Perception + Awarenessssss who is in there!
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 2, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 7 ) Re-rolls: 3
SerafíneBarrel 44 is a small bar among many on the Sante Fe strip. Just one and a half storefronts, with a sign from the fire marshal that states that maximum occupancy of each half is no more than 48 people. On a Tuesday evening, after happy hour but still before dark, the after-work crowd of lawyers and finance guys and sales professionals is filtering out and the bartender is settling in for a long slow evening, polishing the deep, rich wood of the old, and old-fashioned bar. Which was dismantled from an old hotel in eastern Wyoming that was being torn down and reassembled here. There are still places where you can see and feel the nicks from bullets from a long-ago wild west shoot-out, and the brass footrest has been in use so long it is deformed, here and there, the way stone steps wear beneath the feet.
The specialty of the house is whiskey. Whiskey in all its many forms, with a five page menu of whiskey drinks and whiskey shots and whiskey varieties, from local to global and back again, from reasonable to beyond pricey. They have beer on tap, too - a handful of local brews, and none of the national brand. It's that sort of place in that kind of neighborhood.
Outside traffic is light on Sante Fe. Picture windows are tinted but still frame the street traffic, and an angled view of the bar gives a shot of the sidewalk and the sandwich board outside: which reads, merely: WHISKEY: DELETING MEMORIES SINCE 1762.
If Justin's looking down his beer or responding to any of the bartender's attempts to engage in conversation, he might miss her when she's visible in the window, wandering down the street. Pausing, her head canted aslant as if listening to a distant and half-remembered song. Eyes crawling over the sandwich board, which brings a certain distinct curve to her mouth. Stands there a minute, Serafíne, thumbs hooked in the belt loops of her cut-offs, eyes narrowed against the glare of streetlights on the picture glass.
Then makes some decision. Some tumbling click in her mind, and saunters into Barrel 44.
Alone, because she abandoned her companions at the karaoke bar a block and a half away. Though the bar is mostly empty, she claims the stool closest to Justin and scoots it a half-inch closer. Orders a Mamie Taylor No. 1 for herself and buys him another round if he's more than half-finished with his beer.
Her eyes are on his profile as the bartender retreats to go make her drink, this slanting awareness in them, a kind of alert wariness underlying her body language as she studies his expression, his posture, his presence.
No greeting, not yet. Not aside from the offer of another round on her, which was made more to the bartender than the Verbena.
Justin[Per+Awareness]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 6, 7, 7) ( success x 3 )
Justin[Oh right Nightmares]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
JustinJustin didn't look out the window. He didn't need to look to know that someone was there. Patterns flowed around him in the small bar - unique heartbeats that wove in and out of his awareness. Serafine's he knew. When she walked in the door, he felt the visceral thrill of her resonance. It made the hair raise on the back of his neck.
He'd come here directly from work today, which was obvious both by smudges of dirt on his jeans and the salty-musk smell of sweat that lingered on his skin. (His t-shirt, at least, he'd changed.) His tan looked a fraction darker today than it had the last time Serafine had seen him.
After all that had occurred the past few weeks, it was a little strange to think of them all just returning to their mundane lives (though perhaps Serafine's life was never really mundane.) And yet, life went on. So here she'd found the Verbena with an empty plate in front of him that had once held a large sandwich, still speckled with crumbs and a drizzle of pickle juice. And a craft beer in his hand that was mostly empty. He didn't object when she ordered him a second.
He did, however, afford the Cultist a sidelong look. Not so much suspicious as watchful. "Thanks," he said, when the bartender brought them their drinks.
SerafÃne(Perception + Awareness-as-empathy)
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 2, 2, 4, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
SerafíneSerafíne's life is never mundane. That much you can fucking tell by her clothes. Tonight she's wearing a pair of cut-off denim shorts over thigh-high black lace stockings, which are torn on the left thigh, deliberately or otherwise, heavy boots with high platforms and silvered heels covered over with buckles. A black leather belt inset with silver studs, and a black lace... well, god. That's some sort of bra or perhaps bandaid made of black lace and wrapped around her torso. She was trailing a dark jacket of some sort when she came in, and slipped a small clutch on a long silver chain off her torso and onto the barstool beside her a moment after discarding the jacket there too.
Her hair is loose and wild from the wind on the street and freshly, brightly blond with new coils over golden highlights and a new, dark undercoat where she keeps it buzzed short. She smells like cloves and tobacco and alcohol though not-too-much so early in the evening, not yet. Guarantee she has a joint-or-three tucked into her cigarettes tucked into that little silver bag on the barstool beside her. Guarantee that she's planning to get fucked up, tonight, again, too.
That sidelong look, not suspicious but watchful, catches her posture, which is sharp and wary rather in the way he might be wary, beneath his skin. The way an animal is in the presence of another, one that might be a predator. Sera was a bit freaked out by the intensity of the Verbena's martial preparadness, but their fucking readiness to shed blood and that wariness lives in her now, immediate and present - but fuck it. The girl leans into her fear rather than away from it.
No wonder she gets into so much fucking trouble.
"Welcome," is what she says, her eyes direct on his, level and blue and ringed by black liner and black mascara. "You looked like you could use a drink. Though to be fucking fair, most people look like they could use a drink to me."
Then she turns deliberately away, giving him her profile. If he is perceptive enough, he might see her pulse beating in her neck. Fast and the faster as she waits for the bartender to return with his beer and her mixed drink. When they come, she leans forward, sips it and hands it back to the girl with lifted brows.
The sudden slash of her half-smile as she hands over the cash to pay. "I'll need another shot with this."
Then back at Justin, sharper and more aware this time. Something searching in the fineness of her attention. The awareness there, the fucking grace of it.
"Long day?"
Justin"No more than usual," he responded with a light shrug. "It's summer and I work in landscaping." Justin finished off the last dregs of his beer and pressed his lips together, running his tongue between them as he pushed the empty bottle to one side. His eyes hovered over Serafine's exposed skin for a moment - catching on the lace top that barely covered her chest before he glanced back to her eyes.
"And yeah, I could use about ten drinks right now."
For once he was being direct. And he looked it too. Like he needed a few drinks. (As she'd pointed out.) He looked like he could probably use some kind of physical outlet too, despite the tired set to his shoulders. They didn't know much of each other, but Justin had such a physical personality that it was likely he kept a lot of his tension in his body. Maybe it was a good thing that he'd gone back to work. (Maybe it was the only thing really keeping him grounded, right now.)
SerafíneThe bartender brings her back that extra shot and Serafíne slashes the woman a smile, dumps the extra shot of whiskey into the mixed drink and starts to stir, just enough to layer the extra bit of alcohol through the ginger beer and lime juice so that each sip feels more like a punch than a slap. Inhales the scent of the drink, leaning over the edge of the bar, elbows braced, her spine arched forward, shoulder blades cut back against the incurve of her vertebrae like vestigal wings, all hovering. Then glances back up at him, the sweep of her mascara coated lashes over his eyes. His mouth; the tense set of his muscled shoulders.
The slashing smile stills. She's had enough tonight that there's a certain gloss to her gaze, but there's something alert underneath it; or perhaps merely aware. Alive to nuance, physical and otherwise.
It's summer he tells her, and I work in landscaping, and Serafíne has virtually no idea what that means in terms of work. She has never worked a day in her life, though she looks more like a scrapper than an heiress, like she's just getting by on the skin of her teeth, her latest scheme. Like maybe she is dealing sometimes, to put together the cash for her bar tab or her cell bill. All she does is make a noise though, back of the throat sort because she wasn't really asking about fucking today.
That's when she slides off the barstool. Bumps it aside with the curve of her hip and turns around, standing beside him with her spine against edge of the bar. Close, the way she did the very first night they met, which seems now so very long ago. Elbows back, her drink pushed a bit into the space in front of him so she can reach it, his plate with the detritus of his meal displaced by her highball glass, the scent of whiskey sweet and strong from the fizzing drink.
"I never said thank you. Not to you. I didn't -" She is looking at him directly again, right at his eyes. He is so tense he's not likely to see her wariness, but she can taste it sharp in the back of her throat. Still, it doesn't close. "I was a little wrapped up in my own shit, at the time. And it sounds like you went through some of your own.
"But thank you."
JustinHis reaction to her intrusion of his space was different than it had been that first night. Then, he'd been amiably tolerant of it, if a bit wary (as aloof people tended to be of strangers.) Tonight she'd notice the live-wire coil of tension in his torso; the way he straightened his spine and the curve of his long neck and eyed her like he half-expected her to stick a knife in his back. The tension remained, but the expression fell away quickly when she spoke.
He blinked. Old sweat from the day's labor had collected in his eyelashes and left them looking wet. His eyes weren't yet shiny from drinking but his pupils were dilated in the dim light of the bar. His irises looked brown tonight - dark and difficult to read.
"You and Pan had things pretty well under control. And the other guy. Jim. He's the one you should be thanking."
But that probably wasn't what she meant. Maybe he knew that and just didn't know how to acknowledge it. Maybe it felt wrong to have someone thank him for getting lucky and saving his own life.
That night, over a week ago now, when they'd gotten back to the cabin and found everyone alive and whole - found a girl who'd been reborn - Justin had hugged Sid. Really hugged her, and pressed his face into her hair like he might float away without her there to tether him. And there'd been something in him then that had felt pure and vital and overflowing with life. Something like the person he might have been if his life had been different. Or perhaps the person he still was at heart, beneath the layers of self-preservation.
That was the person that Serafine felt whenever she was near him. Someone who was achingly alive. But the way he felt and the way he acted didn't not always sync.
His eyes left hers while he took a long drought of his second beer - the one she'd bought him. It was an IPA tonight - better for the heat than the stout he'd been drinking last time.
Justin[Edit: "didn't always sync."]
SerafíneHer eyes drop from his own to his torso as he coils away from her; and she draws in this breath, not-precisely-sharp but living and aware of that snapping reaction. The forward movement of her shoulders, the overlay of surface tension and deeper currents evident beneath.
"Already thanked them," she returns, voice all quiet, cutting her dark eyes in a precise sweep away from him. Toward their reflections in the picture window. " - now I'm thank you. Night before you called, the Padre was all ready to go off by himself to confront them. Because he thought there wasn't anyone else who could or would go.
"Only reason he didn't," her voice is low and rich, there's a fondness threaded through the words that speaks to the relationships she has developed with the two Disciples. And this twinned helix of residual anger and fear, all these days later, that thickens her voice. " - is I figured out what was going on and fucking attacked him and there he was, telling me Tranquila, tranquila, Serafíne. You don't got no shoes on.
"So, maybe if you hadn't called, he would've done it anyway. The next day or the one after that.
"You could've walked away." Her breathing is slow and controlled and now her pulse is slowing, too. Her eyes are steady and dark and immediate. Midway through, she reaches back to pick up her own drink. Takes a log draught of it, all sweet and spice, then turns her head aslant and returns the glass to the bar. "So let me say, thank you.
"And you can say, you're welcome, Serafíne."
Finds his bottle of beer, glances at his hand around the glass, the dirt beneath his fingernails. The deepening of his tan. She is in profile to him, the stark cut of the tendons in her neck taut beneath her skin. The buzzed line of her hair, dark against the hard part where the blond begins.
"You look like you need more than a drink, or ten, Justin.
"I don't know you from fucking Adam, and I know that much."
JustinAs time passed, the tension in his back began to uncoil. Not entirely, but enough. Enough that he didn't look like he might either bolt or draw a knife at the next sudden movement. This response, it was an animal thing. Instinct. But instinct could be calmed. The Verbena closed his eyes and breathed in, taking in the wash of scents lingering around him. The sharp sweetness of Serafine's drink; the hoppy aroma of his own; the old wooden bar; whatever products the Cultist used in her hair or on her skin. All of the details that marked her unique living pattern.
He exhaled.
"I just did what I had to do. What anyone would have done. We all did. And we got really fucking lucky." He looked at her and offered a hesitant smile. "But you're welcome. And... thank you. For being there. For keeping the priest from killing himself."
You look like you need more than a drink.
He huffed a soft breath of delicate, bemused laughter. "Yeah, well, it'll have to do for now."
kai[:D]
kai[I'M SPYING]
kai[WHICH I WOULDN'T HAVE TO DO IF SOME PEOPLE UPDATED THEIR SCENE LOGS MORE REGULARLY THAT'S ALL I'M SAYING]
SerafíneIf she disagrees with him - that he did what anyone would do - Serafíne gives no voice to it. Just watches him as he calms himself, her gaze shunted just aslant from his own as if she meant to give him some modicum of privacy, and absorbs his thanks with a twist of her own mouth. Wry, nearly. This tip of her blond head by way of acknowledgment, no more.
Oh, there's product on her head and her skin. Sandalwood oil and clove cigarettes, something more complex behind or beneath it all. The drinks she had earlier; the hint of her sweat, not because it is cold in here but because whereever she was before she was moving with something like abandon.
Her gaze flicks back to his, then. Drawn back by the huff of his bemused laughter, which brings a different sort of curve to her mouth. Sweeter, somehow, delicate in its complexity.
"You're wrong, you know."
Careful, the movement of her right hand toward his left then. If he tenses or pulls away, she is not insistent. But if he allows her, she cups her palm over the back of his hand and pulls it away from the bar, away from his beer if he's holding the bottle with the left, and settles his palm quiet neatly and precisely over the bare skin of her torso, so that his fingers are wrapped just above the narrowest point of her waist and the edge of his thumb follows the lifting curve of her rib cage and he can feel every breath she takes.
"It doesn't have to do."
This little half-smile at the edge of her mouth; a tension framed into her lean body - not that same animal instinct that lives inside him, but still: a wariness, an alertness, some acknowledgment of the potential for violence in his reaction to her closeness, as much as his deliberate choice to belay the instinct.
"We can talk if you wanna talk. We can go on a goddamned bender, get drunk off our asses, until the whole world dissolves into itself." She bites her lower lip, here. "I can sit here and shut the fuck up, or walk out the door if you don't want me around. We can spar, if you need to get it out. Wooden blades or I've got a full kit back at the house. .
"I told you before, Justin. I like the way you feel."
Justin[Life scan - because clearly he's losing the WP battle tonight]
Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (10, 10) ( success x 2 )
JustinTo say that Justin's response was ambivalent would have been an understatement. And truthfully, if she'd caught him on nearly any other night, his response would probably have been different. But just this once, he let her take his hand, and even though he knew what she was about to do, he didn't stop her. There was a hesitance to the motion of his arm - not a hindering of her effort but certainly nothing like assistance. And then his fingers touched the skin above her hip, and it was warm and soft and alive and more than a little inviting.
He intended to say no. To smile and beg her forgiveness and extricate himself from the situation as he usually did. But instead he looked at her, then glanced away and closed his eyes. He could feel her pulse beneath the pads of his fingers, and for a moment he allowed himself to focus on it - to feel the heady beat of her pattern until it sprung into sharp and detailed focus. The expansion and contraction of her lungs. The flow of blood through her veins and into capillaries that flushed the surface of her skin. When his opened his eyes, he let out a long breath.
His hand was still on her waist. He let his fingers grip just a little more tightly and brushed his thumb in a slow arc over her stomach. Clearly not the immediate dismissal she'd been expecting. But he wasn't a priest or a member of the Chorus. This sort of contact was natural to him - even venerated. If he avoided it, it wasn't because he thought that it was a sin or because he felt shame in the act. It wasn't even because he didn't enjoy it. His reservations were of a more personal and complicated sort.
"I don't want to talk," he said finally. "But I don't know if I can be... what you want."
SerafínePerception + Awareness-as-empathy.
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 3, 5, 5, 7, 7) ( success x 4 )
Serafíne
The bartender is now assiduously looking away from the two of them; or trying to look away. The few other patrons are wrapped up in their conversations and have yet to take notice. Or: if they take notice it is like so - furtive looks and archly exchanged glances, followed by more furtive, stolen looks.
Of course, that is how strangers often look at her in places like this, when she wanders in alone dressed like that. Feeling like that, taking up more space than a girl like that should ever take up, walking in heels not like a half-hobbled, drunken sorority sister but like a fucking brawler, an energy that reads masculine to strangers because they don't fucking know that she doesn't fucking care about their fucking definitions of gendered behavior.
There's that moment where he turns away and closes his eyes, and then she turns her head aslant too. Gives him her profile and the delicate edge of her jaw sharp above the long, vulnerable sweep of her neck, her nose prominent here, and her dark brows sharp over her deepset eyes. There's a delicate curl to her ear, fringed by no more than an eighth of an inch of dyed-black hair that she keeps buzzed off, a half-dozen or more earrings pierced through the lobe and cartilage. The impression of ink at her hairline, just behind the soft hollow beneath her jaw, burned into her skin against the hard prominence of her skull - a small black triangle.
She's still, just breathing, her pattern flushed and warm. Her skin flushed and warm and once she settles his hand on her skin, she leaves him to hold it there, tighten his grip, or draw away all on his own. There's a starker twist to her torso, the sheering curve of muscle beneath her skin where she's turned toward him, the vulnerable sweep of abdomen where her false ribs end beneath his thumb. He can feel every breath she takes before she takes it. The tension of it, wrapped into her flanks and the muscles framing her spine. Holding her upright.
Quiet while he struggles with his ambivalence and just - giving him space for the struggle. She does not touch him again until he makes that decision, his grip tightening minutely on her back, the slow sweep of his rough thumb over the taut plane of her upper abdomen. Then, she looks back at him, just the dark cut of her sweeping gaze to his features, a three-quarter profile now, her eyes shining with hoarded and refracted light.
Something just - open about them, and just aching for him, though that ache is dampened, is veiled, and never devolves into either piety or pity.
He does not want to talk.
She laughs, this sharp spike of her gaze drops to his mouth.
But he doesn't know if he can be... what she wants.
The edge of her laughter softens, is reeled back into her body and her dark eyes linger on him; not his eyes precisely, which are dark and framed by lashes thickened by sweat from the long day's work, not his mouth but the edge of his jaw, the framing tension in his neck and shoulders, the evident struggle he holds entirely inside.
And now, now she reaches for him. Finds his left thigh with her right hand, intent on swinging him closer to her, so that his frame is cheated towards her rather than the fucking bar. Her fingers spread out over the widest point of his quadriceps muscles, mid-thigh in a deliberatively gentle grip.
And if he turns, if he allows himself to be pulled in her direction:
Then she steps deliberately closer, between his knees, rising to her tip-toes and leaning forward to kiss him, three chaste and delicate kisses: the first on the left corner of his mouth.
The second in the precise, ruinous middle.
The third at the rightmost edge.
"This isn't really about me, you know. And you don't have to be anything but you."
The words between each kiss are murmured back to him with remarkable gentleness, with a hungry sort of restraint.
For all that, she does not pursue the promise of her mouth on his, not even if his opens beneath hers, mid-kiss. Even then, she just breathes in his breath, the humid, beery yeast of it. The fucking vinegar of the pickles, the remnants of his meal. Her own breath is sweet and spice, ginger and whiskey and lime from her drink; cloved from her cigarettes, just a hint of ash beneath. And warm against his cheek and jaw as she leans closer, sliding her cheek along his, her mouth finding his ear.
"But you're also wrong." The briefest smile, sensed rather than felt. The curve of her cheek against the cut of his. "Because right now, right at this fucking second, you are what I want." The reverence in her voice is warm and fine and enduring. "Whatever that is. Whatever that means. Wherever that takes us tonight, even if it's no more than this, right here and right now."
Justin
The bartender looked away, conscious of the intimacy of their exchange - perhaps a little uncomfortable, though surely he'd seen such things before. Others either pretended not to notice or watched them covertly. Justin wasn't unaware of this fact, but if he cared he didn't show it. Serafine looked at him with eyes that were open and aching and entirely unabashed, and Justin didn't turn away from it. Instead he drank it in like it was a kind of sustenance - as though he could pull some of her fearless honesty into himself.
He didn't resist when she turned him to face her. Her hand on his thigh was warm and somehow heavier than it ought to have been for such a light touch. His awareness of it was keen and immediate in ways that were both good and bad; that made his heart thump heavily against his ribcage, but also set his posture rigid and still like a rabbit in the sight of a predator. (And here, only moments ago she'd been frightened of him.) Maybe that gave her a moment's pause before she slid between his knees, but some of his tension seemed to relax when she drew closer. He didn't lean in when she pressed her mouth to his, nor did he try to claim her lips for something less chaste and fleeting. What he did was slide his hand to the small of her back and pull her fractionally closer, and when her mouth left his he wet his lips as though he could taste something of her that she'd left behind.
When her breath touched his ear, he closed his eyes and bit down lightly on a tentative smile that pulled at one side of his mouth. "I think it should take us back to your place before the bartender throws us out." He gave a roll of his head and brushed his nose beneath the hinge of her jaw, breathing her in. "And this isn't just about me. At least, I hope not." Before he pulled away, he pressed his lips to the throb of her pulse at the side of her throat.
"But thank you." This last whispered so softly she'd barely hear it. And then he was pulling away from their tangled embrace, letting his hand slide from her back as he pushed her gently from between his knees and stepped down from the bar stool. He gave a gesture to the bartender to indicate that he was ready to pay his bill, and when the receipt came he signed it and pocketed his card.
Serafine
That moment when his spine stiffens and his posture sharpens and his whole frame goes still-as-prey: oh, that moment does give her pause. Serafíne, too, stills, though her stillness is more responsive, more finely calibrated than his. Just this sense of taut restraint in her obliques and diaphragm, holding herself fixed in place long enough that he can make the choice to push her away if that is his choice. But he doesn't; and so she leans directly in to the fixed point of his fear, sliding between his knees and the moment shifts and some - some - of that live-wire tension in his torso dissipates.
--
She does not answer him, Sera. Not verbally. But fuck, there is the razor-edged curl of her own responsive half-smile in his periphery as he brushes his nose beneath her jaw and breathes her in, and more than that - this exquisitely contained shiver mostly constrained by the set of her shoulders as his mouth finds her pulse. He does not even require these signs. He can feel the beat of her Pattern, the surge in her heartbeat, the catch in her breath, the dull warmth as more blood is flushed to the surface of her skin, all these automatic, autonomic signs of her arousal, her fucking want sharp and rich as copper against his senses.
And then there's her laughter, husked and bright, like old silver, as he pushes her away so he can stand from the barstool and pay his fucking bill. She's turning around, back to the bar, reaching for her drink and the curve of her smile is visible as a particular cut of her cheek, a certain sweet and defining tension in the small of her back as she braces her elbows on the bar and works assiduously at finishing as much as she can of her augmented Mamie Taylor #1 while he goes through the ritual of paying his bill and pocketing his card. Neither touching him nor looking at him directly - just these playful (though never quite arch) sideglances, her brows lifted in neat little array above her dark, darkly lined, darkly lashed eyes.
As if in further proof of her appetites, look at the drink. Drained down to ice cubes, no more, while he calculates his tip and signs the receipt and when he is ready to go she turns in a sweep and gives him this speculative, appreciative glance, which lives somewhere at the intersection of wry and raw, then leads him out the door.
(And after the door closes: the bartender to the guy at the end of the bar, wry, "That was fast.")
The sun has not yet set. He was finishing an evening meal, she was just starting on her fucking evening of drinking and whatever else it is girls like her spend their time doing, and outside there is twilight lightening the sky and traffic on the street. The flush of headlights against storefronts and the quiet of a Tuesday evening crowd. Those two extra shots (the drink + one) are starting to hit her now and she spins back to him outside with this grin. Doesn't kiss him again now because she's saving that for Later and there are logistics to be arranged.
Did he drive?Is he okay to drive?How many drinks did he have.
Oh, she's persistent on this point. Will allow him behind the wheel only on strength of two-or-less, the sum of which must include the half-an-extra beer she purchased for him. Her place isn't far. It's a long walk but walkable, or they can catch a cab. Or hey, there's a bus coming that they can catch, which will make it more walkable. She is suddenly enamored of the idea of the bus, of running to fucking catch something even in her insane shoes, because she loves to feel her body move. And probably wants to see his in motion, as well.
[repost!]
JustinBefore they left the bar, Justin picked up his as-yet-unfinished second beer (the one that Serafine had purchased for him) and tipped it back like a college kid on rush night, just as she'd done with her own drink. A drop of it escaped the corner of his mouth and slipped down to his chin, only to be wiped away a moment later with the back of his hand as the two of them spilled out the door onto the sidewalk.
She wanted to know if he'd driven. How many drinks he'd had. The answers to these were: yes, two, and I'll drive. (Not quite ready to surrender himself to her whims just yet.) He didn't seem drunk, or even tipsy, despite how quickly he'd consumed the last of his beer moments before. Though there was a faint flush to his skin and his lips, and he relaxed enough to smile - really smile - at her suggestion of running to catch a bus.
Perhaps another night she would see him run. But not tonight. Tonight there was too much edge and tension and uncertainty, and she would have to work to pull him out of his head if she wished for him to join her in this wild, enraptured plane of existence. He led the way to his car (a new-ish black Subaru Outback that looked like it was about due for a wash) and unlocked the doors. Once they were inside, he started the engine and asked, "where to?"
SerafineSerafíne makes some back of the throat noise as Justin answers her questions and declines to run to catch the bus, gives him another once over, this one sidelong, the sweep of her gaze and a wry, gauging twist to her mouth before she accedes to his I'll drive. She walks close then, matching his speed if not his stride, her chin high, her attention sharp on the smokey horizon, glimpsed between the buildings, the streetscape no more than a smear of lights until they get to his car.
Folds herself into the passenger's seat, her little bag slung across her body, the chain bisecting her torso, her leather jacket tucked neatly in front of her, legs tucked beneath her until she realizes again how uncomfortable the heels are beneath her ass: necessitating re-arrangement. Does not think about the seatbelt until he pulls his across and then she pulls hers and she's looking around the car, not opening things just taking it in. Whatever detritus his day leaves behind in here. Whatever he carries out in the open, whatever he leaves behind before her eyes find his profile again. That edge and tension and uncertainty stark in his neck, in the line of his jaw, in his shoulders.
Where to?
- she gives him an address. Then starts with directions but her directions area not particularly fine ones. She knows the city through the windows of cabs and buses and the way it moves beneath her feet; how it feels to pile into the front bench seat of an old van four-at-once and watch it move while she's stoned and someone else is driving.
The landmarks she offers are bars and restaurants and galleries and that place with the installation piece but: it may be a neighborhood he knows already. Close in to downtown, historic without being Historic. Treelined, green, single family homes, duplexes, a few condos, with small city lots big enough for well-manicured gardens and stone walls and front porches and back patios and tire swings. House built in the 1910s and 20s and 40s, arts and crafts and prairie style, the odd neotudor or neovictorian, brick and solid and stone.
Sera offers commentary on the places they pass - just makes quiet conversation. Lauds the sauerkraut balls at the brewpub, asks him if he's been to that bistro on seventh. Sees people she knows in passing, the sight of one of whom reminds her of something else. And so on. It's not a long drive. There aren't many stories tonight, but they are offered up in lieu of tense and awkward silence.
The middle of a quiet street. - Park here.
She climbs out of the passenger's side onto the sidewalk and leads him up the walk to a two-story house, middle to upper middle class, not as old as the gorgeous prairie school place on the corner but attractive and lived in and moderately well kept.
The garden's getting overgrown now, but Justin can see the care someone put into it once. Sera's waiting for him on the sidewalk, has shrugged on her leather coat now, and is pulling her phone from one of its inner pockets. Scrolling through messages in an attempt to gauge where her roommates are.
"Some of my housemates might be home. I think they're all out, but - ." She's turning into him as soon as he gains the sidewalk, opening up her body language to him and inviting him close. Close enough that she can kiss him, not on the mouth but on the edge of his jaw, then beneath his ear.
" - if they're here, do you wanna brave the gauntlet or skip the grand tour and introductions?"
JustinSerafine was better at this than he was. Practiced and easy like she did this sort of thing all the time (and maybe she did.) Justin was more familiar with these parts of the city than he was with some of the others - he'd had a job a few streets down from here about a month ago - and was able to follow Sera's directions without much issue. She did most of the talking, with him offering an occasional comment and answering any questions she tossed his way (no, he had not been to the bistro on seventh.)
The interior of Justin's car was lived-in but not especially telling. He'd tracked dirt and sand onto the back seat, and a couple of empty glass bottles clinked together on the floor when the car turned a corner. The passenger seat was clean though, as was the dash. If at any point she'd bothered to peer into the trunk from the outside, she'd have found it full of boxes and tools and a large backpack, but he seemed to prefer to keep most of the mess relegated to the back.
When they exited the car, Justin took a moment to regard the state of the garden, eyeing it with a curious and analytic gaze that suggested he might be identifying its contents in his head. Possibly with scientific names. He gave her a moment to check her phone, but when she eased herself into his space his full attention returned. He was still while she kissed him - not as tense as before, but still contained. Still, perhaps, a little unused to the contact. He wet his lips softly and slid his hands beneath her jacket, finding the exposed skin at her waist. His touch felt warm (unusually so, actually - like the way it felt to bask in the sun's radiant heat) and work-roughened.
"What do you think?" he asked, leaving one hand at her side while the other traced its way to her stomach, then down - slowly - until his fingers caught the clasp as the front of her belt.
Justin[Edit: caught the clasp at the front of her belt.]
SerafineThere's this thing she does when his fingers catch the clasp at the front of her belt. Serafíne doesn't lean into, all hungry, no. Instead, she gives him this edgy little grin and just sort of sags back. One step, then two, all deliberate and slow, her eyes fixed on him, that nervy little half-smile still lingering at the edges of her mouth as she pulls away. Drawing him after her if he wants to keep that contact between them.
"I think," she stops abruptly with the third backstep, nearly snapping to attention and momentum to carry him fractionally closer. "That was really fucking clear. I'm a terrible tour guide, anyway. I'm much better at this."
Close enough that she can reach for him, slide her hands behind his neck, into his hair and pull his mouth down onto hers for a series of short, hungry kisses, each one half-a-bite, bruised and bruising.
"For some reason I'm starting to suspect that so are you."
Her phone has been deposited into one of the capacious pockets of her leather jacket just as it buzzes to announce another text message that she ignores, entirely.
Then and only then does she turn to lead him up the walk and into the house. The lights are off and the garden is dark and the porchlight is not on. There is still light in the sky and the air is humming with evening insects. They jog up two or three steps to the stoop and she reaches to twist her little clutch around her body and search out the key. Which soon enough spills them into the front foyer.
Inside, the house is dark; the shadows are deeper and only the windows are bright. Light cuts into the house is oblong patches. An impression from just inside: the long hallway opens into a capacious kitchen at the end, with a series of windows shunting out onto a dark back patio.
Sera's turning around as the Justin pulls the front door shut behind him, taking off her leather jacket to half-hang on the coat tree by the front door. Then she pulls the chain from which her little bag hangs up and over her shoulders, shedding that, too, as she steps back into his space and reaches for his hips, gathering up the hem of his t-shirt as she starts to push it up his torso.
"If you wanted, we could go out back and smoke a bowl. But somehow I think you're going to turn that down, too."
Justin
Sera pulled back against his hold on her belt and Justin pushed forward as though they were linked by a more permanent and invisible tether. Like it wouldn't matter if he let go - he'd still feel the inexorable pull of her energy. When she snapped to a halt, his body was close enough that parts of them bumped and brushed together and his hand became a warm pressure between them where it continued to hang twined around her belt buckle. The back of his neck was still warm from the sun when she touched it.
Here's a thing she'd discover: Justin's hair lent itself very well to being grabbed - thick and soft and strong enough to hold up to aggressive pulling. Whether or not he actually enjoyed that sort of thing was another discovery entirely, but at least for the moment he didn't seem to mind.
He caught her lower lip on that last kiss and sucked a bit of redness into it before she pulled away, eying her mouth with a gaze that was quickly bordering on hungry.
For some reason I'm starting to suspect that so are you.
Justin's eyes flicked over her shoulder at the house and he dropped his hand from her waist, giving a quiet laugh. As though she'd just embarrassed him. But he didn't go so far as to disagree or make a play for modesty.
Sera ignored her text and led them inside. The house was dark and still and it didn't seem like anyone was home. Justin didn't have a jacket or other belongings, so he took a moment to let his eyes roam over the interior architecture while Sera shed her own. The sweep of his gaze returned to the Cultist when she stepped closer, taking in the play of light and shadow on the bared curve of her shoulder. He stood still while she lifted the hem of his shirt. Beneath it his skin was a little paler than it was on his arms and neck, with a light outline of abdominal muscles and a thin trail of hair that descended from his navel and disappeared beneath the waist of his jeans.
He didn't even bother to answer her this time. Instead he grabbed his shirt and pulled it over his head, tossing it on one of the coat hooks. Then he cupped her face with his hands and kissed her, drinking in the taste and feel of her lips and the closeness of her breath and pulse. The press of his hands was rough on her jaw but his mouth was more controlled - a deep, reverently sensual act. Maybe it was enough to distract from the way he pressed her toward the wall, or maybe she'd notice and give him one of those edgy smiles.
Either way, when they got there he lifted her like she weighed nothing and hooked her legs around his waist, using the wall and the press of his hips to prop her up. He probably should have taken the moment to talk to her - to tell her that he hadn't slept with a girl since high school, that he wasn't sure he actually knew what he was doing - but he didn't. Because somewhere between those bruising kisses outside and watching Serafine take off her jacket something had sparked in Justin that was stronger and more insistent than his nerves or his anxiety.
Because yes, he knew this. Maybe he didn't know her, but he knew this. And he wanted it. So he made a low, insistent sound and bent his head to kiss the place where her neck met her shoulder, scraping her skin with his teeth.
SerafineLife scan, cos she can't help it. -1 dif for focus.
Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (4, 7) ( success x 2 )
SerafineSee, she thinks this is going to go a certain way. Thinks she's going to be his guardian angel, right. Beatrice to his Virgil as he emerges from one of the seven hells of "I haven't done this in a long time for reasons we're not going to talk about except: I'm ready to give it a go again." Thinks she's going to pull up his t-shirt slowly and reveal him slowly and revel in him slowly and be soothing and tender and instructive and encouraging and sweet and slow. Thinks that there's no way whatever's in him is going to push past those bars and shutters and padlocks he keeps so firmly in place, that tension that ratchets up his spine when she gets too close except if she goes slow. Pulls him out, pulls him through. Thinks they have time to stop in the kitchen maybe for provisions: nalgene bottles of filtered water and a fifth of whiskey because what the hell.
He needs to let loose, doesn't he.
These are the things Serafíne thinks she knows.See how it really goes.
--
She actually fucking claps her hands when he strips off his shirt. Claps her hands and reaches up, loose with delight, like she's gonna help fling it wherever it'll go but instead, she's got her hands on his frame already, palms on his obliques, calloused fingers on his back (she doesn't work for a living like he does, but sometimes, some nights, some long, long nights, she has been known to play her guitar until her fingers bleed), thumbs pulling her hands upward rather than down, all exploring inchworm.
And it's strange because he's a hot guy, well-built, and she's looking at him all hungry, but it's not like she's objectifying him, not like she'd get some shadowy shiver of the same pleasure from seeing him jogging shirtless in the sun, no. It's: this is skin beneath my skin, new and different, strange and known, and I fucking love it.
Before his mouth finds hers, she bends forward to kiss him tenderly, reverently, in the center of his sternum. Right over his goddamned heart.
And God, Goddess, Lakashim, what the fuck ever, she was made for this.
Then he's kissing her, so thoroughly, so sensually. Walking her backwards, toward the wall like maybe she won't notice.
Oh, she notices. How the fuck could she not notice the way he's steering her toward the wall, even with his mouth on hers and his hands rough on her jaw. She notices because she's the one walking backward in heels and she knows what comes next and so half-way across the foyer she's kicking off those heels so she doesn't stab him in the hamstrings or herself in the calf when they get there and he presses her back and he picks her up and wraps her thighs around him.
So midwalk, she's four inches shorter than she was and god knows where the heels go careening and god knows what her housemates have to put up with, the scraps of clothing they find littered around their house when she brings someone new home. (Though: to be fair, usually she makes it to the bedroom before this point. Usually.) He's now more than half-a-foot taller than she is, and has to actively bend over to keep his mouth on hers.
Don't worry, she helps: her own arms threaded under his so that she can rest her forearms on his shoulders, fingers laced behind his neck, pulling his mouth down onto her own. Which is fine with her, and yes he can taste the grin on her lips beneath his fucking mouth.
The noise she makes when her spine hits the wall and he picks her up and wraps her legs around his waist is one of uninhibited delight. And she does weigh almost nothing, compared to him - the twist of her nearly-bare torso whip-lean and hungry against his solid frame. She leans into his hips, leans into his embrace, wraps her arms more firmly around his neck, elbows digging in to his shoulders as a sort of counterweight. Balance shifting forward implicitly as he pins her in place.
His teeth find the jointure of her neck and shoulder and her mouth finds his temple and her kisses, they go like this: first the warm, soft heat of her mouth; then the assertion of her teeth; then the soothing sweep of her tongue. Then her breath, warm and deliberate to evaporate the moisture left behind. This long line of them, mouth-teeth-tongue-breath, each like a little prayer to the dogs or whoever. Whatever's out there. They begin over his temple, over his pulse and following the shadow of his skull beneath his skin, the curve of his cheekbone, the line of his jaw, the shell of his ear. That's where they end, her nose in his hair, her mouth open over his ear.
"Your hands are so fucking warm." Wonder in that. Pleasure in it. Reverence in it too. Profane and inappropriate and uninhibited as she is, she doesn't murmur all filthy and encouraging in his ear, telling him what she wants him to do, and how, and why. She's gasping and squirming against him when his teeth scape her neck. Smiling against his ear. Grinning really, flushed with want and and breathless delighted by it all. Murmurs,
"Upstairs. Second door on the left."- like she expects him to carry her all the way to the fucking bedroom.
JustinHis heart - oh... his heart was beating like a fucking drum. She'd feel it when she kissed him. Even be able to see the way his blood pulsed beneath his skin at the hollow of his throat as the flesh there jumped visibly. That he was alive with adrenaline right now, there was no question. And perhaps it was this as much as his want that propelled him forward. She wasn't all wrong, you see. Justin was scared. And in a certain way, inexperienced. And yes, sometimes when he was scared he walled himself away.
And sometimes he just kicked the fucking door down and broke out into the sunlight. All depended on what he needed to do to survive.
In truth he hadn't known he'd be able to do it until it'd happened. That was why he'd warned her. Why he'd seemed so skittish back at the bar. He didn't know. And there she was, nothing at all like any of the people he'd been with before, but inviting and electric in a way that was impossible not to respond to. (As she'd said to him twice now: I like the way you feel.)
And they really didn't know each other. There hadn't been time for that. So Sera didn't know that this sort of thing wasn't necessarily out of character for him. She didn't know that he'd made a habit of pinning his last boyfriend to walls and desks and spilling onto couches with wild laughter and willful abandon. That he was, in fact, extraordinarily bad at remembering details like how to get to the bedroom when all he wanted to do was kiss and touch and fuck his way into the warm and vital life of another person. (Not even the Cultists could claim a monopoly on that.)
Your hands are so fucking warm, she said, in that awed and blissful tone, and he responded splaying one out along her thigh and pushing his fingers beneath the hem of her shorts. His other had been all over her torso, memorizing the details of her exposed skin - the knobs of her spine, the jut of her hips, the soft indentation of her stomach. Her breath on his ear caused a delicate quake to slide down his spine, and he caught her jaw with a gentle bite of his teeth.
When she gave directions to her room, he didn't immediately respond. Instead he caught her mouth in another kiss and shoved her upwards on the wall until her chest was near eye level. He gave a fractional pause, then, as his eyes flicked to the shape of her small breasts beneath the lace top she wore. And maybe this would be read as hesitation, but in actuality it was something closer to curiosity. So he kissed the outline of her nipple beneath the fabric and bit down on it gently, giving a rough exhale through his nose that gusted her with warmth.
When he pulled away he said, "I like this better than I did when I was fifteen." A touch of something both raw and wry showed on his face and in the twitch of his lips, and just before he let her go, he rolled his hips up into her in a way that suggested he really would have been just as happy to fuck her right there against the wall.
Except that it probably wasn't the greatest idea, considering she had roommates. So he lowered her back to the floor and stepped away, heading toward the stairs.
(He wasn't going to carry her.)
SerafineWhen he lifts her up high and higher she narrows her elbows around his head, the points just where his trapezius muscles curve up to make their attachment to his spine, all digging in, her forearms curved up the back of his skull, her hands buried in his hair, looking down at him, watching him as he finds her breasts at eye level. Watching him as he hesitates. Her breath comes in short sharp bursts and there's nothing about her, nothing about her that says that she's judging him in right that moment, that she's reading that as hesitation or anything else: just watching him with interest and compassion and hunger all sluiced together liquid and dark in her eyes in the shadows of the silent, settling house.
Then his mouth is on her breast through the fabric and she tucks her head forward until her forehead rests against the crown of his skull and her blond curls and spilling down around them both. Kisses him there too, and this is tender, this is affection and makes this noise as his teeth close and her nipple hardens further beneath the stimulation.
She doesn't say anything back to him when he pulls away, just lifts her own head and stays like that, braced close, laughter turning into another sort of noise altogether when he rolls his hips against her own.
Except it wasn't the greatest idea, since she had roommates and also: condom, she would've reminded him, her mouth in his ear if he'd gotten closer to actually fucking her there in the foyer. We need a fucking condom.
Then he's lowering her to the floor and she finds her feet all reluctant but smiling and when he turns away she grabs him by the hips and drags him back back to her, spreading her hands across his stomach and spine, grinning up at him,
"Everything's better now than it was when I was fifteen."
"Every fucking thing."
That raw honesty shining in her eyes as her expression softens. And he knows that she knows exactly what he's said to her, then and there. "But I'm glad."
disheveled, her bruised mouth spreading in a wide delighted smile as she takes another moment to fucking savor him, just the heat of his body and the beat of his heart before she pushes him off to find the stairs.
She doesn't follow immediately. Pads barefoot to the kitchen for those provisions she was going to procure before he waylaid her in the entryway and jogs once she's past the foot of the stairs. The house is so quiet he can hear the seal on the fridge opening and closing, the clink of a bottle against tile or stone and then her footsteps on the stairs behind him as she does runs up them in his wake. Catches him in the upstairs hallway, a big central hall that runs the length of the house with a handful of doors that open off it in either direction. One or two of the rooms have partly opens doors and there's a nightlight plugged into an outlet so the hall is not entirely dark, and then the Nalgene bottle against the small of his back, bright and cold.
Sera rolls it around his torso just above his belt line, the condensation leaving behind a trail of moisture as as she circles in front of him. Pushes one of the bottles into his hand (he has the impression of the second and the neck of the fucking whiskey bottle in her other hand, just in case because god knows why, it's not like he fucking needs it). Reaches behind her to turn the doorknob and open the door just far enough to reach inside and drop her own water bottle and the fifth of whiskey on a convenient pile of clothes just inside the door.
Holding his eyes, all steady here, stepping back just enough to nudge the door open fractionally wider as she reaches up behind her back to undo the hooks on that lace bustier. Not the way she might strip for a straight guy, no. It's more like a confession or a belated answer to his curious survey earlier or - well - no less an invitation, but all the more fraught.
Justin
They were each so aware of each other in these moments - senses open and patterns intertwined. When Justin held Sera against the wall, her heartbeat played a rhythmic score that drummed beneath the sound of their breathing and the brush of skin on skin. The cascade of her hair fell like silk against his shoulder as her elbows pressed into his muscle, and it was easy, for a few seconds, to forget that anything else in the world existed outside of this cocoon of physical intimacy. The spell broke when they pulled apart, but only for a moment. Long enough for her to pull him back by the hips and run her hands along his skin and say Everything's better now than it was when I was fifteen.
Justin didn't know if he could say the same. He wasn't the same person he'd been at fifteen. None of them were.
Sera left his side to procure something from the kitchen. Justin let his gaze linger on her back before he turned to climb the stairs. The steps creaked beneath the weight of his work boots, an echo of his presence in the otherwise seemingly empty house. By the time Sera caught up to him, he was glancing at the doors that lined the upstairs hallway and was about to ask again which one was hers (because he hadn't really processed it before) when a sudden assault of cold touched his lower back. Justin gave a little jump and sucked in a breath, and with her focus on his pattern Sera would be able to sense the quick jolt of adrenaline that pumped into his bloodstream.
"Shit Sera, warn me first."
But despite this admonishment, his eyelids fluttered a little when she rolled the bottle across his stomach, and she'd get the impression that it was less the sensation and more the surprise of it that had bothered him. He wasn't upset though, and whether or not the moment was acknowledged he took the bottle she offered him, opened it, and drank some of its contents. An errant trickle of water fell down his chin, and he wiped it away with the back of his hand while he watched her remove her top. When he recapped the bottle, he stepped forward and reached past her to push the bedroom door all the way open. Their torsos almost, but did not quite, touch... hovering about an inch away. He glanced down to take her in - not with the kind of impatient hunger she might be used to, but with the same quietly appreciative interest he'd regarded her with earlier.
Then he stepped past her into the room. His eyes found the bed almost immediately and he moved to sit down on the edge of it, setting the water bottle on the floor. His hands went to work unlacing his boots (unfortunately less easy to rid himself of than her own shoes had been,) and pulled them and his socks one by one from his feet. Then he leaned back on his elbows and looked at her as though waiting to see what she would do.
Serafíne
Shit Sera, warn me first.
It's not the admonishment that has her stilling in the interstitial space beside his frame so much as her awareness of the spike of adrenaline in his blood. That brief shock of fight-or-flight that eases a moment later. Not precisely tension in her, so much as a reactionary awareness all liminal about her. Somehow the way she rolls the cold bottle around his waist is all the more tender for it.
"Hey, sorry - " is what he gets back from her, her voice low, modulated, quiet, accompanied by a gentle kiss in the center of his shoulder blade before she circles him and surrenders the bottle to him. Looking up at him, brows angled sharply as she studies him watches him feels him, gauging whether this is another one of those moments that bleeds into something sharper and darker or just passes, a reflex, an autonomic echo he absorbs back beneath his skin. " - no more surprises."
When he pushes open the door behind her, she's still, looking up at him. Stays in place while he brushes past her so close, just breathing in his scent. Her own eyes are dark in his shadow there's this prickling awareness about her, of his eyes on her body, and the closeness of his frame, that crawls all over and through her in that precise moment. Enough that when he pushes past she reaches out to trail in fingers in the moisture left behind by the condensation on the waterbottle. The callouses on her fingers catch a bit in the thin line of hair trailing down from his navel. It makes her grin and lean forward to catch him with a bite on the back of his shoulder before he is out of reach. The scrape of her teeth against his skin, and the warm promise of her mouth.
Then he's past her and headed for the bed, and she's turning on her heel to shut the bedroom door behind him.
The room, Christ.
Is not exactly the boudoir of a seductress, right. It's big. Big windows overlooking the dark back garden, curtains half-open, shades half-pulled. Their reflections in the old glass are pale, wavery smears superimposed on a watercolor of the garden below and city beyond. A herd of mismatched shoes are piled close to the half-open doors of an evidently overstuffed closet, while another closed door leads to either another closet or - given the towel left pooled on the floor close by - probably a bathroom.
The bed is king-sized and unmade, soft white cotton sheets and a soft, lightweight duvet piled into a voluminous nest on the left side, nearest the windows rather than the door. It smells so warmly of her that she must have left its cocoon no more than five or six hours ago.
He has a brief impression of the rest of the furniture in the room: the colorful bedside tables, a bookshelf against a far wall. The mismatched vanity with its big three-way mirror littered with cosmetics, jewelry, scarves, programs, fliers, receipts, drug paraphernalia (pipes, mostly, but lighters too). A big hookah on the floor beside the vanity. An armchair near the windows, oversized in patterned brocade, the sort of thing you can sink into for hours. The avalanche of clothes in which it had been buried was displaced over one the arms earlier that afternoon and is piled like an avalanche but smells like fresh clean laundry she's not been bothered to put away. One of her acoustic guitars is on the floor somewhere, and there's an electric guitar mounted on the wall like a piece of art. She has original artwork of all sorts, everywhere. Some hung up, other pieces stacked in the shadows. Nothing expensive, but all original, made by someone's own fucking two hands. Weavings and tapestries and a quiet, humming neon tube light / wall sculpture. Canvases and collages and mixed media bits of all sorts.
There is, somewhere in that fucking mess, a three-foot-tall frog carved by a dude with a chainsaw out of the log from an old tree killed by the emerald ash borer. Even the back of the bedroom door has been colonized: papered over with photographs. It is too far away and too dark for him to read them from this distance except for the fact of them: the array of people and parties she's known. Places she's loved. Bars she's closed the fuck down. None of the pictures more than three years old.
Not that he has time to take all this in: perhaps just the gleam beyond the windows, the dark illumination of garden-and-city, an impression of the trunk of the big old oak tree in the middle of the yard. The looming shapes of the larger pieces of furniture. The chaos of her things all around, entirely lived in.
--
While Justin's unlacing and removing his boots and then his socks, Serafíne circles the room and turns on two lights - one on the vanity, low, diffused by a red shade. The other a hanging paper lantern in the corner of the room, makeshift and handmade. Sera pauses at the vanity to undo and then remove her belt, sliding it out through the loops of her cutoffs, before hanging it from a hook on the wall. The leather makes a zippered, sliding sound as it comes free of the belt loops.
Then she crosses the room and skirts past him. He's on to his second boot by now, and she's yanking open the top drawer on the bedside table, rooting around through its contents for -
- condoms. In fucking rainbow colors. She pulls a line of them out of the box, tears off the top one in its package at the perforated line and lowers the rest not back into the drawer but on top of the table. Taking the time to let them settle naturally back into those accordion folds they were packed in.
Then she's in front of him, stepping carefully around his discarded boots. Knees flanking his knees, calves against his calves.
"Not since you were fifteen, huh?" she asks, as she leans forward to drop the condom still sealed in its sleeve - well, right in the center of his sternum, favoring him with one of her edgy grins as he lounges back on his elbows. She splays her right hand midline on his chest, just below the condom, and drags it down the center of his abdomen with a gentle but increasing pressure until she gets to his waist.
"You know, selfishly, I'm glad I didn't know that before I propositioned you." she continues, quite nearly conversationally except for the edge in her smile, the gleam in her eyes in the half-light. As if they weren't both half-naked in the dusk in her bedroom. As if she hitching her body fucking closer to his and reaching out with both hands for the buckle of his belt. Which she undoes with this deliberate, conservative, insinuating motion.
"Because if I had, I would've probably offered to take you out and find someone to get you laid," she looks away from him then, over his shoulder at their reflections in the window and then back to him. The timbre of her voice darkens, here, " - instead of bringing you home to do it myself."
She's moved on to the top button of his jeans, and takes her time here, all the while starting to knee him a bit, like she's urging him back on the bed. If he doesn't start to move she even tells him to scoot.
"And I'm rather enjoying doing it myself."
For now, she goes no further with his clothes than his belt buckle and the top button. Maybe the zipper before she steps back, reaching now to undo the top button of her cutoffs, hooking her fingers through the empty belt loops and sliding them down over her hips with an undulant motion. Beneath: black lace hipsters and - of course - her fucking fishnets.
The next question comes as she slides off and steps out of her shorts, kicking them away, thumbs hooking in the the elastic waistband of her stockings. "Do you wanna tell me how long it's been since you were with a guy you wanted to fuck?" She's watching him the whole time. There's such awareness, and such fucking compassion swimming in her dark blue eyes.
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