just nods, which he'll feel more than see in the darkness. It means: Yes, you can let me go now.
He can't feel her heart the way she can feel his, but her heart is beating like that too. Rapid as a frightened rabbit.
Fr. Echeverría"You're at the rectory. Okay? I'm gonna count to three and then I'm gonna let you go."
He hasn't had much occasion to make promises or keep them but tonight isn't the night he turns out to be a man who doesn't keep his word. Stands there with his back against the wall until the count of three and he counts even but not arduous and when he lets her go it's even too. Keeps his hands at her elbows in case she falls out or tries to bolt again but she's back to herself now.
Keeps his mouth shut after that too.
SerafíneSerafíne stumbles a bit, but she does not fall or try to bolt.
Doesn't say anything either, beyond a shake of her head (the "no - " sort, a shake rather than a nod) when he tells her that she's at the rectory, okay? - not when he gives her the terms, not when he lets her go.
Instead, as soon as she is free, all under her own control, she turns immediately around and rises on her fucking tip-toes and throws her arms around his neck and hugs him tight. Tight like there could be demons at her fucking back, and she's not going to let go.
Fr. EcheverríaIf she's making him paranoid or anxious he keeps it tamped down. No one else was at the door and no one else is in the apartment. This place is warded against psychic intrusion but not against physical. If something were after her it'd be in here by now but all that's after her is coming from inside her head and the rotten-sweet smell of booze metabolizing on her breath doesn't push it away.
He doesn't push her away either. Blows out a breath sounds like he's been holding it since he found her in his kitchen and waits a couple seconds to gauge she isn't going to let go and then he hugs her tight but not tight like when he was restraining her. Tight like when she hugged him in the sanctuary after he said he'd help and he got the idea she needed it.
"Vale, Sera, vale," he says to her neck, her hair. "Ahora estás a salvo, alright, just take it easy."
SerafíneShe smiles against his chest, mostly hidden, when he assures her that she's okay, she's okay, she's safe, alright. Take it easy. Turns her head into the warmth of his mouth, which is really little more than the movement of her tangled, sweat-damped curls against his cheek and jaw.
In the next few moments, her grip on his neck shifts, eases back, so that her hug is loosely ringed around his shoulders rather than tightly clenched. That's all, though. As I mentioned, she doesn't seem like she's going to let go.
Her eyes drift up, though. Past the edge of his cheek and jaw, his ear, his black hair threaded with silver, above him into the darkness pooled on the ceiling of the hall.
"Pan - how'd you get here?"
Fr. EcheverríaThe fact that she made it this far isn't a testament to her tolerance. It's more like that old adage about God looking after children and drunks and even that's part bullshit if you take into consideration how many kids God lets splatter in car crashes and school shootings and everything else every day versus the number of drunks who walk away from what the Euthanatos would call Fate without much more than a scratch to show for it.
No point talking Fate or God or Anything with someone in the midst of a bad trip though.
"Tell you in the morning," he says. "Let's get you some water and go to sleep, huh?"
Serafíne"'Kay." - returns Sera, rather sweetly now, almost entirely quiescent and apparently content to stand in the Pan's hallway with her arms around his neck and her cheek resting against his chest. Quiescent enough now that he could probably lift her arms from around his neck and give them back to her and she'd accept them with that same sweet note in the back of her throat.
" - how'd you get into my head though." Flatly asked, like a poorly phrased rhetorical question, some shadow of a thought drifting across her features. Then, a note of concern between her brows. "Can you get out?"
Quiescent unless he tries to walk her back into the kitchen to get that water. Then she stops and refuses to continue for love or money. If he wants to get her water, he's going to have to leave her in the hall and retrieve it from the sink or fridge, because she is not going the fuck in there.
Fr. Echeverría"Yeah, I can get out. Here."
So he twines her arms down off his shoulders and steps away slow until he's sure she's going to stay put. Ducks into the kitchen long enough to grab a bottle of water out of the refrigerator and then steps back out again and steers her deeper into the living room.
When she's sat down on the couch with her boots across the room where she kicked them in her fruitless struggle he crouches down next to the couch and uncaps the bottle and hands it to her.
"Drink," he says. "I'm gonna get you a pillow."
Serafíne"I don't - " - that narrow line between her brows deepens. "I don't want you to go."
Oh, she is seated on the couch now just where he's settled her, and she accepts the uncapped bottle and drinks when he tells her to drink, pouring back several gulping mouthfuls. Even though she tells him she doesn't want him to go, she doesn't do anything to stop him, and is seemingly glued in place on the couch. Maybe she's pinned there by the shadows of the room.
He can stand, pad off to retrieve a musty old pillow from the linen closet. And while he's leaving or as he's returning - at some point, it should be said, when he is behind her rather than in front of her - she lifts her chin as if she were listening to some memory of an old wax recording and had to hold her head just so to hear it proper.
At that point, she asks, equally quietly. "Do you think he could see?"
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